Wintertime (Frerard, Sequel to Summertime)

16: really sad chapter vibes im sorry

The hardest part was the realisation, and in turn, the staggered acceptance that he was indeed forgetting.

In much the same way that Frank's head was adapting and wiping New Jersey away for this alleged wonderful new start, that had really taken three years to get started, Frank was forgetting. Not entirely, of course, not in that kind of way - things were just fading away, the distant kind of memories, for when he was a kid.

It had started with the boy he couldn't recognise, and the inability to remember the colour of his bedroom walls, and what his high school looked like, and the name of his best friend in elementary school, and little things like that: awkward, and odd, but overlooked with time, until it seemed the hammer had finally hit the nail on the head.

Because this was the one thing in the whole damn world that Frank was determined not to leave behind; the one thing he was clinging to with all he had, even if it had been twenty or so years since she'd walked this Earth, Frank could never ever forget about his mother, and what she smelled of, and the way her voice sounded.

And it was exactly that - these blanks in his mind, and the mystery as to what had brought them on that left Frank laying awake at night, because he'd developed this horrible habit of his dreams being more of a walk down memory lane than anything else, although it really did feel like it was much less of a gentle stroll, and much more like he was being pushed into oncoming traffic on a highway called memory lane, but that wasn't nearly as catchy.

He couldn't go back inside his own head, not even when everything had seemed to be okay, because he couldn't accept that he was forgetting, because perhaps there were just some parts of Frank's memory that he knew he couldn't live without, and all in all, he was terrified of knowing, and as much as he hated to admit it, right now, ignorance and naivety was bliss... sleep deprivation, however, was not, and of course, there was also the matter of lying to Gerard in regards to what had brought on the eye bags and drained the colour from his face.

Stress.

That's what Frank had said, and would continue to say, and Gerard wouldn't continue to believe him, that was for sure, but it wasn't going to make Frank say anything.

Because, okay, Gerard wasn't exactly the easy person to talk to, and that was a bad sign, and Frank knew it, but he also knew that he really couldn't give less of a fuck if he tried.

He just knew that this had to stop, that he had to fill this mess in his head by some means, but of course, he was stumped as to how he could possibly go about the aforementioned, and at least like this, he had somewhat of a legitimate reason to keep himself up at night. Not that it mattered, of course, because Gerard knew he was awake, and Gerard knew he was lying, and Gerard was probably hidden in the corner of the room, watching Frank's every move that very moment.

Frank just didn't care to know, because perhaps it was better off that way - whatever that meant, because at this point, he really wasn't entirely sure.

But he knew so much about Gerard; he knew too much, like his head was throwing everything else away in favour of the ghost boy with the hair brighter than Frank's future, and Frank just didn't quite know what to make of that at all.

He grabbed himself a glass of water from the kitchen, slamming his hand against the light switch in a desperate and clumsy attempt to illuminate the darkness that three am brought, however, it wasn't like he wasn't accustomed to it with the amount of 'stress' he'd been under recently. He shook his head, glancing over the ignored box of pills at the back of his cupboard: the ones he didn't take anymore, as he grabbed something to eat, anything really, because he needed something to distract himself from reality and the way it seemed to be falling to pieces around him.