The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder [Frerard]

Such An Asshole

Ryan's hair seems particularly golden on a foggy December morning.

He's in a coat similar to Gerard's, maybe a bit more military-style, and Jamia is wearing a black skirt she once swore would never leave her closet again. Gerard doesn't know if it's appropriate to wear Docs to church, but his mother told him if he's already going, he might as well be a bit of a rebel whilst he's at it.
He doesn't really know why he's there. Distraction, perhaps, might be the best fitting answer. A part of him still hopes that maybe at least some of his three thousand sins won't be able to cross the shiny threshold.

It's a small church, all brown and bronze inside, eyes of saints staring down at him from the paintings hung on the walls. The floor is cold marble, the pews a warm dark wood. He shifts uncomfortably at how the light pours in through the tinted glass windows. It's bordering on eerie, as if a looming dark presence came to watch over him, casting blood red shadows on the people surrounding him. Perhaps the corridor will swallow him whole as he walks towards the altar.

"Merry Christmas," says Ryan's dad when they meet him. He's a man of few words and many, many wrinkles. Gerard knows his eyes, though, there is not a single dishonest speck in the milky brown- just like his son's. Gerard smiles.

It's a haunted setting, he concludes. Everything here reminds him of his own wrongdoings. It's a shame the regret stays even after all these years he hasn't stepped foot in a church. He feels like he might be the ghost of his own Christmas past. The present feels too plastic anyway, and the future... Don't worry about the future soon became you have no future at all and getting out of that mindset is too much of a leap out of his comfort zone. Perhaps the setting isn't haunted after all... perhaps it is just him.

It's strange. He's become so used to the half-life, hazy and floating through time and space between himself and the next season of the year. Everything blooms, Gerard fades. Concrete fumes- Gerard fades. Downpours... Gerard fades. Each time everything dies again, he hopes he might fade away completely. It hasn't happened yet. He still hasn't given up.

He's jittery during the mass. There's something in the air that's making him nervous. It's not the people. It's not the gospel despite the guilt it stirs in the pit of his stomach... it's the feeling of being watched in a room full of people. As if all the shadows on the floor are a part of a single entity that's chasing him and him only. That's ridiculous, obviously, but there's something very real behind his irrational paranoia...
He'd look around if he wasn't anxious it'd be someone he wasn't expecting.

"Cheer up, soldier," comes from behind him. Gerard chokes on his own saliva. "Sorry I scared you. You just looked like someone broke your favorite toy. Oh, and, merry Christmas I guess."

His rambling gave Gerard some time to collect himself. "Merry Christmas, Pete. I'm uh- kind of- not... sad? I mean. I'm fine. Just absent. Mentally."

Pete Wentz grins. "Eloquent is how I like them.". Gerard blinks twice, trying to process. Was he flirting with him? "I'll give you a minute to come back to Earth. Where were you? Halloweentown?"

Gerard snorts at that. It's so much easier to talk to someone when they aren't expecting eye contact. "Ah, my hometown, yes." Someone shushes them from the front pew. Gerard immediately stiffens.

Pete looks amused. "He can joke, everyone! An extravaganza!"

Gerard snickers. The guy is so awfully loud, it's ridiculous; but there's something comforting about it. He isn't sure why Pete is talking to him, though- it seems slightly counterproductive to befriend someone who's willingly kissed your arch enemy. There isn't any way of Pete knowing that, he's aware, but his thought process wasn't very logical to begin with, either. Sometimes it seems to him that people can sense things like those. However, the least he can do is try to be polite.