ĐɆVłⱠ ₮Ø₩₦ (devil town) • frerard

vii

frank doesn't leave his house for more than two hours for three weeks and everything feels dead to him. it took him three days to realize it, that it was really happening, that hayley was really gone and he had gone to her funeral despite the deadly glares that people shot him. he only stayed for ten minutes, enough to see her body in the casket, eyes shut and skin cold. enough to say goodbye and leave. and after that, everything came crashing down. he was on a downward spiral and nothing felt right.

the moment he returns home, his entire body is shaking and the images of hayley are branded into his brain. they may never leave. frank remembers everything. he remembers he was thinking about gerard, about how he would get his revenge, about how he would worm himself into gerard's head and force his memory into him. and he remembers looking up from his steering wheel and seeing the headlights to his right and he remembers spinning out, the initial impact, the scream of lindsey. red, blue, red, blue.

the shaking doesn't leave for a while, his hands are violent in the way they move and when he looks around his dark house he just feels so fucking helpless. he killed hayley. he murdered her. one of the only two people he felt that he could trust in this fucked up world he's in. the only light at the end of the tunnel. with her leaving, so has lindsey. and that was the last hope he had, the last shred of reason to stay the way he is. gone. just disappeared. and he can't blame anybody else but himself which makes this all the more tragic.

the first thing he does is break. of course he breaks. because it's all he knows how to do. fighting won't help a damn thing. screaming won't help a damn thing. but crying could help. even if it's temporary. because hayley is gone. sweet, sweet hayley. they'd met years and years ago at a blink concert back when frank was still in college, and they bonded quick. hayley was still haden back then, and they exchanged numbers. they met up more, it was always platonic, haden was straight, always loved girls. and frank respected that. but they became best friends. even when haden came out as hayley and even when hayley moved away with lindsey. frank admired her, always had and always will. she was someone frank trusted with everything.

and frank, frank killed her.

he cries, for hours because it's all he knows what to do. he doesn't have anyone else to grieve with, nobody else to talk to. gerard is gone, lindsey is gone, hayley is gone. and it's just him. alone again. eventually his tears die down and he heads to the bathroom and he turns on the light. which is a first in a long time. the bruises are still on his neck but they're fading. he wishes they'd stay longer. he wishes someone else would give them to him. he tries to choke himself but it isn't the same, so he heads to the bedroom and covers his face with a pillow. he can't hold it any longer than two minutes and he hates that. he wants to die. more than anything. he wants the pain to just stop. he wants to forget it ever happened but no matter how har he tries to go back, he can't. because hayley is never going to reply to that text he sent and she's never going to see how sorry he is again because she can't. because she's fucking dead.

frank falls asleep after crying until two in the morning and for the next two and a half weeks, he stays at home, his house becomes the mess it once was, he stops eating except for the few nibbles of lunch and dinner and he doesn't shower. surprisingly enough, on his second week, he gets a text from gerard.

gerard: you haven't texted in a while and i'm not sorry about how i acted in the bar because i can't do the relationship we've had without some groundwork but i'm still worried about you. i haven't heard anything.

frank reads it twice over, but he doesn't reply because gerard is still being an asshole and thinking about him just reminds him of hayley and he can't stand that.

the final week passes and that's when he finally feels something more than self-hatred. and that's just normal hatred, for gerard. he's tired of blaming himself. tired of everything he's gone through and he needs to get out of the house. he wakes up at ten, makes himself breakfast, showers, gets dressed in the same leather jacket he wore when he first met gerard, and leaves at five to the bar. he isn't sure what he's expecting, if it's a dom, a sub, a switch. if it's gerard. if it's someone else he knows. but when he enters the bar, the first person he lays eyes on isn't gerard or lindsey or anyone else.