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It is June 16th, 2015, gay marriage has been legalised and Gerard Way gets a call from a ghost. He stares for a moment in disbelief at the once-familiar avatar blinking on the screen of his car, the contact name he couldn’t bring himself to change.
Frankie is calling you. There’s still even the stupid heart emoticon next to the name.
He deliberates for a moment before steeling his nerves and clicking Accept. Frank’s face fills up the screen and he hastily smooths down his hair, trying not to cry. “Hi,” he manages to croak.
“Hey,” Frank says. His eyes look greener than he remembers. Not emerald-green, more like the tops of a forest lit by dawn in the film of a golden memory.
“I like your hair,” he offers, and Frank laughs, almost like the way he used to. If his old laugh was a balloon floating in the endless sky, now it was weighed down, shackled by the shattering of illusions. There’s a barrier between him and that smile, and it’s not the screen. There’s a barrier between them and he will never be able to take them down. “Thanks.”
“So, did you hear the news?”
He tries to smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. It’s great, isn’t it?”
The corners of Frank’s lips lift, automatic and stilted. “Yeah. I just…I thought I’d call, because, you know…”
Because he’d wanted to marry Gerard as soon as he could.
“Right. Yeah,” he says, as if he hadn’t been thinking about that for the past eight years. “Thanks, I- I appreciate it.”
There’s that tight-lipped smile again. Then there’s silence.
“How are you?” Gerard asks, out of desperation. Please don’t leave, he wills.
“I’m really happy,” he responds, no sarcasm. “Jenny and the kids, we’re all doing great.”
Great. So he was doing what Gerard had done constantly for the last year. Lie his ass off and name-drop his family and his plastic life in every conversation. Was Frank even aware that he was doing it? He’d never been one for passive aggression.
But he didn’t know Frank anymore, did he?
And suddenly the memory comes flashing back to him like a slap in the face. He remembers a broken Frank, eyes red and cheeks tear-stained, seeing him after Gerard’s wedding. He’d tried to smile, but it had been more a grimace, and Gerard’s heart went with it out the window.
“Emily’s great,” he’d said quietly. “I hope you’re happy. Just…just not as happy as you were with me.”
Two months later, the invitation for Frank’s wedding came in the mail like a taunt.
“That’s nice to hear,” he manages, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry.”
Frank doesn’t even acknowledge the apology. “You seem happy too, so.”
The key word is seem. “Yeah, because I threw the love of my life under a bus and married the first person to photograph the debris so strangers an ocean away wouldn’t think I was gay!” he blurts, then immediately regrets it when Frank flinches.
“I don’t know how true that is, Gerard,” he said. Gerard, not Gee. “I’m not sure I know you anymore.”
“You do!” he protests. “I’m just“- he gesticulates angrily at the air- “I pretend to be someone else for Emily and her friends, and I hate it! I hate every minute of it! I’m a blank slate for them now, like Charlie from the fucking chocolate factory!”
It was the first movie they watched together, curled up on Gerard’s childhood bed with a bag of homemade popcorn and exchanging theories in between kisses.
Frank laughs bitterly. “You’re not the victim here, Gerard, even if your legions of online stalkers appear to think you deserve better than her. She was your choice. You proposed, not her. Do you wanna get matching tattoos, have the same haircut, go steady and just be friends so we can fuck everyone who looks just like us, thinks like us, and feels like us too?”
It’s a quote, so familiar that it’s burnt into the back of Gerard’s skull. It’s from Frank’s poetry, a series of angst-ridden screams pinned down on paper.
“We used to be the same type of people,” he’s saying now, “but you decided to be a motherfucking puppet for people who wrote nightmarish songs about little girls and profited off marginalised communities. Doesn’t mean that much to you, you’re just playing a role.”
“I was real when it came to you. Hesitant Alien was about you,” he retorts, a little hurt. His comment lacks the sting, though.
“Yeah, and I write songs about you. You like the songs I write about you. Admit it. You like them until your friends do too, then you’ll say it sucks and call me a sellout.”
Gerard feels like he’s been kicked. “What? Frankie, I’d never do that!”
“You would if they told you to. It’s okay, it’s o-fucking-kay, and nothing matters because society will always defend their beloved. Emily is not a good person. I’d write a dossier about it, but I told you the same thing eight years ago, didn’t I?”
Gerard is silent for a moment. “Yeah, you did,” he finally says. “You’re right.”
“And you don’t owe anyone anything.” The anger in Frank’s voice is unlike anything he’s heard before. “You don’t owe the fans an explanation, you don’t owe the band an explanation. You don’t owe me anything. And Emily thinks the world owes her something.” He chuckles sardonically.
“I told you she was a bully. You didn’t listen until you yelled at your own innocent fans because she showed up covered in blood. I told you she was racist. Two years later, you called in your fancy ass lawyers when she got in trouble for taking her lies too far. I don’t know, I found out all this on the fucking internet because we’d stopped talking then. How true is any of this?”
Gerard doesn’t respond, his brain scrambling to compute this angry version of Frank. He’d always thrown red-hot passion into his songs, but that anger had never been directed at him. Not to his face, at least. That was because he’d known Frank the lover, not married, new Frank who finally sees all his bullshit.
Frank throws his hands up. “Fuck if I know. There’s never a label stamping people as good or bad. You have to judge for yourself, not go with the flow like a dead fish, and I’m not about to say this in an interview, but goddammit, I think I owe my ex-bandmates a little respect.” He spat the last words.
There’s a brief, tension-filled pause where Gerard debates opening his mouth, but the moment he does, Frank cuts in again.
“She is not a good person. Not to me, not to Ray, not to Mikey, your own brother about whom she blew up the internet in a supposed scandal. And I wouldn’t come kicking down the door with my worthless opinion unless someone close to me got hurt, which they did.”
“Your opinion isn’t worthless,” he says feebly. “And I know, I know it was really bad-“
“And don’t you just nod like all the blame is on her!” Frank interrupts. “I don’t care how your fucking moral compass works anymore, but you’re not the hero of the black parade anymore. Not to me.” He pauses, perhaps to let the words sink in or to recompose himself.
The bitterness in his voice fades to sadness now. “You were your own person until the rumours started about your sexuality. From then you turned into a conglomeration of them, and them, and them too. Can you see it? No? You should’ve looked closer then, when I carved your name into my thigh under atrocious stage lighting.”
He exhales. “There you go, there’s my full signed confession.”
“I’m sorry,” Gerard whispers. “I know it doesn’t even come close to covering it, but I’m sorry. You’re right, you’re completely right, and I’m a coward, and I know it’s too late. Emily’s not the villain that built my plastic life, but together we did, and I know, I have to stop pretending,” he babbles.
He closes his eyes and inhales once, twice. “Tell me what I could possibly do to tell you I’m sorry,” he begs. “Anything at all.”
Frank’s eyes soften. “Just answer me honestly. Did you ever truly love me?”
And just like that, Gerard’s heart splinters. Frank doesn’t think he’s loved, either, and he can’t bear that thought. “Yes. Yes, of course!” he chokes, a sob threatening to bubble up. “I loved you. I love you. I love you.”
“I waited ten years for you to say that,” Frank says at last. “So…thank you.”
Gerard feels like someone’s applied a seam-ripper to his heart. Somehow, until now, he’d thought Frank still cared about him.
“I always expected you to follow me, no matter what,” he begins, looking down and fiddling with his cuticles. “And that was messed up. I thrived off the attention and kept showing off so you’d stay. Eventually I began to take you for granted, and when I got spooked, I ran and I never stopped running.”
Tears begin to pool under his lashes and he furiously blinks them back. “I just want you to know, every song I wrote, I wrote for you. Why the fuck do I sound like a Hallmark card? Just- the world is ugly, but you’re beautiful to me, and I mean it, I mean it. I still fucking love you. I’m done with pride and pretences and trying to predict your next move. I know you threw our chess board away years ago, but all that time I wasn’t trying to plan a checkmate, I just wanted you back.”
“That’s a shit analogy.”
Gerard looks up and sees a smile, a real smile, and he could have melted with relief. “I shouldn’t have married Emily,” he continued, boldened by his reaction. “I did it because she was there, she was convenient, and she seemed like everything I wanted. But I can’t live like that anymore. I can’t keep getting on the high of her cocaine, waving to the crowds while needing you with every breath, because it’s not fair to her, even if she never stayed true to me. You feel like home to me. And I thought you should know. Which is why we finalised the divorce papers today.” He swallows. “The baby…is with her.”
“I don’t… I don’t expect anything from you, of course. I just wanted to see you one last time.”
Frank frowned. “But I was the one who called you.”
“I’m outside your house.”
“What the fuck?” Gerard hears him swear just as he’s getting out of the car and the front door flings open, revealing Frank. Without thinking, he dashes down the front path, stopping short only when he realises he’s about to hug him.
“You’re here,” Frank says in disbelief. “And you let me stay on the phone the whole time?”
Gerard laughs at the unexpected joke. Then he remembers his mission and sobers himself. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s obvious but I owe you a long, long list of apologies.”
Frank’s hand lands on his shoulder and he turns to putty. “I accept your apology. Well, apologies. Apolo-gees. Get it?”
Gerard lets out a sound that’s simultaneously a laugh and a sob. “Yes. Yes, I do,” he says, and internally kicks himself for the choice of words. “Thank you. Thank you.” He gazes at Frank’s face, mentally mapping his features and gently placing his image in an imaginary locket, for when he burns. “And thank you for letting me see you one last time.”
The words finally seem to register in Frank’s mind. “Hang on. One last time?”
The tears run down Gerard’s face now, unabashed. “Sorry. Get back to your family, I’m sure they’re waiting for you.”
The syringes are waiting for him in the trunk of his car, ready to hand-deliver him to hell.
The stinging slap across his face jolts him back to reality. “You are not doing this, Gerard Arthur Way,” Frank says fiercely, his eyes glimmering with unshed tears.
“Go back to your family,” he whispers weakly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I’ve made too many mistakes.”
“Gee, no, I love you,” Frank says firmly, his hands coming up to cup Gerard’s face. As much as he longs for the contact, he pushes him away. “Jenny,” he says. A reminder.
“I love you!”
“But you love her more.” It’s not a question. “And, as terrible as it sounds, I already got to be with you. I already had my turn. So I’ll treasure those memories for all time and whatnot.”
Frank’s arms pull him close. “Listen to me, Gee, I love you. You’re the one I want. Am I making myself clear?”
He cracks a half-smile. “Yeah.”
Like magnets, their hands drift towards each other until their fingers interlock. Frank gives his hand a squeeze. “I’ve been angry at you for the past decade, you know.”
Gerard chuckles. “Yeah. I know.”
“Just…you are worth it, every single time. I love you, so much.”
Gerard can feel his tear glands already reacting. “I love you so much too.” He strokes the back of Frank’s hand with his thumb. “I wish we could run away from here, make up everything and wake up feeling alive.”
Frank kisses him softly and Gerard closes his eyes, soaking in the sensation. He’d missed this.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, looking down at their joined hands. “Jenny and the girls are out of town this weekend, but there’s going to be an uncomfortable conversation when they come back. It’s not fair to her. I married her and I vowed to love her and we have children, oh God-“
Gerard calms him down with a brief kiss to his forehead. “Jenny’s one of the best people I know. It feels unfair, yeah, and maybe that makes us bad people, but I don’t want to ever leave you again.” His voice cracks on the last sentence.
“And I know we have all these issues to resolve, and we’ve hurt each other so much, but I want to talk about it. I can go back to all those dark places if it means you’re there with me.”
The look on Frank’s face is half adoration, half unbridled joy. Gerard could die right here and be forever at peace.
“We’ll figure something out,” Frank says reassuringly. “Us against the world, yeah?”
He smiles back, the flood of emotions threatening to break the dam of his self control. “Always.”