This Is the Best Day Ever

Gerard had awoken particularly early. It wasn't for any real reason- he only had to be in work for 8.30 and he woke up at 5, an hour earlier than he normally would on a shitty, overcast tuesday morning. But, for whatever reason, he was in a brilliant mood, unusual for him at this time of morning. And as he rolled over in bed to bury his face back into his pillow, his nose bumped against the shoulder of his boyfriend.

Normally, on a week day, Gerard would have just kissed Frank on the cheek and ruffled his hair, going to work and leaving the younger man to sleep. Frank didn't have a job, as he was still looking, and so most of his time alone was spent sleeping. Not this morning, Gerard thought.

He gently brushed his lips over the smaller man's upper back, one of his hands slipping up his thigh to rest on a prominent hipbone. Frank didn't stir, his shoulders only hunching a little as he turned further onto his side, away from Gerard's touch. The older man shuffled closer to him and kept his eyes trained on his face, smiling lightly at how beautiful Frank looked when he slept. Those perfect lips, parted into a slight 'o' shape, neck craned a little, throat exposed. Gerard took advantage of this, his lips attaching to the younger man's throat and sucking lightly, playfully. Still Frank didn't stir.

Gerard whined lowly and tangled a hand in the small man's hair, brushing through it gently and letting his teeth sink lightly into the tanned slope of Frank's neck, eyes fluttering closer for a moment at the feeling of his boyfriend's flesh between his jaws.

But he quickly chased the thought away, reminding himself to be cute and sweet and not the sex-crazed animal that he turned into whenever he bit into Frank's smooth skin.

He let himself nip, kiss and suck at the younger man's neck for a few moments, hands roaming over the supple tattooed flesh of his arms and eventually clutching at both of his hands. Frank was so beautiful.

"Frankiiiiieeee, wake uuuup!" Gerard mumbled against Frank's ear, biting the lobe softly. His boyfriend groaned in return, his hands sleepily moving up to rest on the older man's hips, eyes still closed.

"It's too eaaaarlyyyyyy!" He whined at the man above him, pawing at his chest in protest. Gerard chuckled, capturing Frank's soft lips in a deep kiss to shut him up.

The smaller man moaned into the kiss and his eyes shot open for a moment before closing in pleasure, his hands sliding up under Gerard's armpits and around his upper back. Gerard's tongue worked slowly against the younger man's, teasing him for the most part. Frank tried to pull him closer, starting to crave morning sex even though he'd been awake for not even two minutes and it was pretty much five o' clock in the morning.

Gerard knew what Frank wanted the moment he moved his legs up to wrap round the older man's waist, and he reluctantly shook his head. Frank detached their lips and pouted, pulling the puppy-dog eyes that Gerard was yet to resist. Gerard groaned, looking at his boyfriend solemnly.

"Baby you know I have to work," he protested, and Frank simply folded his arms, still pouting. The taller man sighed, kissing his forehead. "I'm gonna try and finish early today, anywhere. I've planned something for us later."

Frank squealed excitedly. "What what what!?" He practically screeched, instantly wide awake. Gerard chuckled again, shaking his head at the over-excited man before him.

"It's a secret surprise, duh," he said, smiling and then recapturing the younger man's lips before he could say another word. They kissed for another few minutes, until Frank began to claw at Gerard's back and moan lowly like he always did and buck his hips up lightly. Gerard regretted sleeping naked- it would be a lot easier to deal with having Frank's own nude form pressed against him if he himself wasn't naked in the first place. He groaned again, knowing what Frank was trying to do to him.

"Baby, no. Not now." Gerard tried to ignore the hurt expression on his boyfriend's face, but it didn't work, and he sighed sadly. "Frankie, please."

Frank just giggled, sitting up to nuzzle the older man's cheek. "Teasing, baby. Go to work."

He let Gerard kiss him for another few minutes before he started bugging him to get ready for work, which Gerard was becoming reluctant to do because of how goddamn cute and sexy his boyfriend was. But eventually he dragged himself from the bed, with help from Frank, and went to shower as the smaller man laid back down and pulled the bedsheets up to his chin, yawning.

Even after making out with Frank, having a shower, eating breakfast, and drinking a quick coffee, and after getting dressed into the black and white pinstripe suit that he always wore to work on a tuesday, Gerard was ready almost half an hour earlier than he was normally. He leaned down to kiss Frank's temple with a smug smile on his face, mumbling in his ear, "I'll call you later, okay?" He received a brief nod in response and after that, Gerard left for work.

When Gerard made it out onto the street, ready for the twenty minute walk to his workplace, it began to rain and the black-haired man uttered perhaps a dozen profanities at himself for leaving his umbrella upstairs. But he quickly composed himself and told himself that it didn't matter, he would just walk to work in the pouring rain. No big deal. No. He wouldn't let the weather affect his mood. Besides, he just did what most people did when it rained in New York - used his bag as an umbrella.

About 5 minutes into his walk or more like light run, Gerard decided to make a quick stop at the Starbucks round the corner (even though he'd already had coffee that morning, but if you're Gerard then one coffee is never enough) just to grab a latté and then quickly make his way up to his office early, so that he could get a headstart on finishing all his work, and then maybe his boss would allow him the rest of the day off. Gerard would then, hopefully, stop off at the jewellery shop he knew in the centre of the city. It was all part of his surprise for Frank.

So, as soon as the blessed Starbucks sign appeared at the end of the street, Gerard made a bee-line for it, practically barging past every single person that happened to be on the sidewalk. No one got between Gerard Way and Starbucks. No one. Anyone that had, hadn't lived to tell the tale. But literally, but... Gerard really liked coffee. It was his one true love, alongside nicotine, art, and of course his absolutely gorgeous and perfect boyfriend.

But by this point, the rain had only gotten heavier, and as Gerard quickly slipped inside his favourite coffee shop (and almost fell on his backside after his sneakers slid on the wet tile), the heavens opened and unleashed turrential rain on all of New York City. Gerard, however, was standing in the doorway to Starbucks absolutely sopping wet and looking like a drowned rat. After shaking his hair out and seeing that everyone in the shop was looking at him and trying not to laugh, Gerard trudged over to the counter to order his latté that he had gotten all soggy for. He could have taken a cab to work. But no, he wanted a goddamn latté.

I am still in a good mood, Gerard thought to himself. I am still in a good mood.

'Just a latté,' the wet-haired man grumbled as he reached the counter, looking up to find his favourite coffee shop guy, Ray, beaming at him.

'Your usual?' Ray asked, knowing that it was completely unnecessary, drumming his fingers on his side of the counter as he looked up at Gerard in enquiry.

'Uh.. No, with an extra shot this time,' Gerard said quickly, startling Ray a little.

"Are you feeling okay this morning, Gerard?" The curly-haired man asked, cocking an eyebrow in suspicion as he picked up a regular-sized paper cup. Gerard nibbled on his lip, nodding mindlessly. He didn't really want Ray knowing about his plan, in case it failed.

"You look worried about something, man," Ray said, not looking at him as he made the coffee.

"I'm fine," Gerard said, feeling awkward. Ray shrugged.

"You and Frank fighting again?" Ray knew about Gerard's boyfriend, of course. They were actually quite good friends. Gerard had been coming here for the whole two years that Ray had worked here, so by now they knew an awful lot about each other. Perhaps they were friends. Gerard had never considered it before. But he flinched slightly at Ray's question.

"No," he said softly, not wanting to be reminded of when he and Frank used to fight. Ray shrugged again, finishing Gerard's coffee and placing the cup on the counter.

"Guess it's not my place to know."

"It's nothing bad!" Gerard blurted out all of a sudden, seeing that Ray looked a little upset. Maybe worried for Gerard? No. Of course not, Gerard scolded himself.

Ray just nodded, not wanting to push the conversation any further. He changed the subject.

"You got much work to do today?" He asked as Gerard payed him for the coffee silently. The black-haired man shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm gonna try and get it all done quickly though, I have some, er... errands, to run later and I wanna get off work early, ya know?" Gerard almost mumbled to himself, starting to get preoccupied with the thought of his plan. What if it went wrong...?

"Well I hope you do," Ray said, going to say something else before he noticed a rather pissed customer who was waiting impatiently behind Gerard. Ray blushed and Gerard nodded his goodbye, making his way to the door and back out into the street. He barely even noticed that the rain had stopped and the clouds were starting to clear. He was still thinking.

Gerard only sipped his coffee once as he made the remainder of his journey to the office. He was too busy thinking about his plan. The all-important plan that could practically make or break his relationship with Frank. The plan that involved Gerard waiting for weeks on end to get a reservation at the best italian restaurant in New York, the plan that involved Gerard saving up hundreds and hundreds of dollars just to buy the ring he'd been looking at for months in the window of the jewellery shop only a block away from where he worked. He hoped his plan would work. It was making him feel sick with anticipation just thinking about it.

It was just coming up to 8.20 when Gerard got into the North Tower. He was nowhere near as early as he had wanted to be but he blamed Frank for making him all horny and therefore extending his shower time from fifteen minutes to almost twenty five, because he'd needed to relieve himself. He bet that Frank did it deliberately.

8.25 when Gerard sat as his desk and logged onto his computer, setting his coffee down on the desk before realising that it was going lukewarm and so he picked it up and pretty much chugged the whole thing in one go, which left that rotten, bitter aftertaste in his mouth that he absolutely hated. He quickly searched out some chewing gum, though, so that yucky breath problem was shortlived. Gerard had just opened several documents on his computer and was getting to work on them when he started to feel really sick. His palms were getting all sweaty and his face had paled and he wanted to spend the rest of his day hurling in the bathroom. But he soon realised, a few weeks too late, perhaps, that he needed help with this. He couldn't ask his parents, no, because they would only try and persuade him not to do it. Tell him that he's too young, that Frank's not right for him, all that. But Gerard knew what he wanted. He wanted Frank and he wanted him all to himself. Forever.

Gerard then decided to call up his brother Mikey, who lived down in New Jersey. Mikey wasn't married, but he was a lot better at this kind of thing than Gerard was. Gerard had thought that he'd be fine with this, what with him being a complete hopeless romantic and what not. But it seemed that's not how it worked, and Mikey seemed like Gerard's life preserver right now.

But, much to his dismay, Mikey didn't pick up the phone when Gerard called, and so he left a desperate voicemail describing what he planned to do and what he was nervous about and how much Frank meant to him, why it was so important that this worked out. Gerard really hoped that Mikey would listen to the message. He really, really hoped so.

It was 8.46 when it happened. The explosion, the attack, the crash, whatever you want to call it. You know what that means. You know you do.

It shook the ground, the sound of steel tearing through steel and glass shattering and roaring flames and crumbling walls could be heard easily. Screams echoed from the ground, from inside as the tower shook from its foundations upwards. At first it was confusing, for whoever saw it happen and whoever didn't. But within that very minute, people were rushing out of their shops and poking their heads out windows to see what had caused the explosion. Hands were clamped over mouths and eyes widened in shock, faces paling and knees weakening.

A look of pure and utter horror took over the faces of the thousands of people that saw it in that one minute, some barely resisting the urge to scream.

No one knew what had actually happened until they saw the second explosion with their own eyes, over fifteen minutes later. And that's when they realised, it wasn't just out of the blue. It was planned. It was a goddamn attack. This time they screamed. They cried, they sobbed. They murmured under their breath in disbelief, some even uttering prayers and crossing themselves.

Ray saw it. He saw the plane hit the south tower, minutes after he had followed everyone out of the shop upon hearing that the north tower of the World Trade Centre had been hit by a goddamn plane. Ray felt sick, looking at those burning buildings and knowing how many people must be injured, dead, dying... Oh god.

By this time it was all over the news. Everyone in the country knew, everyone in the world knew about it. But there was nothing like seeing it happen right in front of you like that. And Ray couldn't deal with it. He rushed back inside the shop, which was now empty as everyone had flocked into the streets, and turned on the shitty TV that was above the counter. He stretched up to turn on the news and, sure enough, there it was.

He could see it more close up now, different angles, different shots. He looked to the north tower first and let out a sickening moan as his head started to spin. That wasn't the twentieth floor. Nor the fiftieth. Nor the seventy-fifth. Ray would bet his life that it was the ninetieth to the hundredth. It had to be. And just knowing who was on one of those floors, the ninety-sixth to be exact, made everything a million times worse. He couldn't help but repeatedly mumble, "no. please, please no. no." as he stared at the tv in shock and horror.

The cameras that were filming the whole thing had zoomed in on parts of the towers, and Ray could see people leaning out of windows, at above one hundred stories above ground, just to breathe. The smoke was thick, and the buildings themselves just gargantuan pillars of fire. Men and women were waving white shirts around, probably screaming for help and rasping for air. Ray continued to cry and then after what could have easily been an hour, as he watched on with nausea creeping around in his stomach, the south tower fell. The building just collapsed in on itself and plummeted to the ground, plumes of smoke, dust and ash rising high into the air like a pyroclastic flow. The south tower was gone, destroyed, completely annihilated. Hundreds and hundreds of lives, gone. Ended. Crushed.

Another ten minutes passed. The ash and smoke continued to weave in and out of the city streets, driving people back into their shops and apartments, but it was as this was happening that people began to fall, drop almost like flies, from the north tower. Ray didn't know if they had fallen, or had flung themselves off the building to escape dying of suffocation and smoke inhalation. It was at this point that time completely stopped for Ray, as he saw something on the screen that would haunt him more than anything he had seen in the past hour and a half. It was the image of one black-haired man, clad in black suit pants and a black waistcoat with a white shirt and black tie, spiralling downwards through the air towards the ground. His death was not masked- the angle at which he fell, corresponding with the camera angle made it so that the footage was still being shown when he hit the ground. Ray's jaw dropped and he retched, gagged, almost vomited. That had been Gerard. He knew it. He knew it. God help him he didn't want to know it but he did.

Frank had seen it. The moment that he'd turned on the tv after dragging himself out of bed, the plane had just hit the south tower. Literally, just at that second.

The noise that Frank made was indescribable. It wasn't a gasp, nor a scream, nor a groan. It was more like a cry mixed with a whimper, a little choked sob spilling from his throat at the same time. It would have been heartbreaking for anyone to have heard it, for that is what the noise signalled. Heartbreak.

Frank had scrabbled around for his phone, trying to dial Gerard's number but failing miserably the first few attempts because his eyes were clouded by a torrent of unstoppable tears. But the moment he got it right, he was kneeling on the floor in front of the tv loudly pleading for Gerard to pick up, to tell him he's okay and he's in Starbucks, he's somewhere, he's just not in that godforsaken tower, please, please...

"Frank!" The hoarse cry startled the sobbing man and he practically screamed, frantically speaking into the phone, crying hysterically.

"Please tell me you're not in there!" Frank begged. "Please tell me you're not! Baby please! Don't do this to me, you can't do this to me, you can't-"

"I love you!" Gerard seemed to cough into the phone, rasping for breath in between words. Frank felt vomit rising in the back of his throat. "Frank, Frank I love you so much oh god I love you I love you baby I'm so sorry oh my god Frankie I'm so sorry I-"

"You're okay, " Frank mumbled helplessly. "You're okay, right? You're gonna get out, you're gonna come home, right? A-And, and, oh god baby please you can't do this to me no please please pl-"

"I'm gonna come straight home, Frankie," Gerard sobbed, coughing loudly and retching slightly. He was gasping for air. Desperately pulling all the air into his lungs that he could. "I'm gonna be with you soon, baby, I'm trying to get out of here, I'm trying..." Another pause, another cough, another gasp.

"What's happening!?" Frank wailed, tears streaming so quickly from his eyes that he could barely feel them anymore.

"I don't know, baby, I don't know," Gerard spluttered in response, his voice cracking as he continued to choke. "I'm gonna get out of here, I promise. And I'm gonna come home and I'll be okay and-"

"Gerard don't do this to me!" Frank yelled, his voice wavering as tears and snot flew everywhere. He was a mess bit he didn't care. He wanted Gerard, he just wanted him home, safe, anywhere but there.

"I'm so sorry," Gerard sobbed hopelessly, his eyes squeezed tightly shut but Frank didn't know, couldn't see. "I love you so much, baby, I'm coming home, I'm coming home..."

There was a sound on Gerard's end of the line that sounded like a deep breath, a controlled sob, and this is when Frank went berserk.

"No don't! Don't you fucking leave me! Don't you fucking dare!" He cried into the phone. "I swear to fucking god, Gerard, don't! I need you, please, I n-need you..."

"I'm coming home, Frankie," Gerard said again, throat hoarse with coughing and crying. His skin was blistered and burned and black, his face stained with smoke and tears and blood. As he leaned out of the window, he whispered. He could never know if Frank heard him, and it wasn't aimed at him, but at the heavens. They were the last few words he would ever say.

"Hello angels, where are you?"

The line went dead.

"No! Gerard! No no no no no no oh my god oh my god Gerard no oh god no no Gerard please-"

Frank screamed, a loud, glass-shattering, blood-curdling scream, as his eyes unintentionally flicked to the television in front of him. On the screen he saw a man, falling, his body spiralling towards the ground as gravity clutched him by the collar and brought him plummeting to the harsh concrete below. Frank saw it all. The way he just disappeared, his body exploding into nothing more than bone shards and scraps of flesh.

Frank puked, all over himself and the carpet he was knelt on. And before he could say a word, scream another word, he fainted and collapsed face-first in the puddle of his own vomit.

*

Mikey caught the first plane to New York that he could. Of course, this was a few days after the attack because the US Government had to be extra-wary of the air traffic now. But the moment he got to NY, he made his way straight to Gerard and Frank's apartment. Or rather... Frank's apartment.

Ray was there with Frank when Mikey arrived. They had never met before but Ray soon explained that he was a friend and had been looking after Frank because the poor kid had no one else.

Mikey was still in the process of grieving for Gerard, but somehow he wasn't in as poor a state as his late brother's boyfriend, or as he had come to learn, the fiancé that Gerard had hoped to make him. Frank knew nothing of Gerard's plan, and Mikey was going to tell him, even though he knew it may make things worse for a while, but Frank would thank him in the end.

Mikey tried to talk to Frank, he really did. But he couldn't get through to him. The nineteen year old was more or less a zombie, previously gorgeous hazel eyes now dull and constantly staring into space, leaking tears for all the time they were open. Ray and Mikey knew he was coping with post-traumatic stress, but in fact he was barely coping at all.

Frank said barely anything, his only words being "I want to see Gerard" or "when's Gerard coming home" in whatever circumstance. Ray didn't know what to do, nor Mikey. They couldn't get Frank to move so that they could get him to a doctor. Every time that they said Gerard wasn't coming back, Frank would scream and cry for up to hours on end.

"Frank," Mikey said on the second night of his visit, as he wandered into the kitchen to find Frank sitting at the table in complete darkness. The younger man said nothing, staring at the surface that he was resting his arms on. Mikey sighed, taking out his phone and flicking through his voicemail messages until he found the one he wanted. He said nothing as he pressed play, and he then left his phone on the table in front of Frank as the message played, leaving the room.

'Mikey, this is urgent, so get back to me some time this morning, please? I'm gonna ask Frank to marry me. I know, I know it's early for that, but I love him and he means so much to me. I know I'm supposed to be good at this kind of thing but I'm so scared, Mikey, I'm so scared he's gonna say no to me, I can't lose him like that. I need your help on this, Mikey, please? I don't wanna fuck this up. I wanna be with Frank for the rest of my life and I want to call him my husband. I'm gonna ask him whether mom and dad care or not. But I need this, Mikey, and you've gotta help me. I can't be without him.'

Frank sobbed for hours. He sobbed as the message played, over and over, on a loop, Gerard's words to Mikey burning into his brain.

He cried, and cried, and cried, until no more tears could be cried. And he never stopped crying.