Chapter 6-Frank/Gerard
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Frank-
My head shoots up and out of my hands when I hear a knock on my door. I glance at the door, wondering who it could possibly be, seeing as Ray just fucking barges in and no one else would want to see me. Maybe it’s Gerard? A tiny seed of hope forms in my stomach and I quickly crush the thought. Why would he want to see me? He probably has something to do, some nurse’s skirt to look up.
I stand up and slowly walk to the door, panic rising inside me as I realize it might be my mother or father or both, here to lecture me about how much of a fuck-up I am and hang crosses everywhere so that “Jesus can look over and protect me from the sins around me.” Give me a break. I slowly open the door, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes to face whatever is behind it. I am greeted by silence, and I keep my eyes closed so as to pretend it was just a hallucination caused by my withdrawal and not my parents glaring down at me or a police officer, here to condemn me to jail after I get out of here.
I feel a finger poke the space between my eyebrows, causing my unintentional frowning to cease and my eyes shoot open. Leaning against the doorway, a confused frown-smile on his face and finger outstretched is Gerard. “You keep frowning like that, you’re gonna get premature wrinkles,” He singsongs, dropping his arm limply.
I roll my eyes, willing myself not to blush at the fact that Gerard is standing just a foot or so away from me.I mentally compose myself and arrange my face in a casual half-smile. “Hello to you too, Gerard.”
He grins and knocks at the doorframe, talking in his normal yet distinctive voice. “Am I allowed to enter? Vampires need permission to come into their acquaintance’s dwellings.”
I roll my eyes at his eccentric words and step aside. “Yea, come the fuck in. If by some chance you actually are a vampire, just don’t bite my neck.” I say, watching him walk into my room, his eyes taking in the uniform greyness.
“No promises, Frankie,” he says, baring his teeth and winking at me. Oh god, he gave me a nickname. I can feel my face blushing a deep pink as dirty thoughts of him biting and sucking on my neck with his perfect lips and teeth enter my mind. I turn to my bed to hide my blush and sit cross-legged on it, smoothing the wrinkles in front of me on the covers. He sits opposite me, looking around at anything but me. I am struck by a fleeting thought that the looks like a small child in this moment, twiddling with the hems of his pant legs. The awkward silence and the tension in the air grows. I decide to end it. “So, what brings you to my humble abode, Gerard?”
He replies quickly, as if he was waiting for me to ask him something. “Oh, you know, I was in the neighborhood.” I nod, leaning back and using my forearms to hold myself up.
I cock my head to the side, squinting my eyes as I study his form. He mimics me, and I see humor glimmering in his hazel eyes.“You seem to be the most sarcastic person I have ever met.” He flops backwards on the bed, estimating the amount of mattress behind him wrongly. His limbs momentarily flail as he teeters on the edge of falling off the bed, and I reach out a hand to steady him. He grabs it and pulls himself up with surprising strength and speed, his momentum bring him back to sitting position far too fast. He tips forward, his face mere inches from mine. His cheeks are tinted a shade of pink that would be unnoticeable on people whose skin wasn’t the color of bone. Gerard is not one of these people. He scans my eyes with his, our faces extremely close. He says quietly and very seriously, “Oh, I am by far. The most sarcastic, I mean.”
I decide to test the waters a bit, to see if I can rile him a bit. “You also seem far less confident then you outwardly project.” His eyebrow twitches, and his face twists into a strange smile.
“You seem far more confident that you outwardly project,” He says with a smirk.
He continues before I can get my two cents in. “You see sugar, sarcasm and false confidence are my only defense mechanisms. I’m not exactly physically strong, I have no talents to hide behind, I honestly have nothing but the ability to throw out a cool expression and a quick one-liner. Not many people take the time to see past the façade, however.”
All his pet names are strangely sexy, how he draws out the syllables. I scoot to my edge of the bed, away from him and tip my head backwards against the cold wall. “Why aren’t you actually confident, though?”
He looks at me incredulously, like the answer should be obvious. “Why should I be? Let’s count what I’ve got going for me. There’s the dark bags under my eyes. There’s my greasy hair that really needs a fucking cut. There’s my bony body covered in bruises. There’s-” I cut him off.
“Your eyes. There’s your eyes.” He looks over to me, confused. “What?”
Oh god. I actually said that. I didn’t mean to actually say that. I might as well explain it to him if he can’t see it himself. “You’ve got your eyes going for you. Your eyes are really pretty, and they have the badass ability to hold other people’s eyes really intensely. I think our staring contest in group therapy proved that.”
I look at the wall behind me, determined to not look at Gerard. I feel the weight on the bed shirt, and I glance back in front of me. Gerard is (yet again) far too close for me to remain calm, having crawled over my legs and is staring at me intensely. My face heats up as I realize how he is practically straddling me, his face so close to mine I could count each of his long black eyelashes if I felt the urge to.
He says in a quiet voice to me, “Thanks.”
I nod, feeling very uncomfortable as Gerard is practically staring into my soul. I manage to bend my knee and press my one of my converse into his chest lightly, making him look down and our eye contact break. I say dryly to him, mind functionality returning, “You have a real problem with personal space, Gerard.”
He sits back on his knees and looks back to me, that fucking smirk back on his face. “No, Frankie, I don’t have a problem with personal space. You have a problem with me invading your personal space.”
I blush and look down, realizing that this is true. That fucker. Suddenly I catch a whiff of his body odor when he moves, the smell making my eyes water. “God, when’s the last time you took a shower? You reek.”
He immediately scoots further away from me, crossing his arms self-consciously. He avoids my gaze sheepishly scratch his head. “Sorry. I don’t really have any other clothes to change into, and there’s not much opportunity to shower in a dirty alleyway.”
I immediately feel terrible. How the fuck could I of forgotten he was homeless? I get up, offering my hand to Gerard to pull him off the bed. He takes it cautiously. “If you want me to go, that’s fine, I’ll-”
I interrupt his nervous stream of words. “No, it’s totally not a problem. Can I give you come clothes to change into and deodorant, though?”
He looks at me gratefully and nods as he uses my hand to quickly pull himself up. His sudden tug makes me stumble, bumping my forehead into his chest as he stands. I rub my head and he looks down, letting out a little giggle, probably at how weak and clumsy I am. I stick out my tongue and turn to my closet to get him something to wear and clean himself with. I grab the longest pair of jeans I own and my biggest t-shirt, seeing as Gerard is taller and a bit broader than I am. I also pick up my deodorant and some old spice. It smells like liquid asshole in a can, but it’ll be better than Gerard smelling like a hobo.
I toss the stuff to Gerard, who drops the items on the bed and starts to take off his shirt. His back is turned to me, but I can see just how much his bones stick out of his skin, but not unpleasantly so. I take in every inch of his shirtless form, staring as could only be considered creepy. I watch Gerard put on the deodorant and slip off his pants, standing only in dirty boxers. I look away, embarrassed. I can feel him glance over at me. “I’m that disgusting, huh?” He says, the humor in his voice sounding hollow.
I look back over to him; he’s staring over his shoulder at me. I clear my throat and speak. “No, you’re not disgusting at all; I just wanted to give you some privacy.” He scans my face for a trace of a lie. When he finds none, he slips my jeans on and turns around to look at me. “For someone so short, your jeans fit me nicely.” He jokes dryly.
I ignore the joke, completely unaware of anything but his left arm.
On the inside of Gerard’s arm, from his wrist to halfway to his shoulder are hundreds of black and purple pockmarks, some crusted and infected, others healed over. The skin visible between the marks is laced with blackened veins, so prominent under his ghostly pale skin. The casual smile he wears slips off as he studies my face, going emotionless and still. He says in a quiet voice, “Addiction is such a fucking bitch.”
He makes a move to cover his arm with his hoodie again, but I walk over to the bed, sitting down and taking the dirty black cloth away from him and setting it on my lap.
“Don’t put this dirty old hoodie on again until it’s washed.” I continue to stare uneasily at his arm, unable to look away.
Gerard looks at me, his gaze hard. He suddenly grabs my own arm, and pushes my sleeve up. “You know, Frank, if you keep using meth your arm is going to look like this too. In half the time it took for me to build up my collection.” He brushes his fingertips lightly over the ten or so visible pinpricks on my skin, each with a tiny scab on it. I shiver involuntarily at the feeling of his cold fingertips.
“Those will get deeper and darker, Frankie.” He whispers. “It’ll take more to get you high, and you’ll never be the same when you’re fully addicted.”
I look down at his arm, then up to his face, then back down to his arm. A beautiful, broken man with a destroyed life. I pull my sleeve down, pushing thoughts of the future out of my mind. He retracts his arm, and sits there for some time, just looking at me. I feel my face heat up for the fucking billionth time and sigh, my head falling down into my arms.
His casual smile returns, but only a fraction of its previous self. “You blush a lot Frank. Why is that?”
I refuse to answer him and burrow further into my arms, unable to look at him. His hand cups my face lightly, and I slowly lift my head up. He leans in close to me, eyes half open. “Is it because of me? Do I make you uncomfortable?” He says in a husky voice, eyes flickering with uncertainty and something I can’t understand.
This is all too much for me. I panic and jerk away from him, teetering on the edge of the bed as Gerard had done before. This time he is the one to catch me, and his grip is strong. I can feel tears burning my eyes as I speak in a cracked voice. “Gerard, I’m not gay. I can’t be. I…I like girls. Not boys. Not. Boys.” I say, trying to convince myself as much as him.
He lets go of my hand and I fall off the bed, my back hitting the floor. He looks away, eyes covered by his curtain of hair. “But…but to Ray, you said when you looked at someone, you didn’t know. When you looked at him.”
I sit up, mortified he heard that. I glare at him, deciding to hide behind defensiveness. “How the fuck did you hear that? I…You spied on me? How dare you?!?”
He starts to protest. “No, there are thin walls here and-” I cut him off coldly. “I think you need to leave, Gerard.”
His eyes fill with angry tears and he starts to take off my shirt, to give it back to me. “Keep it. Just get out,” I say.
He quickly stands up and walks out. I pretend not to see the tears on his cheeks. I feel so bad, but I don’t know what to do. I panicked. I shouldn’t of freaked out, it looked like he was going to kiss me but he was most definitely just going to make me uncomfortable and get too close again. God, why am I such a fuck-up? I slam a fist against my wall, gritting my teeth to keep from crying out in pain and frustration. I’ve only known Gerard for a day, and I’m completely obsessed with him. What the fuck is wrong with me? I wrap my arms around my legs and curl up, trying to protect myself from my feelings.
Gerard-
I slam Frank’s door shut behind me, mentally beating myself up. How could I have been so fucking stupid? Trying to kiss him? I just met him for fuck’s sakes. I storm into my room, closing the door behind me. I hear a thud from Frankie’s room, and want to go make sure he’s okay, but then I remember he just kicked me out. I lay on the floor, glaring at my track marks. God, these are disgusting. I am disgusting.
*STOP READING HERE IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED BY SELF HARM*
I start to scratch at them, the infections burning and beginning to bleed as I irritate them. I don’t care; I just want these off my arm. I want my life to be normal. I want to be loved. Neither of those will ever happen to me though. I’m not good enough.
I keep scratching and clawing, and my fingers start to turn a stick red from the blood pouring from the injections. My eyes burn as I cry, tears mingling with snot as I keep scratching.
I bet he was just blushing because he was so wierded out by me being close to him. God, someone just fucking kill me. I stop scratching as the blood becomes too much and starts to drip down my arm. Ireach for my hoodie and realize it is still in Frankie’s room, instead tugging a sheet off the bed to stop the bleeding. I wipe off my arm, wincing. A stronger wave of self-hatred washes over me.
Just let me die already. Everyone would be better off if I was dead.

Notes

My excuse for all the emotions- addicts are very hormonal and emotional as they are going through withdrawal. And sexual tension does nothing for this issue.
IMPORTANT NOTE- DON'T READ GERARDS POV IF YOU'RE EASILY TRIGGERED.I DON'T WANT Y'ALL TO HURT YOURSELVES. you're not really missing anything if you skip it anyways.
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