Welcome to destruction

When Gerard met Frank, it was around 1am on a Monday morning. The sky was like a giant void, there was all but one or two stars that appeared through a foggy glimpse of light that shone out of dim streetlights. After he saw Frank there, collapsed, bleeding and breathing in deep drags he completely forgot about the liquor his friends wanted, it just didn't seem important in that time, even to someone as reliant on alcohol as Gerard was. When he saw him, not had his motivations for the night dropped, but his expression had too. In that moment all he could think was, 'what the hell had the guy done wrong?'. When he later learned that in fact, all he did was walk throughout New Jersey, he wondered why he was ever surprised. Nobody survived in New Jersey, not in one piece most the time, anyway. He did empathize with the stranger, having remembering his high school days, and that's why he was so reluctant to ignore it.

Gerard remembered people passing him in his worst times on the street that he then called his home, and remembered how he wished someone had stopped. So for Frank, he did; he became the person he wanted others to be for him, and found someone along the way.
That morning, he slung Frank's arm around his and walked him home, in fact, right into his home-where nobody was around. Apparently Frank lived alone. He was visited by his parents once or so every month, but as far as company, he had none. It wasn't like Gerard had no friends either but, he'd never met someone he could relate to so strongly and, somehow, it felt right to be with Frank at that time. The lies in his head told him that he only felt sympathy, but his heart beat more truth than those words every time he thought about him.

Throughout weeks they talked rubbish, mainly small talk and beer. They spoke more in smoke rings than they did to each other. When awkward silences became more apparent though, was when Frank emerged a new plan: music. It was the perfect thing to fill the air. No more echoes of shouting down the road, no more empty conversation. When Gerard came over, he was ecstatic to hear his favourite music playing, and he felt better knowing that they finally had something interesting to talk about.

For the weeks following after those, their conversations became comfortable, friendly and so much easier to maintain."I can't believe you get all this crap and not have to work" Gerard constantly repeated, even after Frank explained for the fifth time that having a bit of money off his parents meant 'jack shit' to him. Frank always wondered what Gerard even worked as, but on suspicions of him being a drug dealer, he always kept the topic quiet. When a little tipsy though, was when all the questions came pouring out.

It was strange for Frank to even be tipsy, really. It got to the point in his life where drinking was a hobby, and getting drunk was a hard task for someone so used to the feeling. However his past week had been different. They both listened to the same records whenever Gerard came round and, even when he wasn't round, Frank played them for the memory of him, and then played along on his guitar that had lasted a lifetime, and never got more in tune. So at this point, the alcohol was out of his system, but eventually the records grew tiresome, and liquor called his name.

"Are you a drug dealer?" was a very forward question, but Frank said it regardless. It's not like he had no reason to ask it either. There was a time when Gerard, on the topic of hospitals, said how freaked out he was about needles, and he didn't understand how his clients could stand it. Not to mention the fact he always seemed to carry a stench of weed around.
"What the fuck Frank, I'm a tattooist. I do tattoos. I mean, not often, anymore. But I do tattoos and they make a lot of money. It means I don't have to work as frequently because I just get paid for the ones I do and it lasts me a while", was his response, and it was surprising to Frank, who thought it was fucking cool. He let Gerard babble on for so long about all the different tattoos he'd done whilst he just glared at him, in awe.

"You gotta' do me a tattoo sometime?" Frank suggested, but was annoyed to see Gerard so confused at the thought. See, Frank was a fairly small guy with a scruffy side shave and black fringe but, he didn't look tough, not from where Gerard was standing. It might have been as he found Frank at his most vulnerable, or it might have been that he'd never actually seen Frank talk to anyone other than himself, but Gerard thought Frank was 'a bit of a pansy'. He did regret his comment about that after though, when one punch left Gerard's arm completely dead for a whole 10 minutes. After that, Frank's strengths were never brought up again.

"So you're an artist then, did you go to art school?" Frank had asked later on that day, when they both stood in the kitchen, letting the stench of smoke weakly find its way out of the open back door. "No," Gerard had laughed.

"Huh?" Frank laughed with him, however raised an eyebrow as a gesture of 'how the fuck does that work then?'

Gerard stopped smoking for a second to take a sigh along with his laugh. "Artists usually think they're all know-it-alls. They're pretentious but interesting and I don't know, they're all fucking gay."

Gerard smiled to himself whilst smoking, until Frank spoke again. "Yeah, so you're an artist then."

Notes

I gave up on this story but it's bugging me that I never finished it so, here's the shortened (and hopefully less boring version) of the story with a couple things changed.