One-shots

Being lost is a desperate kind of epiphany.

He wanders around the midnight streets sometimes, alone, hoping he might disintegrate right there on the filthy sidewalk. It's a general madness, something in his chest that's killed by that familiar smell of hazelnut lattes and cheap cigarettes against his palms, but it's soft and his head is buzzing, because he can't get over the fact he always ends up in the same place.

It's dark, and cold, and he feels like he might vomit all over his own shoes, but the static in his head is keeping it all choked down to his knees.

He's left him, the warm skinned beauty that hogs his bed sheets every time, right there in his bed. He does it a lot, he feels guilty; but his own senses crave the loathe of the world upon his shoulders sometimes. You could say that it's a creative kind of disease, but Frank knows that all he's got is somehow masked by the flames beneath his eyelids. He doesn't appreciate the oxygen anymore, even though his tortured arteries wouldn't agree.

He feels like an anemic stuck in a vacuum, because that's all he is but even though the liquid iron he drinks never sticks, he's aware of the rust before it hits the surface. The gentle swirl of tragedy, a smile he never earned from those gorgeous eyes that he's sure would taste like caramel if he kissed the skin enveloping them.

The streets are greasy and the fog is damp enough to numb, calluses crossing over rough steel fences and creating a turmoil inside his gut. He already misses the heat, the smell, the kiss, but he's too self-absorbed to make himself recoil now. He's run out smokes an hour ago and his lungs have sensed it, he knows, because they thank him for the fresh air that's hitting beneath the crude tar of their existence. He feels weak, denied and alone, even though none of those feel true enough for a genuine acknowledgment.

But underneath all the madness, the love and the youth still lies a familiar misery, one he's kept there like a butterfly in a jar for all these years. He might've stopped but it's never been enough, even though his soul hurts at the thought and the image of someone else to mend his wounds. He isn't sure if he's ready but he knows it feels strange since he's never been saved from abrasion by an oncoming wave before. And he knows it's a paradox, he feels like one as well, but then Gerard is an oxymoron with more of a power to end him than to save him from crumbling.

He feels the breeze when it hits because it attacks his hair first, ruffling it and tangling as much as his thoughts seem at that moment. Maybe it's a lunatic move but for a second he feels like he can fly, and crash deep inside some unknown moor without any regrets at all.

But before his metaphorical wings spread open and wide, he's caught by the collar, then the elbow, and a breath is released into the crook of his neck as if he were the personification of salvation itself. He tries to turn around but a strand of long black hair glowing cobalt blue in the street lighting vanishes the thought out through his rib cage.

Inhaling seems easier now and Gerard's hands on him seem firm and distant, waiting to be held somewhere without the darkness creeping out from every crack in the old concrete.

"You do realize," Gerard states simply, gripping the fabric of Frank's jacket like he might fall apart any minute now, and leave him to face the cold on his own, "that running won't get you anywhere."

Frank breathes a laugh, hollow and crude like an hourglass whose sand got washed away by the constant rain. "I was going to come back before dawn."

"That's okay," Gerard responds, and his lips on Frank's neck are like flowers against old ink that Frank almost forgot the entire process of getting. Maybe that's the deal, the corners of his imagination can stick together now that the emptiness is filled to the brim. "As long as you allow me to catch you every time it happens."

"Yeah," Frank smiles into the night, the blue stretching over the horizon like a rubber band begging to snap him out of his thoughts. "I do."

He turns his head to look at him, and he can't decipher why his sleepy eyes fit the 3 AM fog so much, but the haze and the distortion the meds left just make him want to bring him back where he belongs. "Take me home."

And Gerard spins him around, ignoring the streets' whispers and trapping his palm, the letters on his fingers already captured deep inside Gerard's chest. And then Gerard's lips hit the corner of his mouth, lacking the usual lip gloss but it doesn't matter since Frank still feels the glitter, the tingle and the spark that ignited something in his throat and made him want to strangle his thoughts and bury himself in his bed sheets along with Gerard. "Okay."

And Frank is breathing through the holes in his t-shirt when the dawn hits the window's sill, the weight of his arm heavy across Gerard's hip. He twists the misery down into the back of his skull, drowning it with the rest of his regrets and falling asleep, legs and hearts tangled with Gerard's.

Perhaps the despair has a name only when there's a lonely mind savoring it.

Notes

so... hi. i know this isn't really good, i'm rusty af. also happy trans day of visibility, it was yesterday but i am late as usual. i was too awkward to post my own selfies to tumblr so my best friend had to do it for me lol. talk abt being visible. ain't i a piece of shit.

idk what else to say. peace out ppl

xomls