Come, Angels of Unknown

I was drained.

The exhaustion rooted deep inside my ankles, making it hard to move as I somehow managed to squirm my way out of the fabric covering my body. My heart pounded, low and crude as it tingled inside my digits, wordlessly trying to remind me of its beating.

The bathtub was already filled all the way up to the top; the foam knotting slightly above and kissing the steam rising from it. My eyelids were heavy when I finally sat down, seemingly dragging over my cheeks and making it hard to look as the water captured the pores of my skin gently, reaching out for dents to fill in. I had many, both physical and mental, but the coconut I smelt in the air reminded me I was home.

Frank’s steady hand opened the door soon, carrying a pile of my clothes in his lap and smiling softly as he was closing it with his foot. My head spun again, reaching out for my brainwaves and pulling harshly, making me feel like a ragdoll on strings.
He put a towel on one edge of the tub and sat on it, his fingers finding some water and spreading it out on the damp skin of my back. It calmed, in a sense, his breathing pattern decorating the twitch of his lips in a certain way which made me want to kiss him again.

"Thanks for all the... bubbles," I smiled, slight. It took him a while, but he chuckled fondly. His eyes looked bruised of the capillary that burst inside his eyelids, but I liked it that way- he seemed ethereal, the purple caressing the red against pale skin as if they were lovers parting ways.

His fingertips brushed some of my hair backwards, lingering against my cheeks as gentle as a feather would feel next to a graveled road. I liked it; it made my head sting less. "I just had a feeling you don't like being exposed."

I nodded, closing my eyes and letting the heat brush against my palms, soothing the itch at the back of my eye sockets. “i’ve always had some sort of disconnection with myself.” I felt him shift beside me, but I didn’t look at him- instead I stared into my own knees and tried to form a coherent sentence. “Generally, too, but it’s always been the worst with my body. Not necessarily because I’m not satisfied with my appearance. I’ve made peace with that a while ago. It’s mostly the fact I always feel like there is something wrong. Not like, ugly-wrong, just… wrong.”

He fell silent for a while, but then his hand grabbed mine in the water. “You mean, something like, feeling trapped?”

I nodded, allowing his fingers to run through mine and tie each other in place. “I don’t know how to describe it, but my mother used to always complain about how different I was. She didn’t call it different, though, she called it ‘girly’- it almost made me get a completely wrong perception of myself.” I could feel his hand clenching at mine- it made the words burn my throat a little lighter. “She’d throw me into stereotypes completely, blaming it on the fact I didn’t have a girlfriend. She hated the feminine side of me, and she made sure to shove my head in a box when it came to that.”

“Do you still feel like that? I mean, do you think she’d still call you ‘girly’ and stuff if she were here?”

I chuckled quietly. “It’s something I was born with, I don’t think it will ever vanish. I’m okay with most of it now, I think, but nudity is still a problem for me.

“What about Mikey? Has he ever had a problem with it?”

I shook my head, praying I’d shake off the pain in my forehead with it. Thinking about Mikey had become physically painful a while ago. “Not that I know of.”

Frank sensed my discomfort; I could feel it in the way his hand twitched in mine hesitantly. “I can leave now if you’d like to wash off, or something.”

I looked up at him through my lashes, smiling at the concern his chapped lips carried in their edges. “Stay.”

He seemed as if he was debating something inside his mind, that beautiful, beautiful mind, but then he shifted only a millimeter closer to me and clenched the grip of his hand on mine. “Okay.”

*

“Am I allowed to kiss you?”

His wrists were locked on my hip, my breath hitting his collarbone unevenly, shallowly. I slowly lifted my head up, closing my eyes and kissing him tiredly. My knees felt heavy, but the kiss was sweet and I didn’t know if my knuckles hurt because of my exhaustion or the fact his lips made me forget too much.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He moves his hands over to my waist, arms holding me close as I press mine flat against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat, the stretch of his lungs, and the flex of his muscles against my elbows.

“Stop,” I choke out as I will my lips away from his. “No, just… let me listen to you breathe for a while.”

I leaned my forehead against his and listened to his exhales, brushing against my mouth and dragging shards of glass down my spine.

“What if I fuck you up?”

He all but laughed, sliding a fingertip along my neck artery. “Good luck with that.”

“I’m serious,” I mumbled, “I’m not in the position to save you. I can’t even save myself.”
He sniffed, smiling slightly. “There’s no such thing as ‘saving’, Gerard. You can only survive. I haven’t fallen in love with you because I thought you’d save me. I did so because you’re like a magnet, pulling everything I am towards yourself and exposing it in the rawest way possible. You make me your shield, because my broken pieces stick to your skin and keep you from fading away.”

“You knew,” I bit on my lip, narrowing my eyes slightly and taking a deep breath through my nose.

“You’re afraid of yourself, of everything. You’re afraid of the blood coursing through your vessels and making it hard to move, because you know you feel me in every corner of your bloodstream,” he leaned his forehead back against mine, and just now I’d felt how cold he actually was. Then he kissed my temple, and murmured, “You can let it go. All of it.”

I turned my head to face him, “Will I let myself go, too, then?”

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards, slight, but I caught it, “Even if you do, I won’t.”

And as I let the rain pour inside my mind, I kissed him, tender. The storm was loud, but making no sound as I made his cheeks wet with my own tears; he didn’t care- neither did I. I could feel the burn but I embraced it, just like him as he told me he loved me again against my lips; and I couldn’t help but to pull away just to see his eyes while I said, “I love you, too. From the bottom of every corner of my bloodstream.”

Notes

Seventeen days. At least it's a nice number.
I'm so exhausted.