...The hardest part about being separated by an invisible barrier is that none of the sides know what exactly happened.

The day was unusually uneventful and went uncomfortably smoothly, at least to Gerard it was even more boring than when he spent hours downstairs in his basement room every day, only leaving it to pay the bathroom or the kitchen a short visit. He was sure that from that exact day, he’d remember nothing in less than a month, except for a heavy feeling of sadness and the equally heavy rain, which poured about ten minutes after they returned to the hotel. It has been raining on and off the whole hike, and yet such outburst was unexpected.

Gerard didn’t say a single word to Frank and avoided his eyes by all costs, not that it was very hard anyways. Most of the time Frank just stared blankly at the muddy ground, his hands buried deep in his pockets. He didn’t even seem to pay any attention to the fact that his T-shirt was almost completely soaked, and his jeans were splattered with dark mud. Nor did he pay any attention to the generally cold weather. His jacket was tied around his waist by the sleeves and yet, he didn’t put it on. It’s almost like he didn’t feel it.

The only time Gerard came in contact with him was when he almost slipped on a wet rock and Frank caught him, grabbing his hips rather roughly and holding him up. He then proceeded to gently set him back, make sure he could balance by himself, brush his long hair out of his face and ask if he was okay. Gerard didn’t say a word, which he started regretting about ten minutes later, when it was too late to go back and thank Frank or just talk to him.

Gerard was thinking about what he could have done differently. His main point was definitely not having sex with Frank. His second was not telling him he loved him. His third was freaking out after Frank first kissed him. He shouldn’t have just accepted it, it was weird and he realized it now that the passion has fled and the teenage lust was satisfied. Of course, he liked Frank, but he was really, really missing common sense or just any sense at all. He tried to comfort himself by reasoning that the days are long here, and his mind could have been numbed by the feeling that it’s been a month since he arrived to Austria, even though in the reality it’s been a week, but it was not helping him calm down or feel better about his actions. Instead, he felt fooled, and at the end came to the conclusion that if Frank was serious about this, they would have only been sharing occasional closed-mouth kisses by now.

He also thought about how many partners Frank had had before him. Probably very, very many, so this was most likely not his first time in such a situation. Gerard didn’t know what it was, but something in him reminded him of the ‘cool guys’ in his school, who got all the girls and constantly got laid. Maybe it was his full-off-himself walk with his chin up high in the air, or his constantly laughing eyes. However, they surely weren’t laughing now, and that’s what threw Gerard off track. Frank was clearly deep in thought, or even upset, and Gerard couldn’t make out whether he was the cause or not. If Frank did this quick dating thing often, he’d get used to not getting attached to people. It makes sense, right? You have sex once or twice, and then you just go different ways and forget about each other. But what if you’re sensitive and actually live through each “break up”, if you can even call it that, as if you’ve been together for at least a year? What if you actually suffer from it? Gerard wondered if Frank was like that. He was pretty sure that they weren't even a thing, but the thought of Frank crying over losing a one-time partner seemed interesting to him.

Maybe Frank is just having a bad day, he thought. Maybe he got a call from home with bad news. At some point he felt guilty for even thinking about it, as if he was invading Frank’s mindset.

He should have said something when Frank caught him on those wet rocks. He really should have.

During the after-lunch mail session Gerard didn’t get a single letter, and nor did any of his roommates.

***

Gerard sat cross-legged on his bed with one earphone in in a dark room, skipping almost every song on shuffle. None of them fitted his mood, and he was getting grumpier and grumpier with every tap of his thumb on the screen. Diego, Drake and Adham had gone over to Tom’s and Brandon’s room, so he had the space completely to himself. Too bad he didn’t want to do anything, not even draw. Last night he made a small sketch of Frank, but it ended up looking so strange that he couldn’t resist the temptation to throw it out.

Suddenly a soft, rapid knock on the door distracted him from his phone. He glanced up, his eyes wide as saucers as he pulled an earphone out of his ear. It was either the guys or Ballash, but he knew for sure that his roommates wouldn’t come back until about 2 AM. That left Ballash as the only option.

He plunged backwards, panickly trying to hide his phone under the pillow, when he saw something way worse than a million of angry Ballashes chasing him.

He saw Frank’s head peek out from the corridor, a small smile on his lips.

The counselor must have noticed Gerard’s actions and his scared eyes, so he hesitantly stepped inside, as if to completely reassure him that he wasn’t Ballash, his hands interlocked below his waist. He looked painfully conscious, nothing like the Frank Gerard saw in the morning.

“Hey, it’s just me, heh,” he mumbled out quietly, averting his eyes away from Gerard onto the floor. “Whatcha doing?”

To Gerard it seemed like this conversation was way, way out of place.

“Uh, nothing really,” he replied, wondering if he could commit suicide by jumping off the balcony.

Frank stepped a bit deeper into the room, seeming to crouch slightly. A part of Gerard was hoping he’d sit by him on the bed and kiss him, give the invisible barrier a crushing punch, but the other was begging for Frank to just leave.

Frank stopped in the middle of the room, looking down at the red-haired boy. Their eyes connected, and Gerard couldn’t bring himself to look away. They shared a moment of heavy silence.

“Gerard,” Frank said softly, as if scared to scare the boy off. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“Nothing,” Gerard replied a bit too quickly. Partially (and mostly) it was true. Nothing had really happened, and that was the whole problem.

“Gerard,” Frank repeated with a more insisting tone in his voice, his gaze suddenly getting intense. “Please. You’ve been acting weird all day, talk to me,”

Gerard stayed silent, casting his eyes down to his hands. His fingers fumbled with the earphones.

Notes

does this even make sense to you guys