The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder

"I know the flowers are shit."

Gerard's entire chest is clenched, Jamia's fingers tightly around his wrist. It hurts, it's where his scrapes are, but he knows it'd make her feel bad if he voiced it. But it's okay, he presumes, he probably wouldn't be able to speak if he tried anyway.

"But I couldn't really do better," Frank's voice is wavering, like he's not sure if the words leaving his mouth are his own or somebody else's. He takes a long drag of his cigarette, so violent Gerard can almost hear it crackling; orange and bright underneath the dead, gray ash. His cheeks are hollowed, eyes set, narrow- he looks like a masterpiece painted from watercolor spite and the grief loss takes with itself wherever it goes.

"I know you like wildflowers."

It's like all the power in Gerard's body leaves him, because Frank's words and the tone of his voice hit so close to home, even though he isn't saying much at all. Even the glint in Frank's eyes reminds him of a familiar darkness he'd probably be able to smell on his own clothes if he were to stick his nose in the collar of his shirt right now.

"I know I've been a shithead lately," he says after a few moments of tense silence. He throws the butt of his cigarette behind himself, burnt to the filter. His hands fumble and he quickly lights a new one, lighter hot pink and half empty- it makes Gerard's fingers itch for a smoke. "It's been almost three months. Not like you were going anywhere." He rubs his eye with his free hand, over purple bags and tired lids, his lips curving downwards a bit in a frown so unnatural for such a pretty face. He messes up his hair, scratches at his stubble and sighs long and pained before inhaling more of the smoke. It's the same smoke that'll probably kill both him and Gerard, who's still trying to catch a breath, at some unfixed point in time- but the sad truth is that neither of them really cares, especially not right now. "Sorry, I'm being an asshole again. I bet you're used to it by now."


He takes a few more drags and shuffles around with his feet, knees bare and awkward and so cold while so close to the wet ground. Frank doesn't seem to mind. "Talking, I'm not good at it. It's why I avoid you a lot, I suppose. No use in denying it anymore, right?"

Gerard's never spent more time without blinking in his life.

"Fuck." It's such a powerful word, Gerard thinks, or a really weak one after all- it can be used for anything, mean anything, or everything- and if you're lucky... maybe even nothing at all. It's pitiful, and all Frank can muster up with, but at this, godforsaken, broken fractal of time, it doesn't seem like there's anything else to say.

He doesn't talk for a while after that. He chain-smokes the entire time- it makes Gerard bite his lip almost hard enough for it to bleed. Frank shifts a lot, like something in his veins is keeping him from standing still. At some point he relaxes just a bit, but miserably- his arm on the tombstone and head against the arm.

If Gerard didn't know better, he'd think he might've heard a cry.

Frank picks himself up swiftly enough. Cigarette back in between his lips, eyes heavy and knees looking scraped as he's getting up. He sniffs a bit, spits out some excess smoke, and his voice almost startles Gerard when he speaks again. "I'm sorry I'm so bad at this. Fuck, I'm apologizing to a dead person." He grimaces when he realizes what he's said. He utters to say something else, but hesitates, and then it looks like he's settled for an alternative. "I wish I could be better. I wish I could let someone else help me be better. But whenever there's a chance, I fuck it up. I suppose it means I don't deserve 'better', then. Maybe. I'm not good with words."

His mouth draws into a tight line before he takes another drag, and he holds it in for a few long seconds before blowing it into the wet air. His eyes are focused on the tombstone, he crosses his fingers over something. Gerard supposes it's the lettering- the way his knuckles dive and curve across the dents Gerard imagines are there. It's such a gentle gesture and his face is the softest Gerard has ever seen it become- for a moment, a slight moment, before he looks vile again.

"See you soon. Well, not see you, but y'know."

With that he strolls off, steps a lot heavier than the ones that carried him to the graveyard in the first place.

*

Gerard hasn't felt this shaky in a while.

His cheeks are cold, shoulders quivering- his whole body feels run down by storm but he thinks that, somehow, it hasn't even started raining yet.
He recalls the nightmares, the fears and the general paranoia coiling through his veins and he's about to scratch at his wrist again- but then he remembers Jamia is in the room with him.

"He never told me about his mother," she says, elbows on his mattress and dark hair spread around his pillow. She's ashing into a plastic cup and his head hurts like crazy, but he can't even pinpoint why this time.

He doesn't talk for a while, just looks out the window like he's expecting the lightning to put words he doesn't have in his mouth. "I've never thought of sadness as something so visual until I saw him there."

"Yeah," she sighs, silent.


"It felt like someone manually tied a knot in my stomach," he says finally. His shoulders hurt.
"Imagine how he must've felt, then."
"I know how he felt." Jamia's brow furrowed, and he felt in his bones what was about to come.

"No, but really-"
"I know how he felt." His words had a crude echo to them.
"Gerard, his mother is dead-"
He started shaking a while ago, but this is probably when she first notices- his neck craning and skin tingling with cold sweat. He hates this part.
He walks towards the bed, knees almost giving in. He breathes harder, spine and back strained and frozen. He sits down and picks up the picture frame from his nightstand.
Jamia's eyes are wide and hands stiff- she's probably ashing all over his bed but he can't bother to tell her that. He's too busy staring into his own eyes, staring right back at him from the picture, hazel and innocent like he wishes they could still be. Where did all that naivety go? And why did it have to be replaced with infinite layers of stomachaches and repetition of the phrase 'I don't want to talk about it' so much it burns his tongue and makes his throat swallow the fire?
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Jamia says, and it'd maybe even sound reassuring if her eyes weren't as scared and curious when Gerard dared to look at her. He doesn't blame her, he's thankful she's so polite- not a lot of people would be.
"It happened a few days before his fourteenth birthday." Gerard hasn't heard his voice shake so much in almost a year. "I don't really know what else to say."
"What happened?"
And Gerard tries, he really does, but the tears don't listen to his orders- and neither do his shoulders as they shake the sobs away from his body. "I'm sorry, I can't-"
Jamia tries to touch his shoulder, but Gerard shrugs it off carefully. It just makes him feel more pathetic.
A minute or so passes and he calms down, salt dried on his cheeks and head heavier than ever. He lights a cigarette, breathes into the night- it's unsteadier than usual, but then again, so is his head right now. The window sill is cold just like his lungs despite the burn every larger drag leaves there. He can't get rid of the feeling God is watching him and laughing at his misery.
"You okay?" Jamia asks weakly.
Gerard nods, it's all lies anyway- she probably knows.
She's a good friend, after all.
*
There's something special about early mornings.
Maybe it's the way the air smells like you could snap it in half, or the breeze ruffling your hair like an old friend. It's all soft, mauves and peaches blending in with the autumn gray like watercolor across the overcast sky. It feels real, grounded- almost enough to bring Gerard's head back from the clouds.
He's wearing a chunky knitted sweater on bare skin, and it matches the dirt-brown tones from outside. It's dark olive green and it's keeping his body warm, but he's still cold nevertheless.
He's got a mug of black coffee sitting on the sill in between his elbows, head leaning on one hand while the other is holding a cigarette. He smokes too much, he notices, but he doesn't seem too bothered by it when he brings the smoke closer to his lips.
He thinks about Frank while he's taking the drag. First, it's just a question mark somewhere inside his head- something like curiosity- about his mother, his strange mood swings, or just simply his overall weirdness. He's the only thing Gerard's ever met in a library that he can't read at all.
Then, just like that, it's not only that. It's also how he talks; fast, distressed, but it's still quiet and it sounds a bit like rain on gravelly roads in early spring. How he looks at things, people, everything; with big mossy eyes and rage, such violent rage- so much of it that Gerard thinks it might be sadness. His voice, his sarcasm, the way he smokes- everything he is looks like he was built to despise the world.
But something makes Gerard think that maybe the world is the one who had despised him first.

Notes

i'm sleep-deprived, my laptop doesn't work, i'm having an existential crisis, i barely found the strength and motivation in me to post this for i am in the middle of a month-long creative breakdown. please don't give me shit for not updating.< if the formatting is weird, blame my phone. i do it for all my issues.