Gerard drags his feet underneath him, the pavement feeling like a personal assault to his feet. Everything hurts, honestly. He feels like each step is a foot on broken feet, every breath in is needles in his throat, every glance around is a panging ache in his head. He feels like he’s coming down from the worst hangover in his life, and he didn’t drink a thing.

People around him steer clear, because Gerard honestly looks homeless. He looks sick, dying, looks worn and broken. He feels as bad as he looks, maybe worse.

Gerard can’t stop thinking how much of an idiot he is. He let Frank play him like that. He let Frank in. He was going to give Frank the world, had planned everything out, because Frank was everything. But he’s not here. He’s gone.

Gerard didn’t think to get his last name. He doesn’t know where Frank works, he knows it’s a school, but that could be anywhere. He doesn’t know where Frank lives. He doesn’t know a thing. He just knows that Frank willingly chose to walk away from Gerard, and there’s nothing Gerard can do about it. He doesn’t have anything. He can’t even send dog shit to his address because he doesn’t have that.

Gerard wouldn’t do it if he did know where Frank lived. He’s in love with this fucking asshole, and he can’t help it. His senses and brain are all telling him that he should just forget about the guy, he knew him for like six hours. He was nothing, he’s barely a blip. In a highlight reel of Gerard’s life, Frank’s not going to have much screen time. Only he’s going to be in the highlight reel, because every single second Gerard spent with that guy was one of the best seconds of Gerard’s life.

He’s torn up over a guy who didn’t even like him back. He knows it’s stupid, knows that Frank is a dick and he should forget about him, but Gerard doesn’t have it in him to forget. He doesn’t have it in him to not feel broken. Right now, he is broken.

He’s been torn apart, had his pieces scattered, stepped on, and laughed at, and he doesn’t know how to stitch himself back together quite yet.

Gerard hasn’t felt this bad in years. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this bad, but the only thing that even compares was the day that he bottomed out. But drinking, honestly, it leaves you feeling like shit, but this is something else entirely. It’s not that it’s worse, it’s just a different kind of hurt. Gerard let himself down back then, but this time, he let himself get fooled. He let someone in, someone who he was utterly sure was good, and it turns out that he was wrong.

Gerard isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, he’s not looking ahead, if he didn’t look so unwholesome, he’d have walked into at least a dozen people by now, but as it is, people are avoiding him like the plague. His mind isn’t paying attention to where he’s going, but his feet know the way home.

He’s surprised when he looks up to see familiar surroundings. He sees the bookstore that he frequents, and a large business building that he still doesn’t know the purpose of. He’s only a few blocks from home. Right now, he needs to be there. He needs his bed. He needs to take a long ass bath and just cry it out. He needs to watch Disney movies with Hayley and talk about how awful boys are.

He needs Frank.

Gerard chokes on air, because he can tell he’s seconds away from crying again, and he doesn’t want to do that again in public. He’s already spent at least fifteen minutes on the sidewalk crying, and then another fifteen minutes in the bathroom of that Starbucks before he was asked kindly to leave, he doesn’t want to cry again with other people watching.

Gerard speeds up, which makes his feet turn to fire, and he’s sure they’re going to give up beneath him or just fall off, but despite that, he perseveres and walks on.

Then Gerard sees the bar. Gerard goes through a spectrum of emotions in the moment that he sees it looming over him, and none of them are good. He thinks of how he used to drink his life away in there and almost let it destroy him. He thinks about meeting Frank in there. He thinks about using pickup lines on Frank in there. He thinks of how he started to fall in love with Frank in there. Then he thinks about how he could really fucking use a drink.

Gerard almost gags at his own thought, because he’s not supposed to think like that. He gave that up years ago. He won’t allow himself to even consider it.

Gerard rushes across the street, almost getting flattened by the car that comes out of nowhere. He feels a vicious stabbing as the sound of the cars horn honking at him meets his ears, and he knows he’s only got seconds to spare before he collapses. He needs to get home fast. He runs to the door beside the bar, runs up the stairs three at a time, and then starts scrambling in his pockets for his keys.

His hands shake, and he has to look at each key individually to find the right one, all the while feeling like his heart is going to give out. He doesn’t think he’s going to even be able to open the door before he loses his composure. He feels his heart rate pick up, as he tries to find the right key. Even when he does, he keeps putting it in the wrong way, and his hands are shaking too much to get it right.

“Fuck,” Gerard says, feeling his face heat up, as tears begin to spill down his face. It takes him more than a minute, and quite a few whimpers of despair, but finally, he gets the key to turn in the lock, and then he’s trundling into the apartment, feeling like everything is completely broken, and honestly, it is.

“There you are,” Hayley says, her chipper voice coming from the kitchen. “Nice of you to finally make an appearance.”

Gerard stumbles through the living room, and finally collapses on the couch, and that’s when he lets everything fall apart. He’s never felt so disparaged, never felt so hurt, or so used in his entire life. He doesn’t think he’s ever been in this much pain. He barely knew Frank, and yet it feels like he’s lost a thirty-year relationship. He can’t believe this is happening, can’t believe he feels this hurt.

“Oh crap,” Hayley says, as she drops something and then comes running from the kitchen to see Gerard curled up on the couch looking a bigger wreck than she’s ever seen him, and that’s saying something.

Gerard can’t say anything for a long while. At least twenty minutes pass of him just weeping into the sofa, not caring what he must look like, not caring what a mess he is, barely even aware of Hayley sitting there next to him looking on the verge of tears too and she doesn’t even know what’s happened yet. Gerard just can’t talk right now though; he can barely bring himself to keep on breathing, he doesn’t want to have to explain himself to her.

Hayley doesn’t care. She doesn’t need an explanation. Not yet at least. Right now, Gerard just needs to cry, and she’s content to let him do so.

Gerard tries to speak, tries to form words, but every time he tries he’s interrupted by his own sobs, and at some point he just gives up, just keeps crying.

“Chocolate?” Hayley asks eventually, and Gerard barely hears her, doesn’t even think about her words, he just keeps crying.

Hayley nods to herself, and scurries off to her room, coming back with a pack of Hershey’s bars that she keeps in there for when she’s on her period and wants to murder people. Chocolate doesn’t heal all pain, but it’ll at least null it a little bit.

Gerard doesn’t even notice, he just buries his face even further into his knees and feels like the world is going to implode, and he thinks that he might even prefer that.

---

Frank’s feeling very much the same as Gerard, though he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t feel the need to cry his eyes out though, not yet at least, because right now he feels numb. He would very much prefer feeling awful, he would rather be weeping uncontrollably, because he’s sure that it would hurt less. Nothing can hurt as much as this though.

Frank feels empty. He feels like a glass with a hole at the bottom. He doesn’t feel sad, really, that’s not the word for this feeling. He feels hollow. He feels depressed. He feels empty.

Frank walks home, his feet sound like explosions against the pavement to his ears. He’s been walking for over an hour, staring blankly in front of him, not capable of any thought other than that he misses Gerard. He doesn’t live even remotely close to here. He would call a cab, if he had his wallet, but that’s been stolen. He would call Ray and ask him to get a cab, but he doesn’t have his phone either. He can’t take the train, can’t even use a payphone. He just has to walk home, and walking home leaves him alone with his thoughts.

What must Gerard think of him right about now? Gerard probably hates him. Frank would him too. Frank does hate himself. Gerard is somewhere out there, Frank doesn’t know where, but he is out there somewhere, and he is under the impression that Frank abandoned him. Frank just left him. He walked away.

Gerard is out there and he doesn’t know that Frank would take a bullet for him. He just doesn’t know. Because Frank left him. That’s what Gerard will think. Frank left him. Gerard won’t even know where Frank went.

Frank never got his phone number. He didn’t stop to think about it. He just assumed he’d get it eventually. He doesn’t know where Gerard lives, doesn’t know his last name, he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know how to possibly get back into contact with Gerard again. Gerard doesn’t know any of those things about Frank either. He’s gone, and there’s no way to tell Gerard that it was a mistake. Leaving him there on that bench, it was a mistake. He would never have done that to Gerard. He wouldn’t have. He loves Gerard, loves him like he hasn’t loved anyone in years.

He loves Gerard in a different way than he’s ever loved anybody before. With Gerard, something clicked that never did with anyone else. Gerard was something special. Gerard’s don’t come around in your life more than once. No one in the world is like him. No one in the world, Frank thinks, is as good as him. Gerard is more than he could ever put into words.

He’s not here though, and its Frank’s fault. It’s his fault. He should’ve woken Gerard up and told him what was going on before he ran after that mugger. He should’ve given up sooner. He shouldn’t have run after the thief at all. He should’ve told Gerard his last name. He should’ve told Gerard what school he worked at. He should’ve given Gerard his phone number. He should’ve done a lot of things. He did everything wrong.

He’s never fucked up this bad. He’s never fucked up with this much at stake.

Frank walks the dismal path for another forty-five minutes before he sees his building. It seems bigger. When he starts on the stairwell, he’s sure the steps are taller, he’s sure that there are more of them. His floor must have been moved up overnight, because this is more than it was yesterday. It seems like it takes him years to get up the steps. His legs are sore, and everything feels wrong. He feels more than broken. He feels shattered. He feels ground into dust. He doesn’t feel whole.

It feels like he’s lost a part of himself. Like he just woke up missing something.

Frank at last reaches the door to his apartment, and he opens it easily, then walks through the door, feeling like a zombie.

“I’ve heard of the walk of shame, dude, but this is something else,” Ray says, turning around on the couch and muting the TV when he sees Frank. Frank doesn’t feel like engaging with him. He doesn’t feel like anything. Frank feels like sitting down and staring at a wall for hours. There is nothing at all in this world that he wants to do. He just wants everything to stop. He wants the ringing sound in his ears to go away, and he wants Ray to go away, and he wants the sun to go away, he wants the whole world to just stop for a minute. He doesn’t want any of this. He can’t stand it.

He wants everything to go away. Except for Gerard. He wants Gerard to come here.

Ray gives him a quizzical look when Frank just stops and stands there for a minute. Frank looks blank. He looks like he’s somewhere else and nowhere all at once.

“Frank?” Ray asks.

Frank stops staring at the TV mindlessly and then looks at Ray, who’s giving him a quizzical, and somewhat worried look.

“Where are you right now, man?” Ray asks him.

Frank doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t have a voice. He doesn’t know where it is, or what he would say if he had it. He just feels like nothing.

“Frank?” Ray repeats.

“I don’t,” Frank chokes, and then coughs, and then decides not to keep talking.

“Dude, you’re starting to freak me out a little bit,” Ray says, and Frank just shrugs, but it’s half-assed like he doesn’t have the energy to do something even as minimal as that.

Frank decides that he just wants to go to his room. He walks to the side of the living room, feeling Ray’s eyes on him, and he walks into his room, collapsing on his bed. He still doesn’t feel anything. It’s a painful numb. It hurts, but it’s a hollow feeling. It’s like he’s screaming all alone in an empty stadium.

“Frank?” Ray asks, appearing in the doorway of Frank’s room. Frank doesn’t look up, he doesn’t talk, because he’s sure that if he does, he’ll breakdown. He can feel it coming, and part of him wants it to happen, but part of him wants to just stay like this for a while, because at least right now, while he’s hurting and he’s in agonizing pain, it doesn’t feel real.

When he starts to cry, that will be real. When he feels his body gasping for air, dissolving into tears, then it will be real. Gerard will be gone. Frank will be alone.

He can tell it’s going to happen though, and it’s coming on fast.

“Frank? What happened last night?” Ray asks.

Frank opens his mouth to say something, and that’s when all of his composure evaporates.

It almost feels better, sobbing unabashedly, feeling like it’s the end of the world and he’s got to get it all out, because at least this way he’s feeling something. It hurts and the pain in his heart and stomach make him ill, but it’s more than the numbness. The numbness was worse because it felt like there was no destination. This, it’s awful, and it sucks, but he wants Gerard like he can’t explain. He wants Gerard so much. And he’s just gone. And that’s the hardest thing in the entire world for Frank to have to cope with.

Frank wants Gerard, more than anything in the world he wants him. He wants to tell Gerard he’s sorry, he wants to give Gerard the world. The fact that he can’t, and that he’ll likely never see Gerard ever again, it kills him.

Frank considers the fact that he’s never going to see Gerard again, and for a moment he just stops. Everything stops, the world he’d begged to stop a moment ago does as he’d asked, because everything freezes.

He’s never going to see Gerard again. Gerard is gone. Gerard probably hates him right now. Frank isn’t going to have the life with Gerard that he was sure of.

The agony of a minute ago doesn’t have anything on what Frank feels now.

Notes

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