All We Need is Daylight

Uncertainty has always been a huge part of Frank’s life. He doesn’t know how to make it through life without questioning his every move. His constant solution is to retrench, rework, find new routes, and take the one that makes the most sense.

However, sometimes he comes upon an impasse, that impasse being the lack of any real path. There’s no clear way forward, nor is there a way forward at all. This is his current situation. The only thing Frank has managed to scrabble up is to stay in his bed for the rest of his natural life and probably for the rest of whatever comes after that.

This, he knows, is not a logical step forward, as it’s not a real life. He knows one thing for sure, though, and it’s that things cannot go back to the way that they used to be.

Looking back on it, it’s like a forgotten memory, something lost behind a fog. Everything from before seems hazy. He can’t believe that there was once a time, not so long ago, when his routine was to go to class, eat meals, go to practice, study, and sleep. That was his actual life, just a week ago he was doing that exact thing. That was once his course of action, and the only one that he particularly cared for.

Now, things are different. He can’t get out of bed. He feels like he’s in a constant state of death. He cries every few minutes, and he’s becoming dehydrated because of how much he’s crying. Everyone feels sorry for him, including himself, and he’s fucking miserable.

With this many days off from his life, you’d expect him to have found something enjoyable to do in them. He might have picked up a new hobby or found a new Netflix show to absorb his every waking hour, but no. Frank hasn’t found the time to do anything so reckless. All he’s done has been sit in his bed, stewing in his own turmoil.

It’s starting to get boring, and yet, he doesn’t see any other possible move forward from here.

There’s a pain inside him that is unjustified in its brutality. It’s clawing, raking through him, churning his insides until there’s nothing left of him to linger on.

This pain, it’s physically incapacitating. He’s not lying in bed, soaking in his own misery, because he wants to. He literally can’t do anything else. When he tries to move, his entire body hurts. His body is mirroring the pain inside of him. His stiff, aching joins are as painful as the thoughts and memories inside of him.

Eventually, it’s a certainty that he will have to return to classes. That he will have to get up, to live on. If he doesn’t, he’s going to lose almost every letter grade that’s on offer for him.

He’ll have to create a routine, a bastardized version of the old one. It’ll require getting out of bed, showering, making himself presentable, going to class, studying, and being attentive all the while. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to manage it. It hadn’t seemed like a lot a week ago, and that was on top of hockey practices, four in the morning figure skating sessions, and his social life. Now, however, merely lifting up a limb is like climbing the highest peaks the world has on offer. It’s a monument to his perseverance that he’s able to wake up in the morning.

There is nothing he wouldn’t give to just sleep and not wake up again. He doesn’t want to die, that’s not quite the emotion he feels. He’s just unhappy all the time. It gives a sense of permanence, like it will go with him through the rest of his life, and he’s sure that it will. No one gets past this. They get through it, bear it, but they never forget. It doesn’t go away. Coming to grips with that is a hard thing for Frank to wrap his mind around. He’s not ready to move forward. He wishes everything would just stand still. He just needs time. Time to pull himself up.

There are more factors contributing to Frank’s disarray then just the event itself. On the surface, that’s the worst thing, but it goes deeper. Namely, what happened effects everything moving forward on top of being the trauma that it is. Frank has one very hard decision to make, more difficult than all other decisions he’s made before.

Hockey is and has always been everything to Frank. Since about the age when he was too old for Blue’s Clues but too young for Saturday Night Live, Hockey has always filled that space. Hockey has been his everything. Frank has hockey posters on his walls, he has mountains of ticket stubs in his dresser, he has hockey in all of his plans for the future, and he has hockey in his blood. Hockey is as much a part of him as his eyes or ears.

But ever since that night, hockey has been entirely tainted. He can’t imagine being on the ice without thinking about what it caused him. He can’t step foot in that ice rink without knowing what happened to him there. He can’t look his teammates in the eyes knowing that one amongst them did what Morgan did. Even if they’re not Morgan himself, they wear the same jersey. Frank wears the same jersey.

He can’t even think about the concept of hockey without it flashing back to him, dramatically, in full color and slow motion. The events of that night are like a slow replay played on ESPN the morning after a hockey game.

The thing about it is, Frank has never considered anything else. He hasn’t ever thought about himself as a lawyer, or a business owner, an accountant, or a computer programmer. He has only ever considered hockey. The only backup he’s ever planned on was to work his way up the ladder at a fucking Walmart. His ultimate end goal has always been hockey. He’s been so intent on hockey that not to see that dream through would make his entire life a failure.

Now, though, hockey feels wrong. It feels like it’s been distorted, changed, turned to something that it never was meant to be. It’s like pouring cream into coffee. At first there’s only one spot, but then it dissolves, growing into the coffee until they become the same thing. Hockey has done that for Frank. Once, it was the greatest, most amazing, and exciting thing in the world. Now, it’s a monster, warped, twisted, beyond repair.

Frank doesn’t know if he’ll ever actually be able to play again. These last few days have given him all the time he’s needed to think, and unfortunately, he might’ve taken too much time because all he can think about is how much he doesn’t want to play hockey again. He loves the rush he gets when he skates, loves the way his feet ache after he spends too long on skates, he loves the way he sweats so much he could probably wring out his own jersey. He loves hockey to death. But he’s also in pain. Frank can’t say that his love of hockey outweighs the pain that it’s caused him. He’d love to say there’s no question, that hockey will always come out on top, but that’s not something he’s sure of anymore.

Before this, he definitely would’ve been sure. Nothing, not rain nor shine, could’ve taken him away from the ice. In sickness and in health, hockey was his one true love. He never accounted for this, though. Frank never accounted for his soul to be ripped out of his body with blunt instruments. He never thought that anything like this could happen to him.

It’s not just him, though, and somehow that makes it harder than it does easier. Brendon is in the same boat. The thing that happened to Frank, that took his life and spirit away, Brendon went through it too. Brendon is going through it too. How does he do it? Brendon has been at practice every day since Frank got here. In fact, Brendon will arrive early most days. How is he able to do that after what happened to him? How can it not have the same impact on him as it does on Frank? Is Frank just weak? Is he not good enough to get through this? Is he doing something wrong?

Maybe Frank is just more sensitive, too sensitive even. Maybe he is taking this way too hard. Except, there’s no other way for him to take it. As much as he would love to stop being sad and in pain, he can’t just make that go away. He doesn’t have that sort of godlike control over his emotions. He’s in pain. He’s suffering. He’s sad, and depressed, and fucking scared. And there is nothing he can do or think that will take that away from him. There’s no one who can say or do anything that can take that away from him.

Frank knows what his own decision is going to be, and that kills him. He knows what he’s going to have to do. It sickens him, sickens him to the bone, because hockey is everything he loves, but he knows that there’s an obvious answer.

How can Frank play on the same team as the man who raped him? How can Frank step foot in the same room as the one where it happened? How can he play the sport that caused this to happen to him?

Hockey is no longer a reasonable thing for Frank to do. There’s no sense in him doing it. He can’t play when he’s in this sort of emotional state. This isn’t a decision he should’ve ever had to come to, and not one in this short amount of time, but it’s a decision he knows he’s going to have to make. There’s just no way for Frank to keep playing. It’s not what he wants, not by any means, but what Frank wants is out of the question. What he wants is for the pain to be taken away. He can’t just take this pain away, though. There’s no cure for this, there is only persistence.

Except for his constant reliving of the night with grizzly color, hockey has been one of the only subjects on Frank’s mind. He’s been unable to think of anything else.

Frank hasn’t stepped foot outside in several days. He hasn’t even left his room for any reason other than to use the bathroom and get food. Even so, Ray has been bringing him things he stole from the dining hall like muffins, bagels, apples, anything small that won’t be missed. Frank has stood up, maybe a grand total of ten times in the last four days.

He doesn’t want to stand up now, but Frank decides that it’s about time. He needs to do something with today. He knows what the ultimate destination is going to be, and that’s why he can’t help but put it off. He doesn’t want to do this today, but he should. He’s been putting it off for four days already, the worst thing he can do is to keep on pretending. He can’t play this game any longer, because he’s not the only one being hurt by pretending.

It’s not fair of him to leave the team hanging any longer. They’ve got a game tonight, and they’re counting on Frank. They probably know he won’t be there tonight, but they should know he’s not going to be there any other night either. It’s fair to them for him to give them his verdict, even if it’s one they’re not going to want to hear.

There’s a lot of stuff that Frank is throwing down the drain by quitting the team. He’s throwing out his entire future, for example. He’s ridding himself of his favorite thing in the world. He won’t be with any of his friends anymore, not Travie, Mikey, Pete, or Ray. He won’t get the chance to be near Gerard anymore. He won’t have the thrill of it, feel the rush that fills him every time he hits the ice. He won’t have his future career anymore. His career will be entirely gone if he doesn’t play hockey anymore. How can he ever play professionally if he doesn’t play in college? That’s basically the only medium in which recruitment is done, and if he’s not playing all four years, no one will ever get the chance to see how much they need him on their team.

He’s also giving up on his scholarship to this school. It’s not a cheap school. It’s less than Boston had been, but it sure as hell isn’t what you would call cheap. He’s also stuck here for the next year, he can’t even go to a different school, a better school, for another nine months. But that’s assuming he knows what he wants to do that’s not hockey. Frank can’t go to a school that specializes in his interests if he doesn’t have any interests, and he really doesn’t.

There’s really no choice for him, though. He can’t play hockey here anymore. He just can’t. So what else is he to do but quit?

Frank climbs out of his loft bed slowly, feeling more than ever like his feet are going to slip on the ladder down.

Once his feet meet the ground he stands there, just standing. He doesn’t move because he doesn’t know what to do when he does. He supposes he should put some clothes on, though he doesn’t really feel the need to. He’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, if anyone has a problem with that, it’s their own qualm to bear, and he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

He does perform a sniff check to make sure he’s not going to leave the room smelling like four-day old stale clothes that need to be washed. He does smell like four-day old clothes that need to be washed. Frank relents and changes his shirt, but people are just going to have to settle for the effort he is putting in to being presentable which will not exceed a fresh shirt.

According to the clock on Ray’s desk, it’s just past one, midday, when no one is likely to be at the rink except for Coach and Gerard. He should probably talk to them now before people start swarming into the rink for the game later.

Frank’s stomach rumbles, and he’s not entirely sure it’s because he’s hungry. He hasn’t eaten real food in days, and his entire body is practically corroding because of it. He can’t survive off of Cheetos and granola bars. He’s making himself sick.

Staying in bed probably isn’t going to help him much either. He’s only doing more damage to his body.

The good news is that Morgan didn’t do any permanent damage to Frank. Besides the bumps and bruises he’s got here and there, he didn’t leave anything else behind. That hasn’t made what happened any easier, but it’s made Frank slightly relieved. The lab reports his doctor sent him have been somewhat comforting on a mental level, but it doesn’t change things much. He’s not infected, he’s not sick, but he feels like he is.

He’s also very sure of one thing. He can’t report. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be the boy who was raped. It just doesn’t happen to boys. He’d lose every bit of his pride if he allowed that information to go public. What’s worse is that he’s a sports player, a hockey player. This just doesn’t happen. Not to people like him.

The word embarrassment doesn’t quite reach the right level of prowess. It would be far worse, far worse than anything. A boy in his position, it might as well be a coming out alongside the humiliation of his being a boy in the first place. His career would be in tatters. No one would ever take him seriously again. He wouldn’t be a good hockey player, he would be the hockey player who was raped.

His ideals are archaic, and on some level he knows this, but it doesn’t change the way he feels about it. Just because he knows it’s ridiculous doesn’t change that he feels the way he does. Wanting something doesn’t make it true.

Frank would love to see Morgan rot behind bars, would love to see his hockey career ruined and his name to be shouted in infamy on the streets of this town, but he knows that he doesn’t have the strength or willpower to see it happen. He wants, so much, to believe that he could be the one to strike Morgan down, but there’s no way he’ll ever be able to. Frank doesn’t have the guts.

Not yet at least.

Pacing around the room, trying to psych himself up to even leave the safety that the door provides, he catches his eye in the mirror Ray has hung up on the door. He looks pale, morose, cadaverous. Frank looks like a drawing from Tim Burton’s newest movie, which has somehow been brought to life. He’s not appealing in the slightest. He looks like he’s suffering from some virus, and he can’t believe it’s his own emotional state that has taken such a huge physical toll on him. His entire appearance, in some way, is entirely self-inflicted.

He looks like he’s been through hell. The horror of that night reads across his face like a book, and he’s unsure if he’ll be able to compose himself enough to mask that. He makes eye contact with himself in the mirror, and it’s hard to hold the gaze, because his eyes are red, and the bags underneath them are so huge that he physically can’t look at them for too long without feeling his eyes begin to water.

Frank never realized how unfathomably violated this sort of thing makes you feel. He knew it would feel bad, but he never considered just how much or in what way. It’s not about being attacked or hurt, there’s something far more gravely traumatic about it. It feels like his innocence has been taken away from him. Frank’s never even kissed anyone, but now, it feels like he’s been left out in a sewer to decay for a few months. It’s not fair. It’s disgusting. There’s no amount of soap or water that can wash it away.

Morgan took something enormous from him. He might as well have taken out a knife and chopped off one of Frank’s limbs, because the damage he’s left in his wake is just as prominent.

If anything, all this does is further prove why Frank needs to quit the team. He doesn’t have another choice. Frank has been through hell and back, and he can’t put himself through it any longer.

If his life is just classes, food, then back to the dorm to stew, then so be it. If that’s all he has right now than it’s all he has. But at least it’s better than the constant torture of having to see Morgan every day.

Today is the first time in four days that Frank walks outside, and he’s quite dramatically startled by the sunlight when it greets him. The day is not a warm one, not by any means, so he’s glad that he had the forethought to pull on a jacket before leaving his room.

Everyone around him scuttles around with their jackets pulled tightly to them, though there’s few people outside right now, considering the hour, as most people will be in class right now. Frank scurries off to his location, which is quite close to his dorm, a fact which once pleased him greatly, but now it practically sickens him.

The heavily windowed building gleams in front of him, sun refracting off of the glass of the windows, making it a blinding building. It makes the building seem more beautiful and upscale than it actually is. The sun makes it glow, which is new, because usually the ice rink looks like a decaying relic of a town growing up around it.

A chill runs through Frank that has nothing to do with the temperature. He stops in front of the doors, and he looks at the door handles before him, unsure of whether he’s capable of gripping them or not. It feels like the strength in his fingers has worn out, having been eroded away in the past few days he’s spent without flexing the joints.

Frank takes a deep breath, then another, and several more. He stares at the doors still, incapable of seeing past the goliath of opening them.

How can he step foot in there? That’s where it happened. This is the scene of his every nightmare, and waking horror that has plagued him for four days. Behind these doors is the very room where the unspeakable happened. How can he ever step foot in there again?

This is one bullet he is going to have to bite, though. Hockey still means a lot to him, and he won’t allow himself to play a masquerade for any longer. He knows that he can’t continue with the team, and they deserve to know that too.

Frank grits his teeth, before clasping his hands around the cold handle of the door, and wrenching it open.

The air that meets Frank is warm. It’s such a drastically different climate that feeling the temperature increase is like walking through a solid wall. Frank steps foot through the wall, allowing the warmth to blanket him, though it doesn’t do anything to cure him of the shivering that spreads through his entire body. The door closing behind him leaves a lingering draft, which, as he stands there in the front lobby, dissipates slowly.

He stands there, in the lobby. The windows shine through the bright light of the afternoon sun. Everything is normal. The same old posters and newspaper clippings line the walls. The same letters on the walls and doors, the same paint, the same carpet. It even smells the same.

Frank hates it.

He walks slowly on the same ugly grey carpet. He can’t imagine anywhere else he’d rather be less.

The walls echo with his nightmares. They’re alive with it, practically pulsing with the horrors they’ve witnessed. This entire building has absorbed the memory of that night.

Frank practically faints as he forces himself to walk past the door to the locker room. He doesn’t want to think about what’s on the other side of that door.

Frank considers all the things that he’s going to have to tell Coach, all the questions he’ll have to dodge, all the hell that he’s going to put everyone he knows through, but he knows he doesn’t have any other options. He’s in the middle of considering all these things when he practically runs into someone.

That someone happens to be Gerard, who’s too busy with his own thoughts to even notice he was in someone else’s path. Gerard gets a mean elbow to his side which he’s saying sorry for, even though he’s the one who got hurt. He does so before he even looks up to see that it’s Frank standing before him.

“Frank!” Gerard says ecstatically, with a true glint in his eyes, “you’re back! Thank god, the team needs you. You know, I forgot how much we sucked before you came along, and then you were MIA and I remembered again, but thank god you’re b-”

“I’m not back, Gerard,” Frank interrupts. “I’m quitting.”

“You’re…” Gerard starts, trails off, and then snorts out laughter. “You’re kidding.” He says it like a statement, grinning back at Frank, waiting for him to crack a smile and say it was a lame excuse for a joke.

“I’m not,” Frank says, and the smile Gerard expects to see is nowhere to be found, instead, he faces a man who has bags under his eyes that seem to have gauged out permanent residence. He sees something he can’t even describe in Frank’s face. It’s like he’s looking at a shell of a man, someone who’s dead and just hasn’t gotten the memo yet. It’s incredibly disconcerting, and the tone of Frank’s voice is one of complete, stone cold seriousness.

Gerard doesn’t like it, not one bit. Frank looks depressed, he looks worse than he can ever remember seeing him. He looks like the only thing that he’s been doing at all the past few days has been crying.

Something happened to him. Gerard doesn’t know what, but his previous visit instigated a sickening feeling in him, which has only doubled now that he sees Frank here. He hoped it was simple. Not happy, but simple, something that you can move on from. As awful as it sounds, he hoped it was something like a family pet dying. He knows that’s not fun, but it’s something you can get over, even if it’s hard.

This isn’t the reaction of a man whose dog died. This isn’t remotely close to that. Whatever happened is a mountain compared to that, Gerard can tell. It’s in his eyes, or rather in the bags underneath them, and in the droop of his head like holding it up is simply too much work. Something big, verybig, has happened to Frank.

“Frank,” Gerard says, shaking his head. “You can’t be quitting.”

“I am,” Frank replies.

“You can’t. The team can’t hold on without you,” Gerard replies.

“I’m sorry,” Frank says, briefly. And he is. But that doesn’t change what he needs to do.

“Frank, quitting just isn’t an option, you know it’s not.”

“I have to do this, Gerard,” Frank says, and he looks at Gerard, right in the eyes, before he loses the contact and stares instead at a spot behind him, feeling like he’s going to cry just being here.

“If it’s more time you need, then you can have it. I’m not in a rush to put you back on the ice if you’re not ready to be there right now. If you need some time to rehabilitate yourself, go ahead. But you can’t quit, Frank. You just can’t, and you know that.”

“It’s not time I need, Gerard. I need to leave. I just need to.”

“Frank, we can wait for you. A week, a month, I don’t care. We just need you back. If not for our sake, then for yours.”

Frank feels like a zombie. He remembers the routines of his life, remembers the basic mechanics of who he is, but they all seem long gone now. He feels like everything has been taken away from him, like he’s been evicted from his life like it was just a house he couldn’t pay the mortgage on.

“I have to quit. I’ve already made up my mind.”

“But your scholarship… you’ll lose it without hockey. You’ll lose that, and then what?” Gerard asks, because it doesn’t seem like Frank thought this through. Frank is at this school because of a hockey scholarship. If he doesn’t play hockey, that will be taken away from him, with no remorse. The school will be glad to make him pay full price. And then what? Frank can’t give up on that. He just can’t. He’ll lose so much more than whatever has prompted him to quit might make him think.

“It’s unfortunate,” Frank says, “but it’s what I have to do.”

“Frank,” Gerard shakes his head, “You love hockey.”

Frank doesn’t say anything in response to this. He doesn’t know what to say. He does love hockey, Frank loves it with every bit of him, but he’s stuck. Frank is caught between a rock and a hard place, and this is the only option he has left.

He can’t be on the same team with Morgan, he simply can’t. He can’t tell anyone what happened to him, he’s too scared of what will happen if they know. What Morgan will reveal if they know. And he can’t even stand to be touched anymore, the slightest contact with other people sends him into a panic, how is he supposed to play a sport that involves contact? More physical contact than practically any other sport. Hockey isn’t an option anymore, no matter how much he loves it. It hurts him inside more than he has words to say, but Frank doesn’t see how there could ever be any other options.

“Frank, you can’t quit,” Gerard says, pleads almost, “you’ve got the potential to be the greatest hockey player of this generation. You could be the next Gretzky, you could be Crosby, Ovechkin. You could be better. You can’t give that up.”

“Gerard, you don’t understand, you can’t understand,” Frank says, shaking his head.

“You’re right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could throw away something I know you care about with all your heart. I have seen you on the ice, I know how much time you put into this. You breathe hockey. You pump it through your veins. No one has ever looked more like they belong out there than you, so tell me, why is it that you would give that all up?”

Frank shakes his head, declining to answer.

Gerard makes an exasperated sound, and he puts his hand on Frank’s shoulder. Frank flinches, gets this look of what Gerard can only describe as fear in his eyes, and he pulls away like Gerard’s hand is on fire. Like Gerard’s touch is too hot for his skin to bear.

“Frank, if you can look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want to play hockey anymore, than fine. I’ll let you go ahead, tell Coach you quit, I won’t try to stop you. But if you can’t, then I don’t think I can accept your resignation. If you truly don’t want to play hockey anymore, then I’ll let you go. But that’s not what this is about, and we both know it. Whatever it is, it cannot ruin your hockey career. You’ll only be hurting yourself more in the end, because I know how much you love hockey. I know how huge it is to you, and I know that you can’t just give it up.”

“Gerard, it’s not that simple.”

“It is. When it comes to what you love, what you’re passionate about, it is that simple. If you love hockey as much as I think you do, you’ll understand why I can’t let you destroy yourself this way.”

“Gerard, you have to let me do this.”

“Why?” Gerard asks, simply.

“Why?” Frank asks.

“Yes, why. Give me a good reason.”

“It’s personal,” Frank replies.

Gerard groans, and he decides it’s now or never to reveal that he knows Frank’s secret, because he needs to get to this kid before he ruins his own life. “Frank, is it about the figure skating? Because if it is, I can assure you that I don’t care, none of the guys will either, okay, it’s not that big of a deal.” This isn’t exactly true, but if it’s what he needs to hear, he’ll say it. Gerard will just threaten anyone who tries to insult Frank’s figure skating.

Gerard knows in his heart that the figure skating isn’t it. He knows that can’t be the cause of why Frank’s quitting. But he can’t believe that anything could ever be so serious as to make him quit hockey. Hockey is everything to Frank. You can see it in his eyes, he has it engraved in him like the tattoo on his back.

“How do you…?” Frank starts, but then he shakes it off, because this isn’t the time to be talking about that. However Gerard knows, it’s not important. “It’s not that, Gerard.”

Frank doesn’t even think he’s upset that Gerard knows. He’s experienced pain so many times worse that he doesn’t think anything like that could hurt him at this point. The truth is, it probably could, it could probably add on to the pain tenfold, but Frank can’t worry himself with that right now. He’s got a whole mess of other problems, of other pains of higher degrees.

“Then what?” Gerard asks, looking like he’s getting ready to get on his knees and beg Frank.

“I just need to do this,” Frank says, and he starts to walk past Gerard, done with entertaining the idea that Gerard can somehow talk him out of it. Gerard can’t talk him out of this decision, he’s spent days pouring over this decision, letting it destroy his every will, and he isn’t going to let Gerard’s words destroy his efforts.

He had so wished that Gerard would be able to talk him out of this. He knows he doesn’t want this. He knows the very idea of quitting hockey makes him want to puke. But thinking about playing alongside Morgan makes him want to puke just as much. It’s a dilemma that has no solution. He can’t win. Gerard can’t talk him out of it. As much as he wishes that Gerard has all the answers, the truth is that he doesn’t.

“No, Frank, stop,” Gerard says, and he instinctively grabs Frank’s wrist, to try to pull him back, and Frank goes absolutely crazy at the touch. Gerard’s hand closes around the small part of his arm, not tightly, but firm enough to try to prevent Frank from walking any further, because he doesn’t want to let Frank go over to Coach and actually quit. But Frank, at this touch, breaks down.

He makes a whining, terrified, sound, and he tries to tear his arm away from Gerard, by any means possible. He’s willing to break his own fucking arm if it means Gerard will let go. Gerard, not registering what’s happening, doesn’t loosen his grip, which sends Frank into a full-on panic attack in only a matter of seconds. Gerard realizes what he’s doing only too late, he’s not even holding Frank’s wrist tight enough to hurt him in anyway, but Frank loses it as if he’d just been touched with an iron.

Frank wrenches his hand back, Gerard letting go the second he realizes the mistake he’s made, but it’s too late. Frank, in his attempt to get away from Gerard, stumbles, and then falls over, falls against the wall, not hurting himself that much, but once he’s on the floor he realizes he can’t breathe. Not in the typical way where he’s having trouble breathing and his breaths are coming out as wheezes, but like he actually cannot breathe. His throat has closed up completely, like someone has tied a noose around his throat. Air won’t pass. He can’t even remember how it’s supposed to.

Frank starts gasping, and Gerard just looks down at him, aghast, not sure what’s going on. He’s not sure what he did, it’s all happened so fast, he can’t even pinpoint at what point things fell to pieces.

Gerard recognizes that Frank is having a panic attack, having suffered from enough of them himself, but why on earth it’s happening right now, Gerard doesn’t know. Frank starts crying, he puts his head in his hands, draws his knees up into his body, almost in a fetal position, and he just starts bawling, right there in the hallway, like a little kid who fell and scraped their knee on the sidewalk. He’s melting into a mess right before Gerard’s very eyes, and the thing is, Gerard doesn’t know why.

Gerard leans down, wants to tell Frank he’s sorry, wants to reassure Frank of whatever he needs, anything to get Frank to calm down. He’s not sure what he’s done, but Gerard will take full responsibility for it. Maybe the pressure of trying to quit got to be too much, and Gerard brought him to a boiling point. It must have something to do with that, Gerard thinks. He’d been a little too aggressive in trying to stop Frank from quitting, that would make sense. After all, for whatever reason Frank came to this decision, he’s sure that it’s been stressful. Being in that place, there’s no way to avoid being in emotional turmoil.

Gerard puts his hand on Frank’s knee, trying to be comforting, trying to show him in any way that he’s sorry.

“Don’t touch me,” Frank snaps, swatting at Gerard’s hand, and he looks up at Frank, a flash of anger on his face before Gerard watches his face turn almost instantly back into one of fear or grief, or both.

Gerard evaluates him sympathetically. There’s probably a perfectly logical explanation for Frank’s behavior, he just has to work out what that might be.

Frank’s been AWOL for days now, he won’t talk to anyone, he barely even acknowledged Gerard’s existence last night. Now he says he wants to quit hockey. Hockey is everything to Frank. There’s a spark that lights up in Frank’s eyes when he talks about hockey, or when he plays it. When you watch him on the ice, it’s like watching a force of nature. Even looking at him watch others play hockey is a game full of suspense and trepidation. Frank and hockey go together like peanut butter and jelly. They’re practically incomplete without the other.

What could make him want to quit hockey then? What on this earth could actually justify that sort of rash action? And what could make Frank have a panic attack merely by being touched?

Gerard has a sinking feeling. In his head, there’s a sound like brand new Legos snapping into place. It’s the feeling of a puzzle piece finding its mate. But this eureka moment is not the kind of discovery that Gerard wants to be burdened with.

“No,” Gerard says, shaking his head, and he’s looking at Frank, finally understanding why he looks so fragile. He can’t stop shaking his head, like if he shakes it more, it’ll stop being true. What he suspects, it will evaporate, and the world will give him solace. He can’t stop repeating “No, Frank” over and over again, not wanting to let it be true.

Not to Frank, not to him. Frank, of all people. His Frank, the one who heats him up, lights a candle inside of him. This couldn’t have happened to him. This is Frank. Even if he doesn’t love Gerard back, it doesn’t change things. This couldn’t happen to Frank. To Gerard, to anybody else, but not to Frank.

“Gerard,” Frank says, with this look of despair in his eyes, and Gerard just wants to hug him, to hold him to his chest and tell him that it’ll be alright. But he can’t touch Frank, he can’t do that to him. He can’t allow anyone to hurt Frank, not scare him even, not like that. Never again.

Gerard sinks down to the ground to look at him, be eye level with him, as Frank loses it in the corridor, and he wants to pull Frank to somewhere safer, somewhere secluded, where he can just let it out without the danger of someone walking in, but he can’t, and it sucks.

Gerard wants to squeeze the pain away. Like if he hugs Frank for long enough, lets Frank cry it out, it’ll just disappear. Gerard has never felt the need to hold someone as much as he does right now, and the worst part is that he can’t. He’d run the risk of hurting Frank more, and the last thing Frank deserves is to be hurt more than he already has been.

“Tell me…” Gerard starts, and then stops, looks around, feels as though the walls have eyes and that they’re going to divulge his secrets when he’s not expecting it. He can’t stop himself though, he feels as though it just might kill him. “Tell me who hurt you, Frank.”

“Gerard,” Frank says, shaking his head. It’s the only word he can get out right now, because he feels as if his entire body is convulsing. Like he’s reliving that awful night. His brain won’t stop playing reruns, it’s something he wants nothing more than to banish from his entire brain. But he can’t, and that forces him to remember it, at any given moment, like being hit with a freight train. Over and over again. Scene by scene, moment by moment. He remembers being pushed to the ground, having his face shoved into the tiled floor, and he remembers everything else. Vividly.

He’s also not sure how to feel about Gerard knowing. Part of him is almost relieved because someone, Gerard, knows. Frank doesn’t have any emotional connection to Brendon, not really. He feels bad for the guy, in the same way he feels bad for himself, but sharing that connection doesn’t bring the two of them closer to each other.

But Gerard is very different. Gerard is the best friend Frank has here, and that would make him the best friend he’s ever had in his life. No one is there for him like Gerard is. Gerard can be a shoulder to lean on, maybe. But at the same time, Gerard can’t know. No one can know. He doesn’t want anyone to know, he wants it to be a secret, for only him to know, and him alone.

The fact that Gerard does know is not good. He wants this to be a secret he takes to his grave and now the closest person to him on the whole goddamn planet apart from his mother knows his biggest secret ever. And he can’t even tell his own mother, because she would rain hell upon everything in her path. Gerard might do the same.

Looking at him now, Gerard has murder in his eyes. He has fury, vengeance, all the makings of a warpath in his future. Gerard is a very passionate person, that has been clear from the get go. Gerard is one of the worst people to know his secret, because Frank’s sure that if he were to find out who, then Morgan may never breathe right again.

Frank doesn’t want that. It’s not like he doesn’t want Morgan eating through a tube for the rest of his life, because that is definitely a fantasy of Frank’s. He just doesn’t want to face the punishment for putting Morgan there, and he doesn’t want Gerard to either. He wants Morgan to suffer, wants him to suffer in the fields of punishment, wants him to push Sisyphus’ boulder up a mountain for the rest of eternity, but he is not willing to sacrifice his own life to make that happen. Murdering the guy is all well and good, until you have to live out your life in prison because of it. Morgan simply isn’t worth it.

“Frank,” Gerard pleads, wanting nothing more than to hold him, to kiss the pain away. Except maybe to see the head of whoever did this to Frank on spear.

“Gerard, no one can know,” Frank says, finally gasping out, though it’s preceded and followed by sobbing.

“Frank, tell me who did it,” Gerard says.

“No,” Frank says, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“But they hurt you,” Gerard says, a flame flashing in his eyes. Frank sees it, sees the trouble it’ll cause if Gerard knows. Gerard’s not a very angry or forceful person, but Frank can tell that if Gerard were to know, there’s a good chance he’d beat Morgan to an inch of his life. As much as Frank would love to see him hurt like that, to see a big black eye on his face, a bloody nose, maybe a couple teeth punched out, it wouldn’t do him any good.

“There’s nothing to be done about what happened in the past,” Frank says, “nothing now can change what’s been done.”

“They deserve to pay.”

“Not in whatever way you’d make them.”

“Frank,” Gerard pleads, pain in his voice, that Frank is surprised to hear. It astounds him that Gerard would care so much for him. Gerard’s reaction is drastically different then the one he’d have expected to get from the composed, kind man he knows Gerard to be. He’s a nerd, passionate, and full of warmth, but now, he looks desperate for blood. Frank doesn’t want to give in to temptation. He cares a lot about Gerard, too much to let him ruin his own life by going after Morgan.

“Please just let it go,” Frank says.

“He’s on the team, isn’t he,” Gerard says, coming out of nowhere with the deduction skills Frank hadn’t anticipated him having. “That’s why you want to quit hockey, isn’t it?”

“Gerard…”

“Frank, if I can’t kill the guy, at least let me kick him off the team, let me get him expelled, let me-”

“Gerard, no one can know,” Frank says, shaking his head, still crying tears like a waterfall, an unstoppable force. “I don’t want anyone to know, not anyone.”

“Not even to make him pay?” Gerard asks, somewhat aghast. He should think Frank would want to see this guy fry more than anyone else would on the planet, even more than Gerard does.

“But if he pays, I’d have to say why. I don’t want anyone to know what happened, not ever,” Frank says, and he doesn’t know how to phrase it in a way that doesn’t make him seem vapid. The fact of the matter is, it’s embarrassing. If everyone knew, Frank would be the boy who was raped. He doesn’t want that hanging over his entire hockey career. Then Frank remembers he won’t even have a hockey career after today, and this sends him spiraling through even more tears. These ones are guttural, obnoxiously loud, and the pain inside of them is transferrable to anyone who hears his howls.

Gerard’s heart breaks tenfold. The sharp pain of it shoots through him with cruelty. Seeing Frank in pain is like being in pain himself. It’s actually just the same. Gerard doesn’t realize it until Frank looks up at him, but he’s got tears of his own running down his face. He shouldn’t be letting his guard down like this. No one should see his weakness in such an apparent way as Frank is seeing him now.

“Gerard,” Frank mutters, quietly, through tears that run down his face at an alarming rate, like it’s a race for which can fall off his face the fastest.

“Frank, I’m just so sorry,” Gerard says, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry.”

Without thinking about it, Frank grabs him, brings Gerard into a hug, a bone breaking, needy, and entirely consuming embrace. It’s not in a particularly romantic way, and Gerard isn’t delusional enough to think of it that way. It’s the kind of hug that you can tell Frank has been needing for days now, and he’s only now getting the chance to have it, which makes the grip stronger, the hunger for it a stabbing one. Frank needs to be held, right now, the fear of physical contact is outweighed by the need for someone else’s warmth. He needs Gerard, more than anyone else in the world, it’s Gerard who he needs. Gerard is the only person who can give him what he needs right now, someone to hold him.

Gerard hugs him back, thinking to himself, that he won’t ever let Frank go, not for anything. Never again.

It hits Frank now, of all the times that it could have hit him, it’s only now when it sinks in. He’s attempting to quit hockey. The one thing that keeps his life force gleaming. His everything. He’s trying to quit hockey.

There were days when he would come home from a day of school, having been pushed into lockers, ignored by his peers, and sat alone at lunch tables. He would come home, strap on his ice skates, and let them take his pain away. There were snow days where Frank and Hayley would sweep up off all the ice on the pond by their houses, and they’d learn new tricks together, or perfect the ones they already knew. There were nights where Frank couldn’t sleep, he’d sneak out of the house, and the pond would be a hockey rink. The trees surrounding it would be the crowd around him, and Frank, well Frank would be Wayne Gretzky.

Frank would hear his name spoken over the speakers during morning announcements, congratulating him for carrying the team to victory the night previously. His face was the only one of importance on all hockey photos in the school and in the newspaper. He’d be congratulated for his skill when he’d buy groceries. He has a fucking bench dedicated to him.

When he makes a goal, he flies. It’s a high that no drug could ever get you to. When his team wins a game, it’s like winning a season, every single time, every tiny win, they all mean the world to him. Simply being on the ice, playing against another team, especially a good team, one that doesn’t give up without a fight, it fuels him. Nothing makes him feel more alive like having ice beneath his skates. Nothing in the world.

Frank gasps out, desperate, hysterical. “I don’t want to, Gerard, I don’t want to.” How could it have taken this long? How is it possible that he let himself forget?

“Frank, it’s okay, you don’t need to. You don’t need to tell anyone. You don’t need to play hockey, it’s fine, I get it.” He means it, from the tips of his fingers to the middle of his heart, Gerard means it. Frank shouldn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do, not after what’s happened to him. If he doesn’t think he can play hockey, then fuck hockey.

“No, Gerard,” Frank says shaking his head, and he pushes Gerard away from him only so much that he can look into Gerard’s eyes, which aren’t quite as red and sunken as his are, but they definitely expose his insides. “I don’t want to quit, Gerard. I can’t. I-I love hockey. I love it, Gerard, hockey is… it’s mine.”

Gerard doesn’t know if he likes Frank’s decision or not. Frank shouldn’t be pressured into anything that he doesn’t want to do. If he doesn’t think he can play hockey anymore, or if he doesn’t want to, then hockey is off the table. But there’s something in Frank’s eyes, a fear that is unmatched even by Frank’s fear of Morgan. Frank is afraid of going on without hockey just as much as he is afraid of going on with it. He’s never known a life without hockey, how can he just give it up?

Gerard understands though. Everything has been taken away from Frank. His sense of safety, his happiness, his future. Hockey can’t be taken from him as well. Frank needs to keep some part of himself safe, and this is the biggest part that he has, letting it die would only be a testament to how much Morgan took away from him.

“Do what you need to do, Frank,” Gerard says, looking back into Frank’s eyes, resting his head on Frank’s. They’re so close now, barely an inch between their lips. It would be so easy to just break the distance entirely. Gerard can feel Frank’s breath, unsteady and short, barely any intake to be had.

“He can’t take away hockey too,” Frank says in a firm way, despite the tears falling from his face and the hesitancy of his voice.

“Then show him your strength,” Gerard whispers. Frank nods, before collapsing again, rooking his head into Gerard’s neck, not afraid to let himself be vulnerable. Gerard closes his eyes, pulls Frank tighter to him, allows everything. As hard as it is for the both of them, this is where they need to be. Frank in Gerard’s arms, and Gerard in his.

Notes

Hey so, some of you might know i'm having a rough time right now, which is why this chapter took so long. I really do appreciate those of you still reading, and I wish this hadn't taken so long. Thank you so much for your continued support, and thank you for sticking with me.