All of the Stars

We made love twice more after that, up until we were both too tired to go on and decided upon laying back under the sheets and holding each other. It was far past nightfall by time we had finished with each other, we both knew by that time tomorrow we'd be halfway back to Jersey. We ignored it though just like we had agreed before. We wanted to focus on each other and all the time we had left together.
Sweet Pea jumped onto the bed with us, her short tail wagging as she climbed across Frank and I's tangled legs. I pushed my face into Frank's warm color-coded chest more, his arm tightening around me as he reached forward and gave Sweet Pea a tiny pat on her head. She gave a hoarse ruff in response to him. We both chuckled. It was a bittersweet chuckle, this wasn't going to last long. Everything we'd ever said to each other was beginning to show as foreshadowing, clear as day.
"I'm gonna miss this." I blurted out. Franks body tensed beneath the grip I had on him. He sighed and kissed my head delicately.
"I know. I will too. It's okay." He whispered.
"It's not okay." I said, almost too harshly at him.
"We can pretend it is." He replied.
"No, we can't." I snapped. I pulled away from him and sat up, the thin sheets pooled around my lower half to leave my pale body exposed from the waist up. I looked down at Frank who's eyes were now filled with intense sorrow and overwhelment. His gentle hand extended out and placed itself on my covered thigh.
"Hey, we'll be alright." He told me so softly that I felt a lump form in my throat immediately, I could feel the tears welling behind my eyes. My heart stretched and contracted with some kind of unknown discomfort. I shook my head and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
Frank sighed again and sat up with me, "C'mere."
And I did. The sheets still covered our lower halves as he pulled me into his lap, letting me straddle him in a non-sexual way. I craned my neck down to study his perfectly structured face. He was so fucking beautiful, such a beauty who I wanted to stare at forever and never look away from. It was so unfair. I wasn't going to be able to keep this person forever. It fucking sucked.
I stroked the back of his ebony hair that was so soft that it fell between my fingers like silk. He gazed up at me with half lidded eyes, those big eyelids that made his face seem so much more innocent than it actually was. I dipped my head down a little more and kissed his baby-pink lips tenderly, not pushing for anything else. My nimble fingers found themselves rubbing themselves over his neck tattoos, to the bottom of his jaw where I could feel the increments of his scruff that poke through his smooth skin since he hadn't shaved in days.
"Gerard, I..I just I...," He mumbled against my lips after taking a deep and shaky breath.
"I know," I muttered, "I love you too."
"Yeah?" He laughed breathlessly and somehow silently.
"Yeah." I assured.
He kissed me again. "We're...we're okay."
I placed my forehead against his, letting goosebumps fluster across my skin when I felt his breath on my cheeks, "We're more than okay. My yellow paint."
I heard his breath hitch, just like it hitched the first time he ever said my name on the first day of theater. "My C Major. The stars in my sky. The wholeness in my heart."
A tear fell down my face and journied its way down to my jaw. Frank exhaled sharply then sweetly kissed where the drop had stopped near my jawline to removed it from my face.
"Please don't cry, angel." He contend, voice torn and on the brink of cracking into a choking sob.
"This fucking sucks. It really fucking does, ya know? God, I just...I wanna be happy. You are my happy but you're gonna be taken away and I don't know how I'm going to handle it, Frankie. I'll go back to being that lonely kid in the Goddamn corner, everyone's gonna know what happened and...and they'll hate me. I swear it. This is a load of bullshit because God damn it, I love you. I fucking love you and I can't hold it in anymore. I finally get happy and it's being taken away from me and-"
"Gerard, baby, take a breath." Frank interrupted. I watched his tear stained face contort as he tried to hold back how hard he wanted to cry. Me, on the other hand, I was a mess of ugly and disgustingly loud sobs. I was terrified, mainly because I've never cried that hard in my life. I felt like I was being stabbed from the inside out and my organs were being completely twisted around like fucking playtoys.
I leaned my head into the crook of Frank's neck where I could feel safe, wanted, secure. "Just hold me, please." I whimpered. I could feel his body go suddenly relaxed and he lay down on the bed again, me laying over him without changing our position. The heat radiating off his bare chest filled me with contentness, not enough to ease the anxiety coursing through my veins. My eye's were still wet and showing no sign of wanting to be dry anytime soon. But he held me and took care of me, just like he promised at the beginning.
My eyes drifted close eventually with the help of Frank's hand dragging through my hair which lulled me into a near pit of sleep. But of couse, I, Gerard Way, have no such thing as good luck. Never have and never will. So yes, just as my anxiety had died down and I was finally calm, my phone had obnoxiously ring and send an earpiercing sound through the motel room.
"Disrespectful. We're in Amish Country." Frank muttered, his eyes closed and his face unreadable.
"Shut up." I retorted and pulled out of his embrace to grab my annoying ass phone off the bedside table. I squinted my eyes to read the caller ID. My heart dropped. It was my mother. "Fuck." I yelled, ripping the white linen sheets off the bed to wrap myself up, leaving Frank butt-naked on the bed.
"What the fuck, Gerard?" Frank hissed. I rolled my eyes and covered myself. Climbing off the bed and wandering into the bathroom, I pressed the phone to my ear, nearly killing myself from almost tripping over Sweet Pea's snoring body in the doorway. Then I hit accept call. I didn't even think twice.
I cleared my throat, "Momma?"
I heard a shaky breath come through the phone just before my mother's sweet voice poured out, "Gerard, honey, where...where are you?"
"Pennsylvania." I told her quietly. There was a long silence.
"Please, just, come home, okay? Geebear, we're so damn worried about you. Are you hurt? Has anything happened?"
I paused for a moment, choosing my words carefully. "I...I'm not hurt, Momma. I'm okay. Have um...have you contacted to the police or anything?"
Mom sighed. "Yes. We've been looking for you."
"Oh."
"I'm not angry with you, Gerard."
I was about to speak again as Frank suddenly appeared, dressed in only basketball shorts, and leaned himself the doorway of the bathroom by moving Sweet Pea over with his foot. A gaze of concern spread across his already saddened face as he realized what exactly was going on.
"Did someone tell you who I'm with?" I asked my mother slowly. Frank's eyes widened. A sound of a sniff came from the speaker of the phone. My mother was fucking crying over me because I was selfish enough to leave her filled with worry just because I favored my own emotional and sexual needs more than the feelings of the person who gave life to me.
"Mikey did." She spoke airily, "He misses you. He misses his big brother, and your father and I miss our damn son, Gerard. I'm not angry with you, I promise. I'm just worried sick and I'm so Goddamn thankful that you answered me."
"Mommy?"
"Yes, honeybunch."
"Do you think I'm a disgrace?"
"Oh God, Gerard, of course not. Not ever. I don't care who you're with at the moment, just please come home to me. It's so quiet here, Grandma is worried sick." My mother gasped out. It was to the extent that my grandmother was worried about me. She couldn't be worried. We all knew that she didn't have a lot of time left and the last thing she needed was the stress of her grandson disappearing with a thirty year old man.
"Momma?" I said again.
"Yes."
The lump in my throat returned and the grip I had on my phone became a million times tighter, "Please don't press charges on him. Don't let him be arrested."
"I don't have a say in that, Gerard. I think it would be for the best if he was-"
"Mom, he can't."
"What? Gerard I can't let that man-"
"I love him." I disclosed.
My mother and I didn't say anything for what felt like years. I bit the knuckle of my index finger, shooting Frank a worried glance. Both of our eyes were bloodshot and tear filled.
"Gerard, I don't know what to say." She whispered.
"Say you won't let him be arrested." I asserted.
"There's not much I can do-"
"Yes, there is."
"Gerard-"
"I have to go." I mumbled, not bothering to say goodbye before I hung up on her, midsentence. That was when I completely broke down into a hurricane of depression and complete hatred for almost everyone around me. I chucked my phone at the mirror above the sink, watching as both the mirror and phone screen shatter against each other. Frank gasped, but I didn't care. I let my body collapse onto the floor, pulling my knees into my chest and slamming my head into the palms of my hands with only the sheet wrapped around my body still. Then I sobbed. And I screamed. And I cursed and I yelled and I threw a fucking fit. And Frank was there the whole time, with his stupid fucking dog. He sat down on the floor too, his arms wrapped around me, our backs leaned against the wooden bathroom cabinets while we cried in unison. Sweet Pea whimpered in front of us. Her tiny head cocked back and forth, studying our emotions. Because dogs really do know when bad things are happening.
We took a shower after we broke down next to each other. We both stood under the hot spray of the water. My head never left his chest and his hands never left my hips throughout the whole ordeal. We only shared soft kisses because honestly, that's all we wanted. That's all we had left to do. Comfort each other. There was no doubt in our minds that he was going to be arrested as soon as we stepped one foot in Jersey, yet for some reason, he didn't protest when we got into his little Honda Civic at half past three in the morning and started our way back to Belleville. I couldn't place my finger on why he even agreed to go back, or how he was so accepting of the fate he was going to meet in less than twenty four hours.
Frank was silent when he drove this time. He hand still set on my knee, like always. It was our routine. The routine I'd never forget no matter how much mind was hell bent on blocking out the memory of his touch.
"Frank." I spoke out gently.
I observed how his hand tightened on the wheel when I spoke to him, his knuckles turned white from the strength of his fingers wrapping around it, "What is it, angel?"
"Can...we pull over?" I asked, not really expecting a yes. We had only been driving for half an hour but I noticed that we were passing so many open and empty fields that looked so beautiful under the pale Pennsylvania moonlight.
"Where?" He remarked kindly.
I peeked out the passenger seat window, scanning my eyes over the large and lush hay field we were passing by. "There."
And he pulled over. He stopped the car just before the hay field and jammed the keys out of the ignition, turning to me and giving the weakest and most defeated smile I'd ever seen appear on someone's face. I started hurting even more on the inside. My organs twisted themselves more than before to the point that I could cry out in pain.
"You wanna get out?" He asked wailfully. I nodded.
Hopping out of the car hand in hand, we trudged through the field after leaving one of the windows open so Sweet Pea wouldn't suffocate. We didn't say anything as we walked throughout the uneven patches of growing hay, all I could hear was the sound of Frank's labored breathing from all the cigarettes he inhaled on a daily basis. His hand stayed clutched to mine, the conducting warmth of his hand distributing into my own. Pennsylvania wasn't any warmer than Jersey in the early spring. After some time, I found a spot in the field that was decent enough for us to sit, tucked behind a large hay bale.
We laid on our backs, still hand in hand with our eyes fixated on the stars above us. Frank still hadn't said anything, and neither had I. That's when I realized; this was a goodbye. Maybe even a celebration, celebrating the short month in which we'd known one another and became romantically involved.
"Frankie," I called out to him in a whisper.
"Yes, my flower."
"I love you." That was the first time I ever directly said it, and on the inside, I was freaking the fuck out. I'd never loved anyone except my mother, and maybe Johnny Depp after seeing him in Edward Scissorhands, but that's not my point. I loved a real person who wasn't in my family. I had formed a mutual bond with another person who had the same feeling for me as I did for him. He taught me things. He was teaching me how to love. He was teaching me how to let someone inside and stop myself from barricading in my own self hatred and pity. Frank was painting me a picture. And it had so much fucking meaning that I could just implode from how much it was affecting me. Because back then, when I saw art, I saw a meaning. And he changed that. He was showing me the actual meaning, and in my mind, that was all the art I ever needed to see.
"I love you too, alright? No matter what happens." He returned.
"No matter what happens." I confirmed.
"You're going to take Sweet Pea." Frank told me, his speech sounding bland and unamused.
I shifted my head against the hay covered ground to look at the side of his face, "What?"
"You and I both know that I'm going to be put on trial, Gerard."
"Don't say that. I don't wanna think about it."
"You're going to take Sweet Pea, alright? You're gonna take care of her until her ancient ass finally decides to give up and just die already." He simpered a little, his lips barely twitching up into the smile. I rolled myself over to meet our bodies together and share his undying body heat. My head found itself on the usual spot above his heart where I could hear it beat slowly. I liked to think that it beat just for me. I wanted to think I was the one keeping it going.
Frank wrapped his arm around me and let the side of his face be placed on the top of my head, "Look up."
I looked up. He was looking at the stars again.
"Remember when I asked you about wondering where people are going with their lives?" He interrogated me calmly. I nodded against him.
"Remember how I said I didn't want you to go 'nowhere'?"
I nodded again.
"You went somewhere, Gerard. You went somewhere just like the fucking stars. You're the sky, a sky that opened up and let itself be filled with all of the stars. You're open now, and not in a vulnerable way either. You're not scared of yourself anymore, are you?"
"No. No, I'm not." I told him.
"When we're separated, I want you to look at the stars every night, okay? Look at all of them. You won't feel so alone."
I raised my eyebrows. "How does that help with loneliness?"
"Because I'll be looking at the same exact stars and I'll be thinking of you until we find each other again. Whether it's in the next life or in twenty years."
"You're saying goodbye, aren't you?" I questioned him sheepishly.
"That's exactly what I'm doing."
That was the last time Frank Anthony Iero ever held me in his arms.

Notes

WE ONLY HAVE ONE MORE CHAPTER AND PROLOGUE LEFT OMFG I ACTUALLY FINISHED SOMETHING FOR ONCE IN MY PATHETIC LIFE LOL IM FUCKING SOBBING THE PROLOGUE IS RUINING ME
THE LAST CHAPTER IS LIKE 5036 WORDS GET READY THIS WAS ONLY LIKE 2.8K MAYBE 3.1K BUT SHIT WE ALMOST THERE THE END IS NEAR FUCKCKKKK
p.s i didnt edit this lol give me a BREAK xxx