FicWad

Under Our Tree



How can something that once made my heart soar into the sky like a firework now burn my eyes like Satan’s own brand of bleach; make my heart smash like a glass doll in the hands of a reckless toddler when it used to make me feel like everything would be okay; kill me instead of reviving me like it once would have?

Because you aren’t there, lying underneath it lazily like the clouds above are rotating around your deep hazel eyes. You aren’t perched, beaming like a baby hyena, precariously on one of the higher branches like an angel heading for heaven. You aren’t there and without you it means nothing; the now-agonizing memories, the reassuring shade of the branches, the fact that our names are some carved cliché rotting away in it’s ancient bark. None of that matters anymore. Because you aren’t there, aren’t here, aren’t with me under the one thing that was always ours. Under our tree.

I can remember the first time that we gazed into one another’s eyes like two rabbits caught in the blinding headlights of love. It was under our tree, mine and yours, Frankie; the two of us together under the gnarled branches, you facing the sunset and me facing the fading-in moon and completely unaware that one another was just a trunk’s thickness away from discovering the greatest thing to ever happen to either of us. You only noticed me when I sniffled, looking to the moon as though it could tell me what to do about my failing grades; about the bullies who forced lies down my throat like sickly-sweet cyanide; about everything that was turning me into nothing. You heard me sniffling in the moonlit, sun-stained haven of the tickling grass that gathers around that old oak like hundreds of tiny children gathering around a wise old man, you heard me and you instantly ran around to find me. And you did find me, in more ways than one. Under our tree.

I first realised that I love you in the presence of our familiar family of lush leaves that grew and brightened along with us, along with our jet-propelled friendship. I guess that it wasn’t so much a case of me realising that my heart only ever beats a tune worth dancing to when around your bright eyes that even stargazers would struggle to look away from, more like a case of me gradually phasing into it like a toddler learning to talk; you don’t remember exactly when it happened, just that it did and that it’s the most natural thing in the world. After we found each other there, in our own personal paradise of things that are just meant to be, we spent endless evenings just simply being. Being and appreciating, because you made me appreciate everything, Frankie; made me appreciate all of the fluttering that my heart did whenever you so much as smirked that clock-stopping, world-spinning smile at me. Made me appreciate it because it made me feel appreciated, like as long as I’m with you I’ll always matter. Under our tree.

I had my first kiss under the adoring eyes of the stars, twinkling to get a glimpse as we tasted bliss for the first time, perched on one of the lower branches to avoid the dampness of the April-shower bathed ground. It’s ridiculous, I know, that I didn’t get my first kiss until I was fifteen when a lot of my friends had already lost their virginity, but for a kiss like that it was well worth the wait; because if I’d have had any other first kiss then it would have been ruined by what you gave me, Frankie, it would have been tainted purely due to the fact that any other first kiss would never be as perfect as how your moonlight-lips ghosted on top of my own trembling ones. It was your first kiss too, I knew that and I also understood how nervous you were about it, so I told you that I’d kissed before; lied to make you think that at least one of us had a clue what we were doing. I think that we both did, as our tongues tangoed together for the first time of many passionate dances of affection, we both knew exactly what we were doing because love was telling us to do it. To make each other feel loved and adored and wanted and needed. Under our tree.

When Mikey ran away from home, after my little brother and I had one of our thankfully rare fights, I ran straight to my sanctuary; all shaky tears and heaving breaths, into your open arms. You mended my broken heart with the glue of your warm breath; you fixed the chunks that were missing from my soul by filling them out with your love. When I told you all of the things I had said, things that I should never have shouted at my fragile baby brother, you were completely honest with me; you didn’t say that I was right and you didn’t say that I deserved to rot in hell for shouting at my brother when my own problems got too much for me to bear. You helped me to think things through, used your omnipotent logic to make things seem less apocalyptically bleak than it was and, using what you gave me, we both went and found Mikey; curled up and crying under the slide at the local park. Curled up and crying and shivering and whimpering; all because I couldn’t keep my temper. But it was alright, Frankie, because you were there with me, helping me to get through to my baby brother. Just like you always get through to me with your flawless words, just like you always make me feel like a little less of a failure. Under our tree.

I love thinking of that hot summer’s day, when I was sixteen as opposed to the world away from that which seventeen has become and you were fourteen yet seemed so much older than my mindlessness, when you carved our names into the bark of our home; in the exact same spot where my back had been pressed against the rough skin of our mother on that evening when you found me. It felt like that magical moment when the bride and groom cut the cake, my hand firmly atop of yours as the penknife sliced through the tree trunk with surprising ease, as though it’s what the tree wanted us to tattoo into it, like it was just the right thing to do. Just like being with you is. Under our tree.

I can still recall every joke that you tickled my soul with, how every word uttered beneath those protective branches was never anything less than productive. Just like every soft tiptoe-touch that we brushed against one another’s skin with the intricacy of a con-artist painting a flawless replica of the Mona Lisa; just like every enticing embrace that just snuffed out all of my problems, if just for the few hours that we were in each other’s arms; just like everything that you did for me, saved me from myself with your smile and reassurances. If only I could have done the same for you, Frankie. Under our tree.

I never saw it coming, on that ironically frosty morning in late January, when you rolled up your sleeves and showed me all that you were capable of doing to your bone-china skin. The way that your wrists were redder than the Devil’s fury shot me straight through the heart, I mean; you’re my boyfriend and I never even knew that anything was wrong, for fuck’s sake! I just cuddled you up into me, akin to how you had many times to my undeserving self before because I know how much a cuddle can help, and kissed each furious incision as though I were kissing the priceless rubies of the crown jewels. I asked you why and you told me more than I ever wanted to know yet not nearly enough for me to be able to make it all okay again; you told me about all of the things that They call you, about how much They hate you, about how alone They make you feel. About how I’m the only thing that you have left in your life. And that was the first time that you ever made me cry, the first time that I’ve actually ever had something truly worth crying about. Under our tree.

I’ll never be able to wash it from my mind, the evening that They followed you home. To our home, to our tree. They were yelling at you like demons letting out their envy of my perfect little angel; They were shouting lies like an addict pops pills, shooting you with Their harsh poison; They were throwing stones at you, too, making you stagger and stumble until I saw Them coming up behind you. I’ve never punched anyone before and I never will again, but They had hurt you, were still hurting you, so I did the one sensible thing that I could. I knocked They’re ringleader clean out, scaring the others away with the fact that I was older, stronger and more furious than a vampire in sunlight. And then something clicked within me; you helped me, understood me, because you were going through a situation almost identical to my own pitiful one. I just held you; kissed you; caressed you; nuzzled you; did everything that you always did to me when I couldn’t stop crying, and tried my hardest to ignore the one thing that I just couldn’t. Too much had finally become enough to truly be too much. They broke you; your spirit had been drained from your stunning soul. Under our tree.

I was the one who found you, Frankie. The one who was hospitalized for severe shock. The one who you left all a-fucking-lone in a world that was worth nothing before you brightened it and is now worth even less because you’ve plunged it into a never-relenting black void of excruciating agony. Just like the rope did to you. Every time I close my eyes for so much as a nanosecond I see it, Frankie, see you just swinging limply from the highest branch; drifting back and forth in the wind as though you#re flying as highly as only your smile could ever make me feel I was. You just looked so dead, Frankie, so unlike the saviour that you were when I found you. Dead, gone, eternally free. Under our tree.

I wonder who’ll find me. I just hope to God that it isn’t Mikey; he won’t be able to cope with seeing the lifeless body of the one person that he has left. Life seems to have fucked us all over, huh, Frankie? First me, then you and now Mikes is getting the sharp barbs of what They can do. I should really know better than to leave Mikey like this, like how you left me, but my selfishness and crippling need to be with you again easily overpowers any guilt that I might have once felt way back when I was still capable of feeling anything other than agony. I’ll be feeling nothing but bliss though by morning, bliss and you, Frankie. I left a note, mainly to Mikes on how to never give in like you did and I am, but by the time they find me it’ll be too late. By the time they find me I’ll be dead, gone, eternally free.

With you.

Forever and always.

Under our tree.







A/N: Thank you very much for reading, I hope that this was alright. I was ridiculously bored, thought of a random word (‘tree’) and decided to write a one-shot around it, thus resulting in this pointless piece of depressing crap that should probably never see the light of day. Oh well. Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think/how to improve! :)