FicWad

Gerard stared at the coffee pot.
He could hear Frank move behind him, yawning, stretching. The boy groaned as his back popped, and ran a hand through his hair.
Gerard knew he was shirtless, and Gerard knew exactly why he was shirtless. He knew they'd kissed, and he knew his hands had slipped under Frank's shirt, and he knew Frank hadn't stopped him.
He'd stopped it all, suddenly crushed by guilt and fear. After all, the emptiness couldn't be filled by cheap alcohol-fueled fucks and a junkie boy he knew nothing about and just had a pretty smile.
Because Bert tasted a certain way and Bert smiled a certain way and the light would play with the contours of his body in ways Gerard's mind had never been able to comprehend and Bert wasn't there anymore and even though he'd managed to find his new phone number Bert had never wanted to talk to him.
Bert had been everything to him and now he was nothing to Bert.
His mind had collapsed at the thought, hidden inside itself.
Gerard stared at the coffee pot and felt like crying, knowing perfectly well that kissing Frank had only made matters worse.
"Uh...morning?"
"Hey...hey there, Frank."
Gerard clutched the pot and flipped around to face him.
"Coffee?" he managed to croak.
"Always."
The man poured each a cup, and even the sound of it made his skin crawl.
He realized a second too late that it was cold, but Frank told him it was OK, cold coffee was fine too. It was coffee nonetheless and that was all that mattered.
"Listen--Frank. About last night-"
"Tell me more about Bert."
"Wha-"
"He's the reason last night happened, right? Tell me more about him. I'm curious."
Gerard blinked a few times, at loss.
"He was sixteen and I was twenty one when we met. I was a closeted little fag and he showed me my true self. He was brave, braver than I've ever been. We would talk."
"Talk?"
"Always. About anything. And there was sex, of course there was, but we would talk mostly...sometimes for hours at end. And ge was so smart...so, so smart. Smarter than many men I've met. And I loved him. I think he loved me, too, for the most part. We were together a long time."
He'd sat down, lighted a cigarette. They were both going to be late for work, but it didn't matter.
"He was a poet. An artist. A creator. He wrote. He took pictures. He painted, a little."
"What went wrong?"
Frank's question felt like a heavy blow to the back of his head. Gerard's mouth gaped, and he ran a hand through his hair.
"People change, I guess. They grow. They have epiphanies, and they have doubts-"
"I didn't ask for poetry, professor. If I had wanted the cliché broken hearted old teacher, I would've asked for it."
Frank smiled at him, and Gerard forced himself to smile back.
"He moved to California eight months ago and apparently is now fucking a porn star twenty years younger than him, so that's that."
Gerard stared at the floor for a few seconds, until the cigarette burned his fingers. He hissed when it did, dropped it, and then threw it away.
"We should get going."
His voice sounded more distant that it should've. More detached. His thoughts raced to the pills he could've swallowed, but then that thought, too, was erased: the sadness came crashing down and it was scary, and unexpected and cruel.
"You OK?"
"I'm perfectly fine, Frank. I'm fine."
His mind laughed at him: he'd crawled back into his teenage years, when he knew nothing to rebel against but his very own sadness.

*

"So, Frank, how's Gerard been treating you?"
Bernadette didn't look up from whatever she was working on. Frank glanced at her.
"Okay? I mean, normal?"
"You like the guy?"
"Define "like", Bernie."
"Appreciate his presence."
"Yeah, he's OK. Not really around that much, doesn't really talk when he is. And half of the time I'm not home. How big do the fliers need to be?
"Twelve times thirty."
"Gotcha."
He actioned the paper cutter, humming as he did so.
"Has he cooked for you yet?"
"Should he?"
"He eventually will, when he realizes he appreciates you. It takes a while for that to happen, though."
"He did, actually."
"Acknowledge the fact he appreciates you?"
"Cook."
"What did he make?"
"First time we met. Spaghetti, I think. Not really sure. Don't really remember."
"Stoned?"
"Hungover."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Is this OK?"
Frank pulled a brightly colored flier for a pride march they'd been organizing up in front of her. She eyed it thoughtfully.
"It's cute."
"You're not answering my question."
"Neither are you. So, can I ask you a question?"
Frank shrugged.
"Why did you start using?"
He arched an eyebrow.
"Too personal?"
"No, no. It's fine. I don't even know, either. Or I do. Kind of."
"Care to tell?"
"Has Gerard told you I have a sister?"
"Susan, right?"
"Samantha. Or Sam. Anyway, there was a school teacher who gave her a little too much attention. A lot of it, actually."
"Pig. How old was she?"
"Ten, eleven. The bastard did eventually go to jail. But something like that is kind of hard to fix, you know? So it dragged the whole family down."
"And you started using because your little sister got raped?"
"Because I couldn't protect her."
He stared at her and she stared back: a small quiver on the right of his mouth, but that was all the emotion he let himself show.
Bernadette scolded herself: she'd gone too far, she'd pried too much.
"So that's that. It makes me feel good, and it numbs everything out. I can float. I fly and it's far away from me and it has nothing to do with me. And it's not my fault."
"It wasn't."
Frank lowered the cutter's blade. It tore through the paper, and his mind longed for the blankness.
"It is."
His voice saddened her, and he felt himself disappear.
He wasn't going to go back to Gerard's that evening. He needed to stop listening to the screaming.
He needed to pry open the hands latched around his neck, he needed to stop the never-ending choking.