FicWad

ASDFGHJKL this went green in less than a day?! Thank you so so much!





No survivors.

Those were the two words which lodged themselves into my brain, never ceasing to repeat ever since I had heard the news reporter state them during the breaking news bulletin not two hours ago.

Those two hours had felt like centuries, a mere introduction to the beginning of my bleak and desolate life without him. If that could even be called a life, that is. Sure, the erratic, hollow thud of each and every one of my heartbeats could continue, and my lungs could keep gasping at the sour, stained, tainted air around me; but would there ever be life behind my eyes?

He was just going on a short flight. JFK to LAX, off to stay with Mikey for a week. Now he would never get to meet his newborn nephew.

No survivors.

The words crashed down on me once again, sending vicious white-hot blades through my heart. All of the empty, vacant, numbness I had first felt disappeared completely, leaving only the pain. It was the kind of cold, searing pain, which ravaged itself through my entire body, crushing my lungs and hindering my breath. It cut and sliced and ripped my heart incessantly into a never ending string which was being slowly tugged out of my body.

Why hadn't I gone with him? Just because of a stupid audition, one that had meant so much to me, but just seemed trivial now.
I remembered our last conversation before he left.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you, Gee?"
"Baby, I know how much your music means to you. I'll miss you, but I'd much rather you go to the audition. Don't waste your talent because of me."
"I'll be on a plane to you as soon as it's finished."
"I know, Frankie. I wish I could stay to cheer you on, but Mikey's expecting me."
"It's okay. I love you."

I slouched further into the floor, closing my eyes as his voice rattled through my mind.

Would it ever get any better?

2 words haunting my mind, 2 hours had passed, and the 2 of us would never be together again. I choked violently on the tears which had been cascading endlessly down my cheeks ever since I found out.

I jumped a little when I heard my phone ringing, but I couldn't pick it up. I couldn't face whoever was at the other end of the line. Whether it was someone grieving, consoling, or someone who simply didn't yet know, I wasn't ready to talk. I just needed to be alone. To try and work out why this would happen, why he would deserve this fate.

Humans all have the same hamartia - the same fatal flaw. That is that we cannot perceive that any of the tragedies of the world could ever happen to us, until they do. When we see other countries in a state of war, people dying due to poverty, fatal crashes and accidents, everything in the world which etches our mortality deeper into stone; we never think it will happen to us.

Sure, we all know we aren't invincible. We hurt, emotionally and physically, and we understand the concept of death, the inevitability of the oblivion that awaits us from beyond the shadows.

But we never expect it until it hits us.

I'd always believed in God, a higher power. But I was beginning to rethink everything. If there was a God, why would He allow this to happen? The loss of life, so young, so talented. Not just, I couldn't even think of his name, but everyone else up on that plane. All people with dreams and ambitions, lives cut short needlessly. It made me think. Why did this have to happen? Why do any deaths need to happen? Is it that God can't really control everything, can't actually stop these tragic accidents, or is it that He is just evil, and doesn't want to stop them? He just allows them to die.

No survivors.

Did any of those people deserve this? No. I didn't believe anyone deserved death. Yes, there were demented, sadistic people in the world that caused hurt and death to others, but I didn't even think they deserved it, really. After all, who had made them that way? If God created us all, then He created their personalities along with it, He made them the way they were. No, no one deserved the agonising pain of death.

Especially not my, I gulped, my breathing becoming more and more erratic as I thought of him, my Gerard.

He couldn't be gone.

I curled up into a ball on the floor, my breathing heavy and laboured, though it still felt like it wasn't quite filling up my lungs. I just felt hollow. The dented shell of a broken man, too far beyond repair.

How could I go on without him?

He was everything. He was the only thing that kept me going, day after relentless day. From the first day I met him, he took in my bruised and battered soul, encouraged me to never give up my dreams, to never let anyone else win. He gave me a reason to go on when I had fallen into a bottomless pit of despair and depression.

I thought about the infinite hours of lonely desperation ahead of me, and I realised that the only person I longed for, the only person who could help me through this, the only person I wanted to help me through this, was Gerard.

Pain engulfed my chest once more, the jagged edges of the daggers pounding their way into my heart causing another choking sound to escape my lips, the sound seeming to echo in the stony silence.

I opened my eyes only to be staring at the bed. Our bed. The bed in which I held him in my arms - could it have only been a few hours ago? It felt as though an eternity had passed as I lay, huddled over on the hard, cold floor.

It took all of my strength to move, my muscles clenching up, adding to the ever-increasing pain in each and every fibre of my being. I staggered over to the side of the bed, what used to be his side, and collapsed onto the mattress.

I could still smell him. Part of him was still here with me.

The faint fragrance of tobacco and coffee mingled with a caramel-like sweetness; an aroma I had become so accustomed to, one which I had associated with home and happiness for the years in which I had known him. One which was now lingered with thoughts of loss and death, and most of all, pain.

I wasn't sure of how long I laid there, allowing waves upon harsh waves of pain to wash over me, until every breath was a struggling gasp, and my eyes felt rough as sandpaper from the unrelenting tears which never ceased to fall.

I felt as though I was suffocating, caught in a torrent of fear, loneliness, pain and anger.

I had breathed in his scent until I could no longer smell it on the soft sheets, trying to cling to the little piece of him still with me. All the while it had helped me to imagine that he was coming back, because if his scent lingered, how could he not also? It was the last drop of hope in the fearful empty shell of a world he'd left me behind in, and when that too was gone, I just felt lost. The icy shards still made slashes in my chest, making my torment all the more apparent, but I had already grown used to them, knowing that they would taunt me for the rest of my days.

I didn't want them to leave. I would rather suffer than ever forget him. I wanted to remember every hint of a smile, every kiss, every little touch; I wanted to remember all of him, forever.

I slowly glided to the window. The sun had descended, leaving the ugly, fake, artificial light of the streetlamps down below to soak into the shadowy darkness, eating into the beautiful ebony night. Most people feared the darkness, but at that moment I revelled in it. The scariest things are not those which we cannot see, but those which we can. The images that haunt us are not the ones scratched into the darkness, but the ones set in the blinding light; just as the image of a crashed plane on an otherwise sunny afternoon will forever burn behind my retinas, managing to etch itself onto both my open and closed eyes.

I wanted nothing more than to creep into the sheer darkness and hide there forever, never having to communicate with anyone again, finding my own little escape from dissonant reality.

Raindrops blurred the windowpane, causing the edges of the lights outside to falter, as if they were unsure of themselves. I watched as the droplets trickled down, my breath beginning to fog up the inside of the window. The skies were crying. They were mourning. They were sobbing, just as I have been.

It made me feel so insignificant. I was like the droplets, just a few molecules of water in a torrent of rain. I was just one person in a world full of pain and suffering and sorrow. But no one notices when one rain drop falls from the sky, it only matters when thousands, millions, plummet into the earth. To the world, it didn't matter that I was trapped in the throbbing pain his absence had left me in, everything would carry on anyway.

The ringing of my phone, again, snapped me from my thoughts, but still didn't distract me from the sharp gnawing feeling in my chest. I was, temporarily at least, out of the daze, but still not quite in the real world yet. I was somewhere in-between, moving without realising, eyes open but not quite seeing. A ghost that couldn't understand how to pass through either side of the ether.

I slid back to the floor, numbly noticing that my phone lay broken on the ground next to me. Had I thrown it? I couldn't remember. But at least the ringing had stopped.

I felt exhausted. But I couldn't face sleeping in that bed alone. Not that I would be able to sleep, anyway. Not with my heart in slithers, my lungs on fire, and the images of the crash from my television set still corroding my mind.

I would probably fall asleep on the floor in the end though, but I didn't want to dream.

I wouldn't be able to handle the nightmares.

My mind whirred a little, trying to think of some rational option, but it soon gave out, unable to concentrate on anything other than the hole inside me. It's edges were fraying, pulling more of me down inside, sucked into the abyss of which I was not sure of the destination. It didn't matter.

I didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

I needed him so much right now.

I huddled my knees into my chest, holding my arms around them in a vain attempt at holding myself together.

The tears had finally stopped, as I doubted I had any water left in my entire body to create more. My head was pounding, and my eyes kept closing as I teetered precariously on the edge of sleep.

That was when I finally found the solution.

In a flash I was up and walking to the bathroom. I rooted around in the cabinet for a few seconds before I found them; the little bottle of sleeping pills prescribed from Gee's Doctor a few months ago. He'd only used one or two and ever since they'd just been left at the back of the shelf. I took the bottle to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of water before tipping the contents into my hand.

One, two, three. How could something so destructive feel so right?
Four, five, six, seven. I hoped we would be able to find each other, wherever we were sent.
Eight, nine, ten. My eyes were drooping, but I was scared it might not have been enough.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I'll see you soon, Gee.
Sixteen, seventeen...

I felt myself fall to the floor. Everything sounded fuzzy, as though I were underwater. My vision blurred around the edges, and I began to black out. Before the end came I had what must have been a hallucination. The front door swung open and someone walked in, immediately running over to me. I could feel his tears falling on me as he held me in his arms. No, I thought, the angel shouldn't be crying...

Then everything went black.



---



The steady beeping of a heart monitor was the first noise I heard. A hospital? It hadn't worked... The beeping sped up as I began to panic, feeling as though something heavy had been placed on my chest as I remembered that he was gone. And now my plan to be with him again had failed.

"Frank?"
My heart stopped. Was that...? No, it couldn't be.
"Frankie, baby. It's okay, please, just open your eyes. Please." He whispered, fingers grasping my own and tears in his voice.

I struggled to make my eyelids work, my heart beating at an alarming rate. The bright lights burned my eyes, but I tore my sight away from the ceiling and there he was.
"Gee?" I croaked, grimacing as my throat felt swollen and painful. He noticed my discomfort and helped me drink some water, gently moving my fringe away from my eyes as he did so.

"Am I..? Are we dead?" I asked, confused and disorientated. It had crossed my mind that this hospital was hell and he was visiting me from heaven.

His face was paler than usual, a deathly pallor which pointed me even further into thinking that we were both dead after all. The tears glistening in his eyes made his emerald irises shine brighter, though this also made the bloodshot redness in the whites of his eyes more apparent.

He kissed my forehead lightly and I sighed in happiness from the simple gesture, one I was sure I would never be able to receive again.

"No, I'm alive, and so are you, just." He sighed, and I could see pain etched into his features. "Promise me you'll never scare me like that again. How would expect me to live my life without you?"
"How?" I asked, ignoring his question. "They said there were no survivors."

"I didn't get on the plane. I felt terrible for leaving you just before your audition, and I decided I'd leave in a couple of days with you... When the plane crashed I had Mikey and Mom calling me, thinking I was dead. I called you as soon as I'd calmed them down, I tried to call a few times, but you never picked up..." Tears began to spring from his eyes, and my stomach plummeted with guilt for doing this to him.
"Then it wouldn't even ring and I knew something was wrong... I was already on my way home, but I bribed the cab driver to go quicker and... And then I found you on the floor. Oh God, Frankie... I didn't know what to do. I couldn't watch you die, I even considered downing the rest of the pills right then and there. Luckily I didn't and called 911 instead, otherwise you wouldn't be here. They told me to make you sick, to get rid of the pills and... It was horrible doing that to you, but I can't live without you, Frankie, I just can't. Why didn't you just pick up the phone?" He sobbed, and I reached to take his hand.

"Gee, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I saw the news, and they said your flight had crashed and I just didn't know what to do. I just cried and cried, I was falling apart for hours. I couldn't deal with talking to anyone; I didn't even check the caller ID... I love you. I love you more than anything, and I knew life wouldn't be worth living without you. I couldn't just carry on knowing I'd lost you." I was bordering on hysterical, my breathing erratic and my heart still beating too fast. I couldn't believe he was here, he was still with me. I was terrified that any moment I'd wake up and this would just be a dream.

"Shh, shh. It's okay now. I love you so much, Frankie." He whispered, leaning close and stroking my hair to try and calm me.
I sighed softly and leaned further into his touch. My mind was still trying to comprehend the fact that he was actually here; I could still feel the shreds of my earlier pain in my chest which were mingling with the warmness that spread through my entire being at his touch.

Delicately, trying not to disturb the needle flowing intravenous medication into my arm, he lay down beside me in the hospital bed, wrapping his arm softly around me and allowing me to nuzzle my head into the crook of his neck.

“Promise me you’ll never almost leave me again.” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“Only if you promise me the same thing.” He whispered back, punctuating his sentence with a kiss on the top of my head.

I tilted my head up to look him in the eye. “I promise.”
“I promise too.” He smiled softly, leaning down to kiss me sweetly on the lips. It wasn’t lust filled or passionate, unlike so many of our other kisses; it was simply full of love and relief. It seemed that he, like myself, couldn’t quite believe that we were both here.

We cuddled up again, our eyes closing as the exhaustion of the recent events crashed down onto us. I was on the edge of sleep, clutching onto Gerard as though he would disappear as soon as I closed my eyes, when Gerard spoke.
“You need to promise me something else, Frankie.”
“What’s that?” I replied sleepily, my eyes still closed.
“Promise me you’ll marry me.”
I smiled, the heart monitor giving away my excitement with the beeping of my sped-up heartbeat. Gerard chuckled at the noise, and I quickly leaned up to capture his lips in mine.
“Of course.” I whispered against his lips, before crashing our mouths together once more.




Hey, thanks for reading guys! I hope it wasn't too bad. I wrote the first part a few months ago when I was in a pretty bad place, and I didn't want it to end so tragically so I continued it on before posting it, which I'm hoping was okay! :)
R&R please my lovelies, even if you think it's terrible, I enjoy seeing what you all think!
Panda'xo