FicWad

A/N: Thanks so much to all of you who have stayed supportive and patient with this story, you guys are amazing. I know it’s been a lot longer than when I said I’d update, but I’ve had a lot of stuff going on which I won’t bore you with. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my writing, and I’ve realised for the first time just how much this story means to me- I hadn’t seen before just how much it reflected the biggest issues in my own life. This story isn’t just a fanfiction; it isn’t just the product of someone’s loneliness. It’s a part of me. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before, but I do now, and I will finish this story if it’s the last thing I do. So, thank you to all of you who’ve stayed patient, I hope you enjoy the chapter. You might wanna read the one before if you've forgotten what's been happening- I wouldn't blame you! It was great to write it again, I’ve missed this story so much.


Chapter Thirty One


When I wake up the next morning, it’s still dark and raw outside, bleak December rain scraping down the windowpane. The snow is gone, leaving the streets stark and ugly, the sky ripped up; a raw, bleeding womb starved of possibilities. Reality is poignant, but under my duvet, it’s safer, darker. I stay huddled there for as long as I can, hugging my arms to the bruised, empty feeling in my chest and listening to rain graze the dark windowpane as I try desperately to forget.

But I can’t. Memories slice through me, as serrated as the rain scraping down the sky, lonely and scared under my skin. I screw my eyes shut against them, but flakes of snow glitter in the darkness behind their closed lids, and I can see Gerard’s pale skin and beautifully anguished eyes looking right at me, breaking me apart without fixing me back together. I remember the warm, impulsive feeling fluttering in my chest; the scraggly, snow-dusted branches of the poplar trees above us; the raw, irreplaceable feeling of being so utterly vulnerable; the haunting, anguished pressure against my mouth…

Hurt gores sickeningly through me, reopening the freshly cut memories and making pain well up at the bottom of my throat, aching and salty. I clench my fists with the impact of trying urgently to forget; to remember; to just be numb, nothing, no one.

But all I’m met with are scarred green eyes, glittering with anguish in the soft lamplight of the park, regarding me tenderly, roughly; for once unreservedly genuine. I have to try and not think how those eyes would look at me now, because it makes my chest ache so bitterly, so emptily, that it’s almost unbearable.

I don’t know how long I lie there, hiding, hugging the ugly bones in my body to try and remind myself that they’re still there; that I’m still there. Time stretches out endlessly; pointlessly, dark and numb and cold. I let myself get lost in the simple noises of devastated rain and a heartbeat that might not be mine anymore, until someone shakes my shoulder and the duvet is being pulled tentatively off me. Dull, hard light hits my eyes, ugly and cold, as the hostile air strips my skin and I wince, trying to pull the bedding back over me, but find that someone’s holding it away, stopping me from hiding.

It takes a couple of seconds for my swollen eyes to focus and for me to realise that it’s Mikey, pale and drawn, wearing two hoodies over his school uniform. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his hazel eyes are puffy and bloodshot, and I can see the rough indentations on his lower lip where he’s been biting it.

I bite my own then, clamping down on the soft skin to try and extinguish the hurt that stabs through me, because the expression in my younger stepbrother’s eyes reminds me acutely that it all really did happen. Last night. The snow, the party, the feeling of being so wonderfully, tentatively vulnerable to someone else. The kiss, the shame leaking through green irises, the four ugly red letters snarled into Gerard’s pale forearm. Mikey and Steve’s horror, the devastating defeat sinking deep into Gerard’s eyes that suddenly left me standing even more alone than before.

“Frank,” Mikey’s tremulous voice brings me spiralling back down to the present where the rain is like knives on the window. I force the memories down as I look at him, swallowing fiercely against the tears that threaten.

“What?” It comes out more harshly than I’d intended, scratchy and hostile, hurting my throat and probably Mikey. He flinches and lets go of the duvet, shoving his hands in the pocket of his hoodie- but he doesn’t go away.

“Um. School. We should go,” he mumbles apologetically. I watch his fingers tensely twist the material in the pocket of his hoodie and sit up reluctantly, letting tangled ringlets of hair fall across my face and shield my expression. I want nothing more than to hide away and never have to face anyone or figure anything out again.

Mikey doesn’t let me, though. His face is pale and puffy, like he’s been crying, but it’s pinched with determination as he looks at me. The later parts of last night suddenly come flooding back, filling my bruised insides with jagged pieces; I remember sitting on my bed as Gerard and Steve’s yells ruptured through the house, clinging to Mikey as though he was my only hold on reality.

Biting my lip ashamedly, I force myself to look up at him, scars and bloodshot eyes. “Sorry,” I mumble quietly.

Mikey doesn’t smile, but a little of the pain in his eyes diffuses slightly with gratitude. “It’s okay,” he says sincerely, gnawing at his lower lip. “Um. How- How’re you doing?”

I struggle not to react to the question with instinctive wounded anger; instead, I frown, biting my lip as I try to sift through my wispy, fractured thoughts and their blood in search for the truth. “…I don’t know,” I mumble eventually, looking away from Mikey and swallowing hard. The lump in my throat doesn’t go away. “What…What about you?” I manage, pulling my knees into my chest so I’m huddled up into a little shell. I rest my chin on my knees and look at Mikey.

“I’ve been better.” The corners of Mikey’s mouth pull up wanly for a second before falling back into lines of misery.

I nod, suddenly feeling awful. It should have been me comforting Mikey last night, me asking him how he’s doing, not the other way round.

“We could skip school and just hang out, if you want,” I offer dejectedly, struggling to keep the salty anguish away from the surface. I can’t quite bear the thought of having to go back to school after all that’s happened, but I don’t want to be alone either. Being alone is too close to the truth for me to handle right now.

Mikey shakes his head sadly in reply. “Sorry, Frank,” he mumbles, fiddling with the cord of his hoodie and not looking at me. “I’ll only feel worse if I don’t go to school.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just shiver numbly and glance sideways at my bedside clock. I frown. “Wait, Mikey, you do know that we don’t need to leave for school for at least an hour?”

“Yes we do,” Mikey tells me listlessly, voice suddenly laced with immeasurable sadness. “We’ve got to leave in half an hour. Dad can’t give us a lift because he’s taken Gerard’s to the doctor.”

My heart drops.

“What?” I exclaim, leaping out of bed and looking straight at Mikey, pulse jolting fearfully behind my eyes. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” Mikey asks sadly, his eyes full of hurt. “Dad saw everything yesterday. What did you think he was going to do, never speak about it again? Gerard needs help, that’s what he said. He’s right. I didn’t think so before, but…I don’t see what else we can do now.”

“Gerard doesn’t need help!” I protest angrily, fists clenched. “What the fuck is Steve thinking?”

“He’s thinking what the rest of us are thinking!” Mikey cries suddenly, startling me. “Gerard’s breaking, and the people who care about him can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore! I can’t!” Mikey looks wild, like I’ve never seen him before. His face is deathly pale. Hurting, dark purple bags weigh down the innocence in his hazel eyes. He’s trembling as he looks at me, words spilling from his mouth like he’s been holding them in for too long. “He drinks too much, he never talks to anyone properly and when he does its like he’s not even there at all- it’s like the Gerard I knew is dead.”

“But-” I start, because I think of the little glimmers I’ve seen beyond that. But then I remember the fragile, perfect feel of his fingers laced through mine, the way it made the little bubble in my chest soar and feel the last thing from alone, and I can’t say any more, because I’m choking.

“He carved the word ‘ugly’ into his own arm, Frank!” Mikey is shouting, face screwed up in pain. Tears swim behind his glasses, and hurt wrenches through me as I watch. Mikey sniffs furiously, wiping his face on his sleeve as I hesitantly jerk towards him and pull him into an awkward hug.

He hangs onto me, smelling of toast and talcum powder and bass strings and salty tears, and it somehow makes me feel emptier than ever.

“How could he do that to himself?” Mikey chokes into my shoulder.

I open my mouth, about to reply, but then I stop. I desperately want to tell him it wasn’t Gerard who carved the ensanguined lies into his own skin, but I can’t bring myself to betray his trust. If Gerard doesn’t want to say who really did it, then I can’t either- even though the image of his chalk-white forearm shrinking away from the glow of the streetlamp slices through me, and the four, jagged letters stain the back of my eyelids so dark a red they’re almost black.

I remember the pure, ragged agony in his emerald eyes and swallow furiously, clenching my fists and pulling back, all churned up with emptiness.

“Sorry, Frank,” Mikey manages the smallest of smiles as he takes his glasses off and wipes his eyes, looking even more vulnerable without the thick lenses shielding his hazel eyes.

I make a dismissive gesture of some sort, but I’m not paying attention to anything other than the hurt puncturing my hollowed-out chest. My blood’s infused with anxiety and desperation and acute hurt that don’t know how to deal with each other, so they all curdle together indecisively, making me feel sick, lonely, so empty.

“Um, you’d better get ready,” Mikey says after a few moments in some vain attempt to return to normality. He slides his glasses back on and looks at me. “I mean, if you’re coming?” his expression is drawn with anxiety as he looks at me.

I swallow, nodding listlessly.

“Thanks.” Mikey looks at me sadly for a moment, before dropping his gaze and shuffling towards the door. He hesitates in the doorway, yellow light spilling into my half-darkened room from the landing as he looks at me with sorrowful eyes.

“I thought he really trusted you, you know,” he says quietly, eyes not leaving mine. “I thought…I thought he might have been okay after all, with you.”

Something breaks inside me then, cutting deeper into wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal. I shake my head and look away sadly, turning towards my closet and pulling out my crumpled school uniform with trembling hands, trying not to let the words have an impact, but they swirl into thoughts, a tiny little jolt of hope.

“I-” I turn round suddenly, heart thudding anxiously as I look at Mikey. “Will- will he be okay now? Gerard- will he be alright?” I blurt before I can stop myself, feeling the words cut my throat.

Mikey bites his lip and looks at me with that kind of painful, hazel honesty I’ve only come across through his gaze. “I don’t know,” he says softly and simply. Pain clouds his eyes and he backs out of the room, leaving me alone as salt wells up uncontrollably in my throat. The rain sounds louder than ever; slashing and scratching angrily down the windowpane like knives.

I wander bleakly across to it and stare numbly out at the pouring sky, how it crashes to the ground and its liquid, grey splinters impale everything.

There isn’t even the smallest trace of snow left.

It’s all gone, as if it was never even there.


Or as if maybe I just imagined it.


*

The last thing I feel like is eating; my stomach is squeezing nauseatingly in indecision between anxiety and hope and fear; but the second Mikey and I make our way downstairs, dressed bleakly in our uniforms, Mom plies us both with hot coffee and rolls. Mikey takes one, clearly just to be polite, because he only manages a mouthful before gagging and rushing back up the stairs. My stomach plummets in sympathy, and Mom bites her lip anxiously.

When he returns, looking pale and clammy, Mom abandons her attempts to feed us and wishes us both a good day as we shuffle reluctantly towards the front door. The pain in her eyes as she waves us both off remains in my mind’s eye longer than I’d like as Mikey and I walk to school in silence, letting the rain wash away any possibilities of speech- but all the unsaid things linger heavily between us in the cold, even more evident than they would have been aloud.

It’s not even properly light yet- it’s raw and twisted and dark, and the cold is almost unbearable on my skin. The hard, cutting rain makes it seem impossibly bleak as we trudge the grimy, badly-lit streets in silence, car headlamps slicing dully through the murky rain and illuminating the thick grey pollution hanging bleakly over the road.

I scuff my soggy shoes through the overflowing gutters, laces trailing in the murky water as the rain stings my open wounds. My stomach is writhing sickeningly under my crumpled school shirt and hoodie, anxious, uncertain. Half of me desperately wants to see Gerard, needs to see Gerard. The other half is withdrawn and hurt, never wanting to have to be troubled by anguished green eyes again, yet I desperately need to be troubled by them now, so I can see whether they look at me as if I could be everything- or as if I’m nothing at all. I need to know where I stand.

I need to know if I matter.

It’s horrible, walking to school again with anxiety and dread curdling in my stomach again. It almost feels as though I’ve gone back in time to where there was no glimpse of hope or vulnerability- just cold, unfeeling walkways and the taste of my own blood mingling with the rain. Only this time, the anxiety is present for a different reason, and Mikey’s trailing along quietly beside me, mousy hair plastered to his pale face from the rain, glasses flecked in droplets.

Even although I’d rather be alone to lick my wounds, relief ebbs through me every time I glance up and see him walking beside me, reminding me that this isn’t the past; that even if I don’t have anything else, I have a friend.

But that still doesn’t soothe the horrible, churning spasms of anxiety or the tugging, empty ache in my chest. Memories of last night curdle in my mind, blurring together, their colours running into each other until they’re all a torn blend of hurt.

The school looms into view on the horizon, grim and ugly in the hostile rain. I let the droplets course down my skin and wish they were snowflakes, remembering how cold they were, melting into my skin in comparison to the tender, uncertain warmth blazing in Gerard’s green eyes. The moment sears through me, poignantly precious. It teeters on the brink of shattering, and I suddenly have to choke back tears, furious with myself.

I’m trying to force the devastating emotions down, trying to retreat back into my shell, to never look at my scars, to be anything but myself. I’ve almost achieved bitter numbness by the time we’re trudging through the bleak school gates, rain drumming down on the concrete as we hurry across towards the main entrance.

But before I can reach the doors, I find Mikey pulling me aside, under the shelter of the veranda as the students behind us stream into the warmth of the building, out of the cold, dark December morning.

“What?” I ask, not looking at him. The rain dribbles down my back, cold and wet.

“I-” Mikey’s looking at me, hazel eyes bright gold in the darkness. “I know you and Gerard are kind of close now, but-”

“No we aren’t,” I stammer, heart thudding. “Not really.”

“Frank,” Mikey sounds sad. “Do you really think Gerard just tells anyone the things he told you yesterday about his band and stuff from the past? He doesn’t even tell me about it. But he told you.”

I try and shrug, but pain is spiking into my chest, making me feel horribly exposed and alone, vulnerable to Mikey’s perceptive eyes.

“And don’t think I haven’t noticed how happy you look with him,” Mikey continues softly. “But…that’s why I wanted to warn you,” his voice grows strained. “Don’t…Don’t expect too much from Gerard. He’s my brother and I love him, but I know him too well. He probably won’t recover from what happened with Jeremy. He won’t let you in again, Frank.”

I struggle for a moment. “I-I don’t care,” I mumble eventually, even though now I care so much I want to cry. I hoist my schoolbag more securely onto my shoulder and turn away from Mikey, pushing my way through the crowds and into the stuffy, warm atmosphere of the school corridor, although the cold, bleak feeling from outside lingers at the back of my mind, making me feel helplessly alone in the mash of human bodies.


*


Mikey finds me at breaktime, slumped on the steps down to the library, cradling a plastic cup of crappy coffee in my hands. Tentatively, he sits down beside me and I shift to make room for him but stay silent as the rest of the school rumbles on behind us, loud and ugly in the harsh yellow light of the dingy halls.

It seems oddly silent inside, like I’m separate from it all as I listen to the unhappy beat of my heart and wonder if Gerard’s in school yet, if he’s pacing the halls, all impassive and brooding and sullen, if he’s okay, if he’s thinking of me. The thought makes my stomach knot up horribly, and I have to breathe deeply for several moments and close my eyes.

“What really happened last night, Frank?” Mikey asks quietly, but I still jump, spilling hot coffee over my nylon school trousers. “Before I found you and Gerard?”

“I- I don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter, mopping at the spilt coffee so I don’t have to meet his perceptive hazel eyes.

“Did he say anything about Jeremy?”

“Not…not really. We…didn’t talk much,” I mumble honestly, taking an awkward gulp of coffee which curdles uneasily into my tense stomach.

“Did you kiss?” Mikey blurts suddenly, making me choke on my mouthful of cheap coffee and spill the remainder all over the steps beside us.

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it!” I repeat angrily, standing up, face burning with humiliation and hurt. “I told you earlier, I don’t care, Mikey- okay?”

“He’s here,” Mikey says softly, making me jump and turn to look at him, heart thudding, half with soaring hope, half with plummeting fear.

“Gerard. I saw him at the start of break,” Mikey clarifies when I continue to stare at him uncomprehendingly. “I came straight to find you.”

My heart thuds so fast I have to remember to breathe as I blindly take a couple of footsteps down the corridor, balance wavering slightly.

“Where are you going?” Mikey asks, worry creasing his forehead as he too gets to his feet as if to prevent me.

“I have to see him,” I mumble distantly, already moving away.

“But, Frank-”

“I have to. I’m sorry, Mikey,” I say, and then I rush off before he can say anything more that will convince me not to. The people I push my way through seem so irrelevant as I blindly seek out Gerard’s tall, slim frame. Anticipation thrums through my veins as I hurry through the dingily lit corridors, lethal- the tiniest nick and it’ll spill out into my body, poisoning me with disappointment.

I’ve turned into one of the quieter corridors to the main one and have just stopped, panting slightly beside one of the big windows when I see him. My heart drops, my lungs as cold as the rain pleading against the windowpane outside, all alone in the dark.

Gerard isn’t alone. He’s with the group of scene kids, right in the centre of their little knot, arm slung carelessly round a pretty blonde girl. I falter, but they’ve spotted me. Gerard’s expression carefully misses mine, the film round his expression flimsy.

“What do you want, Freak Iero?” One of the kids sneers.

I swallow, suddenly feeling horribly exposed, like this is all a huge mistake and last night never really happened. “Um.” My voice cracks slightly, and I duck my head. “I just wondered if I could speak to Gerard for a moment?”

I try and catch Gerard’s eye, but he keeps his gaze hidden behind his carefully dishevelled raven hair, avoiding the truth.

“Go away, Frank,” he mumbles very, very quietly. It sounds like his teeth are gritted.

“But, Gerard-” I appeal, trembling all over. “I need…” I trail off then, because I don’t know what I need, other than just Gerard. That’s when he looks up, hair falling away from his face. My stomach plummets. His face is deathly pale, his eyes swollen and bloodshot beneath their smoky black liner.

The little group around him is laughing, jeering, jostling me like I’m a joke.

But suddenly, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The fact the kids are all laughing at me like I’m some kind of freak, the fact my heart is beating so fast I feel light headed, the fact I’ve never been so vulnerable in my life. None of it matters. All that matters is that finally, after sleepless hours and choked memories, Gerard is looking at me.

And as his broken, green eyes collide with mine for the first time since that unreal moment under the canopy of falling, frozen stars, I know it was all worth nothing. I know that I’m worth nothing, that it’s all nothing.

Gerard’s eyes are weak, ashamed as they struggle to hold onto mine. Even though their green is pale and feeble, it makes the back of my throat burn, my chest ache agonisingly, but I still can’t look away, can’t believe the truth that’s staring me in the face. My heart thumps and my cheeks burn with utter humiliation.

A particularly rough shove from someone jerks me out of the oddly silent bubble I’ve been choking in, and back into the oxygen that smothers me.

“Why would Gee want to talk to you?” a feminine voice sniggers. “I mean, really- why would anyone want to talk to you?”

A couple more kids start laughing, and Gerard breaks his gaze away, leaving me overwhelmed by the sudden emptiness of the void their absence tears through me. The bleak, crippling loneliness and rejection hurts so fundamentally I struggle to regain a sense of reality.

“Yeah, who do you think you are- his boyfriend?” another voice sniggers, and the group around me erupts in laughter. The noise is brutal, bubbling through my eardrums until it’s all I can hear above my humiliated heartbeat. After four years of high school, that on its own barely scratches the surface, but then I see it. The thing that makes me lose it. The thing that sears through me like a sheaf of ice.

Gerard’s laughing too.

It’s empty, insincere laughter that weakens his features, but it’s what does it for me. After everything I know about him, after all I’ve confided in him, after what we’ve shared, he’s laughing at me, blocking me out, rejecting me so completely.

Suddenly, I can’t breathe, I’m choking, I’m crushed, I’m nothing.

I can’t bear to look at Gerard’s false cruelty or his swollen eyes just like mine anymore. It’s too real- so, so real. It’s what I should have known all along. Hurt sears through me so powerfully I really can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe until I blindly shove my way through the throng of derisive faces and stumble wildly down the corridor, everything unravelling into broken fragments that black out my vision.

The hurt knots fiendishly in the pit of my stomach, crippling me like poison. It sinks its claws into my squeezing gut, my airless lungs, my dry throat, bubbling repugnantly and sourly through my system like blood-hot vomit. I stagger numbly into the boy’s bathroom, collapsing over one of the sinks as the bitter, convulsing hurt rises and rises in my throat, burning me, suffocating me, as it boils overwhelmingly towards the surface.

But when it peaks, instead of throwing up soured black promises into the ugly white sink beneath me, I just let lout an odd, choky, gasping sound- and suddenly it’s sobs wracking my body, so powerful I have to bend double as I convulse. My vice-like grip on the cold, grimy ceramic of the sink is the only thing keeping me upright as I gasp for breaths, the burning salt blinding my vision with disbelief, stinging its way down my scarred cheeks.

I think of the way Gerard touched those scars so tenderly not even twenty four hours ago, think of how he told me they were the last thing from ugly, think of the kindness in his eyes, and I can’t bear it as I catch a glimpse of myself, of my disgusting scars and streaming eyes in the mirror. No wonder he laughed. The thought he’d actually care about someone like me is a fucking joke.

I’m still sobbing, grappling for breaths I don’t want as I slam my clenched fist into my reflection over and over and over again, watching it splinter, watching the hope and vulnerability in my stupid, swollen eyes shatter until they’re just millions of ugly shards spattered at my feet. Then they just remind me of the snowflakes last night, remind me of Gerard’s lips and trembling hands and the incomprehensible feeling of feeling so un-alone and I stamp on them as hard as I can, tears still streaming down my cheeks, fists clenched round blood and broken bits of mirror impaled in my skin.

I can’t stop, I can’t stop remembering how Gerard looked at me as if I was the only person in the world; the way he told me to show my scars because they were part of me; the way he told me things he told no one else; the way I hugged him and we both held on because there was no one else, because no one else would do; the way he looked at me before he kissed me, hard and blazing and scared in a flurry of snowflakes; the way he kissed me so tenderly, as though I was the most important thing in the world; the way I kissed back because it was all I wanted; because it was amazing; because it made my stomach twirl and my heart thud; because it made me feel so wonderfully the last thing from alone, because I never wanted to let him go; because… I loved him.

This time when I plunge my fist into the weakened, splintered glass reflecting the boy who almost had everything, the mirror explodes, showering the whole room in broken bits, and I have nothing at all, just the strangled chokes that echo off the grimy walls around me.


......

Thoughts? It's been so long since I've written this story I hope it was alright- and that some of you guys still want to read it! I know the chapter was possibly more dramatic than the others, but it kinda needed to be that way for the plot- I hope I didn't overdo it too much, though. Rates and reviews would honestly make me so happy, I feel really nervous posting after all this time so I'd love to know what you all think! I'll try and update really soon, I've missed this so much and have big plans for the next couple of chapters :'D Love you guys, thanks so much for sticking with this!

Lucy xo