FicWad

Thank you for your patience. This is chapter seven of Just GO For It Already! The human drama is unfolding, no? Another thing, I’ve changed the class Finch and Frank share. It’s chemistry, not biology. AND THERE IS AN UNINTENTION MCR LYRIC IN THIS. ITS NOT ON PURPOSE.


Finch bit down on her lip. Gerard couldn’t see her eyes: they were hidden behind hair and shadow. She was holding his arm out by the wrist, starring at the thick, red lines that spelt the name of the person her friend loved so much. The cuts were on the inside of his arm. They were deep. There was no way she could have known that this was the pain he was feeling…and yet she felt responsible. She ran one of her fingers over the word on his ivory skin.

“Why…Gerard?” she asked quietly, her voice high and strained. “I thought…you’d stopped…How can you even be sure you love him like…?” He tugged his arm away from her and pushed the sleeve down.

“I just /do!/” he snapped. The sudden outburst caused her to jump. He stepped away from her. “There’s no way you can understand this.” Finch swallowed and looked up at him. The look she gave him was sharp and angry. It was a look that had been directed at the kids who threw rock at them when neither of them had cars and were forced to wait at the bus stop. It was a look she shot at the students who called her “freak” and called him “fag”. It was the look she got before she curled her hand into a fist and forced it into the face of whoever was hurting her or her best (and only) friend.

“/I can’t understand?/” she repeated, her voice now low and dark. “I can’t understand?!/” He saw her fingers curl up into a ball and there was a moment in which a spasm of irrational fear flared inside him somewhere as a tiny little voice screamed in a panicky tone that she was going to hit him. Her arm didn’t move. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you back? You honestly think I’ve /never felt that?!” She looked like she didn’t know whether to scream or to cry to hit him or all of them at once. Gerard stood there and watched her cheeks flush pink and her hazel eyes blur over with tears.

“You should /know better!!/” she cried. Her voice had changed. It was strange, really. In this moment of anger and confusion, her voice had abandoned its girlish frequency and had lowered itself so that she sounded…/womanly/. It was as though she’d somehow matured in the few minutes they’d stood there. Perhaps she had. She let out a groan of anguish and lifted her fist up to the side of her head. He jumped back at first, thinking that she might actually lash out at him, but found that she was pressing her closed hand to her temple, clenching her eyes shut and holding her head as if preventing her brain from jumping out and escaping from its prison of suffering. He watched as it took all of her self control to root her body to the spot she was standing in.

The both of them were secretly happy that they were in a remote part of the school. An audience of giggling, judgmental students was the last thing either of them wanted.

“We’ve been each other’s only friends for three and a half years. I’ve…” She swallowed heavily and her voice began to tremble slightly. “…Nobody likes the ‘scary-emo-goth’ girl. Nobody. Not even the fucking Scene Kids with their puke colored hair. Not even the one person you think is different…” She was biting so hard on her bottom lip now that Gerard thought it might start bleeding. Her head was bowed again so he couldn’t see her expression. He heard her sniffle, holding back genuine sad tears, for the first time in…he didn’t remember. It had been a while. A pang of guilt occurred in his stomach.

“Hey…” He cooed suddenly, approaching her slowly, holding his arms out as if to embrace her. “I-I’m sorry…don’t cry, please…”

The bell for first period rang. As he got within touching distance, she shot out her arms and pushed against his chest with an almost inaudible grunt. She spun around, her back now facing him.

“Talk to me when your head’s screwed on right,” she growled. Now it was his turn to watch her walked away. Only she wasn’t walking away from some problem that probably would have resolved itself. Hell, the problem he tried to cut away from his body may not have been a problem at all. She was marching away, her long black coat swinging around her heels, from something he could have prevented if he wanted to.

She was walking away from him. And that hurt more than anything else.

----

“So…” Frank began slowly. He lowered his head so it was at the table’s level and poured in some viscous blue fluid into the beaker. “…What’s wrong with Gerard?” Finch was moving her mouth in a strange way, as if she was chewing on her tongue. Her eyes were narrow and glazed over as if she had been thinking.

“What do you mean?” She didn’t look at him when she asked it. She stirred the fluid with a clear stirring rod and used an eye-dropper to add a few drops of green fluid to the blue. Her voice was as hard and thick as concrete. Whether Frank caught that her question was pointless, she didn’t know. And, actually, at the moment she didn’t care. She wanted him to go away. Just for him to…/go away/. Nothing more. She wanted to kick herself for begging the chemistry teacher to let them be partners when Frank moved into their class. Frank decided that if he was going to get some sort of answer that he was going to have to go for broke.

“Or you and Gerard,” he continued. “You two barely even looked at each other during lunch today. It was kind of…/awkward/.”

At that moment Finch felt a bubble of contempt directed at Frank burst in her stomach. It was a stupid, illogical disdain but she felt it hot and burning nonetheless. She couldn’t help but blame him for the scars on Gerard’s arms. Because, in addition to his name now dug deep into the soft flesh of his inner arm, there were a million tiny, superficial cuts all over his forearm. They would probably leave scars there. Scars Gerard would have for the rest of his life. The thought of his beautiful skin torn and ugly made her want to cry in both fury and sadness.

She wanted to tell Frank everything. To scream at him that Gerard loved him and if he knew what was good for him, he’d go and fucking marry the guy. She wanted to tell him that he was going to be with her best friend until he died, whether he wanted to be or not. She wanted to hit him or punch him or lash out at him, anything to make that stupid boy understand what he was doing. But she bit her tongue. She didn’t do anything except watch as their beaker began to foam. She suddenly felt a dislike for chemistry.

“Are you okay?” Frank asked. She said she was fine. In reality she felt sick to her stomach. Frank watched her sharp eyes. He swished his tongue around inside his mouth. “Are you…mad at…me?” With every word he spoke, her anger boiled like magma in a volcano. She wanted him to shut up before she exploded and tore out his blonde and black hair by its brown roots.

She needed to say something. Something that wouldn’t give away anything that would make Gerard hate her more than he probably already did.

“Just…” She began, her voice slow and quiet. “Be careful…around Gerard.” Frank stopped what he was doing with their chemicals and starred at her.

“What?” The word came out odd. It wasn’t how Finch had expected it to come out. She had imagined that it was going to be cold, angry, confused. Something like that. Instead it came out quiet and flat. Almost sad. His discomfort made the sickness in her stomach subside slightly.

“Be careful around him,” she repeated. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.” Frank furrowed his eyebrows slightly and opened his mouth to speak again, but was cut off by another voice.

“Does your conversation have anything to do with chemistry?” The two students looked up at their freakishly tall teacher. A wave of discomfort washed over the both of them. He fit the pedophile description perfectly: Balding, middle-aged, and so sneaky you never would have known he was coming up behind you. They waited for Chris Hanson to burst through the door. Neither of them answered, but placed their plastic goggles back over their eyes and went back to work. They didn’t speak of anything but chemicals for the rest of the class period.

----

Gerard leaned his head back on his seat and exhaled. The air in his car was cold. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the heat. He somehow found himself wanting to feel the cold instead of the self-loathing and the sadness and the contempt he felt now.

Sick. That’s what he was. Terribly, horribly sick. He had to hurt himself and the people he loved in order to feel alive. He didn’t want to hurt Finch or Frankie, fuck, he didn’t want to hurt the girls who spread the rumors about his sexuality or the boys who crammed him into lockers. He just wanted to spend hours and hours a day carving himself open because, really, that’s where the problem was. It was deep inside him, inside a place he could only get with a razor or scissors or an old kitchen knife (the one that they didn’t even use anymore, that he could hide in his special little drawer and grab whenever it was needed). And even then, he wasn’t cutting out the infection. The disease wormed its way into his veins and pulsed in and out of his heart, possessed his brain and raped his senses. He was so fucking sick in his head and in his heart that he felt physically ill. It was no longer simply about Frank and these feelings he didn’t want anymore. It was about how he was going to live the rest of his life if every day he wanted to rip himself open and bleed until he died. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

Gerard pulled his knees to his chest and leaned his forehead on them. He wrapped his arms around his head.

sick sick i’m so fucking sick

A groan of agony escaped his lips. He felt like he was gong insane. Something (his self-control, his sanity- he didn’t know) was slipping away like water through his fingers.

i’m fucking losing myself

Breaking. That’s what he was doing. His insides were breaking into a million jagged pieces and every time he tried to pick up those pieces his fingers bleed and his skin broke and nothing-/nothing/- was all right. And now Finch wasn’t going to talk to him and he couldn’t look Frank in the eye and everything was building up inside him and hurting and hurting and the only thing he wanted to do was slice and cut and tear at himself until his skin was red and warm and wet and there was only a dull half-present ache where this hurt used to be.

i cant do this it hurts too much

Gerard felt his body shake suddenly. He sputtered and put his hand over his mouth. Clenching his eyes shut, he mentally fought the wall of despondency that threatened to burst through. Wetness leaked through the corners of his eyes. He bit down hard on his hand. Part of him wanted to stop, screamed that hurting himself like this was wrong and stupid. Part of him screamed to just do it! Fucking hurt yourself! Your hand will fucking heal, your head won’t!

So he did.

The wall inside his brain ruptured like a damn and a helpless, painful sob burst through. He bit down hard, his body shaking as pathetic sobs wracked his body. One of his small, sharp canines pierced the skin between two of his knuckles and the metallic taste of blood reached the tip of his tongue. His face was hot and wet with tears, and the new taste in his mouth was only another reason to bite harder. Every time he inhaled through his nose, the sound was thick and rough. With his free hand he tugged on his hair, scratching his nails down his scalp. He wanted to bleed. He wanted to hurt. It was as if what he was doing was a form of self-punishment.

There were two gently knocks on his window. He stopped trying to rip open his head and bite off his hand, but the stop to the sobbing was nowhere in sight. Gerard took a shaky breath and lifted his head slowly, the block locks of hair stuck to his face with sweat and tears. He gave a sideways glance through his hair at the passenger seat window. Through the pieces of shaggy hair he could make out Finch’s dark coat. He sniffled hard and buried his head in his arms again. There was the sudden awareness that his hand was deeply bruised.

There were two more knocks. They were slow and delicate, the sound thin and glassy. He heard her voice through the glass, muffled and sad.

“Gerard…Please let me in.”

He shook his head into his arms. He could almost see her searching for a way to convince him to unlock the door.

“Please, Gerard,” she pleaded. “…I’m sorry about earlier. Please, I need you to let me in.”

“Why?” He called, his own voice sounding loud in the quiet of the car. “Why would you even…” He wiped his nose on his hand as he sniffled. Finch gave an impatient pound on the window.

”Gerard!” She cried. “Please, let me in! Please, I’m sorry!” Gerard snorted out a giggle as he was vaguely reminded of the story about the three pigs and the wolf. Little pig, little pig, let me in… He took a few shaky breaths until his body shuddered only slightly, then reached over and unlocked the door. Finch threw the door open and jumped inside the car. Gerard hid his face. He didn’t want to look at her. There was a silence between them before he heard the quiet click of her mouth.

“Did you do that to your hand?” she asked. He pulled his hand inside his jacket, away from her eyes. She leaned her head on his but didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” she whispered. Gerard gave a snort as he cleared his nasal passages and she moved her head as he sat up. He wiped off his nose on his hand and his hand on his jeans. His eyes were bloodshot and the small amount of eyeliner and makeup she’d coaxed him into wearing was smeared under them. Finch took his wounded hand and examined it. The puncture wound had stopped bleeding, but now there was blood around his knuckles. Half of the back of his hand was an ugly dark purple and black. As she ran her fingers over the skin and tendons and joints, she realized how thin her friend’s hands were. In these conditions his fingers seemed abnormally long and his tendons were prominent.

“Things will never get better,” Gerard muttered. His voice was weak and shaky. “I-I’m sick. Look at this…”

“No,” she snapped. “You’re not sick. Plenty of sane people do this. It’s just…we’ll fix it like we did last time…”

“How many next times are there going to /be?/” he asked desperately. “I can’t…I can’t live like this. I can’t do it.” Finch chewed on her bottom lip delicately as she thought. They both stared at the wounds on his hand. Gerard couldn’t help but feel a dull sense of accomplishment, a twisted sense of pride. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t want it to.

“You don’t have to,” Finch said suddenly, breaking the silence. “We’ll fix this. I promise.”

Gerard starred at the bruises on his hand. He couldn’t help but think it wasn’t as simple as that.


. If you're wondering where the Scenies went, I promise they'll be back. I'm trying to develope the characters personalities more. And I now I have to plan out some backstory into Gerard's personality. Gah! Writing homework...that I assign to myself. Dammit.