FicWad

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Italics are stolen from ‘Same mistake’ by James Blunt. The whole set of lyrics and the video to the song can be found here http://www.completealbumlyrics.com/lyric/132124/James+Blunt+-+Same+Mistake.html .
Don’t write off my fic on his bad reputation. I personally love this song but anyway… Read away…
Frank’s POV. ‘You’ is Gerard.
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Once again I cannot sleep…look at the stars beneath my feet.

It’s been a week since you came around to pick up your things. I’ve taken to buying every magazine with your face on the cover and reading each interview ten times over. I pour over the words trying to find some hidden heart break but you don’t even let your anger spill onto the pages. There’s no hint of a smile either but then again that’s probably more because of image than true emotion.

I can’t sleep without you here. Instead I’m sat here in the dim light of a single lamp in the corner re-reading the magazines. They’re strewn all over the flat, littering the floor, so that when I get up to fetch a drink from the kitchen I trample all over them. Walking all over your beautiful face, trampling all over you, again.

Remember rights that I did wrong… hello hello.

I can’t let go of you still even though I suppose it was me who pushed you away. It was my fault anyway. Whether I pushed you or whether you just turned your back on me of your own accord, it doesn’t matter, it just matters that you’re gone and all I have left is the stupid t-shirt I bought you for your birthday. You always wore it, it made me feel so good to see you wearing it. It made me feel almost proud. It was almost like I owned you when you wore that shirt. It made me feel good to know you liked it so much that it became your second skin.

I snuck it out of your drawer before you came round to collect your things. I don’t know why. It wasn’t really that I wanted to keep it, or that I didn’t want you to have it, I think it was more that I didn’t want to have to see you wearing it. It would have broken my heart to see you wearing it and not feeling that you belonged to me. Not that you ever did but to know that, to look at you and know for certain that none of you, not even your heart, belonged to me would have killed me.

It still smells of you, or maybe I just imagine it to. I hold onto it sometimes when I lay down in our bed. I put it over your pillow and cuddle into it and sometimes I can fall asleep because it feels like you. The only thing that’s missing is your heartbeat, steady and soothing, sometimes I hear that too although unlike your smell I know that that is made up. The shirt probably smells more like me than you after all the times I’ve held it close.

Maybe you’ll notice it’s missing sometime and come to reclaim it. What would I say to you then? How would I greet you? ‘Hello’? Words would be beneath me.

My mind is muddy but my heart is heavy, does it show?

I try hard to follow your lead in not showing that anything is wrong. Only a few select people knew of our relationship anyway, to show how torn up inside I was feeling would be to announce to the whole world that we were through, and what’s the point in announcing our previous relationship to them? None. There’s no point to anything anymore.

I try to keep my mind on track but I can’t. Every path my thoughts take, my words take, lead straight back to you. So I stay quiet because talking about you hurts. Thinking about you hurts too but no matter how hard I try to keep you from my mind you’re always there. Everything I see reminds me of you. Everything I do reminds me of you. Everything in the whole entire universe reminds me of you and all the things that we would do.

Have you seen my enemy? He looked a lot like me… So I set out to cut myself.

You always said I was my own worst enemy. I used to go out in the cold in minimal clothing because I was so excited to see the snow and then I’d get ill and it would be my own stupid fault. I used to run around and be crazy and then hurt myself. I used to allow my thoughts to pour straight off my tongue and probably offend whoever I was talking to.

I hurt you though, not me this time, and that I can’t deal with. When it was me getting hurt I didn’t care because like you said it was my ‘own stupid fault’ and ‘I only had myself to blame’. But now you have me to blame too and I didn’t mean to hurt you. That doesn’t change anything, that doesn’t make anything right, in fact it makes things worse because accidents are so much harder to deal with. If I had wanted to hurt you then at least I would be happy with the way things had turned out. I’m not happy though. Far from it. I hurt you bad, and I’m eternally sorry.

I’m not calling for a second chance, I’m screaming from the top of my voice.

I wish I could talk to you for just one second. Hear your voice. I call the house sometimes from my mobile just to hear your voice on the answer machine. I should record over that but it would be admitting that you’re never coming back and I can’t stop hoping, dreaming, that cupid will somehow stitch this all back together. That fate will interfere and smooth things over. That somehow, somewhere, we’ll meet and we’ll realise that we can’t live without each other. I can’t live without you. You seem to be doing fine without me.

I just want another chance. More than anything else in the world I just want you back here in my arms. I want to tell you that you’re beautiful. I want to spend the whole night sitting and talking to you. I want to stare into those eyes of yours. I want to tell you that I love you without you giving me that almost pitying look before you turn your head away and close your eyes against me and the memories I hold. I want to be able to think about you without feeling my whole world tumbling down. I need you to help me build it back up again.

I don’t want you back. I need you back. I need you here with me. I need you stroking my hair back from my forehead. I need your shoulder to cry on. I need your thumb to wipe the tears away. I need your arms to wrap around me and anchor me to the ground. I need you to remind me of who I am. I need you to survive.

Give me reason, but don’t give me choice, I’ll just make the same mistake again.

I need you here but if I had the choice I don’t know if I’d bring you back into my life again. I’ve hurt you once already. I don’t want to do that again, ever. I would hurt you again too and we both know it. Maybe that’s why you’re keeping your distance. Maybe that’s why I don’t pick up the phone and beg you to come back, to come around, to come home. I know that no matter how much I loved you, love you, I will hurt you and I will let you down. You believed in me, put so much faith in me, but I am just built to let you down. You think you know me and can trust me but look at what I did to you Gerard. All I’ve ever done is to let you down.

Maybe someday we will meet and maybe talk and not just speak.

I have these dreams where we’re sat in this café, I’m not sure where it is but it’s no where local, no where I’ve ever been before. It almost feels as though it’s in some other realm. In this dream we sit and we talk. We talk like we’ve never talked before. The things we say are so true and so full of meaning I feel like I’m going to go crazy with the sheer feeling of it.

I need to talk to you like that for real. I need to look you in the eye and tell you everything I never said. I need you to look at me and see me and speak and talk and say all those things that I know you never said either. I know you held things back, good and bad things, I need to hear them. For closure or to begin something new I don’t care. I just need to know what was going through your mind when you watched me play, or looked at me and smiled, or bit your tongue in an argument. When Mikey or Ray or Bob interrupted a heart to heart on tour. When you told me you didn’t love me, couldn’t love me anymore. Because I don’t believe you meant that. I always was stubborn though. Maybe it’s as false as the smell of you that still lingers on that shirt.

Don’t buy the promises… there are no promises I keep.

Like I said before, I was just a world of disappointment to you Gerard. You denied that, probably still will just because you’re like that but I know I did. I could read you like a book and I could see the disappointment in your eyes whenever I fell back on a promise. Whenever I said something but never followed through. Whenever I joked around with your hopes and dreams for us. Said we could have a big wedding and then completely destroyed the image.

I’m sorry I did that but you shouldn’t have listened. Why did you always listen? Always fell for the same old lines? You weren’t gullible. You never were, you were a genius for God’s sake so why did you always do that? Always believe me when I said I’d do this, do that, although it was obvious I never would?

I could promise you the world. I could promise you riches and gold and gifts galore. There’s one thing I always gave you that you never believed in; my heart, my love, you’ll always have my heart. Now that you’re gone there’s a gaping hole in it where you should be. Not literally of course because that would mean I would be dead. I’m dead to you though aren’t I? So maybe I do mean to be literal. What’s my life without you there? You’re the superglue that holds my entire world together.

My reflection troubles me…so here I go...

I’ll go and shower now because it’s all I can do to make myself feel clean again. To feel worthy again. As soon as I get out and see my shape in the mirror I’ll feel dirty again. I’ll wipe away the steam and study myself in the glass. Hating everything I see there. Wishing that you were there too, stood next to me, holding me, resting your chin on my shoulder, yelling at me, screaming at me, crying, dancing, laughing, taunting, playing, leaving… anything but gone. I look in the mirror and see you there and when I turn around… you’re gone. Just gone.

The phone blinks up at me stubbornly. Taunting my weakness. Laughing at how I torture myself like this when a simple call could bring your voice to my ear for at least a moment before you realise who it is. Maybe I will call you maybe today’s the day.

So I pick up the receiver and dial your mobile number, a number I’ve known by heart for years, like every other thing to do with you. On the third ring you answer, “Hello?” my breath sticks in my throat and my heart beats a thousand times so loudly I’m sure you’ll be able to hear it down the line. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
“I’m here…” I say weakly. I try to swallow around the lump in my throat but it’s too painful and tears threaten to fall again. I try to say something else, something a little less pathetic but that’s painful too and all that comes out is a little squeak.

“Frank? Why are you calling me?”
“I just wanted to talk…” The line goes dead. It’s as if the phone line was a hospital monitor, measuring the beat of my heart, as long as he was talking, the line was moving, I was Ok, I was alive. As soon as that dial tone filled my ear the line went flat and I finally fell. Like soldiers on battlefields, or children at parks, or old people at bedsides, or teenagers with a gun against their temples and a death wish pressed up against their throats. I fell, just like that, into complete nothingness.

My knees buckled I fell to the floor and the phone fell from my hand, landing next to me in a crumpled heap. I try to stand, to pull myself up but I can’t, I’m too weak and exhausted and overwhelmed. I’m too tired and lost and alone to do anything but sob into my hands. I’m too broken to do anything but lie there, naked and alone, in a cold and empty flat, listening to the empty drone of the dial tone where your voice should have been.

I Look at the stars fall down and wonder where did I go wrong?