FicWad

Gerard told himself he wasn’t going to do it, but then again, he did lie to himself a lot. So he grabbed a wad of tissues, pressed them to the open cuts, and let the sting of paper on open flesh scream in his nerves. He looked at the wounds with an odd sort of boredom, watched the red invade the white paper like disease, eating at the other color like spreading fungus. It barely even hurt anymore. And at this point he was more concerned with the fact that he was going to have to hide the wounds rather than the open skin itself. The only regret he had was that he didn’t own more long sleeves. He pulled the crumpled tissue away and turned it over. It was criss-crossed with the same red stripes that were on his arm, the color spreading from where the cuts had been until they looked like veins or spider webs. He dabbed at them again, lied on his stomach on his bed, and pressed his nose into one of his pillows, his arm stretched out in front of him. He sighed into his pillow and closed his eyes.

There hadn’t been any tears time. Only numbness. And he cut into the numbness, opened it up so the raw emotion beneath it was exposed like a pulsing organ, and let everything flow out. Love, pain, hate, happiness, agony all came rushing out like a gust of wind and it felt so good this time around that he swore if it felt any better he might have come. The only thing that the object hidden in his dresser drawer brought this time around was an odd stiffness in his pants, and even that came somewhat afterward. He had been thinking about Frank then, while he tore himself open. He couldn’t tell if he was horny or guilty. It made him hungry for Xanax and thirsty for something in his parent’s cupboard. It mostly made him want to go to sleep and forget to wake up.

Forget. Gerard realized how much he liked that word the more he thought about it. Not even the word itself or even the way it sounded as it twisted off his tongue, but rather the meaning of the word. There were a lot of things he would like to forget. He’d like to forget that he was probably developing a chronic case of alcoholism, that at some point he was either going to run out of medication or swallow too many, that if he accidentally bled to death while trying to feel something other than hate and sorrow there would be no one who would care, and that if he didn’t kiss Frank again he might just explode into a million little pieces. He looked up from his pillow, down the length of his arm and peeled away the scarlet-splattered tissue, a sigh that felt as if it had been filling his entire lung space passing his lips like a breeze. A shadow of regret passed in his stomach briefly like nausea. The other marks were just beginning to fade into flesh-colored scar tissue and he had reopened and carved new wounds to hide. He covered them with a new tissue and tried not to look at them.

His bed felt comfortable, his room felt safe. The walls were painted a dark sort of green-ish grey and they were covered with posters of bands, movies, rock stars, art from museums, his art. Art that took him hours to complete in the middle of the night (because he’d woken up in a cold sweat again and one of those images just wouldn’t get out of his head until he painted or scratched or sketched it into paper), sketches half-finished that he decided, well, it looks better half-done anyway, paint, paper, scraps, his life. If he managed to make it out of school alive (or at least partially sane) then he was going to be an artist. He was going to buy a house, use only the basement, and paint and draw and experiment with colors all day long, and he was going to sell them to museums and every last kid was going to be sorry they pushed him into walls and egged his house on Halloween. They were going to wish they had been his friend instead of making his mouth bleed with their fists and sending him threatening letters in the mail, because his art was going to make him worth something. Gerard flexed his fingers and as the skin pulled on the healing cuts, they stung and felt stiff. It meant they were scabbing over. They always hurt before they got better.

Gerard rolled over, sat up, and crumpled the paper in his hand. He made his way to his desk, opened the little drawer in the front and reached into the back. He pulled out a short, wooden box (it had once held paint brushes or something- he didn’t remember) and opened it. There were at least a dozen- maybe even around sixteen- folded, bloodied papers in the box. The red had clotted, become a dark brown on the paper. He scrunched the newest addition into the box and closed it. It wasn’t that he liked keeping them. It wasn’t like he wanted to remember. If anything he wished that box would disappear. But he couldn’t just throw them away because the blood would be visible in the garbage can. As soon as the box was completely full, he’d flush the whole thing of paper down the toilet. Then he could act like it had never happened. Cycle.

He pulled on his jacket again, tugging it painfully over his sensitive inner arm as he climbed the stairs to the main floor. Every time his arm moved, the scabs would crack and he would grit his teeth. Gerard peeked into the kitchen and saw no one. He nonchalantly peered into the rooms connecting to the kitchen (if anyone was there he’d act like he was just passing by) and saw that they were also empty. This in mind, he opened his parent’s ‘various alcohol’ cabinet by the sink and looked around. He had the option of several different liquors, whiskey, the pucker he’d half emptied, and some fluids resting in bottles covered in languages he didn’t speak. He moved to the freezer, moved away some frozen food and pulled out the icy vodka bottle. It was simply amazing that no matter how long is stayed in the very back of the freezer- where the most ice gathered- it never froze. It was always icy cold, cooling his insides, chilling his tongue and numbing his brain. He pulled off the top and took and quick mouthful from it. Wincing, he swallowed and immediately felt better. It was like putting a numbing agent on every little wound, every crisis in his body.

The buzz came, it seemed to almost vibrate within the very center of his brain, and then it dulled. The glass bottle was cold against his palm and against his fingers. He took another moment to fill his mouth, the fluid straining against the inner walls of his mouth, making his cheeks feel tight, swallowed, and repeated the process one more time. Gerard did a sort of shudder and shook his head. He coughed, hiccupped, took another large mouthful (this one dripped out of the side of his mouth was he started to cough halfway through a gulp), swallowed, and put the bottle back in the freezer, behind the frozen foodstuffs and ice and frost where it belonged. He spun around on his heal and leaned his back against the freezer door for support. As he rubbed his eyes, he was vaguely aware that his shoulder blades were pressing hard into the metal door. The pain felt like a pinpoint of light inside the dark numbness the icy vodka laid over his senses. He hiccupped stupidly again and languidly rubbed the back of his hand on his eyes. Things were finally moving at a pace he could keep up with.

Gerard was jerked violently and mercilessly out of his slow-moving, comfortable place when the house phone screamed. Through his half-drunken ears it sounded like an animal was being murdered around ten feet from where he was standing and it damn near gave him a heart attack. He wobbled over to the phone, struggled to life it from its base as it fumbled in his fingers, and finally brought it to his ear. He coughed and took a deep breath before steadying himself to speak.

”He-Hello?” he asked thickly, his tongue feeling like a swollen sponge.

“Hi.”

Gerard paused. The voice on the other line was small, light, and most definitely female. But it wasn’t Finch. No, it was even smaller, more sugary and he couldn’t help but snicker to himself as he imagined a white frosted cupcake on the other line, a phone pressed into its icing. But he really thought about it, he couldn’t recognize the tone and his temples throbbed when he tried to think about it.

“Whos’is?” he slurred.

“Is this Gerard?” The voice asked so that it almost chirped. The tone was similar to the voice used with children under the age of four and various dogs. He leaned against the wall and sighed openly.

“Yeah. Who is’sis?”

”Emmie.”

Gerard felt his back stiffen and his stomach clench. His heart pounded hard and fast through the sleepiness of the alcohol, and fear permeated the fog of numbness he had been engulfed in. He didn’t say anything because his throat had been clogged with thick terror, the sheer horror that she had called him up in his own safe little den. Even though she was miles away, probably sitting in her own room, he felt naked and exposed to her. He could hear the soft wet, clicking sounding as he opened and closed his mouth in an attempt to speak. He finally swallowed, exhaled, and when he broke through the thick barrier in his throat he realized that the hand not holding the phone was clutching the collar of his jacket tightly.

“What d’you want?” He choked out. Even in his own ears, he could hear his voice tremble and it sounded more like a man with a knife was holding him against a wall instead of a tiny girl calling him in the middle of the day. Her voice immediately changed. He could imagine her face dropping from the syrupy smile plastered onto the makeup-caked skin into a vicious scowl as she lay on her bed with the phone to her ear. He could see the lines of displeasure by her mouth, the creases above her eyes, and out of some strange impulse he had the urge to draw that face, that pose.

“What is your /problem?/” She snapped at him and he jumped back slightly, pressing against the firmness of the wall. Adrenaline pumped through him, his veins pulsing with it, his body on a temporary hormone high. Gerard’s voice came out smaller and flatter than he had expected and sounded foreign.

“Emmie, I can’t do this right now-”

“-No!” The girl interjected sharply. “Just shut up! I don’t even want to hear you talk!” Gerard froze as if he had been turned to stone. It would have taken him about half a second to hang up the phone but he just couldn’t move from that spot. He had been rooted, petrified, frozen solid because she was just so fucking cold and so fucking sharp and he was shaking as if he was stuck in a freezer because he was so damn afraid. He heard her take a deep breath before continuing and he thought bitterly that it must take a lot of energy to abuse other people.

“Why do you even bother with Frank?” She hissed. As soon his name slid passed her lips he felt hatred burn inside him. It possessed his veins, heated his insides, and he suddenly couldn’t think about anything else except that he wanted her to hurt. She made him sound so horrible, so…/ugly/ compared to what he really was. And even though Frank had broken him down earlier that day he couldn’t help but feel that undying affection that he’d felt for the past few weeks. “You’re a stupid fag/, Gerard. You have no friends, you sit alone with that bitch at lunch, and you’re probably the biggest idiot in our entire fucking school. How about you actually /kill yourself this time instead of just slicing and dicing for the world to see?”

Gerard felt frustration rip through him. He knew that telling her that he was ashamed to death of the scars on his arm and that the world wouldn’t have seen them if she had kept her fucking claws to herself instead of pulling his sleeves up and scowling at him as if his self-hate was nothing more than sin would be like screaming at a brick wall. She was hearing nothing but what she wanted to hear and no matter how much he tried to tell her she would cut him off until he just couldn’t speak. But right now he was hating her, loathing her with such an intensity that he just needed to let that bitch understand- understand that no matter how much eyeliner she packed onto her face she was the fucking ugliest thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

“Why the fuck do you call me a faggot?” Gerard snapped back. She tried to interrupt again but he kept talking. “I’ve seen you- you kiss other girls like it’s nothing so why am I the faggot?/” Gerard thought that if any other chemical mixed with the vodka in his head he would just break down then and there, right on that fucking wall while that stupid, /stupid bitch of a girl tore him into a million little pieces. He wanted to claw at her, to rip her apart through the phone while he sobbed and screamed and broke her down so she would finally understand what she had been doing to him all those years he stood alone and just took it. She gave a tiny, conceited laugh as if the answer was obvious and he was just too stupid to understand it.

“You’re just a faggot. Everyone would prefer it if you were dead.”

Something inside Gerard snapped. Snapped faster and harder than when he broke down in his car and gnawed into his hand, severed so severely that his mind went blank for a moment and felt nothing- not fear or pain- except the hate he felt towards her. He stood up straight so quickly and so rigidly that he was sure he heard his vertebrae snap. For a moment he completely lost himself and the tears came and his voice exploded inside his throat.

”FUCK YOU!” he screamed into the phone. His head fell forward and his hair covered his eyes so he could see nothing but fragments of light through the locks.

”Excuse me?” Emmie retorted. “What the fuck did you just say to me-?”

“I said FUCK YOU!/” he repeated, his voice so loud that his tiny house echoed with it. It sounded so immense, so out of place. She’d never heard him speak in louder than a mumble or a whisper and if she had to label him with an emotion it would have been /indifference. He grasped the phone tightly and screamed. And although tears pouring down his face, his voice was strong and full of so much unleashed rage that he physically shook with it. His legs couldn’t support him any longer and he slid down to the floor, clutching the phone and screaming into it as if maybe if he screamed into it out enough and long enough everything would disappear. “Fuck you! I hope you fucking die! You never- you never left me alone! I never did /anything to you!/”

“I didn’t ask you-!”

“Just SHUT UP!/” he screamed. “Jus’ shut the /FUCK UP! I hate you! I hate you!!” His voice started to break. “You stupid bitch/, what did I /ever do to you?! Why can’t you jus’ leave me alone?! I never even talked to you, and since the ninth-fucking-grade you-you’ve been…/AGH!/” He let out an animalistic groan of fury, of aggression. He couldn’t think straight, his brain was rolling around inside his skull. “What th’fuck is wrong with you?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?/” Emmie growled back. He imagined her like a cat, arching its back to make itself seem taller and stronger. “Don’t you /ever fucking talk to me like that! DON’T YOU EVER-!”

“Oh, fuck, Meghan,” Gerard slurred. He gave a small drunken chuckle and leaned his head back so he could stare at the ceiling . “It duzzn’ matter. Even if I talked to you normal you’d still scream at me…”

“You have no one!/” She cried. “You are stupid and alone and have no one but…but that /bitch! I don’t even- Whatever her fucking name is, she stole my shoes! That girl!”

Gerard burst into a cackle of hilarious laughter. It was so loud and sudden that he startled himself, which caused him to laugh even more. “Oh my /GOD/, Meghan!”

“Don’t call me tha-!”

He snorted through his laughter. “That was…/two years ago!/ And that’s what you associate her with?! What- tell me what I am for you! Did-did I fall down in front of you ‘n now I’m That faggot who falls?!/” Gerard was nearly sobbing now. Sobbing with the laughter that penetrated the hurt, sobbing from the /hurt that surrounded the laughter. He knew he sounded crazy, he knew he sounded more or less like a fucking hyena as he laughed into the phone, cackled into the silence on the other end, but he really didn’t care. There simply wasn’t enough energy in his body to care. Emmie let out a groan similar to the one he had made previously and he giggled through his nose at the sound.

“You are a /fucking freak,/” she hissed.

”Ha ha!/” He chuckled, the words literally sounding like /’Ha ha’/. “ I know /that already.”

“No, really,” she continued. “You are a fucking freak. Frank will never want to be with you./” She said it firmly, as if trying to break through the already crumbling brick wall that was his remaining confidence. “Did you /ever think that Frank was really your friend?” Gerard gave a little, bored cough.

“What d’you mean?” he asked, although really, he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.

“All he did was laugh about how you obsessed over him.”

Gerard felt exhaustion, a tiredness that seemed to wriggle into his emotions and his body, envelope him. He lied down on the floor, resting his head on the kitchen tiles.

“I’m hanging up,” he groaned tiredly. “You’re obviously lying and…I…Honestly, I’m really drunk right now ‘n I just wanna lie down…” Emmie snickered.

“I’m not lying, fag,” she said. “Just you fucking wait.” Gerard clicked the off button on the phone and curled up. He let out a little groan as his head throbbed. The temptation to just fall asleep there, right in the middle of the tiled kitchen, was becoming hard to resist. He curled his fingers around the phone and closed his eyes. His cheek pressed against the floor and a coldness that brought back the memory of the sloshing vodka spread up through his skin and seemed to soak into his insides. His senses were sharpened with the poison of alcohol, heightened by the taste and sensation of vodka.

But Gerard felt dull inside, as if Emmie had taken an eraser and wiped his slate of emotion clean. More than that, it wasn’t even as though something that had once been filling him was gone, but it was as if she had shoveled out his insides. There was some sort of crater inside his stomach, one that hadn’t been there before Emmie screamed his worthlessness over the phone and hollowed out any feeling he had left. He couldn’t hear anything anymore. Not screaming or crying or angry, thoughtless words that strung together sentences that caused cuts and bruises and mouths full of poison. The house was almost loud with silence. The only thing he could hear was the sound of his breath against the floor where he laid in a pathetic ball. His face felt sticky, almost hard to move, and he wiped off his face with the back of his hand.

Gerard felt his stomach clench and the taste of vodka- half digested and mixed with stomach acid- roll up his throat. He gagged and sat up, putting one hand over his mouth as he attempted not to vomit. He nearly toppled over as he tried to stand, his foot slipping on the tile, and barely caught himself with his hand. He scrambled down the hall, gagging loudly, retching with a sound similar to the croak of a bull frog, before he threw open the bathroom door. Gerard fell in front of the toilet and coughed. His stomach was twisting, his throat clenching tight as the bile worked its way backwards through his insides, up his esophagus. He opened his mouth, knowing the face his features were pulled into was ugly and distorted and he hated it because his eyes were closed and his tongue was sticking out of his open mouth but he was going to puke and he just wanted it to be over. The rough retching escaped his throat for the last time before he finally vomited into the toilet. His tongue was coated with the sour taste of his own bile and the bitter, bitter flavor of alcohol. With a pathetic sob he coughed, spit out chunks of his own vomit and flushed the toilet.

He swallowed. There was even more emptiness this time. But it was the kind of emptiness caused by screaming-induced vomit. A physical emptiness rather than an emotional one. He didn’t know which one he preferred.

---

Frank was finding it difficult to dial Gerard’s number. His fingers would reach towards the buttons, tap at the area code…then stop. It wasn’t as if he had forgotten-/no, he couldn’t forget Gerard’s number (/I didn’t memorize it, why do you ask?/) but it was just…Oh, the hell with it- he was fucking /nervous. Not only did the usual sensation of ants he got whenever he talked to Gerard crawl around inside him, but now there was a seeeriously good chance that Gerard was going to hate him.

Which meant Finch was going to eviscerate him, eat his separated organs, and then kill him. He may as well have fucked himself.

Frank poked at the numbers again and the house phone beeped in response. He got to the fifth number, internally praised himself for the advancement, and then hung up. He groaned and threw the phone on the floor like a child having a tantrum. The phone was just being a meanie pants. Frank curled up on his bed and clutched one of his pillows. Gerard always made petrifying nervousness look positively cute. Frank didn’t feel cute. He felt like one of those rat-dogs that never stopped shaking.

He rolled onto his back, pressed the pillow to his face, and kicked his legs almost violently, unleashing the pent-up nervous energy. Call Gerard. Call Gerard. Call Gerard. CALL HIM.

…But that was hard.

Frank rolled over again and picked up the phone off of the floor, not bothering to exert the energy to get out of bed, but rather just stretched his arm until it was practically dislocated to reach it. He stared at it. The phone stared back. If phones could laugh in a taunting manner, this one would definitely have seized the opportunity. Frank gave the object a glare and debated whether or not he should stick his tongue out at it. He decided against it. He pressed the ‘talk’ button and heard the dial tone. Step one. Check. He dialed one, that number in front of the area code that’s real function wasn’t really understood, and took a breath. His heart was still beating- pounding against his ribs like a fist against a door, yes- but still keeping him alive. The three digits of the area code were pounded in and he couldn’t breathe. Frank would have been better off fighting a war in some other country. At least then he could die with some dignity.

Frank breathed, inhaling so that his lungs were filled and the air forced out some of the ants in his stomach, and pounded in the last seven digits as quickly as humanly possible. He pressed the phone to his ear and tried to control his breathing. It rang once and he briefly considered running to the bathroom in case he threw up. It rang again and he fought tooth and nail against the urge to hang up. The third ring seemed to take several hours longer than the others and he wanted to hide, to curl up in a ball and pretend to be dead. Something inside him was embarrassed, humiliated, feeling stupid and lonely and pathetic and he just wished Gerard would stop whatever he was doing and just pick up the fucking /phone-/.

Click.

Frank froze and temporarily forgot why he’d been so stupid as to call Gerard’s house in the first place.

“ ‘Eh-/loh?/”

He sighed with relief, feeling like a full body-cast made of lead had just been lifted. The voice was smaller, cheerier; the voice of a boy who has barely begun his long and painful journey of horniness into puberty. Not Gerard.

“Um, hi,” he stammered. “Is Gerard there?”

“Yah, hold on a second,” replied the boy. Frank thanked the Gods that Gerard had a younger brother. The boy acted like a sponge for his nervousness and he wasn’t quite sure why. He heard Gerard’s brother- Mike? Mikey? Matt? He didn’t remember- pitter-patter through a few rooms before finally belting out, ”GERARD! PHOOOOONE!” which was quickly followed by silence. Frank breathed steadily. He heard the plastic sound of the phone being handed over and forgot how to breathe. The voice that answered was definitely not the same as the boy he’d just talked to. In fact, it barely sounded like Gerard.

“…’ello?” Gerard sounded heavily groggy, his voice thick as if he’d just been woken up from a deep sleep and Frank felt a sudden pang of guilt. He cleared his throat and swallowed.

“…Hey.”

Gerard didn’t answer at first. Frank could hear him take a breath, but even after he exhaled he didn’t speak. They were both silent and Frank found himself liking the tiny bit of awkwardness. It felt comfortable. Human. Gerard finally swallowed and Frank could hear his lips part. His voice was still sleepy.

“Hi.” And that was all. The word sounded fractured, not entirely broken but just fractured.

Mostly it just sounded sad. Not a deep, complicated sort of despondency, but just a simply sadness. The kind of sadness that reminded Frank of the nostalgic grey of a rainy day. Thin and almost innocent. It made Frank want to cry.

“Hi,” Frank echoed. There was more silence and Frank wished he could keep it that way, lock it in a jar and keep it all to himself. Gerard’s end of the silence was firm and it was apparent that he wasn’t going to speak until Frank did. “…I just…wanted to talk about what happened.” He could hear that Gerard was walking into another room and he assumed it would be his bedroom.

Gerard made a sniffling sound. “What’s there t’say?”

“It…I’m sorry,” he replied feebly. In his head the words sounded less frail.

“…/Why?/” Gerard asked as if he was really uncertain. Frank didn’t speak because, honestly, he couldn’t think of a legitimate reason. ”I feel bad” just didn’t seem to cut it. When he didn’t answer, Gerard answered for him. “Finch told you to.”

“But that’s not why I want to,” Frank protested. He felt as if he had to be delicate with Gerard, as if anything he might say might just shatter him. “I just…it was stupid. Shit happened. I should have believed you because I like you better.” Frank became aware that he was speaking in fragments and if Gerard actually got the just of what he was trying to say he’d be more than lucky. Gerard must have gotten to his bedroom because some sort of music was playing in the background. Something soft like an old U2 album or a quiet song from The Blood Brothers. With the soft music playing and the sensuality hanging between them like a silk sheet, Frank wanted nothing more than to cup his hand under Gerard’s face, to feel his skin, his texture. When Gerard answered, it wasn’t the question Frank had expected.

“Why do you like me better?”

Frank breathed, felt his barrier of comfort crack. “I dunno…” he mumbled. “…You’re…artistic. Quiet…” He wanted to name a million things but he couldn’t think of words to describe them. “…Different.”

Gerard let out a snort that sounded out of place. “Different got me into all this shit.”

“What shit?” Frank asked.

“Nothin’,” Gerard replied quickly. “What else?” Frank blinked to himself.

“I, uh, think you’re…” Just say it. Just…do it. “…Gerardireallylikeyou.”

Gerard didn’t say anything. The music played in the background and Frank still didn’t know what band was playing. He had half a mind to ask. He wanted to pretend he hadn’t said anything. He heard Gerard swallow again. His voice sounded a little too loud when he spoke.

“You kn’why I like you?” Gerard asked. Frank asked what. “…Are you really sorry?”

Frank nodded despite the fact that Gerard couldn’t see him. “Yeah. I am.”

Gerard laughed through his nose. Frank thought it sounded a little like a sob. “That’s what I like about you.”