FicWad

“What /happened?/”

Gerard tried to speak, tried to get his tongue to curl and his lips to move so that he might be able to form words, but all that came out was a loud, pathetic sob. He coughed over the toilet, the sound reflected off of every hard surface in the bathroom so that he could hear his own repulsive retching. He felt his insides tremble, his abdomen tighten as if he might vomit again and he opened his mouth and held his breath, waiting for it to come. After his stomach lurched and nothing came out but spit that hung from his lips like spider’s web before it dripped into the water, he gasped for air and coughed again. Gerard’s face was soaking wet, his hair sticking to the skin on his cheeks and chin and forehead with sweat and tears. He felt so dirty, so ugly, so everything he hated. He inhaled and exhaled, the breaths as jagged as stone to the point where they sounded as if they must have been tearing up the inside of his throat. He tried- really, he /tried/- to get the words out but they were lost in nausea and retching and the sobbing so violent that Gerard thought he was going to physically break from the shaking.

“Gerard, what /happened?/” Finch squeaked over the phone. Her voice sounded small in the device and Gerard couldn’t help but realize that the minimal outside contact was almost no consolation. While he retched and she didn’t speak he simultaneously regretted and was thankful for calling her. The fact that she was listening minimally smoothed the abrasiveness, but when Finch couldn’t extend assistance he wished he couldn’t hear her on the other line. It felt almost as if he was being teased by the fact that she was okay, probably sitting comfortable and warm in her bed while her parents who loved her slept in the next room. And him, he was vomiting air and spit in his cold bathroom while he waiting to be taken away to a place where they would stab him with needles and impale him with tubes and tests and angry, judging words and eyes. Gerard could tell she was listening to him breathe, waiting for a spot where she could interject. “Gerard, /please./”

He coughed again, so nauseas from crying and coughing that he felt as if some sort of hot, vicious pestilence was ripping out his insides. He managed to breathe enough so that there was a short span in which he could speak. The breathing between every few words was so heavy and rough that his lungs felt torn and bruised. “Sh’saw m-my cuts, Finch,” he whimpered in a high voice. “And…oh my God, I can’t…I can’t stop throwing up, I can’t./” Gerard swallowed, or at least attempted to. His body shook and tried to inhale while he simultaneously attempted to swallow his spit, and he gagged and retched into the toilet again. His body tensed for so long, didn’t let him /breathe for so long, that he thought he might die of asphyxiation while his body tried to purge itself. He finally breathed in and it almost hurt.

“What- how/- what’s gonna /happen?/” Finch sputtered on the other line. Gerard bitterly wished she wouldn’t ask questions. Half of them he didn’t want to answer while the other half he didn’t know /how to answer. He pressed the phone tightly to his ear and leaned back from the toilet, his back feeling stiff and pained from leaning forward, his middle feeling tense and sore from gagging. With the back of his free hand he rubbed away some of the stickiness off of his cheeks. As soon as he pulled his hand away, his face was immediately wet again, his eyes overflowing with wetness to the point where he was nearly blind.

“I can’t- can’t…st’crying…” Gerard’s words came out as disassembled thoughts, broken and fractured to the point where even he knew he was making no sense. He snorted up the mucus clogging his nose and wiped the excess fluid on the back of his hand. Every inch shook, shook so violently that Gerard seriously thought he might be having a small seizure. “I threw up, Finch. I threw up in the kitchen. She asked me…and I- she asked me who- God /DAMN IT!/” Gerard slammed his hand down on the porcelain toilet seat and he squeaked with the surprised of sudden and unexpected pain when his knuckle smashed against the hardness. There was a sudden release as the pain throbbed and he exhaled almost as if in pleasure. He hit against it a few more times, tiny whimpers rising in his throat as the collisions turned his knuckle- the one by his smallest finger- a deep purple. Finch made a whining sound like a wounded dog on the other end of the phone.

“Please, stop it, Gerard!” she pleaded, and the only reason he stopped trying to break his hand was because she sounded so terrified. “You’re scaring me!” She listened to him cry for somewhere around a minute before she penetrated his whines with words that were actually strung together, words that actually made sense. Some part of Gerard was glad, relieved, that there was some sense in them, some sanity. “I don’t-…I can’t understand what you’re saying. Tell me, /please./”

Gerard clenched his eyes shut, felt the tears force their way through the corners so his eyes stung, breathed and moved around to the other side of the toilet. He pressed himself into the corner, the place where the two walls of the small, rectangular room met sharply by the toilet, and clutched the phone to his ear with both hands. In that little space he felt safe, even though he knew someone was going to come downstairs and get him, grab him, snatch him up from his safe little place and take him and hurt him and scare him.

“I’m going to die, Finch,” he whispered. He felt so small and afraid. He wasn’t sixteen anymore- no, he felt about four years old. Four and small and so scared and shaking so hard that the phone was tapping against his ear. “…I’m gonna kill myself. I have to. I have…I have to do something. I wanna cut but I can’t so I have to kill myself.” He heard his friend make a gasping sound similar to the one he had been making. Shaky and afraid and uncontrolled.

”No,” she whispered back into the phone. He could barely hear her, her voice was so tiny. “No, don’t…We’ll get you help- I’ll get you help. I /promise./” Her voice became high and weak on the last word and Gerard pressed as hard as he could against his corner of the wall as if to escape it.

”Nonono I can’t,/” he whimpered, his voice a high-pitched, long whine. “I can’t. No one can help me, I’m crazy, I’m sick.” He started to sob again and his whole head felt so tight he thought his skull might fracture at the temples and just split down the middle. Gerard was crying so hard that the hair stuck to his face was soaking wet, as if he’d just dunked them in water. He had never cried so viciously, so pathetically. Not when his first friend moved away in the sixth grade and left him alone, not when boys locked him in a school utility closet for three class periods and he /pounded and screamed and clawed in the two-and-a-half by four-foot room for two hours, and not when his arm was bent behind his back, held by a boy who wanted him to admit that he was a dirty, stupid faggot to the point where it was almost broken because he just wouldn’t say it.

But back then he wasn’t crazy. Back then his mother didn’t hate him and he wasn’t sobbing his suicide to his friend on the phone in the corner of a bathroom. Back then he was just angry and depressed and only a little more than confused, and he didn’t know when then became now but somewhere, somehow it had and he wanted to go back to then because at least that meant there was hope. There wasn’t hope now. There was just the fact that he was going die and no one was going to care. And if he had a gun or a razor or hell, even some low-dose sleeping pills he would have done it right there, feeling like the biggest shit on the face of the earth because he wouldn’t have the courtesy to hang up on Finch before he did it. He was glad only for her sake that none of those things were within his reach. As he pressed the phone hard against the cartilage of his ear to stop it from shaking out of his hand he removed one of his hands (the left one, actually) and looked at the blue vein under the skin. Now holding the phone between his head and his shoulder, he made a quick slicing motion over the skin with his nail.

Gerard coughed and his throat hurt, felt rough like sand paper and tight as if someone was pressing their thumbs hard against his larynx. With a snort to clear his nasal passages he breathed and tried to relax. If he had died right then and there he wouldn’t have minded. It would be more like passing out like he wanted to, anyway.

“You’re not crazy.” Finch spoke suddenly and Gerard gave a startled jump. Even though he had been thinking about her, he had forgotten she was there. He looked at the white mark left by his nail on the thin skin over his vein and wished he could cut it open. Finch’s voice sounded so thin, as if it might rip like paper and float away. “You’re not crazy. And if you die I’ll kill myself.”

“No. Don’t,” he said as quickly as his voice, which was thick and slow and not entirely composed yet, would allow. The way he demanded this was as if he was asking her not to do something simple, and he only wished it could actually be that way. “You can’t. I’m really- really God damn sick, I can’t-” He cleared his throat and almost gagged. “-don’t need t’be here.” Both his hands returned to holding the phone.

“Don’t even,/” she snapped and he heard her sniffle and take in a shaky breath. “Don’t…that’s so /stupid. Why would you even say you don’t need to be here? Why would you even /say that?/” Gerard couldn’t exactly interoperate her tone and on account of the cloud of suicide in his head he couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t involve /”I’m just going to die”/, so he kept quiet (save for the quivering breaths and little whimpers that escaped his mouth and nose) and let her talk.

Finch breathed and grunted to herself. “I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly. “It’s not…” He heard her inhale before the breath seemed to explode out of her in a burst of despondency. ”Just please don’t do this, Gerard. Please. If you go I go and I’m not ready yet.” Gerard felt the shakiness of oncoming sobbing return and he pulled his knees to his chest as tightly as he could.

“I /have to/,” he whimpered. His face was wet again. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to.” He heard Finch give a hard snort and a whine.

“Gerard…” she cried in a high voice. “Gerard, I’m gonna…call the police if you don’t stop.” Gerard wriggled and writhed in his corner and brought one of his hands into his hair, raking his nails down his scalp. She sniffled again. “Where are you? Are you in your room? D-d’you have anything?”

“No, I’m in the bath-bathroom,” he stuttered, his breath hitching as he tried to speak through the tears. “And I don’t have anything so /don’t./” As soon as he spat the last word he realized how stupid and childish he sounded, but it didn’t matter. He let the contempt surge between them for a moment, hating how he was enjoying the hurt aura coming from Finch’s end of the phone, before he muttered through a sob that he was sorry. He was but he wasn’t.

“They’re taking me awa-away,” Gerard continued. “My m-mom’s gonna take me to the hos-hospital.” His eyes clenched shut again. “/God, I’m so scared./ I kept thr-throwing up. She made me show her my…” He swallowed after nearly choking on the spit accumulating in his throat. “…my arm and she asked who Frankie was and I just threw up. It hur’s, so bad, Finch, I’m dying.”

There was a sudden quick rapping on the door of the bathroom and Gerard turned with a squeak. He squished his body together as if trying to disappear into the wall.

“Gerard?” his mother called through the door her voice muffled by the wood. “Gerard, open the door.”

”Ohgodohgodohgod,” he whimpered, keeping his voice only as loud as he needed for Finch to hear him. He bit down on one of his index fingers to keep the sobs as quiet as possible./”Finch, please help me. Do something. Ohmygodohgodohgod.”/

“I /can’t!/” she half-screamed. He felt as if she was screaming at him through a wall of glass. He was stuck inside that little place and she was pounding on the wall, trying to get to him, but he was still alone and scared and helpless, hopeless. She could watch (listen, actually) to how much he was hurting but she was still miles away, in her own home, in a position he was so envious of that he would have killed his own brother to be there instead of where he was. “Oh my /God/, Gerard! What…I don’t know what…”

“Gerard, open the God damn door!” his mother cried, shaking the handle and pounding on the door. She was like a monster. She was going to kill him and eat him up, but first she was going to break down the door as he sat in the corner of his tiny little bathroom. Gerard’s head felt light, as if it has been filled with helium. Now his brain was floating in that light, open space and his eyes saw spots of red and blue and black and his heart was so swollen and full of horror that it was going to break open his chest. He was hyperventilating, his nose dripping uncomfortably and the air feeling flat and sharp and dry as he sobbed and prayed for help.

“I can’t…” he choked out through heavy breaths. “…I can’t breathe…”

His mother twisted the doorknob and broke the lock.

“Gerard?” Finch gasped. “/…Gerard!/ What-?”

There were too many dots in front of his eyes. He clicked the phone off before his mother jerked open the door and nearly ripped it off its hinges. And he couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of liberation as he slunk against the wall with limp muscles and closed, tired eyes. As he past out, he sighed, his mouth opening and feeling like an enormous, black chasm, forcing out the air in a gust of release. And for a while he wouldn’t feel hate or fear or pain. For a while he wouldn’t feel anything.

---

Gerardireallylikeyou

…people…

!!FREAK!!

Has anyone ever told you yourereallygoodlooking?

…I’m losing myself.



I’m sorry.

---

And when he woke, he didn’t really wake. Feeling came before sight and sound. He felt a rumbling, a gentle purring against his cheek and torso and palm. And it was only feeling. So much so that he thought he might actually have gone deaf and blind. He swerved back into unconsciousness, delving into darkness, to senselessness, before emerging again, reappearing with the ability to hear. And there was more to feel this time: the sticky, stiffness of dried sweat on his scalp, the feeling of muscles tensed into the fetal position. The position of sleeping, only he hadn’t been sleeping. It had been deeper than that, less rejuvenating, more consuming.

There was the sense of hearing this time. Rumbles and soft, muffled swoosh sounds that came and went, emerged and disappeared into nothing. And with sound came sight, and through the pillars of black in front of his eyes that must have been his hair he saw beams of light that followed with the swoosh sounds, dots of color, darkness. And he lay there, Gerard lay there, letting the colors and sounds came and go, trying to understand, comprehend them. He flexed his fingers against the material beneath them, finally acknowledging the neglected limbs, moving them slowly, carefully, as if discovering them for the first time. The muscles in his back and legs tightened and demanded attention, making him move and turn against the firm, purring material against his back and torso and legs. Gerard made a tiny groan as he moved; still not fully awake, still not completely aware. Something in the darkness ahead of him moved, turned, allowed more light to come and go against him.

“…Gerard?”

Air was sucked into his lungs with tension and released with relief. He knew he voice, the voice of his mother, and although he was relieved with the new knowledge that the voice belonged to someone he knew, apprehension burned inside him. Because of it’s her she’s only there to take him away. Put him where he doesn’t need to be.

“Mom?” he groaned, as if to reassure himself it was her. She didn’t answer right away; let him sit within the silence surrounding his question. Time moved around the question like water around a rock embedded in the mud of a river. And she let it move that way, let him sit there wondering and waiting and beginning to squirm on the inside. He propped himself up on his hands, extended his arms and shook his head to get the hair out of his face, and looked ahead. It was then he knew he was in his mother’s car, that his hands were propped up on leather, and that the lights that came and went were the lights they past on (what he assumed was) the highway. The sounds were cars passing. He was in the back seat, hence the amount of room he had to lie in the fetal position. But even with Gerard’s new ability to comprehend his surroundings, it was still dark, his eyes still felt dry from crying, and his stomach felt flat and somewhat nervous, as if he was recovering from the flu.

”Mom,” he repeated, a little louder this time, when she didn’t answer. He could hear his own voice again, as he could before in the bathroom, and he recognized a certain sort of rasp in it and he wondered if his mother knew he had been smoking. Probably. She seemed to know everything, like some sort of omniscient being. He vaguely (if somewhat bitterly) wondered why it then took her two years to realize her son was mutilating himself.

“I’m here,” she said. Her response made Gerard think a vague little ’Well, duh’ to himself. Of course she was there. As if someone else was driving the car. With those unimportant, bitter thoughts retreating into the back of his mind, he breathed in and out deeply, trying to will away the nervousness inside him. The lights outside brightened the interior of the car as they appeared and he could see from his place in the back seat his mother’s long fingers on the steering wheel. They looked wrinkled and old, almost witch-like. He looked away because he didn’t like see them.

“…How long have I been sleeping…Out?” He asked quietly, groggily, squinting his eyes at the brightness of the lights. Every second his eyes were open, the lights seemed to get a little less bright. He saw his mother twist her neck ever-so-slightly to look at the digital clock. The numbers were a bright green in the blackness and said that it was almost eleven. Gerard had really wanted to ask her, ’Where are we going?’ but the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to know the answer. She took a few seconds to respond to his question and he thought sourly that she was probably taking her time answering because she knew how much it hurt him.

“ ‘bout forty-five minutes,” she said. By the tone of her voice he could tell her lips were pursed. Neither of them said anything for a few moments before she added, “I had to carry you to the car.”

Gerard sniffled and rubbed the side of his hand on his eye. “Don’t doubt it.” He felt a thin quiver of satisfaction inside him as a tiny wave of contempt wriggled between them. There was a certain weight to the silence, as if one of them wanted to speak but was hesitant to do so. There were things Gerard wanted to say- nasty, angry, and otherwise- and things he wanted to ask but didn’t want to know the answer to. He didn’t doubt that there were hurtful things his mother wanted to say, but he couldn’t help but think that those weren’t the things she was holding back. He leaned his back against the back of the seat for support while he brought his less-supportive hand up to his mouth to chew on his thumbnail. When he teeth /click/ed through the nail he was sharply and painfully reminded of Frank, and therefore reminded of his mother’s knowledge of him. He wondered what assumptions she’d made.

With a sort of dull interest he asked if he could move up to the front of the car, not really caring if she said yes or no. A change of scenery was desired, not needed. When she told him he could he hoped over the cup holder-storage area that separated the driver’s seat from the passenger’s seat (he noticed but didn’t really care that he hadn’t been wearing a seat belt) and wiggled into the seat. It was much warmer in the front of the car and he was somewhat happy he’d chosen to move there, despite the fact that he was now within reaching distance of his mother. And, even though she’d never done it before, he was almost sure she would hit him if he said anything that might piss her off.

Gerard looked out the window and curled up in his chair, the heat and gentle, comfortable purring of the machine he was in rocking him like a child in the womb. His mother spoke suddenly, startling him slightly and killing his potential sleeping opportunity.

“How are you?” she asked. Gerard scoffed through his nose, feeling bitter and just a little bit immature. But mostly bitter. Spiteful.

“What d’you /think?/” he retorted. He was in no mood to be polite and he thought he might as well go for broke and release a bit of his tension.

“You don’t need to talk to me like that,” his mother replied. She sounded a little bit hurt and part of him felt guilty. He pulled his legs up to his chest and didn’t look at her. It felt safer that way. Gerard thought that if any more negative feelings welled up inside him he might just implode. He was more fed-up than anything. He let his mother drive for a little while, let them simmer in their own thoughts while the lights pulsed in and out of view. The darkness outside made him wonder if Finch was asleep or still awake. She’d probably fallen asleep, and he was more content with that thought.

“…So who’s Frank?” his mother asked. There was a hesitancy, a certain caution, to her question, as if she was afraid he might just spew again, only this time on her dashboard. Gerard thought she’d be lucky to have him spew on her dashboard considering the ugly emotions that swirled inside him when she the question left her mouth. And part of Gerard supposed she had a right to know, that it was more or less harmless, but the majority of him sent her an ugly sneer and told her to mind her own damn business. Of course, he didn’t say that. He didn’t have the emotional endurance to be hit, even if it was with words and not a fist.

Gerard figured it was his turn to take a lengthy pause before answering. So he sat quiet with no intention of opening his mouth, perfectly content with staying quiet and avoiding her question. The subject of Frank felt so personal, so secret. With this he thought he understood, albeit vaguely, how a mother felt giving up her child. He’d kept this boy- or rather, his feelings for this boy- hidden for so long that exposing them was like tearing them from his insides. His mother repeated the question and, much to his surprise, her words didn’t contain any agitation. She simply repeated herself as if she thought he may not have heard. Gerard gave a little sniffle and blinked slowly and deliberately, fully realizing he was only trying to kill time.

“He’s no one,” he said finally. He closed his eyes and shook his head before correcting himself. “It doesn’t matter.” There was another pregnant pause between the two of them and Gerard wished his mother would learn to respond more quickly.

“He’s not no one,” she said in a simple tone. “We both know that. I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about…him.” She had hesitated before saying ’him’ as if she had been searching for another word but couldn’t find one. Gerard shrugged uninterestedly.

“What’s there to tell?”

And this time she responded a bit too quickly. “Were you embarrassed? Did you think I wouldn’t accept it?”

”Mom,” he interrupted in a strained voice that suggested he might cry. “…It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”

“And why’s that?” she demanded, almost snapped. “If you’re…/doing that/ to yourself for him then he must be important.” Gerard felt his eyes burn and he clenched his teeth to stop himself from crying. He thought Frank was worth it. Frank was important. Shit, he was the most important thing in Gerard’s life- probably out of anything he could remember. He just didn’t want to admit it- not to his mother, at least. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her glance at him. “How long have you been feeling this way?”

“ ‘bout what?” he asked. “Frank? Or…” What thin shell Gerard had placed over himself had cracked, peeled off his skin. His mother swallowed before continuing, and he thought that maybe she was feeling as uncomfortable as he was. Something about that thought was contenting, made him feel just a little less alone.

“About…” she stopped to look for the words before clarifying. After a moment she finally burst through the wall of discomfort and said blatantly, “…About how you feel about /boys./”

Gerard couldn’t hold back the little playful snort that burst through his nose. Something about how awkward his mother appeared when she said the word ’boys’ was deserving of a laugh. He allowed himself to smile a little, to feel a little less hurt and defensive, and he could have sworn that he saw his mother give a little smile of her own. He cleared his throat with a dry cough.

“I’ve been gay since I was in the seventh grade,” he explained through a partial laugh. Although as soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he hadn’t exactly spoken correctly. In theory, he’d been gay since he was born and had only been aware of it since he was thirteen. But he was sure she got the message. She /’hmm’/-ed and nodded faintly. Gerard slunk into his seat and glanced up at her. From the angle he was sitting at, he felt small and childish. “…Are you mad?”

His mother gave a tired sort of laugh, one entirely empty of ridicule. “About…your sexuality?/” He nodded and didn’t look away. “Why would I be /mad about that?”

He shrugged. “I dunno.” He felt a little bit ashamed, a little bit stupid.

“Well, I’m not,” she clarified. Gerard chewed on his nail for a minute, missed Frank terribly, then muttered a surrendered sort of thank you. He sort of hoped she heard. There was a sense of liberation, of relief, inside him and it cooled the ugly hotness that had been there before like water on a hot pan. He sighed and closed his eyes before asking something he’d been wondering since he’d pushed through the thin membrane of unconsciousness that he’d earlier been enveloped in.

“How long am I going to be in the hospital for?”

His mother shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on how bad it is.” Gerard rubbed his wounds with his thumb through the sleeve on his arm thinking, ’It’s real bad.’ He didn’t ask any more questions, a stupid little part of him still hopeful that maybe if he didn’t know about the bad things that perhaps they wouldn’t happen. He knew better and wished he didn’t.

Gerard saw the sign for the Davison Psychiatric Hospital and felt what little comfort he had gained over the liberating conversation with his mother die a painful death. There was an element of embarrassment, an unreal sense of I can’t believe I’m doing this. His mother parked close to the entrance and he felt like crying. The glaring neon-white sign above the front door was another light he didn’t want to look at. Gerard would have given up all his art, his entire college fund, and the comic book collection he’d spent around five year acquiring to turn back time.

“I don’t wanna do this,” he whimpered. His mother said she knew. He believed her. She made him get out of the car anyway.