Wishing You Were a Ghost

Stairwell Song

Life is hard.

Life is unfair, and sometimes even a little cruel. Life is ups, and downs, and jobs, and people, and feelings, and happiness, and heartbreak. Life is every good and bad thing that the world has to offer.

Most importantly, life happens.

It doesn't slow down, and sometimes there is truly only so much you can do to keep everything carefully in line in a way that works. Sometimes that line gets all fucked up and you just can't get it to properly merge the way that it used to.

The break-up is something similar to what happened with Gerard. Only it's not. Not really. Not at all.

The only thing that is actually similar is the core concept.

It just doesn't work.

Frank's work hours are morning to evening, and Aspen's work hours are evening to morning. As the relationship goes on it becomes harder and harder to get time together. There is a distance that grows as a result, and it leaves Frank feeling increasingly anxious with every missed connection.

Every exchanged -

Frank: i'm so fucking sorry, my brand meeting ran late, i'm just now leaving the store.
Aspen: It's ok sugar, but I'm already omw to work. I'll txt u on my break

- leads to a certain tightness in his chest, and every -

Aspen: I kno I said I would come over this am but I'm so beat after my shift. Tmrw?
Frank: absolutely. don't worry, okay? get some rest, i love you
Aspen: Ur an angel, Frankie. Ilyt :)

- has him agonizing for hours, staring at the ceiling above his bed.

And it all comes to a head about a week after his birthday.

Aspen is humming something soft in their kitchen, and Frank is watching them move around, gathering dry ingredients for a batch of cookies they've been planning to make when they have free time. As normal, they're calm and relaxed. They move fluidly, perfectly connected with their body and the space around them, and Frank thinks again, with something sorrowful in his chest, that life is hard and unfair.

"Can I ask you a question?" He pipes up finally after the eggs have been cracked, and the oil has been poured.

"Sure thing," Aspen says with a smile, turning with the bowl in their hands as they whisk things together. "Whatcha need?"

"This isn't working, is it?"

Aspen's hands still, and they regard him for a long, drawn out moment. Their smile falls into something sad, and a frown forms in the way of a wrinkle across their forehead. For a moment, Frank wishes more than anything that he could take it back.

But then they smile, rueful, and not particularly happy, but it's still a smile.

"You been feeling it too?" they ask, setting the bowl down on the cabinet. They wipe their hands on a dish towel hanging over the handle of the oven and make their way across the living room to stand in front of him.

They reach out both hands, and Frank takes them, kissing their knuckles, dusted white with powdered sugar. Their skin is sweet with it, like the night they first met.

"It feels..." he starts, frowning as he brushes away the rest of the granules, though it only serves to smear it. The contrast is lovely. Not just the white against their skin, but Frank's hands in theirs. Pale fingers lace between dark brown, and Frank's tattoos run in bold lines that get covered by the sky colored acrylics that are gently tracing them.