It's been quite a while (not as bad as usual though>.<) but don't hate me I've had baaaaaaad PCD because I met Fearless Vampire Killers and ah it hurts. (WE MET THE TIMIDS IN THE STREET I DIED)
Also it's gonna be this slow for like two weeks, I have exams and stuff but after that I CAN UPDATE LIKE EVERY DAY IF YOU WANT ME TO OMG.
It's all a bit disjointed, too, there are loads of breaks but it's the only way I could do it without it being like fifty million words long.
There is loads of cool shit and massive drama coming so, uh, when I come back it will be super exciting times and all that.
Thank you for reading and being cool ily.
❝Stumfrei- the freedom of not being watched by a parent or superior- being alone in a place and being able to do what you want .❞
The train wasn't the most gentle ride I've ever had, I must say. Day two of staying at Gerard's house had brought us yet another 'adventure'. At least, though, this one wasn't another fucking 'surprise', we were going into the city. Apparently there was a load of stuff for us to do, but the main reason for our second excursion was so we could watch the lights.
I'd only ever watched the lights from the edge of the cliff in the woods. And, I knew there was really nothing special about the lights- there was no extravagant light show or anything, it was literally just the night lights of the shops and stuff, but even so- it felt as though a massive part of my childhood that I'd never had was finally being granted to me. An even deeper part of my mind was telling me that this was the best way for it to be- I wasn't going blindly by myself for no reason; I was going with someone who meant more to me than I'd ever thought possible, at a time when sure, things were falling apart; but knitting back together at the same time.
I think Gerard had been asleep at one point, actually. His black hair was sticking to the damp windows of the train, his eyes flickering under the possible sleep that he had fallen under. There weren't many people around us, seeing as it was an odd time in the morning. It wasn't early, but it wasn't late either. Those who were sitting opposite us were mainly sitting with their eyes glued to their phones, but mine stayed silent in my pocket. Somewhere under the happiness I was feeling due to being with Gerard, there was a pain down to the fact that my mother had not tried to get in touch with me since I'd left the house. Something told me it was down to my declaration of homosexuality, but even so; she could at least pretend that she gave a shit.
Although, I guess, she'd proven that she didn't already, really.
About half an hour later, the train had stopped. Gerard had woken up since then, and insisted that he hadn't been asleep anyway. Judging by the fact that he could barely keep his eyes open, I didn't believe him.
We were the only ones getting off at the city stop, disembarking from a train that was now mainly filled with families making the most of the fact that nobody really had to be at school or work. A triumphant feeling of satisfaction shot through my stomach when I thought of work. I should be slaving away in the mall right now, cleaning imaginary dirt and chasing imaginary criminals, but instead; I had the whole day ahead of me to spend in the city with Gerard.
Gerard took my hand as I stepped off the train, and I managed not to fall down the gap between the platform. That was an improvement on the usual. I had a feeling that a broken ankle would rather spoil the atmosphere that I had going on here at the moment.
It wasn't a very long walk from the train station to the heart of the city. It was mainly through winding streets anyway, pretty roads with uneven pavements and shops on both sides. A few streets in, the shops turned to nightclubs, then to pubs, to restaurants, and finally a mismatch of all of them, crammed into the city center. Taller buildings; department stores and office blocks and advertisements; towered above and among the others.
Gerard was grinning as he looked around. His eyes fell on me, and I felt a proper, genuine smile split across my face. There was honestly nothing special about the place itself, I was just so happy to be here with Gerard. I knew that would be true of pretty much anywhere that we went, too.
"Hey, shall we go and get coffee, or something?"
Gerard's eyes were darting around at the many coffee shops dotted around our immediate surroundings. I could see four just from here. Without waiting for an answer, Gerard took off in the direction of the Starbucks, leaving me to follow him. I was only a little way behind when he stopped, and turned to take my hand.
"Gerard?" I started awkwardly, knowing that his reaction to what I was about to say was probably not going to be particularly great. I was a bit embarrassed about saying it- especially to Gerard.
"Yeah?" He sounded mildly interested, although not in a rude way. He simply sounded as though his attention was stolen by our surroundings, and I couldn't really blame him, honestly. I was only half-concentrating, too.
I smiled awkwardly as I met his eyes.
"I don't like coffee."
-
"Quite honestly, you disgust me," Gerard said, dark eyes affixed on mine over the rim of his cup. We were sitting at opposite sides of the table, and whereas I was grinning, knowing that he was joking really, Gerard was looking more as though I'd killed something he loved, rather than told him I didn't like coffee.
Actually- thinking about it- they were pretty much the same thing.
"It tastes like vomit," I said simply, lifting my cup to my lips. There had been much debate over what I was having when we'd ordered. Gerard had insisted that I have coffee, getting all 'parental' on me and insisting that I hadn't properly tried proper coffee. I completely ignored him and got some sort of warm milkshake thing. It wasn't great but it was better than whatever Gerard was trying to fob me off with.
"Good vomit."
My eyes narrowed. "There is such thing as good vomit?"
Gerard shook his head, smiling again properly. "Not really. I taught myself to get past the taste for its healing properties."
I took another sip of the drink and looked at him sideways. "Healing properties?"
"Okay so I'm less likely to fall asleep, leave me alone."
I scoffed as he raised the cup to his lips again. Trying my best (and probably failing amazingly) to match the faux-outraged expression that Gerard had mastered, I met his eyes again.
"A possibility of falling asleep in my company?"
Gerard laughed, a quick chuckle, but it was a laugh nonetheless and a very adorable one at that.
"Okay, okay, fine."
We both fell quiet after that, though every time I looked up, Gerard was still smiling bemusedly to himself. After about five minutes of silence, he put the cup down on the table and looked at me.
"Even though we did just have a conversation about vomit."
-
Gerard and I had spent about an hour simply walking around the center, looking at pretty much everything we passed. None of the shops interested us particularly, although a quick look in the odd musical-looking one was about as much as we got on the shopping front.
In fact, the atmosphere around the shops wasn't really the best thing ever. It was too mainstream and crowded, with most of the shops selling colourful clothes or sickness-inducing tracksuits and typical things like that. Eventually, we came across a small side-street and followed it, hoping that it would lead us somewhere with a bit more... atmosphere. There was no point coming here for a shopping trip when there were much better things to do than go shopping.
The street was a winding one, and we followed it to wherever it took us for about twenty minutes or so. In any other situation I would have been complaining, seeing as I hated walking usually, but the fact that it was full of things I'd never seen before was making it so I didn't mind so much. There were shops selling handmade things, like windchimes and crystals hanging in the windows. It was all a bit twee and cliche, but in the best way possible. Honestly- we didn't really fit in here seeing as we were both dressed in black and Gerard had eyeliner on today and hadn't brushed his hair. We were attracting some funny looks, but as long as it wasn't accompanied with the typical behavior that we got around by our houses, then I wasn't particularly bothered.
The end of the street spilled out onto a park. Well- it wasn't a park as such, but it was grass and trees and a lake, so it was a park enough for me. My hand was still laced into Gerard's as we made our way to one of the benches, and sat down. It was pretty much empty, besides a man walking his dog around the edge of the water, and a kid who was running away from their parents, following close behind them and chatting. It made me wonder- when I was a kid did my parents ever do stuff like that with me? Or did they just keep me in the house to entertain myself? I didn't have any recollection of any normal 'kid' things, so it was probably the latter. No wonder I was strange- really.
Gerard and I were quiet for a while, watching the water. It wasn't even that sunny, the wind was almost unpleasant, but it didn't really matter. Although we had hours until dark, hours to spend doing things in the city, it honestly didn't seem as though there was much to actually do. Hence why we'd ended up by a lake instead of the shops.
"You know," I said, snapping out of my thoughts and turning to look at Gerard, "this is the first normal thing we've actually done."
He seemed to think for a moment, and then nodded. "It is. I mean, climbing over fences and painting on the bridge and running away from home will always be better, but I suppose this isn't too bad."
His tone was flippant, but a phrase stuck out from the rest, echoing in my head. I was going to leave it, ignore the fact he'd said it, but it was like fighting back something intent on winning, so I said it. My voice was pitifully quiet.
"Running away wasn't fun, you know."
It wasn't necessarily accusing, but Gerard looked as if I'd hit him. Not through anger or anything like that, he just looked hurt.
"Oh god, Frank... I didn't mean it like that..." he made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. "I'm sorry."
I shook my head. Although I didn't want him to get worked up about it, I couldn't stand him joking about it so flippantly when everything inside my chest was hurting. Two days- and she hadn't called. As far as she knew, I could be anywhere; with anyone. It was apparent that my mother did not give a shit about her son- her only real son- and although I'd known that deep down for years, there was something rather painful about being slapped across the face with it.
"It's okay, I know you didn't mean it like that... But... She doesn't care."
Gerard's eyes narrowed. That look was my favorite thing. It was sympathetic, but not in a patronising kind of way. For someone who hated sympathy but didn't want to feel alone, Gerard had it perfect. I smiled sadly as he spoke.
"I'm sure she does. She's just mad because of what happened with your job."
He was trying. He really was honestly trying, but he was so spectacularly wrong that it was taking all of my self control not to call him straight out on it. It wasn't Gerard's fault that he was annoying me, he wasn't supposed to be- he was trying to help.
"She hasn't called me, Gerard."
The perfectly calculated expression was replaced with shocked disgust. "At all?"
I shook my head. "It's not even about the job, either. She told me she hated me."
"Seriously!"
I shrugged. "Near enough, yeah."
It was then that I realised I hadn't actually told Gerard what had happened between me and my mother, or properly explained why I had to come and stay in his house. Not that he'd asked- he didn't pry into things if I didn't want to talk about them, but even so. I could see now that it was asking a bit much, expecting to stay in someone's house with no explanation, and plus, this whole anger and pain of my mother's behavior meant that I had to talk about it to someone, or I'd crack up. Normally I wasn't great with keeping things inside my own head. They tended to fester, so I was definitely going to have to find some way of explaining how I felt.
"That's... That's... Awful."
Usually he spoke with such a sarcastically huge vocabulary, using extensive words when they weren't needed, so it was strange to hear him struggle for a word as simple as 'awful'. We both knew that 'awful' wasn't the right word... It was so much more than 'awful'.
I shrugged. No words seemed to be coming to my mouth, or at least not any that wouldn't make me seem like some kind of pathetic sympathy-fisher.
"It's not your fault, you know that, right?" Gerard asked me suddenly, his eyes dark as they met mine. The expression on his face was basically impossible to read, it was a perfect balance of so many different ones.
I shrugged again. That seemed to be the only reaction I was capable of. "Maybe it is. I don't know."
"It's not, Frank. Why the hell would it be your fault?"
That question was the very same one that I had been asking myself repeatedly since 'moving into' Gerard's house. Why was it my fault? My initial reaction had been to pile up the defence, scream about how I'd done nothing wrong and all I wanted was to do what I felt was right, but deep down I knew exactly the opposite. That was why I was so bothered about it, that was why it was festering in the pit of my stomach every single second. There was a knowledge deep within my soul, an unmoving sense of something...
"She was right."
I hadn't realised that I'd spoken aloud, but Gerard whipped around to stare at me with a stare that was almost frightening. I'd seen Gerard looked irritated, sure, and although most of the time I think he'd been joking, it was nothing compared to this. He looked genuinely annoyed.
"No she fucking wasn't 'right'."
I nodded. The more I thought about it, the more I realised how much sense this situation actually made. Not to me, in particular, but I knew how my mom's head worked and how she was with me and Ryan.
"I disappoint her."
"That's not your problem!" His voice was raising in volume, and the couple with the kid shot us odd looks out of the corner of their eyes. The kid stopped running, and changed to a cautious walk past the bench where we were sitting.
"It is, really. She said I don't try."
Gerard sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "There are so many things I want to say to you right now, Frank Iero, but I'm going to have to settle for 'if you act like a martyr one more time I am going to hit you'."
I smiled in spite of myself. "I know I sound stupid, but it makes sense, doesn't it?"
Gerard's eyes both simultaneously widened and his eyebrows raised dramatically. That face was the epitome of his coveted idiot-reaction. "No?"
"My mom wants this idea of a perfect son, right? That's not me, is it?"
"It doesn't have to..." Gerard started, but I held up a hand and he stopped talking mid-sentence. He must be really bothered about what I had to say, because I'd never seen him actually do as I asked before.
"I know what she's like, Gerard. Whenever I was a kid, and I did something wrong, or showed her up, she didn't react like a normal parent. She would seriously flip over it, and go on about how she'd imagined this idea of a perfect son and all I could do was let her down. All she really wanted was for me to go to college and get a good job or start a business or something, but that isn't me, Gerard. I can't be someone else. Not even for my mom. Doesn't that make me a failure by default?"
Gerard's hand had crept towards mine, and he took ahold of mine once I'd stopped speaking. I hadn't realised that his expression had softened, but he was looking at me with the sadness of the world in those eyes.
"Listen to me." He said simply.
I tried to interject, to explain, but his fingers tightened in mine, and a pleading look came over him so unusual and profound that I probably wouldn't have been able to find any words to say anyway.
"Just listen. You cannot be a failure by default. Nothing in this world can make you a failure by default. The only way that you can be a failure is if you go out of your way to fail. Not by failing by accident. Because that's not really failure- it's just a lesson. Failure by default does not exist, and even if it did- I cannot think of another single human in this whole world who is less of a default failure than you, Frank Iero. You are a beautiful soul, and if your mother can't see that, then she's crazy. I didn't say it earlier, but I love you, Frank. I love you so completely that it's kinda ridiculous. I don't know what it is about you, but you're just so..."
He trailed off, leaving me speechless with him as he clawed around in the air for the right word.
"So..."
I was expecting some dictionary-eluding piece of vocabulary, but what I got instead was a smile; a stupid, stupid grin that cracked his face as he spoke.
"You're just so fucking incredible."
-
The wind had cooled to somewhere just before cold, and it was trailing around my legs, teasing the hood of my jacket and the loose strands of my hair. Gerard's hand was warm in my own, and the grass not-quite damp underneath me. It had dimmed to twilight since, and we'd climbed a hill to see the lights as they came on, around eight o clock, when it was dark.
Something was gnawing at the back of my mind as I sat there. Eight o clock. It was dark enough to need lights at eight o clock. About a week ago it had been nine, and a week before that, ten. The earlier darkness was telling us how summer was fading fast. Summer- the only time I had free to do whatever I wanted. Those empty college forms were still on the dresser in my room. What was I going to do when it was dark at six o clock? Five o clock? When we were deep in winter? When I had to have woken up from this summer, when I had to be making money? What was I going to do then?
I tried not to worry, but it was like a veil over my face. As time passed, it got thicker and thicker, and I knew soon, I wasn't going to be able to see past it.
"They should be coming on soon."
Gerard hadn't spoken for a while before that, and I turned to look at him. His eyes were fixed on the city. It was slightly below us, but only a little. Only enough to be able to see the taller buildings about mid-level. The best view, really.
I had been waiting for this since I was a kid, and I can't honestly say why that is. There was nothing spectacular associated with streetlights- I wasn't stupid, I knew that. But the city had intrigued me for such a long time, since I was about four or five years old. I don't know why.
Gerard's hand was only loose in mine, his fingers draped lazily through my own. I could sense it steadily darkening around us for about ten minutes, and then, suddenly- a light blinked on. Just one.
The others seemed to follow. One by one, they blinked into life, not in any particular order or pattern. The red lights on the tall towering department stores. The golden glow of the interiors of the smaller backstreet shops. Glaring white bulbs from the entrance of the garish clothes shops. One by one by one, until it was as though Gerard and I were sitting on top of some kind of throne, looking down onto a blackened sea, with fallen jewels spangling the floor of it. The whole picture, once every light was on, was staggering.
I couldn't even hear Gerard breathing. Someone had told me once- a complete old wives' tale- that when photos were taken, some part of your soul was stolen to that photo forever. Yet- everything was so still and perfect and beautiful, that I thought the most dominant part of my soul had been captured in some kind of postcard-photo. Even so- I wouldn't have complained if I had to sit here with Gerard forever and ever and ever.
My eyes burned with the imprints of so many lights when I closed them, like popping fireworks behind my eyelids.
It was, as so eloquently put by Gerard earlier- 'fucking incredible'.
-
We were waiting at the train station to go home when Gerard realised he hadn't bought return tickets to get home. I began to panic, until he explained that we could just go and buy some, and it would only take about ten minutes extra.
Sometimes, when it came to having to act like an adult who knew how to behave or even get a return ticket I embarrassed even myself. It seemed that there was no end to the stuff I didn't know how to do.
Gerard and I walked to the front of the station, my hood pulled up over my ears seeing as it had gotten remarkably cold in the past twenty minutes and the time it took us to walk from down the hill and back to the train station. Gerard was counting money out, enough for tickets, when we stopped at the ticket office.
I was caught up short when Gerard stopped so abruptly that I almost smacked straight into the back of his head. For some reason, his face had paled dramatically, and when I followed his eyes, with the same feeling as though some sort of chasm had opened under my feet and was currently swallowing me whole, I realised why he was looking so ghost-like.
The ticket office was only about ten feet away from us, and it took me a while to work out what was wrong. The light was still on inside.
I hadn't looked at the window, however. It was only thirty or so seconds later when my eyes fell on the swing sign did I realise.
The ticket office was closed. We had no return tickets.
We couldn't get back.