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Frank keeps his footsteps calm and evenly paced as he makes his way to his hotel room. When the keycard unlocks the door, he’s grateful for the vacancy and quiet, because without it, he would be utterly humiliated by the fact he wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears no matter what.
He makes it to the edge of the bed before his legs lose their strength and he collapses in a sitting position, sucking in a jagged and broken breath that bubbles into a sob held tight in his throat. He fights it back as much as he can, because who the hell is worthy of his tears? No one that hurts him this way. He can’t grip onto his dignity slipping through his fingers like water no matter the amount of defiance he wields. He’s no match for his own heart— never been any match for anything, he realizes.
Frank could say he has no idea how he could be idiotic enough to allow it. That wouldn’t hold any ounce of honesty to it. He knew exactly what he was getting into, unceremoniously placing his heart in the jaws of a trap, but strength is not a trait of his where it counts the most. It doesn’t help the matter that he truly hadn’t seen any of it coming. He let himself be whisked into someone else’s selfish indulgence and fooled himself into believing he held some higher purpose, that his value to this person went beyond a passing phase before he found someone better.
But the problem had presented itself from the very beginning; Frank has always known what he wanted, but Gerard is capricious. He can envelope Frank in the heavenly love of him before kicking him from the clouds the second some sense reaches his head. Frank has been battered before, but not like this, and he would’ve never allowed anyone else to do it, but what no one has been able to understand is that it’s Gerard. There is and never will be anyone like him. He was designed with the purpose to torment and adore Frank all in one assigned mission.
Frank could adjust to the cruelty of never being chosen by him if it meant he was given at least a taste of what it would feel like for fleeting moments. But Frank’s always been a secondary choice no matter how those moments dressed themselves, maybe even a third, if he were to be posed in a competition with all the sugary love affairs Gerard treats as sacred in comparison to the impulsive decision that led him to Frank’s bed. He has a real habit of stumbling in, lavishing Frank in all the right words to break him down, melt him on his tongue, gunning straight for the most tender parts of his heart to get his fix.
Gerard loves nothing more than unconditional love, it doesn’t matter to him whether he can return it or not. At this point in time, with Frank’s shaking hands frustratedly shoving his hair away from his teary face, it feels like Frank is the only one Gerard can never return the favor for. Gerard tears out his beating heart for his fans, gives out a limb or two for his friends and family, and now, he’s given away half his soul at the altar to a person he’s only been around for a couple months. Months.
What is Frank left with? Nothing. It’s the usual, he realizes with a pang in his chest. Gerard never had any intention to give anything to Frank apart from some of his time, but that’s not a valiant sacrifice on his part if all he’s ever had is time to waste. Time slips away, no sense of permanence to it. Frank watches it tick by and now all of his patience is washed up and mangled, uglier than he’s ever realized.
Frank hears a frantic knock on the door that pulls him from his anguish. He huffs, bunching up his shirt and pulling it towards his face to aggressively wipe the wetness staining it. He remembers Ray’s concerned looks even as Frank feigned just enough enthusiasm to snap a couple of pictures when Gerard was exchanging rushed vows with his new wife. Frank felt the weight of Ray’s stare resting on his back as he rushed away, claiming to be itching for a shower and a solid nap due to overexhaustion. He’s probably waiting outside the door with a pinched frown of concern and although Frank doesn’t feel like explaining himself, he trudges to the door, thinking of all the ways to push him out of the hall towards his own room so he can be left alone.
But it isn’t Ray on the other side of the door when Frank pries it open. It’s Gerard with his arms folded across his chest, his foot anxiously tapping the ground, rolling his lips into his mouth with a grim expression. Frank sees red.
Frank goes to swing the door shut in his face. Gerard stops it by jamming his foot in the doorway. Frank wants to push it further with all his might, crush his fucking ankle, but he doesn’t have the guts or the heart to when their eyes meet and suddenly his throat is closing in on itself again.
Still, he manages to choke out, “I don’t want to fucking talk to you.”
Gerard’s face crumbles, but his jaw is tense, practically twitching. “Frank. It’ll only be ten minutes.”
Frank’s fingers curl tight around the edge of the door. “Is that how long you have before you run away on your fucking honeymoon?”
Gerard sighs softly, eyes clenched shut. “Don’t be like that.”
Frank’s anger rises in him hot like a volcano on the verge of eruption. “ You made me like that. Should’ve thought this through if it’s gonna end up being a problem for you.”
At that, Gerard’s mouth snaps shut. His eyes dart up and down the length of the hallway as if he expects to see someone coming to catch them in the act. Maybe his wife who has had her suspicions that Gerard’s supposed stage act has some layer of truth to it, just like the rest of the dozens of audiences have suspected. His disappearances and their explanations haven’t added up, meanwhile Frank has sewn his mouth shut in the midst of furious heartbreak to be kept a secret.
Maybe it had been a moment of panic, the wedding ceremony. Sealing himself off to eternal commitment so no one would continue to question him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t extend the fucking courtesy of giving Frank a heads up about it.
Gerard tips his head forward, defeated. His guilt is unflattering and jarring in comparison to the sunny glow radiating off him during his vows. “I meant to tell you.”
Frank’s laugh spills out bitterly. “When? During the thousand fucking chances you had to come clean? How many times were we alone? How many— did you just want something different to fuck without the burden of the guilt?”
“It isn’t like that.”
“I would’ve never let you touch me if I had any idea you were even thinking about someone else like that. You made us all think it was some kind of summer fling.” Frank’s no innocent in that either, but he’s never claimed to be free of sin unlike Gerard who revels in the radiance and fucking joy of his new relationship like not so much of a stain has ever touched it. Frank reckons she wouldn’t have let Gerard touch her either if she knew his hands tend to stray.
Gerard’s nostrils flare. He kicks the door open wider and forces Frank to back up until he’s fully in the room, slamming it behind him and jabbing an accusing finger towards Frank’s chest. “That’s something I’m not gonna let you do. Act like I violated you and strung you along on purpose.”
Gerard thinks he might instill some fear in Frank with the low tone of his voice and that hand poised towards him, but he’s all bark and no bite. Frank can see the tremble in his pointer finger, the hurt plain in his eyes beneath the fury. Frank’s jaw flexes and his tongue tastes bitter as he fights back the tears. He bats Gerard’s hand away and steps forward.
“It wasn’t a violation. You and I both know how fucking eager I was for it. Like a dog at your doorstep all the time, wagging my fucking tail, waiting for you to let me in. You loved me like that.”
“I told you to stop waiting for me.”
Frank scoffs. “By knocking me over in front of our fans? Real fucking mature.”
Gerard pinches the bridge of his nose, practically shoving past Frank. “Can you just be quiet and let me fucking talk? God, you’re writing your own narrative in your head when you haven’t even listened to me.”
Frank doesn’t want to give him the time of day. He opens his mouth to deliver more snark, hit him where it hurts, but Gerard spins around and the hurt plain on his face is enough to make his tongue feel like it’s disintegrating. It’s raw, teary, just like Frank’s in the most bitter mirror image. It feels impossible that he would hurt in even a fraction of the same way Frank does, but it snips his anger in the bud and makes him hold back the worst of his retaliation for the possibility Gerard isn’t here to play more games.
So Frank sucks up his pride and clenches his jaw up tight. “Fine.” He strides over to the bed, sitting on the edge, going silent with a hard stare.
Gerard is only partially relieved by his allowance of this. He’s agitated standing in front of Frank, not knowing what to do with his hands, so he rakes them through his messy black hair and sighs deeply. “It wasn’t something I expected. It just . . . happened. I met her before, back when we were barely recording for Revenge and touring. It wasn’t the right time then, somehow we knew it.”
“Yeah, because you had me. And Kat.” Frank raises his eyebrows.
Gerard glares down at him until Frank forces himself to look away. “Kat was open. You know that. It’s the only reason I was able to have you.”
Frank’s mouth curves in a mirthless smirk and he stares down a crack in the ceiling. “Ending that relationship didn’t stop you from crawling into my bunk when you were engaged to Eliza all but thirty minutes ago.”
“Frank,” Gerard warns. “You’re making this impossible.”
He is. Frank can’t seem to help himself when everything falling from Gerard’s mouth sounds like an excuse. But if listening is going to bring an end to this, Frank is more willing to let it continue. He gestures with his hands. “Keep talking.”
Gerard swallows hard, taking into consideration what needs to be said and what doesn’t. When he speaks, he sounds fragile, slow and cautious. “I know I told you I couldn’t do anything serious. That was true. There was too fucking much bombarding me all at once, too much brokenness, I didn’t think I could handle another relationship. I had to be by myself in that way, just keep myself under lock and key, and I know— I always knew I loved you, Frank, I still know that, but it was just . . .” He trails off, overcome, but not giving into it entirely. He never does.
Frank doesn’t know how to handle Gerard saying those words he’s always yearned to hear. He’s heard and felt them in a half-hearted context, unserious and bubbly moments, but never with the amount of grit and heart he speaks them with now. But it feels like thorns tearing up his insides when Frank swallows it down and he can’t stand it. His eyes heat with the tears he’s been holding back and he bites the inside of his cheek hard to force them not to fall.
“What makes her different?” Frank’s voice cracks.
Gerard shakes his head, grimacing. “Don’t make me say something like that.”
“I have the fucking right to know why I haven’t been chosen again.”
“It worked out differently for her and I. I knew immediately all the things I could have with her. A wife, children, a bigger reason to keep going. I’ve never been able to envision a secure life with someone before. I’ve never felt entirely safe. But she looked right at all the fucked up thoughts in my head and told me there was nothing in there she couldn’t handle, and I loved her for it.”
“Haven’t I put up with you?” Frank’s breathing grows erratic through the fresh swing at his vulnerable heart. “Through your phases of inflated ego, the mood swings, the constant cold shoulder, the—”
“The addiction?” Gerard brandishes a knife like he took it from Frank’s own hands that had come empty. His eyes, cold and full of pain, somehow pierce harder than any blade. “Go ahead. Tell me what a burden I was. It’s nothing that wasn’t already obvious.”
Frank would never feed Gerard’s innermost insecurities that way, but in the wake of his fire daring Frank to hurt him in the same way he hurt Frank, he feels like he can’t do anything but tell him exactly how it is.
He speaks slowly, holding no accusations, but not exactly sugarcoating everything as he always has. “Do you know what it’s like losing sleep because I couldn’t keep my eye off you or else you’d go wandering off for some alcohol or blow? The time you punched me in the fucking stomach because I told you I wasn’t going to let you go out there and kill yourself?”
Gerard looks staggered. It’s a quiet, shameful piece of history they’ve both done their best to bury, but it doesn’t mean Frank has completely forgotten. He’s forgiven all of Gerard’s lashings because he hadn’t been himself. Hurting others gave him ammunition for his own self-hatred. But for Frank to have all of his own empathy and tenderness spat in the face, to be labeled as someone who can’t handle any of Gerard’s darkness, is a lie he won’t stand for.
Gerard stumbles. “I’ve always hated myself for that, you know—”
Frank throws his hand up to stop him. “It doesn’t matter. I already know. I’m not blaming you for the addiction, I’m showing you how fucked up it is to imply that I couldn’t or can’t handle you at your worst. My point is that I’ve carried you like a fucking boulder on my back and never stopped climbing uphill even when it felt like I was gonna break.” He struggles to catch his breath, ragged as it is. “So I’m sorry if I don’t understand and never will. I’ve always fought so hard to be enough for you.”
But he isn’t. He’ll never have another chance to prove himself either.
Frank hits himself in the gut with a wrecking ball of his own. With that, it becomes physically impossible to keep from weeping. Tears rivet down his face and don’t give him the benefit of leaving hollowness behind once they’re finally freeing themselves. If anything, it hurts worse letting them out, like he’s exposing his jugular vein to Gerard and asking him to tear into it for the killing blow.
The strange innocence of losing control of his tears seems to break through the embittered ice in Gerard’s demeanor. He wavers until he too can no longer repress that incessant yearning that’s the cause of all this pain. Suddenly, he’s right there, cupping his hands around Frank’s wet cheeks, wiping his tears until Frank has no choice but to look into those hauntingly expressive eyes that reveal everything and nothing. Lashes wet with residue of similar tears, but it says a lot that they aren’t falling while Frank is on the brink of sobbing.
“You are. You have been enough, always. I love you, Frank.” He admits it. Yet it doesn’t feel nearly as good as it should, coming several years too late.
Frank knows he’s waiting for him to break and melt the ice cap between them. It’s frigid as ever and distancing him in a way he’s never felt before— a way he hadn’t even known was possible for him. The line between himself and Gerard has been so blurred that Frank moves in accordance with all of Gerard’s decisions and encouragement and he’s lost when he finally refuses to follow them. It’s terrifying to realize he’s hardly his own person anymore.
Frank takes Gerard’s wrists and pushes his hands away from his face. “I think you do love me. In your own selfish way. I think you love what I do for you, how I make you feel. You love that even after you knock me over onstage in front of everyone so even the fans are speculating what the fuck is happening between us, I’ll still open my door to you and let you cry about how sorry you are. I’ll let you take my clothes off and fuck the hurt right out of me.” Just like he’d done that night. Frank still feels Gerard all over him and not even bleeding out could erase the feeling. It brings him comfort and destruction all in the same breath.
Gerard looks like Frank has ripped him apart. His hands are still where Frank left them, palms wet from his tears. This is a first for him; rejection. Frank can’t help but chuckle once, a single and mirthless sound.
“Do you think she’ll give you that same satisfaction? Or does she have enough self respect to walk away, unlike me?” Frank licks his lips, jaw hard. “She’s way better than me in that way. She wouldn’t allow all this the way I have. But that doesn’t work for you, Gerard. You want someone familiar to walk all over and they’ll never say no, no matter how many times you do it. A fucking doormat. That’s why you pushed away everyone else but kept me around, your bad habit.”
Gerard’s eyes slowly turn to stone. His hands fall limply to his sides. Stepping back, he spits, “Fuck you.”
Frank scoffs. “Yeah, I already have.” Frank crosses his arms over his chest so Gerard won’t see how those two words have cut him down the center. “Are we done?”
Gerard, ever so stubborn, only smiles wryly, eyes slowly scanning Frank from head to toe with shrewd eyes. “I don’t understand how you have the right to be bitter about not being chosen when you married Jamia first.”
At that, Frank wholly considers swinging at him, but the only cause of refraining is the way Gerard steps back like he’s truly afraid for a second Frank will do exactly that. He springs up instead, clenching his fists at his side. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking go there, you bastard.”
“You think I wasn’t hurt? You’re the victim all the time, right? I’m just some fucking villain in your story, it’s not possible that you’ve ever hurt me, you fucking saint. I should be kissing the ground you walk on and begging for you not to leave.” A tear rapidly spills down Gerard’s cheek and touches the curve of his sneer.
“I was with her before you. I always knew what she was going to be for me and she did, too. That’s the only reason she allowed you in and told you I was just as much yours as I was hers. The both of us told you right away and you were fine with that.”
“What if I wasn’t fine with it? I just had to take any chance I could to touch you?”
Frank barks out a laugh at the pure insanity of Gerard manipulating the situation and forming a sword out of it. He doesn’t take the bait, batting Gerard’s makeshift weaponry away. “Then that’s your problem.”
Gerard is without words. He tries to find another reason to fight, flushed and furious, but he slowly wears out and turns into an example of pure hopelessness. Frank figures out what he’s doing quickly. If they keep fighting, cutting each other’s throats and stitching them just to open the wound again, Gerard won’t have to walk out the door and be done with what they have. Fighting is better than pretending the other doesn’t exist at all and suffering the pain of cold silence where there used to be laughter and affection. Gerard works in truly baffling ways. But Frank can’t say he also isn’t scrambling to fill the silence when it swells between them.
He only has one last thing to make certain of before this is truly over.
“Does she even know about us?” Frank raises his eyes and doesn’t back down.
Gerard’s flush spreads. He smashes his mouth into a thin line of refusal. But the tinge of shame, the slight lowering of his head, is enough of an answer to obliterate the final intact shard of Frank’s broken glass heart.
“You let her marry you . . . and you didn’t even think to let her know about me before that.” It’s so typically Gerard, Frank wants to laugh. It comes out sounding strangled and blue. He scrubs his hands down his face.
Gerard stares at the ground. “Because it’s not gonna happen again.”
Frank can’t possibly absorb more pain at this point, so he accepts that with no reply. He feels himself entering a state of numbness hardening the once tender spots in his chest. Frank usually has so much fight in him, he’s never one to back down from the chance to have the last word, but he’s too exhausted to stress about that now even if his dignity might resent him for it later.
“Well that settles it then.” Frank sounds unlike himself. Monotone. “Get out of my room.”
Gerard’s entire body twitches like he tries to obey, but his feet are cemented in place. He lets out a shaky breath. “I can’t.”
Frank’s fury tangles into his grief and forces his voice out of him. “Get out or I swear to god—”
“I’m still in love with you.” Gerard frantically presses into Frank’s wounds so hard it knocks the air out of him. “I came here to tell you that I always will be no matter what and I don’t want you to think I’ll stop loving you just because I need to end things between us.”
Frank wants to believe it more than he craves breathing. Here he is, flayed and out of strength, and he doesn’t know how to fight against the vulnerability in Gerard’s voice and how it grows smaller towards the end. He finds himself landing back on the bed, crumpled and letting the tears fall.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were marrying her, Gee?” He looks up at him like a child who doesn’t understand why terrible things happen.
“You would talk me out of it. I’d let you, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from . . .” Gerard bites off the end of that sentence, either because it doesn’t matter or it’s too much to share. He leaves it at, “She deserves better than that.”
“Then you better tell her the truth if you really think that way.”
“I will.”
Frank exhales. “You knew how this would end. Why didn’t you break it off sooner if you knew from the beginning what she meant to you?”
“I had to be sure . . .” Gerard swallows hard and looks into Frank’s eyes like he’s burning on the inside. “I had to know if what I felt for her would make me strong enough to let you go.”
Frank stares back at him. “Are you strong enough?”
Gerard doesn’t answer. They stand there for a long time, staring at each other, only ceasing eye contact to blink when their eyes water from the sting of being open too long. Frank tries to pull the answer out from his gaze, but for once, his expertise when it comes to reading Gerard fails him. He isn’t sure he wants to know the truth anyway.
Yet it comes to him in the most unexpected way. Gerard, swallowing down his pride, slowly gets to his knees in front of Frank. He approaches him like that, not stopping until he’s close enough for Frank to watch a tear form and fall down his face.
“I’ve quit many things. Things I thought would be impossible to fucking put a stop to. But you, Frank, I don’t fucking know how to stop myself when it comes to you.” Gerard’s head rolls forward in shame, forehead resting on Frank’s knees with burning contact, his breath trembling. “You make me wish I was better, but I’m not, and that’s not the kind of person you need to be in love with you.”
Frank bites his lip to keep a sob from bubbling out. “But I do need you to love me, Gerard. I don’t fucking know what to do with myself if you don’t.”
“I always will.” Gerard takes Frank’s limp hand between his own and kisses it all over, tears staining his skin. “But we have to think about ourselves outside of what we’ve become. I need to stop this. Or it’s gonna kill us both.”
Frank knows. He feels like he’s already been shot twice in the chest. He doesn’t know how to explain this to Gerard, but it would be a fruitless attempt when deep down, he understands there is no possible way to live a full life if it all depends on one person.
Frank tastes iron in his mouth. Gerard is kissing his way up to his wrist while Frank shakes out a bitter laugh.
“I hate you,” Frank gasps out.
“I know, baby,” Gerard whispers, kissing the inside of Frank’s forearm. “I love you.”
Frank yanks his hand free. He uses it to curl his fingers tight in Gerard’s hair and drag him up. Gerard goes like he’s made of clay, molding to the shape of Frank’s rough hands taking him and bringing him into an equally hard kiss.
It’s nearly brutal the way they move their lips together, teeth biting and pulling until the taste of blood blooms between them. When the salty sting of mingled tears finds its way into the kiss, they slow their fervor and melt together, just like they always have. The blending of paint on a canvas and the ripples on water, violent and beautiful. Gerard holds Frank like he’s made of porcelain riddled with fissures, on the verge of breaking apart entirely. Frank doesn’t show him such mercy, but even his fierceness is underlined with habitual tenderness like the apologetic lick of his tongue against the bleeding sore spot on Gerard’s lip and the nuzzling motion of his nose against Gerard’s in the tiny seconds they take to suck in desperately needed air.
They break apart abruptly, otherwise they won’t be able to stop kisses from turning to heavy touches. Frank feels cold without the scalding heat on his lips. Gerard, breathing hard, slowly drags the back of his hand across his bleeding lip. A smear of scarlet he leaves on his fair skin looks like rust in the snow. Frank’s heart is beating wildly as he numbly stares at it.
He reaches out and cleans it with his thumb. Still cleaning Gerard’s messes, even before he sweeps up after destruction that went on inside him mere seconds ago.
Gerard squeezes his eyes shut and kisses Frank’s thumb. Standing, he doesn’t look at Frank, and he’s thankful for that. Gerard is his Medusa and looking into his eyes will turn him to stone. He instead watches Gerard’s back as he walks away, waiting for the door to quietly close and click behind him before he breathes again.
He’ll be back someday. Only this time, Frank doesn’t hold onto hope.