Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In my dreams they’re all proud of me. We sit around the breakfast table, and mom’s made me pancakes because she remembers they’re my favourite, and my dad’s glasses are broken how they used to be and my brother is smiling. Smiling like he does it all the time, like he remembers how. I ask him to pass me the syrup and he does. Mom pours me coffee and my dad asks me what lectures I have at college today, and I tell him, just like I’m still there, like I never dropped out. Then he makes a joke about how none of the modules sound real, because art is so wishy-washy to him, and everyone laughs and I laugh too because it’s okay if he doesn’t get it. It’s okay in a way it won’t be when I wake up. Because in these dreams, he’s proud of me. 

They all are.

He’s in them too, sometimes. Not in-in them. Because I would never have met him if everything were really as happy as this. It wouldn’t make sense, and my dreams, for the most-part, tend to make sense. So he stands apart, just a face peering through  the kitchen window or a figure hiding behind the fridge. Like he knows he shouldn’t be there. Like he’s only there because he’s everywhere inside me, and anywhere I am, he will be. I can never tell if he likes it there. In my dreams, in my memories that never were. He looks uncomfortable. That’s all I know. 

I try to talk to him sometimes. I say his name

Frankie?

Or wave, or point, or tell him to come and have breakfast. Ask him if he wants coffee, or pancakes. That he’s welcome to join. 

He never responds. Never answers. He just looks at me. Looks at me with these big, beautiful eyes that make me want to hold him and kiss him. That’s when I realise I’m dreaming. Because now I’m kissing Frank and holding him and I turn back to my family and they’re still sitting there. Chatting, smiling. They’re still proud of me. 

Most of the time, I wake up happy after these dreams. They’re nice dreams, colourful and simple. A Monet come to life. It’s been a long time since I saw my family so unashamedly presentable. Like a tv family. No fighting, no tension, no anger. So that makes me happy. Most of the time. Other times, usually after the ones that Frank makes an appearance in, I wake up completely hollow. Grieving, almost, for this moment of bliss that I never, and will never, know. Not with my own famiily, atleast. 

My mom loves you. Frank had said once, after I had told him a watered down version of this. She’d make stacks and fucking stacks of pancakes for you, Gee.

I’d curled around him more, moulding to him easily because he’s always been the only place that had fit me. I know. I’d whispered against his neck. It was always a good morning, being able to wake up next to Frank. Thank you.

Today, I wake up alone. The otherside of the bed empty, neat. So untouched it’s painful to look at. So I don’t. I sit up, clamour for my reading glasses and shove them onto my face just to close my eyes and stare in silence at the dancing stripes of dark behind my eyelids. It’s the first of October today. The first ‘1st’ of the month that I’m not getting woken up by a pinch and a punch and, a little left of the traditional rhyme scheme, lips on my lips and hands down my pants. 

It’s so cold, and the sunlight’s a strip of grey ghost on the wall. The bit of sky I can see is empty and sunken, like how the skin slowly buries itself around the teeth of a corpse. It’s depressing, but it’s a welcome sight. because sometimes I look out there and I still see a blazing orange, and I still feel the choking hot dust cloud punching towards my window. I remember the sinking ball of sick and fear when I later turned the tv onto the news just to stare at that bite taken out of New York’s skyline. Like it’s missing two of its bottom teeth. And I remember how I could get in so little breath that when my knees shook and collapsed and I tried to call out to him, like he might hear me through the tv screen, no voice had come out.

 I remember us wondering the night before if maybe he should stay home , because my mom was visiting the next day and it’s always better when he’s there to ground me. 

It’s always better when he’s there, full stop. So when I had managed to rip away from the television screen and stumbled into the apartment hallways to use the payphone, and his stupid big cellphone that we had affectionately nicknamed the brick just rang and rang and rang until it rang all the way through and I was being told by a kind, pre-recorded voice to try again later, that I can easily look back and pinpoint that day as the worst day of my life. 

Today is not that day. But it’s not a good one, either. He wasn’t in the dream, and my mom’s coming round later to bring me some dinner and talk about anything other than what I want to. Mikey, my brother, might come too which would be nice but he also won’t want to mention Frank and—

And…

And I just don’t know how much longer I can take this big, rotting gap on the other side of my bed. Especially in this much silence. 

It’s nine in the morning, the alarm says. A month ago, that would mean I would get up and make both sides of the bed, wash myself in a shower that was still wet and spit toothpaste into a sink that already had a trail of it foaming around the plug hole. Because God forbid he ever rinse it down, no matter how many times I complained. 

And then I would go into the kitchen and there would be a bowl of cereal already poured for me on the counter, no milk, like he thought the hard part about eating breakfast was the pouring-out part of it. If I then looked to the side a little, there’d be a post it note racked somewhere near by and it would say something like love you. Gonna pick up Chinese for dinner <3 or will be home at 5:30. Will rent a movie for tonight. Make popcorn! Or sometimes just gonna suck your cock so hard tonight you’ll go blind, by the way. With a drawing of said cock, and I would stick them all to the fridge, row after row after row, until time dried up their glue and they’d flutter to the floor and Frank would plead with me to finally just bin them.

It makes me feel sick now, thinking about how much of his handwriting, of his thoughts, of his drawings, of his love that I just threw into the garbage and forgot about. There’s only eleven left, as of this morning. Two of which fell off, and are now laying safely inside a small cuff-link box that I’ve designated especially for the other nine, when they eventually fall too. The fridge door will be bare then. It hasn’t been empty in years. I wonder if I’ll cry when that happens, or if it’ll just be another terrible, life altering change that I’ll tackle calmly, and quietly, and move on from. Just like the rest of them. 

The fridge is empty, except for half a protein bar left over from dinner last night and a dry bowl of cereal, about two and bit weeks old. I stare at it. I don’t know if it will grow mould or if it’s too dry for that. I hope it’ll just stay how it is now, forever, like playfood or clay. 

I grab the protein bar and turn on the coffee machine, because work today means having to go outside and having to go outside means having to see all the missing posters tacked onto windows and walls and lampposts and I can’t do that on an empty stomach. I can’t. I won’t need to worry about dinner, though. It’s Monday, and Frank’s mom always drops me off Tupperware after Tupperware, even after an intense bout of headless guilt had me yelling at her once that I don’t need your pity. I don’t need it. I don’t want your help, Linda. I don’t want you coming round here, anymore. Please. It just makes me remember. Please. Please.

I wonder if my mom will be here by the time she arrives. It’ll be a little awkward if she is. They’ve met a couple times before and it’s clear that Frank’s mom finds their tiptoeing around Frank and mine’s relationship ridiculous, and embarrassing, and disgusting. And I agree with her, except I’d never be as blatant about it as she has been. Blazing rows outside front doors and on stairwells. I hope Frank knew how great I thought she was for that. For ripping my family’s bigotry out from under their creeping feet and shoving it right in their face. I can’t remember if I ever told him. 

I’ve only had one bite of the protein bar before the clock on the wall tells me an entire hour has passed and I really need to get dressed and leave. I gulp the coffee down, no taste, and pull on  whatever I touch first in the closet. Ripped jeans and a dark grey polo. The bundle of my clothes always looked a little monochrome next to the bright pinks,  whites and blues of his, but now that mine is beginning to pile up in a dirty pile while his stays neat and and hung and untouched, the contrast really shines. 

He was all the colour in my life. All of it. 

The sky looks even greyer when I’m standing underneath it. I walk to the studio with my head hung, trying not to make eye contact with all the torso-less ghosts on A4 poster paper. I can’t really wrap my head around what they’re expecting, the families of those people. Those dead people. They’re not missing, they’re dead. Gone. What’s a poster going to do? They either came home, or they didn’t. Frank didn’t. That’s the end of it. A picture of him with my address and his mom’s phone number underneath will do shit all to change that. I blame these dumbass optimistic, heart-warming bits they’ve been playing on the news recently. Families being reunited after weeks, because their son or wife or parent got lost in all the chaos and all the dust and couldn’t make their way home until now, after everyone had already come to terms with them being dead and, on one particularly sickly-sweet occasion, had already had their funeral. And the news reporter stands to the side with a big, cheesy grin while everyone hugs and cries and shouts that they love each other. 

I hate watching those. I’ve never felt so jealous before. Not in all my life. And it lingers, too. That feeling of why them. Why not Frank. It lodges itself like a bullet inside of me, poisoned and slow-release, so it gradually sours me from the inside out. There’s just so much to hate, now. It’s easy. So I do it. I hate them. And I envy them. And I don’t want to think about them. Not now. Not when I have to be in the right headspace to see mom later. What I should have done is told her no, that I can’t do today, that I’ve got to stay late at work. But ahe must have sensed I was on the edge of dismissing her because she had played the trump card. Saying Mikey misses me, and was worried, and maybe it was a complete lie because she knows mentioning Mikey will always work on me, even the me who’s all sour and full of hate. But it could be true. Whatever. Too late to pull out now. And maybe he will come. Maybe he does miss me. Maybe he is worried. Maybe, maybe, but probably not. 

“Gerard!” Ray’s pulling me in for a hug that he knows I’d slip out of if I’d had the privilege of seeing it coming before hand. “Brian’s running a little late, he just called. D’you want a drink? There’s like… oh, you can’t have wine. Uhm… oh! Cranberry juice. And tropical punch.”

“What is this, middle school prom?” I squeeze him back before pulling away, because even though everything’s easy to hate right now, Ray isn’t. 

“I know, man. Glasshouse bars, right?”

“The other Glasshouse had coke.” 

“Yeah. The brown and white kind. That place was a total rink. This is the big leagues now, my friend. They’ve only got Moët or, uh, freshly squeezed.” 

“I never really do cranberry juice. Frank hates spiders and apparently the way they like, farm them, means you definitely get a few crushed ones in every batch.” 

“Oh, really? Gross.”

I frown. Pause. Say stodgily, “hated.”

“Huh?”

“Hated. I said ‘hates’. I meant— hated. He hated spiders.”

Ray’s hand is gentle on my back. I only notice I’m staring at his shoes when he shuffles them, pulling me against his side. 

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay today, right?” 

“Yeah. What? Yeah, dude.”

“Because I can handle it. Seriously. I have your print outs, I know the talking points. It’s just a buncha toffees looking around some art. I can handle it.” 

“No, Ray— I’m good. I’m— it was just the, whatever, the wrong word.” I look into his eyes, ignoring how dead and dry my own feel, and repeat, “I’m good. Seriously.”

He rubs a hesitant circle against my shoulder blades. “Okay. Okay.”

“So, like,” I glance at my watch. We should have started setting all this shit up ten minutes ago. “Did Brian give an ETA?”

“Uh… no. I should’ve asked, shouldn’t’ve I?”

“Should we just start?”

“Ugh.”

“I know. But he’s not gonna be much help, anyway. You know him.”

“Hah. Yeah. Unfortunately.” Ray seems to already have decided about Brian’s usefulness. He is already starting to peel away a grey dust sheet from a skeletal figure, curled and grasping at the air, built out of newspaper and PVA glue. 

There’s a ployeurathene board in one of the plastic wheelie boxes that says that it’s worth $6000. Jesus. To be able to say I made something worth six-thousand bucks. That’d be enough to make even dad give me a pat on the back. Frank wouldn’t care about the price, though. Frank was always proud of the stuff I made just because I was the one who made it. Proud in a way I could never quite teach myself to be. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what that feels like again.

“Dude.” And I must have zoned out because Ray’s handing me a tall crystal wineglass of cranberry juice, peering down to look in my eyes and throwing me one of those smiles. Awkward, but genuine. A comforting pat-on-the-back kind of smile. “You need to leave, you just say, okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m— thank you.” I hold the magenta glass a little too tight and take a sip a little too eagerly, but he prys away content, working at shucking more dust sheets.

 I finish the glass and help, moving weird, contorted sculptures around the room to their designated X’s, filtering through name plates and price tags and pouring out crackers and freshly washed grapes onto little blue porcelain platters. I’m arranging slices of gooey Brie into a staircase pattern when Brian bursts through the door, waving his hands and panting, apology after apology spilling from his mouth. 

“Oh, Jesus.” He says, after squatting to the floor and leaning back against the wall. His face is a little red and his hair is all over the place. He looks like a radish.  “Got caught up in this big, don’t even know guys, thing?”

“Okay. Was that thing your bed?” Ray asks. He looks a little tired from all the shifting around and kind of not in the mood for Brian’s usual bullshit. I’m not either, but I don’t really care enough to give a shit.

“Okay, listen, that was one time. And it was only thirty minutes.”

“It was not one time, Bri.” I scoff, because apparently I was wrong, Brian’s capable of a level that bullshit that cuts through even my apathy.

“It was many times.” Ray says. “Many, many times.”

“My alarm clock busted those times! That doesn’t count—“

Ray is pouring two glasses of wine. “Oh, it busted. Yeah. So we got you a new one, and then that one magically busted too—“

“It did!”

“You Matilda or something, Bri?” Ray scoffs, handing him a wine glass. “Bullshit, dude.”

When I go to drink more of my juice, I realise I’m smiling my first smile of the month. It’s leaves quickly. I can’t feel happy without the guilt after. He wouldn’t want me to wallow, he wouldn’t. I know that. But I feel like he’s owed it, in some way. Like the longer it hurts and the less good I feel, the more I’ll be able to prove what he meant to me. The pain he’s left in his absence. Because I do have to prove it. Especially with mom coming around later. I don’t want her to think I’m anywhere near over him. That’s the idea she’ll get if she sees me smiling. I can gather from little comments here and there that she’s already surprised that  it’s taking me this long. Like I was going to cry it all out in an afternoon and be done with it. Like what I had with him was something transitory and dispensable. 

Like it meant less, because I’m a man, and so was he. 

She’s more or less said exactly that, especially at the beginning when I first turned into Us. Especially before she had to start ignoring big chunks of our life in order to stay blind to how serious and how real it really was.

“Gerard?” 

I look over when Brian calls my name. I must have zoned out again, but he doesn’t look concerned. What’s on his face is confusion, and it takes me a moment to realise he’s only just noticed the other person in the room is me. His brow folds,  eyes honing in like I’m something far, far away.

“Didn’t think you’d be here.” He says. 

“What? Why not?”

Except, we all kind of know why not. It pisses me off. Maybe I don’t have breakfast anymore, maybe I don’t smile, but I’m still functioning. 

“No, just…”

“You told me to be here, and I’m here. What’s so confusing?”

“I told you before, y’know… anyway. Anyway!”

Before it happened, he was going to say. And then it happened, and this whole thing kept getting postponed and postponed, and I took a week off somewhere in between then and now because everything was too much. And it still is. And it probably always will be. But I said I’d be here, and if I say something I mean it. I’m still me. Things like that still stand. 

“Uh, so, two hours guys. We should really start hanging.”

Ray means the wall art. It’s my least favourite part. Hours and hours of no, a little to the left and take it down. We need to fix it higher. When I first told Frank that this was half of my job, he’d burst out laughing and asked if they needed any new hands. It was the first time we’d kind of acknowledged that, hey, you have the serious, big-suit office job and I’m the little artist you let live in the crawl spaces of your apartment. Which like, whatever. It shouldn’t have bothered me. I always knew pursuing art was never gonna be the big bill payer, that I’d probably have to roomshare and couch surf for the rest of my life, but there was something about Frank. The way he never brought up the wage disparity, never made anything of having to shuck the larger half of the bills, having to cover almost all the rent and emergency payouts and any vacations. It was the way he really wanted it not to be a big deal that made it such a fucking big deal. 

So we had had our first argument that night, sitting on the couch, eating pizza he’d paid for and watching a film he’d rented on a tv I’d been gifted secondhand for free. And it’s so stupid, thinking back. So stupid and naive and fucking ridiculous. I’d cried a little, I think. Wrapped up in the duvet, wiping tears away with the sleeve of my pyjama shirt, feeling like it was the end of the world when he had crawled in beside me and put his hand out in front of my face, holding a ten dollar bill. 

“I took this from your jacket. You paid for the pizza, alright? Now will you stop feeling like the thieving, scrounging bastard you are and talk to me again?”

It made me laugh so hard and so suddenly that snot had shot from my nose and onto the money and, oh fuck. It’s still embarrassing thinking about it. He had thrown it onto the floor and wiped my face, tears and snot and whatever else with his sleeve, telling me I was a gross motherfucker. And that he loved me. And he didn’t care about money. He really didn’t. He just cared about us being okay and comfortable and looked after. And that that’s why he was working a job he fucking hated, and why he didn’t want me regretting getting to do the one I liked. Because all that mattered were the hours before and after it when we got to be together, anyway. 

I gave him the best blowjob in the history of blowjob-giving that night. He’d said so himself. 

And this is really really why I hate hanging wallart. Because now I’m remembering the warmth and taste and pressure of him, and it’s mixed with the sinking punch of despair knowing that it’ll stay just a memory. Then I kind of need to cry and kind of need to jack off, except I’m also kind of at work. So I really shouldn’t do either of those things. 

I down my cranberry juice instead. Wishing it was wine. Thinking about maybe making it wine. That’d be a waste of five years. But so is everything else. Now he’s gone, it’s all been a waste. It wasn’t like I was doing any of that t-total bullshit for me.

The tears come before I can even register. It’s such a familiar feeling now, I wonder if I even would have noticed if Ray’s eyes hadn’t gone wide, and worried, and he hadn’t rushed over to me and put his arm around me and told me hey, seriously. Leave this to me and Bri, okay? Go home. Go home and call me later. 

I don’t go home. I think about it, and I’m heading that way, but then there’s a liquor store. Then another, and another. And it’s like, like it’s on purpose almost? Like the universe is saying hey, what the hell, huh? Who cares anymore. And I’m at the counter exchanging bills for beer before I really even know what I’m doing. The girl at the register shoves it into a blue plastic bag for me and I walk home with my head down, the bulky thing half hidden under my coat like the people passing by me might know. Might know that I’m planning on throwing all the sweat, blood and tears that went into getting sober away. All because I’m going through what every other fucker in this goddamn city is right now. And they’ll know it’s beating me. They’ll know I’m weaker than everyone else, and I haven’t got that bounce-back-stronger spirit the whole world thinks every New Yorker has because  I’m not a New Yorker, I never belonged to it. I belonged to him. He was my spirit. He was my strength. And now he’s gone and I just don’t care anymore. 

Frank’s mom is at the top of the stairwell when I get back. I shunt the bag of beer behind my back instinctively, but she seems too focused on my red eyes to notice. 

“Gerard, honey. Gerard. You’re back early.” She gives these big, tip-toe hugs just like Frank used to give, and for a moment it’s hard for my racing mind to distinguish one from the other. I almost kiss her neck, how I used to kiss Frank’s when he’d attack me as soon as I got through the front door. I realise and stop myself before I do. I don’t think I can take much more embarrassment today. 

“Hey, Linda.” God. I even sound like I’ve been crying. I must’ve been doing it the whole way home, and in the store too. Pathetic. 

“Oh, Gerard. Gerard.” And that’s all she says before she’s using her key to open my door. Frank’s key, with the little Frankenstein keyring he got after I pleaded with him to stop wearing it around his neck like a choker. She wrestles her way inside, because everything she does is always with a little bit of fight, and the two big checkered cool-bags swinging around her elbows bump into every wall and piece of furniture as she marches towards the kitchen.

“Lasagna. Three cheese casserole. Veggie medley. Cannolis for afters. A bitta pecan pie I made on Friday, too. It’s still good. It’s all veggie.” She pauses. The quiet that follows the explosion of her voice feels especially empty. This would be where Frank would respond. But I’m not good at small talk like he was, and I can’t think of anything to say past thank you so much, Linda. 

“It’s all veggie.” She says again, uncharacteristically quietly. It dawns on me, after a beat too long, why. I eat meat but Frank was a vegetarian, so she used to only ever bring us her vegetarian meals when he was still around.

“I like veggie stuff too, Linda. Thank you. Seriously. Seriously.”

“I’m so silly, I could have brought the beef bolognaise. I— I forgot.” 

Forgot. It’s such a loaded word but I understand everything encased within it completely. All these little habits, all these little routines that we had both just shaped so naturally around Frank, and now he’s gone, and we’re left still weaving ourselves around this empty space, forgetting we can walk right through now. Not wanting to remember that we can. 

“Oh! I have something for you!” I say. And really I was going to give it to her on Frank’s birthday, which is only a month away, but she looks so tired and so sad standing in the middle of my mail-strewn, fluorescent, empty kitchen and I feel like I need to do something. To look after her, how Frank would have done. Like he would want me to do. 

“Oh?” She follows me into the bedroom, stares at the muddy pair of All Stars two sizes too small for me that are still sitting by the door. There’s two stripes of flattened carpet next to them, where Frank would keep his work shoes. He only owned the two pairs. 

“Here,” I manage to shove the blue plastic bag under the bed pretty craftily while searching for the shoebox. I find it, laminated cardboard brushing against the tips of my fingers, and pull it out with a grunt. The dust blows off easily, and I take it back out into the lounge for for us to have a better look. 

“It’s just— uhm—“ I swallow. Crying’s a little like pissing when your drunk, in the way that once you start, it’s really hard to stop. I hate the powerlessness of it. How all I can really do is sit, and let Linda’s hand cover mine while I swallow and swallow and swallow until my throat hurts and my mouth is dry and, really, it probably would have just been quicker to start crying and really not give a fuck. Frank never cared when he cried. But I’m not Frank, and this is not my mom beside me, it’s Frank’s, and her only son is dead and she’s just brought his mess of a boyfriend gallons of beautiful home cooked meals because she cares about him, and she’s wonderful, and Frank loved her, and I love her, and I’m just making her day harder by sitting here and hurting. 

I pull myself together enough to open the lid of the box. It’ll be easier just to show her, anyway. 

There’s a tape, and a notebook, and some folded pieces of paper. 

“His music.” I say, words barely coming out. “The stuff he was writing. He recorded some of it onto here,” I pick up the tape and hand it to her. She holds it gently, like it’s as fragile and special as it is.

“it’s all of them. The entire album he wanted to send out, except for, well, I think there’s one missing. One song, I mean, because, uhm, here. Look. This is a list. Like, titles and things?” 

She takes the folded piece of notebook paper from me, unfolds it, glancing over it under big false lashes. Her eyes tear up the way mine did when I first found it. It’s a battle not to cry. I have to be strong, I have to be okay. Just for now, just to show her this. My hand shakes when I point to the last bullet point in the list. 

“I’ll be back.” I read out Frank’s scrawling handwriting, “Like the terminator. He liked that movie.”

“I remember.” She says, and then, “Oh. Frankie. Oh, Gerard.” 

She cries into my shoulder for a long time, while I read her out the pages of lyrics and poems and little journal entries written inside the notepad. I skip a few paragraphs. Dirty ones, that even I feel a little red-cheeked seeing. Maybe I won’t give her this part. But she can have the tape. She deserves it. It’s her son, and I’m pretty sure this is the only place he ever recorded his singing. She was always so supportive, of his music, of his creativity, of his passion. So supportive that sometimes a little pang of jealousy and envy would sneak up on me, when she was asking him about his dream-band or what he wanted to write next. My mom would never. 

 Anyway. She deserves to have it more than I do. That’s all I mean. 

“Oh, here— July twentieth. Mom came over, brought home made ravioli. Best. Dinner. Ever. Gee won’t shut up about me getting the recipe for him. Told him Mom never gives up her recipes.”

“Oh—! Yes I do!” Linda interrupts, swatting at my arm like it’s Franks. We share a small smile.

“I’d have to begbegbeg. And I’m not doing that. Even for Gee. And then, yeah, thought so. Here’s the recipe underneath.” I laugh, maybe for the first time since it happened. Linda’s hand is warm where it slides inside the crook of my elbow, the warmest thing I’ve allowed myself to feel for weeks. I feel sorry now, for all the times I turned her away at the door and asked her for a little more time alone. I feel utterly, completely sorry.

“Oh, Gerard, honey. He mowed the front and back lawns for that recipe. I hope you used it.”

I tell her yes, all the time, even though in reality it must have only been once or twice, it was too complicated and expensive and Frank said I made it taste different. Good different, but different. He wanted his mom’s, and that was alright. I used to think it must be the loveliest feeling in the world, to have meals that are made with such familiarity and love that eating it feels like coming home, and no recreation, no matter how painstakingly adorned over, can replace it. All love tastes a little different, depending on who it’s from.

“Oh!” I follow Linda’s fingers, cramming between the back page and back cover, prying out the corner of something white and shiny. 

Photographs. Photographs that I’ve never seen. I tell her this as she frees them, place the book back into the box by my feet to let her lean against my leg so we can both see.

I feel stone fucking cold at the first picture. 

It was always a big thing that Frank never played shows. That he always wanted to, that it was his one dream but it didn’t pay the bills so he just, kind of, never did it. Like he said, us being able to live under a roof and turn the heat on and being able to do that together was the most important thing, and being with me was kind of a dream, anyway, so. His words, not mine. And it always made me feel so fucking guilty, because here I was, prancing around my galleries and studios and playing with other people’s art for a measly sixteen-k per annum while he slaved away over a desk miles high in the grisly fucking sky, hating every second of it and coming home too tired to even look at a guitar, his passion, so that I could. And, okay, fiddling with other people’s art wasn’t my dream, I would have much preferred to fiddle with my own. But I still liked it, and it made me feel good and it never, ever drained me how Frank came home drained every weekday around five-fifteen. It wasn’t fair. And I had kind of promised him, quietly, just to myself, that I’d work really fucking hard for a promotion so that maybe he could lay off a little. Maybe go part time, have more time and more energy to finally get behind that guitar and show this fucking leech of a city that he’s the coolest, most creative, most authentic motherfucker living in it. My words, not his. 

So now, Linda’s arm squeezing mine, asking me what’s wrong, all I can feel is something heavy drop inside me. Like a glacier breaking off into water. I feel ripped up, and so, so cold. 

She goes to shuffle the pile, but I stop her. Pulling the picture up to my face, just in case I’m not looking at it right, in case it’s just the way the lights are playing on the laminated surface. 

No. I saw it correctly. 

Frank, guitar in his arms, bent over it like it’s an extension of his ribcage, face pink and screwed up with his mouth wide and contorted. He’s screaming into a mic and there’s a wave and blur of hands in the forefront, raised and pointed at him like blades of peach-coloured grass bending towards the sun. 

“Are these old?” I ask. 

There’s more. Different outfits. Different backgrounds. Bars, garages, one is outside, a fire pit in the background, people gathered around him like he’s preaching. He has a hairstyle I know in that one. Black and long, curled around his ears. His work made him cut it a week later, even though I made a fuss about it on the phone to whoever and whatever from HR. They had acted like they hadn’t even known him just to get me off. It was fucking ridiculous. None of this really acutely occurs to me, only subconsciously, little flares of thoughts behind the big glowing, alarming one pulsing against my chest. 

He lied to me.

“Old?” I hear Linda say. It doesn’t really feel like she’s there anymore. I can’t even feel her on my arm. “Doesn’t look like it. I didn’t know Frankie played live. Gerard! Why didn’t one of you tell me?”

“I…”

“I would have loved to have come watch. His dad, too. Oh, Gerard. You should have said something.”

“I… sorry. Yeah. I don’t know. I’m… yeah. We should have.” 

I stand up, feet shuffling me along to nowhere and then back again. I can see Frank’s guitar case from here,  peeking out of the bedroom door left slightly ajar. How did I not notice. How would I not notice?

“Sorry,” I say, “sorry. Sorry. I haven’t seen these before. I’m a little—“

“Oh. Honey… It’s okay. Let’s look another time, alright? It’s okay.”

“Thank you. Yeah, sorry, just…” I go back to where she’s sitting a little straighter on the couch. I don’t realise I’m searching her face until she smiles up at me, a bit of lipstick smudged on her front teeth, smile a little thin and wobbly.

“Gerard…?”

“Sorry.”

She’s not lying. I can tell. She really didn’t know, either. It seems like the lie Frank told hadn't been as straightforward to her, or maybe she really just doesn’t mind that he had hid that part of him. But I do. I really, really do.  

I’m about to tell her, when there’s a knock at the door. And then another, impatient and fast. 

“Gerard! Gerard. It’s mommy.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry, swearing. Sorry. That’s mom. Damn. Sorry. Linda—“

“Oh, I’ll scram. I’ll scram. I know, honey. Hey, hey—“ her arms slip out of their flowing sleeves as she throws her arms around my neck, pulling me back from my stumble towards the front door. “You’re doing really well. You are. You’re looking a lot better. It was lovely seeing you, honey. Really lovely. We’ll go through those pictures next week, alright?”

I hold her back. She’s warm again. 

Mom and Linda exchange icy glances as they shove past eachother at the door. Mikey’s eyes hit the floor instantly, cowering in the background. He was there the last time they fought, when Frank was still around. He’d taken Mikey into the bedroom, shown him a little of this and that on  the guitar. It was probably just something loud enough to drown them out, but Mikey became obsessed afterwards. Came round week after week to get lessons from Frank. He probably objectively wasn’t great, or at least I didn’t think so, but Frank believed in him. So, I did too. 

Actually, he was starting to sound pretty fucking okay when mom got wind of it. Said he kept bugging her about it, got angry at me for it. Like I’m the one who grew the talent and passion into him. That’s you I’d told her. When you had him. I wasn’t the one who decided to only like my kids as long as they stuck to all my conditions. She didn’t talk to me for two weeks following, didn’t let Mikey come visit either. He never asked about the guitar again after that. 

Frank never said anything about it but, I could tell he never really forgave Mom after that. It was the one mortal sin to him. To keep someone from their creative potential. Unforgivable. 

Except I don’t want to think about Frank in absolutes and facts anymore. It’s dramatic, I am dramatic and I know it’s dramatic to feel this way over some fucking photographs I really have no clue about but, how can I be sure any of it’s true anymore?

“Linda.”

“Donna.”

And then it’s over, I see Mikey’s chest heave with breath. He looks at me from under his eyebrows and I manage a smile for him. Only for him. He doesn’t smile back.

“Hey, baby.” Mom hugs me with her finger tips around my shoulders. She’s holding handfuls of plastic wallets, face pinched on like she’s come for business. Fuck. “I have mail for you.”

“What?”

“Mail, baby. Come on.” And then she’s in, ribbon of cigarette smoke waving behind her. 

I stop Mikey for a hug just inside the doorway, long and hard. He says hi into my shoulder, readjusting his big rectangular glasses as he pulls back. 

“How you doing?” I want to ask it before we’re crowded again. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Math final tomorrow.” He wrings his hands together. “Everything’s riding on that.”

“Oh, shit. You feel ready?”

He shrugs, arms hugging himself. He’s a clumsy looking kid, chubby and and a little spotty and still growing. Frank said it was cute, that I’d miss it when he grew more into his looks. I’m starting to think he’s right, now. It’s turning out that I’m not the biggest fan of change, especially not permanent ones. 

“Uhm… yeah.”

“You know, it’s okay whatever, right? To me and—“ I almost say Frank. I can’t finish the sentence, my jaw suddenly trembling, but he seems to understand, nodding. 

“Thanks, Gee. But Mom and dad—“

“Moosh! Boys. Get here, come on. We’ve got things to go through.” Mom’s voice rings loud and sharp.

Mikey’s arm closes around my waist as we go in. He hasn’t been inside since, well, Frank.  I wonder if he feels the emptiness too. If it hits him like a wave as soon as he steps through the door, like it does everyday to me.

“Ma, I can’t—“ there’s a fan of folders and binders spread out on the coffee table, plus one more that she’s plucking open in her lap. I feel exhausted just looking at them. “I’m really not in the right headspace today. Can we—“

“Gerard. Baby. I lugged it all the way here. And all one-ninety of him.” She jabs a finger at Mikey, cackling, “I’m not taking it all back again. Go— go make us all a nice coffee, okay? We’ll all have a nice coffee and sit down and I’ll show you what I’ve come up with.”

“I’ll make the coffee, Gee.” Mikey offers.

I don’t want coffee. I want to go through the photos. The photos of Frank. Alone. But I just say thank you, play the good son and sit down next to mom. She hugs my side with her cold, thin arms. 

“You feeling any better yet?” She asks. Like it’s all a mild cold that I just need to rest up and wait out.

“Not really, mom.”

“Aw. Baby. You will after I tell you about this.”

I edge away from her. I don’t like the look of what I can see on the papers. Numbers, names of banks, minus and plus sums. 

“Now, Frank made— what was it?”

“What?” My voice is tight and deep. It only ever sounds like this around her and my dad. I hate it. It feels like I’m putting on an armour I have no control over, everything in me just stiffens.

“His salary, baby. What was it?”

“Uhm… before tax… around… I think around forty-five K.” I’m not actually sure, we tried never to talk too much about money, but that number feels right in my head. “Why?”

She claps her hands, grinning big. “Even better than I’d worked out! So that’s— that’s four-hundred and something pay out, right?”

“…what?”

“Gee, d’you take sugars in your coffee?” Mikey appears over the kitchen counter, carton of milk squished under his elbow and three mugs wrapped up in his fingers.

Mom’s scratching my arm with her nails. I can’t concentrate. 

“Almost half a mil. And I only need about, forty grand from that. That’s all my debt, and then maybe you could throw a little extra our way. Only if you’ve got it spare.”

“…what?”

“His insurance, baby. Life insurance. They’re all gonna start coming through now. This girl at church Sandy, her husband went down too. She got just under four-hundred. Me-ow. Can you imagine? It’s getting deposited in her account tomorrow. Have you got any letters? Anything through the mail?”

“Gee? Sugars?”

Life insurance?

“Gerard. Think. Letters. Official looking letters. Think.”

His life insurance?

“I’m just gonna give you two. Thats what you used to have.”

He’s dead. He’s dead.

“Gerard, baby? Did you hear me?”

“I don’t have any sugar, Mikey.” And that’s all I can say. I feel sick. Like straight, bubbling nausea. For a moment, all I can think about is that plastic bag underneath my bed. 

Mikey shrugs. “Oh, okay. That’s all you had to say.” 

I start to cry as soon as he’s turned around. Big, heaving, agonising sobs that run through the whole middle of me, that hurt to breath through, that dry my throat and mouth and leave my chest feeling heavy but oh so empty at the same time. 

“Oh, babyboy. C’mere.” And I need to be held so badly that I don’t even mind that it’s her holding me. The woman who, when I first told her that I was with Frank, had asked me how I was so okay with being such a disappointment. How I didn’t feel even slightly ashamed. An unemployed, art-school dropout queer. Only one of those things has changed since then, and I don’t think it was enough to make her feel much differently. But arms are arms, and mothers are mothers, and pain is pain. I cry against the protrusion of her collar bone, some familiarity in the action. She smells of the same perfume that she’s smelt of all my life. It’s makes everything hurt more. There was once upon a time when I loved that smell.

“Gee…?” I can smell the coffee that Mikey puts down infront of us. Can see the toes of his shoes tapping against eachother as he waits for my bout of self pity to be over. 

I’m wiping my eyes, saying sorry, sorry, when Mom shoves a piece of paper in front of my face.  

“Did he leave it in your name?”

“Mom—“ it’s Mikey, one leg now tapping nervously against the carpet.

“Hold on, Mikey, baby. Gerard? Did he?”

“I don’t know, mom. I don’t know. We never talked about his work much. He didn’t like it so we never spoke about it. I—“ oh god. Here come the tears again. I just want her to care. To put me first. And maybe it’s selfish. But it’s all I want.

Frank was so good to cry into. He’d hold you, and stroke your hair and kiss your temple and say the funniest most well-timed little quip that’d make you choke with laughter, and the pain or the worry or the stress or whatever it was would go away temporarily and there’d just be him, holding you and rocking you and wound around you and then, eventually, with enough kisses in your hair, you’d forget why you were crying in the first place. And he’d make popcorn and put on a film, and make everything go back to normal just like that. He’d played me his guitar once. Eyeshadow streaming down my face, a phone still off the hook after a call from my dad, my mouth running ten miles to the minute and making no sense, telling him that I’d made such a mistake and I shouldn’t have dropped out and I’m always gonna be this big fucking failure and he’d pressed his lips to my forehead and said to give him a minute, dissapearing and reappearing from the bedroom, an acoustic guitar armed like a gun under his arm. 

It was a song he wrote, he said. I later found out it was for an ex-girlfriend but he said he thought of me anytime he played it now. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time to wonder when he did play it. This had been the first time he’d strummed anything more than a few campfire tunes around me. I’d been a crying mess before he had finished, but they were happy tears. Really fucking happy tears, big rolling marbles that washed all the sad ones away. It was so sweet, and so lovely, and it told me exactly what I could see he was struggling to say with words. That we’re both failures, a little. I’m an artist who can’t sell any paintings and he’s a musician who hasn’t ever released any music but, in one uncharacteristic stroke of luck for both of us, we found each other. And it’ll never matter if the world doesn’t get to see or hear our art, because the only eyes and ears that matter now are his and mine.

 I clapped at the end, a standing ovation, tears still flowing from my eyes when I kissed him so hard that both the guitar and he toppled from the coffee table. We all landed in one big acoustic-ringing heap on the carpet, his laughter warm on my throat. We made really fucking, guitar-traumatising sweet love on the floor. Right fucking there. Right where a request letter for a life insurance policy sits now. 

I see it through the triangle under mom’s armpit, my head detaching from where it’s pressed against her chest. My arms falling away from her. 

“Enough.” I croak. “I’ve had enough.” 

“Gerard.” 

“Mom. Seriously—“

“Okay. One more thing. Gerard. Just one more thing.”

“Mom, not—“ 

She talks over Mikey like he hasn’t even tried to speak, “I don’t know if someone’s playing a joke, or what, but I’m tired of seeing these.”

And then she’s forcing the same paper from earlier back into my hand, the right way around this time, so Frank’s black and white face is staring straight back up at me. 

‘Missing’

Except that’s not his name underneath. And that’s not my address, or his mom’s phone number.  

“There’s a lot of them down by us.” She says, words hard and cut up. “You might want look into getting them cleared up.”

Chapter Text

He doesn’t know I’m watching. I don’t even think he knows I’m home. It’s beautiful. He’s in just his underwear, legs raised and crossed on the low windowsill, a cigarette burning ribbons of grey smoke that rush to disappear through the open window. The study sits in mellow shadow, golden streaked from the setting sun, a soft glow  bakes the scarce furniture. A bookcase, a tall lamp, a cupboard nestled into the wall and the wicker arm chair he’s sitting in. The long arm of the guitar cuts through the wide rectangle of yellow sky, his arm bent around it, tracing it with a practiced wrist while soft, plucked notes billow away with the cigarette smoke. His voice soaks around it, quiet and low, a humming summers breeze.

“Hey.” I say, even my softest voice sounding too heavy in the dust hazed room. There’s one final box in the corner that we’ve yet to unpack, and he kicks it as he startles. Hand jumping to his chest, laughing.

“Oh my God, Gee. You scared the ever living shit out of me.”

“Sorry.” I say, looping my arms around the back of  him and the chair, resting my cheek against his. He smells of lemons and nicotine. “Don’t stop playing.”

I feel him warming against my skin.

“Oh God.” He chuckles. “How long were you listening?”

“It was really beautiful,” I say, sensing his embarrassment, trying to quell it because, well, it was. Beautiful, that is.

“It’s just… some shit I’m working on. New stuff.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm… I’ll play it for you when I finish it.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He turns his head, asking for a kiss that I give without thought. I still can’t believe I have this. Him, and an apartment with him, and. Him. And. This. And. Fuck. Who would have thought. Who would have ever thought that the boy who couldn’t even say the word ‘gay’ until he was eighteen would move to New York with his boyfriend to their own apartment only four years later. It’s like one of those things you dream about, fantasise about, saying oh, maybe in another life. Except here he is, in this life, in my arms. I wonder sometimes, in moments like these when he’s gripping onto me so hard I can feel the nails he’s bitten and the ones he hasn’t, if he feels the same. If he can’t quite believe I’m here, either. I hope so. I don’t believe so, but I hope so.

My hands are snaking below the elastic waistband of his boxers before I know what I’m doing, fingers running through the damp sweat clinging to the crease between his thigh and groin. He sighs into my mouth, hand coming up to grip my ear and some hair just behind. His breath does this beautiful thing just before he comes, where it must catch in his throat, ripping a little of his voice away with it like paint chipping from a wall and suddenly he’s gasping and groaning in a crackling high pitch, vibration becoming sound as he tears away from my mouth to breath shallow and quick. I feel it dripping against my knuckles, pooling at the gutter where my thumb runs along his length. He comes apart in my hands and I’m there to collect all the pieces.Two long, slow streams of breath meet and become one. I’m already staring into his eyes as he opens them.

“Did we just christen the study?” He asks, laughing a little. “I was planning on keeping at least one room orgasm-free.”

My left eyebrow pops up at it’s own accord.“So you walk into it playing beautiful music and looking hot as hell in your tighty-whities?”

“I didn’t know you’d be home, you pervert.”

“Mm…” I crouch down beside him, arms crossed on the arm of the chair. “There’s still the kitchen, anyway.” 

He looks at me, a minute change in expression that I know clear as day as his guilty face.

“Don’t tell me you—“

“Into the sink!” He says, quickly. I let my tongue poke out in mock disgust, in reality, it’s turning my semi into a raging fucking full-i. 

“What are you? A fucking cat in heat?”

He grins. “Meow.” 

“You’re lucky I love you.” 

Oh shit.

It doesn’t signify that I’ve said it, really. Because I just. I do. Love him. I think it all the time. In fact the last time was only moments ago, walking into the apartment and hearing that soft rainfall of acoustic guitar. I think it when I see him stirring a pot of dinner in the kitchen, finger tapping to a David Bowie cd. I think it when he wears that stupid brown cardigan, the one with the big hole in the arm and the pocket that he refuses to throw away because it’s his favourite. I think it when we’re walking on the street, or shopping, or sitting watching bad tv movies at his parents place. I think it all the time. I can’t be near him without thinking it. I just haven’t said it outloud yet. Neither of us have. 

The hand that was gripping my hair in ecstasy is now slowly tracing my cheekbone, following or maybe leading the drip of his liquid gaze. He looks from my eyes, to my lips, to my nose, my eyebrows, my cheeks, my chin.  Then he’s pulling me in by my ear, kissing the tip of my nose, my mouth, my brow, my forehead, my chin and both  cheeks. I pull away, giggling from the surprise and the tickle of his stubble. He keeps his eyes closed when he pulls me in again, firmer this time, kissing just my mouth with slightly parted lips. 

“How you feeling about work tomorrow?” I ask. I’m not really sure why. I’m certain he’s about to say I love you back, to really christen the place, and I interrupt. Why do I interrupt?

“Work?” He’s leaning back a little, mouth wonky. “Yeah. Uh…”

“Will you take me up there?”

“Huh?”

“It’s invite only, right? That’d be really cool. I’d love to see your cubicle. Do you have a computer?”

“Uhm…”

I use my clean hand to point out the window, at the two shards of ruler-straight light blue in the horizon. 

“It’s so rad. I’m gonna tell all my friends, my boyfriend works in the moutherfucking twin towers. And he wears a big suit, and takes a big briefcase and a big cell phone and cuts up big numbers on his big computer. And when he gets home, when he gets home he says ‘honey, I’m home’ just like straight people in movies. And I help take that big suit jacket off for him and he puts away his big briefcase and then I suck his big cock dry. Right there on the doorstep— sorry.” I grin, noting the wobble in his brow, the disjointed tapping of his foot. “I’m only playing around.”

“No, it’s… Gee… I…”

“You think you’ll be able to see me wave?” I say, quickly, flinging my arm back out to point through the window. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so panicked. Maybe it’s the tone in his voice. There’s definitely a tone. Something dry and strained like he’s trying to say something difficult. The afternoon is going too beautifully to try and tackle something difficult.

He follows the length of my arm. Staring at the barely recognisable pinpricks I’m gesturing towards in the distance.

“Might need to wear your glasses.” He says, eventually.

I laugh. 

“We can send smoke signals to each other. Black means, what does black mean?”

“I’m not wearing any underwear. And I’m totally thinking about you.”

“Oh my god.” I swat at him. “Smoke signals not smoke sex.”

“White means, I just came to dirty, dirty fantasies about you.”

I lean into him, dropping my voice. “You know. I’m really, really hard right now.”

His hand drops from my face, snaking underneath the arm rest to palm at the zipper on my jeans. “Oh. I know baby.” 

I wrap my arms loosely around his neck, feeling my lips stretch into a grin. “N’what’re you gonna do about it?”

His mouth is pulled tight, fingers popping open the button on my pants. 

“Gonna make you forget everything we just said. C’mere.”