TALK TO ME ¯ᶠʳᵉʳᵃʳᵈ

-ˏˋｓｉｘ：ａｌｗａｙｓˊˎ-

After Gerard finished cleaning the bathroom, he came out and sat on the bed next to me, holding the razor in his hand. I began to tremble seeing it in his hands and not my own. Something about the thought made me panic. Gerard noticed this and quickly put the razor down on my nightstand. I calmed down immediately. This was why I missed him so much. Without either of us saying a word, he knew exactly what was causing me to panic.

“Can I throw it away?” he asked, pointing at the razor.

I cuddled into my sheets and hid my face in my pillow, not wanting to answer him because he wouldn’t like it.

“Why can’t I?” he asked, once again reading my mind and knowing my answer. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself again. I understand it, I do. I used to cut awhile back.” I looked up at him, eyes wide. As secluded as Gerard may have been, I would have never imagined he did that. He was always deathly afraid of needles and things like that, so I was surprised that he did something like that. “It was only for a short while, but I stopped. But so I get how it makes you feel, but I want to know why exactly you do it. This obviously wasn’t the first time, and I know this time was my fault.” I shook my head, but he continued anyways. “But I want to know why all the other times. What makes you do it?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, awkwardly texting while laying down on my side and Gerard waited patiently as I typed for him. I held out my phone with my answer. “Whenever I feel alone.”

“Frankie, you’re not alone,” he said, sounding so hurt for me. But I really didn’t want his pity. I didn’t want to feel as though he was with me out of pity.

I nodded and went back to typing. “I can’t even talk to people. That means I’ll always be alone.”

“You have me,” he said and my heart fluttered at the statement. I didn’t even care at that point if it was out of pity, it was still amazing to hear. “And Mikey and your mom, and even my parents love you. I know a lot of people don’t approach you because you don’t talk, but fuck them. The people that matter are the ones that stick around and you have those people.”

I looked down at my phone, hesitating before I wrote the next. I had to muster up all the courage I had in me to be honest with Gerard. I faced my phone towards him and looked down. I had written, “But you didn’t stick around.”

“Frankie,” he sighed, sounding apologetic before he even apologized. I shook my head before he continued and wrote another message.

“You didn’t stick around, but you do matter.”

A small, one sided smile crept onto Gerard’s face. He moved my phone down out of his way, so he could look straight into my eyes as he spoke. My first instinct was to avoid his strong gaze, but his eyes were so mesmerizing, I figured that would be impossible to do.

“Those two years that I ignored you, I didn’t matter,” he said each word carefully and articulately, like he was making sure they were engraved into my mind. “But I came to my senses and now I’m here, because you matter to me. You’ve always mattered to me. I was just too stupid about it.”

My eyes welled up with tears, but I blinked them back, not wanting to ruin this moment with my oversentimental mind.

“I’ll always be here, as long as you need me,” he spoke, leaning in so that his cheek was pressed against mine and my heart all but stopped. His warm breath hit my ear with each word and I shut my eyes, trying to hold the shiver that was attempting to creep up on me. “Even if you don’t need me, I’ll still be here until you do.”

“Hey I think Frank’s mom is—WHOA WHOA EW, TOO CLOSE, TOO CLOSE!” If I could talk at that moment, I would have used every cuss word in the English language to tell Mikey to go the hell away.