nobody will love you like the devil will//frerard/ferard

chapter eight

He don't go back to normal after Gerard's gone. Frank wanders restlessly around the house, starting and abandoning six books in quick succession and then writing the same sentence three times in a row before giving up on his English assignment too. He ends up going to bed early just to get away from the noise in his head, which doesn't work, of fucking course, and he tosses and turns while his mind spins in dizzy circles. Gerard. Gerard. Gerard. It's the last thing he thinks before he drifts off sometime around midnight.

***

He jerks awake hard and panting a few hours later, staring unseeingly at the wall and forcing himself to breathe. He's figured out what was gnawing at him.

If Gerard had done it, had leaned across those last few inches and kissed him, Frank wouldn't have tried to stop it.

Frank gropes blindly for the rosary on his bedside table and clings to it like a lifeline, holding it so tightly his knuckles go white and stumbling over the words he knows as well as he knows his own name.

He falls asleep before he's even halfway through the Apostles' Creed, his rosary still tangled around his fingers.

He dreams about rotting things in the dark, contorted and misshapen. He's pushing his way between them, tasting panic. He doesn't know where he is, but he knows he shouldn't be here. The heat reeks of decay and something metallic, pushing oppressively against his skin. He doesn't know what he's running towards – running from? – but it's the only thing that matters. He has to keep running. The darkness is alive and conscious, much more than just the absence of light, and it boils and seethes around him. There's something here, something malevolent and profane and godless. Something wrong. It turns his stomach and he stumbles to a halt, retching. Black bile splatters over his fingers, slick and foul. He's sick, maybe dying, the sickness filling his lungs and infecting his flesh, loosening his teeth and blinding his eyes, spreading like hellfire--

There are tears on his cheeks when he wakes up, and his throat feels as wrecked as it always does after a two-week bout of bronchitis. Only a dream, he thinks, exhaling shakily and grinding his hands into his eyes. Only a fucking dream, nothing to be scared of.

***

He tries to forget about it. He makes even more of an effort to be helpful and not a pain in the ass than usual to make up for it, but it just won't fucking go away. He's tried explaining it away from every angle he can think of, he's tried imagining it in great detail to gross himself out, he's tried praying until his head hurts and the rosary beads have left faint indentations in his fingers, but nothing seems to help. He isn't panicking (yet), but he doesn't think there's any need to freak his parents out and make them worry by telling them. Not only would it be the most awkward conversation ever (and that's including his dad's horrific talk about "the birds and the bees"), but he's still holding onto the hope that if he ignores it hard enough, it'll go away.

It doesn't go away.

He's just minding his own business, watching a safe, stupid talk show. Talk shows are generally safe because they have absolutely nothing to do with anybody kissing anyone else at all and-- fucking hell, now he's thinking about it again, fuck, fuck, fuck. He tries really, really hard to be interested in what the blonde dude on the screen is talking about, but the words bounce off Frank and roll away like raindrops off an umbrella.

His mom comes in and sits down next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. He leans in, and she chuckles and presses a kiss to the top of his head.

"Hi, mom," he says, smushing his face into her shoulder. She smells like soap and that perfume she always wears.

she mimics, and he rolls his eyes.

They sit there like that for a while, occasionally trading comments about the talk show. Then she says, "You're not yourself. There anything you want to talk about, baby?"

He darts a quick look up at her face, then looks away again. She's got that little worry line between her eyebrows that she always gets when he's stressing her out. Fuck, he should have known she'd notice. She's probably been freaking out this whole time. Now he really does feel like an asshole.

"Um," he says, in a voice so small it's practically non-existent, looking down at his knees. There's not really any point in lying. She's his mom, she'll get it out of him sooner or later. "I, uh. Might have thought about kissing a boy?"

"Hey. C'mon, look at me."

He cringes and looks up, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

"Baby, I know it's confusing," she says gently, pushing his hair back off his forehead. "But I know you'll do the right thing. One day, you're going to meet a girl and get married and have kids, and you won't even remember this. I promise. You're a good boy, I know you won't do anything stupid. We all have thoughts we shouldn't sometimes, but we've got to rise above it and not act on them, okay? It's the devil's way of tempting you."

Yeah. Yeah, okay." He feels like a weight's been taken off his shoulders. That must have been all he needed, someone who's sure of things to remind him which way is up and which is down.