Passenger Seat
Title: Passenger Seat
Author: sakurashakedown
Pairing: Frank/Gerard
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Mild Language
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not a thing.
Summary: It’s the night that I’m driving fast out of Philadelphia and northwest towards New York, City of Dreams that my car finally sputters and dies on some lonely highway just outside of Edison. Frank just misses Gerard.
I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.
Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.
"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.
When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide
For all time.
For all time.
Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie
------<>------
It’s the night that I’m driving fast out of Philadelphia and northwest towards New York, City of Dreams that my car finally sputters and dies on some lonely highway just outside of Edison. It’s one of those dark and winding roads with woods on both sides and no streetlights. The median still had a dent in it from where someone swerved and collided with the cement breaker and, driving past with just two cars in front of me, the remnants of glass sparkled under my headlights like diamonds. I don’t get mad though. With its dying breaths, I just pull over to the side of the road and just sit there, hands still on the wheel, foot still on the clutch. I don’t even blink. I’d turned off the radio as I’d zipped past Trenton so now all I can hear is my breathing, the engine cooling. Quiet.
Through my windshield I can see two tiny yellow pinpricks of light approaching me on the opposite side of the median. I watch them come closer, get larger and cast light on the windshield, bringing into focus the finger prints and cave drawings there, where, one year ago, Gerard Way was sitting drunk in the passenger seat and started tracing the fog on the window with his finger and, for a moment, I’m there again. We’re parked in some fast-food parking lot, under some copper orange streetlight and Gerard is tracing, saying, “…and this is what you’d look like if you were a zombie, Frankie. See, you’ve just got turned, so your face hasn’t rotten in yet. That happens, y’know. When you’re dead. I was watching this thing on the discovery channel and…” Gerard, sometimes he’d get drunk and just ramble on and on and me, I’d just sit there smiling and understand it all.
The lights disappear with a vroom and I watch them go through the rearview mirror. I know in my bones that that’s going to be the last car zipping through here for a while, this isn’t the main highway, it’s an older, scenic route, so I just sit back in my seat and let my hands slide off the wheel.
I feel tired but not drained; there’s still this restlessness pounding through my veins. The same restlessness that, earlier, drove me to pack up a bag and jump in my car that can’t even be trusted to get across town. The same restlessness that’s been pulling me towards New York all night. The same restlessness that started last week when Gerard Way drunk dialed me for the first time in months and I got to wondering how the hell I ever ended up in Philly in the first place when, all my life, I’ve only ever been about New York.
If I’m honest, my whole life I’ve only ever been about Gerard and one week ago he drunk dialed me and told me he wasn’t mad and all week my nerves have been going crazy with the thought that, maybe, that was a sign from God. I could come home. I’d paid for my sins.
When the car sputtered and died, so did the heater and I can feel the cold from the night slipping in through the air vents and the space where the glass windows meet the metal frame of the car. I pull my jacket tighter. I should’ve brought something warmer but I wasn’t thinking. I was running on instinct.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and it’s almost dead. The little red light bleeping on and off, telling me I’ve got a good ten minutes until it calls it quits for the night. I open up my contacts. I know who I want to call, who I need to call, but I don’t want to because I still might not be wanted. I might not have atoned for all my sins yet and the thought of any type of rejection before I get to New York to explain myself just puts me on edge.
I scroll pass Beckett, who won’t talk to me and Ross, who I don’t want to talk to. I pass Toro, who’s on vacation and Urie, who doesn’t drive and then I get to Way, who may or may not talk to me, but who’s my only hope for anything and I just pause. My thumb hovering over the button, I hold my breath and hit ‘call’.
A moment passes where it’s just silence and me breathing and then my heart beats as the phone just keeps ringing and ringing. Finally; voicemail. It makes my chest tight, his not answering, but I suck it up and say, “Hey.” I look around the dark interior of my car, the chipped dashboard, dead radio, and say, “It’s Frank.” I say, “Call me back. Okay. Bye.”
I close my phone and feel stupid and then open it again and see that it’s almost two-o-clock and feel even more stupid because, of course he didn’t answer, it’s two in the morning. I toss my phone on the seat and think about whether I should start walking to find a gas station now or later.
I sigh and suddenly my windshield is lighting up again and I know it’s a car, so I force open the car door and step up to the side of the road. I jump up and down, wave my hands. I yell, “Hey!” just as the minivan whips past me, barely missing me and sending me stumbling backwards into me car. I wasn’t mad earlier, but I get mad now. I kick my car.
“Shit!” I get back in the car, and leave the door open, letting in the night air and the warm smell of asphalt and the cool scent of evergreens. I think, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” and that’s when I realize my phone is vibrating pathetically on the passenger seat and I snatch it up.
I push my hair out of my face. “Hey.”
“Frankie?” It’s Gerard and my heart stops and my breath gets caught in my throat. He sounds tired and groggy the way he used to sound when I’d wake him up early back in Jersey to watch the sunrise. Those mornings, before coffee, sometimes he wouldn’t even open his eyes all the way; he’d just hold my hand and let me sleepwalk him up the fire escape and to the roof. Then, he’d lay his head on my shoulder and we’d hold each other close as we watched the sky go from gray to blue over New Jersey. And I’d say, “I bet New York sunrises are epic,” and he’d just nod into my shoulder. Those mornings, sometimes he’d be so quiet I’d think he was dreaming.
He says it again, “Frankie?” He says, “It’s, like…two in the morning, what’s up?”
I try to pull myself together. My breath is coming out in clouds so I close the door and say, “Gerard. I need you to do me a big favor. My car broke down and I’m stuck on the highway and its cold and my phone’s gonna die soon.” It just comes out like vomit, my sob story.
“What?” It sounds like a yawn and I can just picture Gerard pressing the palm of his free hand into his eyes as he tries to absorb all this while still waking up. “Where are you?”
I look out the window. The last sign I really paid attention to said, This Exit Edison, but that could have been miles ago. I say, “I’m outside of Edison. Going towards New York.”
I can just picture him getting up and getting ready, slowly pulling on unwashed jeans, phone propped between his shoulder and ear. He says, “Why?” and maybe there’s more or maybe that’s it, but just then my phone goes out so, either way, that’s all I’m left with. Why? Because, Gerard, I want to say so bad, I miss you. It’s been a year and I’ve missed you. Because Philly exhausts me and Ryan Ross didn’t mean anything to me. Because you called me last week and I realized, drunk or not, I’ve been waiting for that call for months.
I close my phone and guesstimate that I’ve got maybe a forty minute wait, maybe more, depends on how fast Gerard’s speeding. Gerard, when he got his first car a few years back when we were in high school, he’d come pick me up on the days we had long weekends and we’d go driving down the coast, zipping across the state, cruising into New York and getting dangerously close to Pennsylvania. Those long drives with no destinations, sometimes we’d get to roads like these, empty quiet highways, and Gerard would just floor it. Just take off. Times like that, we’d reach wherever we were going in half the time. Crazy thing is, he never got caught, Gerard. Unlike me. I get caught at everything. Running red lights, opening up Christmas presents the day before, cheating on tests, cheating on boyfriends.
I lean my head on the steering wheel, sigh and shiver and wait for salvation.
It’s only when my car is filling up with headlights and I hear the screech of brakes that I realize I’ve been sleeping. I sit up straight and wipe my face and the only thing I can see in the rearview mirror is blinding headlights. On my windshield, I can see every drawing and fingerprint Gerard ever left behind. I can see my almost-invisible, ghost reflection and the door of the car behind me opening and closing.
It’s cold and I can see my breath, clearer than ever. I can hear footsteps and then someone’s tapping at my window. I look up. Face half-lit by the yellow headlights of his car, I’d know him anywhere, day or night. Gerard. I smile through the window and it’s hard to really make out his expression, but he kinda only looks tired.
I open up the door and it’s just as cold outside. I stumble out of my car as Gerard instinctually steps back and, even though it’s cold and I’m shivering, there’s this warmth that just fills up my intestines and all I want to do is throw my arms around him so bad. Gerard. He still looks the same, I think; ghost white, black hair falling in his face, round, round hazel eyes. He’s not smiling, just looking at me in this confused sort of way with his head tilted slightly to the left and his thin chapped pink lips pursed together in a line.
“Hey, stranger.” My voice cracks a bit from the cold, but I don’t even notice.
“Frank?” The way he says my name, it sounds almost like a question, like he can’t believe I’m real and in the flesh, tangible, like he thinks he almost could be dreaming.
I shudder against my will and cross my arms, tap my foot, but I’m still smiling. I say, “Gerard. Jesus, it’s been forever.”
I’m shivering, but I’m smiling and all I can say is, “Gerard. You have no idea how happy I am to see you right now. No idea.”
Gerard doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even smile, just continues to give me this questioning, confused look and I know there must be a hundred things he wants to say, but doesn’t know how to put into words. Instead he just says, “It’s freezing out here, let’s go. We can catch up in the car.”
I follow Gerard to his car, same car he’s had since high school and when I get in, it feels familiar and warm and smells like Gerard, which has always smelled kinda like home.
“How’ve you been?” I ask and I know I’m just staring at him in that love-struck puppy way I always used to stare at him a million years ago when we were dating and happy and dreaming of New York. Gerard, on the other hand, isn’t looking at me at all; he’s just staring out the windshield, eyes glued to the road.
“Good.” It’s not said in that off-putting way you give people when you just want them to shut up and go away, instead he says it in that way people say things when they don’t really know what to say. They want to add more, but right now, all those things they’ve been planning to say, for whatever reason, they can’t say them. They just don’t fit the script.
There’s this awkward silence while I’m warming up and Gerard’s pulling back onto the highway, driving us home. His home. New York. The place we dreamed about and the place he moved to after he came home and Ryan Ross was in our shower and I was still passed out and sleeping on my side in our bed. Gerard, he didn’t say anything, just came over and started slapping me and slapping me until his palms turned red and my cheeks started to bruise. Then he left. According to Ray Toro, he packed up his stuff and moved shortly after I banished myself from the apartment and ran away to Philly, too ashamed to stay in Jersey. The whole big soap opera, it was all my fault.
Outside the windows, it’s all black. Gerard, he reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard, offers me one. I take it and I think it’s weird how right now I can feel so complete while Gerard, sitting across from me, just looks empty. Not sad, just cautious and far away.
“Thank you,” I say. I dig for a lighter and light mine, then lean over and light Gerard’s. Like nothing, he leans in towards me and I catch my breath because, for a split second I think, he’s close enough for me to touch his lips if I wanted to, just move my hand and brush the rough pad of my thumb against the soft skin there. The flame from the lighter illuminates his face and I just watch, transfixed. Pink lips, straight nose. Mile long lashes. The burst blood vessel under his eye. These are details I’ve spent years memorizing and a year trying to hang onto. It’s weird, I think, sitting here, knowing everything about each other but interacting like strangers.
I roll the window down a crack and the breeze comes in and the breeze smells like highway and earth and evergreens. It smells like Jersey, but not the part of Jersey we grew up in, the city part that smelled like city; it smells like the part of Jersey we’d drive through on our way to somewhere else and I can’t help but think how nice it might’ve been if we’d taken the time to take it all in.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice comes to me like a wave from the other side of the car. It’s then I realize, I’ve been starring blanking out the window for who knows how long, just caught up in my thoughts.
I blow out smoke, drop the cigarette out the window, “You.”
I don’t look at Gerard; I just let his silence say it all.
I continue slowly, trying to remedy the awkwardness I’ve just caused. “You’d come pick me up sometimes and we’d drive all over.” Looking out the window, I can see the ghost of my reflection emerging from the speeding black shapes outside and I think it’s really us moving though, not those trees. “You liked to speed down highways like this.” I smile. “You never got caught.” I look at Gerard. “It was nice.”
Gerard doesn’t say anything, just keeps his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.
“How’s school?”
I can feel Gerard’s eyes light up even though he isn’t looking at me. “It’s great. I got an internship. Cartoon Network. It’s paid too. I got it last week.”
“I knew you’d get one,” I say, a little too excited, but I can’t help it. “You’re so talented, Gee. You’ve always been.” There’s not nearly enough light to see, but I can tell Gerard’s blushing. I sit back. “I remember in high school, before we met, I used to sit behind you in math class and watch you draw over your shoulder. It was so cool.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gerard says, embarrassed. “I remember you used to lean over and give me the wrong answers when I’d get called on too.”
“It’s only because I wanted to talk to you,” I say fondly. “You were cute.” I look over at Gerard driving with his eyes on the road, this smirk on his face, and it comes out of me before I even know I’m saying it, “You still are.”
Gerard doesn’t look at me or say anything and I don’t do anything except sit there and want him so badly. I look out the window, above the trees this time, and, for the first time all night, I notice there’s stars out. Tiny, bright pinpricks of light dotting the sky. There’s a moon out too, small and far away because it’s getting so late it’s getting early. Back in Jersey, back in the city, you’d see like maybe one or two stars, but you’d never really know what you were looking at because sometimes, all of a sudden, these stars, some of them would just start beeping on and off and start moving across the sky and then you’d know they were satellites masquerading as stars, drifting through the night.
Once, when Gerard and I were living together in Jersey, we climbed up on the roof and spent the whole night lying on a blanket, trying to stargaze, trying to find what’s real and what’s not. Then, all of a sudden, Gerard turned to me and said, “Y’know, even if we could see real stars, they’re probably dead by now ‘cause, y’know, it takes that long for the light to get here. Billions of miles and whatnot.”
I’d thought about it. “That’s kind of sad, Gee.”
“I know,” he’d said, cuddling in close to me. “But it’s beautiful, y’know.”
I’d thought about it. “Yeah. I know.”
Just one of a thousand memories I have of Gerard. I have so many, sometimes it’s hard to even picture that there was a time when we weren’t together.
Suddenly, I can’t help it anymore. I turn to Gerard and, faster than I can think, I say, “I’m sorry.”
Gerard blinks and looks over at me, confused.
“For everything. Really. I’m just. So. Sorry.”
“Frank?” He doesn’t even try to hide the uneasiness in his voice, the wariness.
“Gerard,” I say. “I’m sorry I ever cheated on you with Ryan Ross. I was an ass. I was stupid. Someone tells me they saw you eating dinner with Bert McCracken and I just go and fuck up everything ‘cause I was jealous. I’m sorry.”
Again, Gerard doesn’t say anything, but this time it’s a shocked silence, not an awkward one.
“I just wanted you to know that.”
Silence. And then. Quiet as a whisper, “I know. I know. I listened to all the voicemails you left. And I would’ve taken you back, Frankie. Eventually.” He looks at me and his eyes are sad. Big, round beautiful hazel eyes I used to always stare into. “You left. Why?”
I look away. I just can’t take the honesty. “I didn’t deserve you.”
Silence. Then, “Why’d you call me tonight, then? There’s, like, a thousand other people who could’ve picked you up probably.”
I look him in the eyes and say, honestly, “Yeah. But you’re the only one I wanted to see.”
Gerard looks back at the road and I feel the car swerve as he gets back into his own lane.
“That’s why I’m out here,” I explain. “I was coming to see you. Tell you I’m sorry. Again. Beg to get you back. You called me last week and I guess you were going to tell me about you’re internship for some reason, but all you kept saying was you weren’t mad and you missed me and, well, I took it as a sign it was time to try to get us back together again.” I pause and add, “I never stopped being in love with you, you know.” Gerard, he keeps looking at the road and back at me. “Why’d you pick me up anyway?” I ask, “This has to be more than out of your way.”
Gerard smirks a little, the tension dissipates a little. “Because I miss you. Because, fuck, Frankie, if you were broken down in Nowhere, Alabama, I’d probably come get you. I was mad at you for a long time Frank, but I never stopped being in love with you either.” He pauses and adds, “And I always knew one day you’d show up.” He looks at me and smiles, “You never were good at staying away from me.”
I lay back, kick my feet up on the dashboard. Outside, the world is asleep and zooming by, but it only looks that way. In the sky, satellites are dancing with stars, waltzing past the moon and doing the tango till dawn sends them to sleep. Inside, I’m sitting next to Gerard and it’s warm and when I reach over, he just takes my hand, no questions asked. When we reach New York, City of Second Chances, the sky is faded black and you can just feel dawn approaching. We eat an early breakfast at some early morning diner and, when we step outside into the parking lot, dawn is piercing the night sky and everything looks beautiful.
We pause for a minute and watch the building light up and the shadows move as everything gets painted that dreamy gray-blue shade of dawn. Gerard is looking around, tired, bags forming under his eyes from me interrupting his nights sleep and, when, the light catches his eyes, they melt and change and turn green and I feel my heart beat in my chest.
Without thinking, I lean in and my lips catch the corner of his mouth. Gerard, he turns to me, eyes wide with surprise. His lips are slightly parted and I say, “I love you.”
I lean in to kiss him on the cheek this time, but he turns his head and I catch his lips instead. It’s a slow kiss, chaste. Gerard’s mouth is warm and moist and he tastes like coffee and pancakes and cigarettes. We pull apart and I say, “I missed you.”
Gerard, he looks at me with tired eyes, but he’s smiling. He pushes my hair back with his cool fingers and I close my eyes, get lost in the moment and, when I open them, he says, “I’m exhausted, Frankie. Let’s go home.”
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A/N: I actually wrote and finished this one before Stable Song, but it needed cleaning up. Anyways, here it is. Comments, as always, are greatly appreaciated <3
Author: sakurashakedown
Pairing: Frank/Gerard
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Mild Language
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not a thing.
Summary: It’s the night that I’m driving fast out of Philadelphia and northwest towards New York, City of Dreams that my car finally sputters and dies on some lonely highway just outside of Edison. Frank just misses Gerard.
I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.
Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.
"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.
When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide
For all time.
For all time.
Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie
------<>------
It’s the night that I’m driving fast out of Philadelphia and northwest towards New York, City of Dreams that my car finally sputters and dies on some lonely highway just outside of Edison. It’s one of those dark and winding roads with woods on both sides and no streetlights. The median still had a dent in it from where someone swerved and collided with the cement breaker and, driving past with just two cars in front of me, the remnants of glass sparkled under my headlights like diamonds. I don’t get mad though. With its dying breaths, I just pull over to the side of the road and just sit there, hands still on the wheel, foot still on the clutch. I don’t even blink. I’d turned off the radio as I’d zipped past Trenton so now all I can hear is my breathing, the engine cooling. Quiet.
Through my windshield I can see two tiny yellow pinpricks of light approaching me on the opposite side of the median. I watch them come closer, get larger and cast light on the windshield, bringing into focus the finger prints and cave drawings there, where, one year ago, Gerard Way was sitting drunk in the passenger seat and started tracing the fog on the window with his finger and, for a moment, I’m there again. We’re parked in some fast-food parking lot, under some copper orange streetlight and Gerard is tracing, saying, “…and this is what you’d look like if you were a zombie, Frankie. See, you’ve just got turned, so your face hasn’t rotten in yet. That happens, y’know. When you’re dead. I was watching this thing on the discovery channel and…” Gerard, sometimes he’d get drunk and just ramble on and on and me, I’d just sit there smiling and understand it all.
The lights disappear with a vroom and I watch them go through the rearview mirror. I know in my bones that that’s going to be the last car zipping through here for a while, this isn’t the main highway, it’s an older, scenic route, so I just sit back in my seat and let my hands slide off the wheel.
I feel tired but not drained; there’s still this restlessness pounding through my veins. The same restlessness that, earlier, drove me to pack up a bag and jump in my car that can’t even be trusted to get across town. The same restlessness that’s been pulling me towards New York all night. The same restlessness that started last week when Gerard Way drunk dialed me for the first time in months and I got to wondering how the hell I ever ended up in Philly in the first place when, all my life, I’ve only ever been about New York.
If I’m honest, my whole life I’ve only ever been about Gerard and one week ago he drunk dialed me and told me he wasn’t mad and all week my nerves have been going crazy with the thought that, maybe, that was a sign from God. I could come home. I’d paid for my sins.
When the car sputtered and died, so did the heater and I can feel the cold from the night slipping in through the air vents and the space where the glass windows meet the metal frame of the car. I pull my jacket tighter. I should’ve brought something warmer but I wasn’t thinking. I was running on instinct.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and it’s almost dead. The little red light bleeping on and off, telling me I’ve got a good ten minutes until it calls it quits for the night. I open up my contacts. I know who I want to call, who I need to call, but I don’t want to because I still might not be wanted. I might not have atoned for all my sins yet and the thought of any type of rejection before I get to New York to explain myself just puts me on edge.
I scroll pass Beckett, who won’t talk to me and Ross, who I don’t want to talk to. I pass Toro, who’s on vacation and Urie, who doesn’t drive and then I get to Way, who may or may not talk to me, but who’s my only hope for anything and I just pause. My thumb hovering over the button, I hold my breath and hit ‘call’.
A moment passes where it’s just silence and me breathing and then my heart beats as the phone just keeps ringing and ringing. Finally; voicemail. It makes my chest tight, his not answering, but I suck it up and say, “Hey.” I look around the dark interior of my car, the chipped dashboard, dead radio, and say, “It’s Frank.” I say, “Call me back. Okay. Bye.”
I close my phone and feel stupid and then open it again and see that it’s almost two-o-clock and feel even more stupid because, of course he didn’t answer, it’s two in the morning. I toss my phone on the seat and think about whether I should start walking to find a gas station now or later.
I sigh and suddenly my windshield is lighting up again and I know it’s a car, so I force open the car door and step up to the side of the road. I jump up and down, wave my hands. I yell, “Hey!” just as the minivan whips past me, barely missing me and sending me stumbling backwards into me car. I wasn’t mad earlier, but I get mad now. I kick my car.
“Shit!” I get back in the car, and leave the door open, letting in the night air and the warm smell of asphalt and the cool scent of evergreens. I think, “What the fuck is wrong with me?” and that’s when I realize my phone is vibrating pathetically on the passenger seat and I snatch it up.
I push my hair out of my face. “Hey.”
“Frankie?” It’s Gerard and my heart stops and my breath gets caught in my throat. He sounds tired and groggy the way he used to sound when I’d wake him up early back in Jersey to watch the sunrise. Those mornings, before coffee, sometimes he wouldn’t even open his eyes all the way; he’d just hold my hand and let me sleepwalk him up the fire escape and to the roof. Then, he’d lay his head on my shoulder and we’d hold each other close as we watched the sky go from gray to blue over New Jersey. And I’d say, “I bet New York sunrises are epic,” and he’d just nod into my shoulder. Those mornings, sometimes he’d be so quiet I’d think he was dreaming.
He says it again, “Frankie?” He says, “It’s, like…two in the morning, what’s up?”
I try to pull myself together. My breath is coming out in clouds so I close the door and say, “Gerard. I need you to do me a big favor. My car broke down and I’m stuck on the highway and its cold and my phone’s gonna die soon.” It just comes out like vomit, my sob story.
“What?” It sounds like a yawn and I can just picture Gerard pressing the palm of his free hand into his eyes as he tries to absorb all this while still waking up. “Where are you?”
I look out the window. The last sign I really paid attention to said, This Exit Edison, but that could have been miles ago. I say, “I’m outside of Edison. Going towards New York.”
I can just picture him getting up and getting ready, slowly pulling on unwashed jeans, phone propped between his shoulder and ear. He says, “Why?” and maybe there’s more or maybe that’s it, but just then my phone goes out so, either way, that’s all I’m left with. Why? Because, Gerard, I want to say so bad, I miss you. It’s been a year and I’ve missed you. Because Philly exhausts me and Ryan Ross didn’t mean anything to me. Because you called me last week and I realized, drunk or not, I’ve been waiting for that call for months.
I close my phone and guesstimate that I’ve got maybe a forty minute wait, maybe more, depends on how fast Gerard’s speeding. Gerard, when he got his first car a few years back when we were in high school, he’d come pick me up on the days we had long weekends and we’d go driving down the coast, zipping across the state, cruising into New York and getting dangerously close to Pennsylvania. Those long drives with no destinations, sometimes we’d get to roads like these, empty quiet highways, and Gerard would just floor it. Just take off. Times like that, we’d reach wherever we were going in half the time. Crazy thing is, he never got caught, Gerard. Unlike me. I get caught at everything. Running red lights, opening up Christmas presents the day before, cheating on tests, cheating on boyfriends.
I lean my head on the steering wheel, sigh and shiver and wait for salvation.
It’s only when my car is filling up with headlights and I hear the screech of brakes that I realize I’ve been sleeping. I sit up straight and wipe my face and the only thing I can see in the rearview mirror is blinding headlights. On my windshield, I can see every drawing and fingerprint Gerard ever left behind. I can see my almost-invisible, ghost reflection and the door of the car behind me opening and closing.
It’s cold and I can see my breath, clearer than ever. I can hear footsteps and then someone’s tapping at my window. I look up. Face half-lit by the yellow headlights of his car, I’d know him anywhere, day or night. Gerard. I smile through the window and it’s hard to really make out his expression, but he kinda only looks tired.
I open up the door and it’s just as cold outside. I stumble out of my car as Gerard instinctually steps back and, even though it’s cold and I’m shivering, there’s this warmth that just fills up my intestines and all I want to do is throw my arms around him so bad. Gerard. He still looks the same, I think; ghost white, black hair falling in his face, round, round hazel eyes. He’s not smiling, just looking at me in this confused sort of way with his head tilted slightly to the left and his thin chapped pink lips pursed together in a line.
“Hey, stranger.” My voice cracks a bit from the cold, but I don’t even notice.
“Frank?” The way he says my name, it sounds almost like a question, like he can’t believe I’m real and in the flesh, tangible, like he thinks he almost could be dreaming.
I shudder against my will and cross my arms, tap my foot, but I’m still smiling. I say, “Gerard. Jesus, it’s been forever.”
I’m shivering, but I’m smiling and all I can say is, “Gerard. You have no idea how happy I am to see you right now. No idea.”
Gerard doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even smile, just continues to give me this questioning, confused look and I know there must be a hundred things he wants to say, but doesn’t know how to put into words. Instead he just says, “It’s freezing out here, let’s go. We can catch up in the car.”
I follow Gerard to his car, same car he’s had since high school and when I get in, it feels familiar and warm and smells like Gerard, which has always smelled kinda like home.
“How’ve you been?” I ask and I know I’m just staring at him in that love-struck puppy way I always used to stare at him a million years ago when we were dating and happy and dreaming of New York. Gerard, on the other hand, isn’t looking at me at all; he’s just staring out the windshield, eyes glued to the road.
“Good.” It’s not said in that off-putting way you give people when you just want them to shut up and go away, instead he says it in that way people say things when they don’t really know what to say. They want to add more, but right now, all those things they’ve been planning to say, for whatever reason, they can’t say them. They just don’t fit the script.
There’s this awkward silence while I’m warming up and Gerard’s pulling back onto the highway, driving us home. His home. New York. The place we dreamed about and the place he moved to after he came home and Ryan Ross was in our shower and I was still passed out and sleeping on my side in our bed. Gerard, he didn’t say anything, just came over and started slapping me and slapping me until his palms turned red and my cheeks started to bruise. Then he left. According to Ray Toro, he packed up his stuff and moved shortly after I banished myself from the apartment and ran away to Philly, too ashamed to stay in Jersey. The whole big soap opera, it was all my fault.
Outside the windows, it’s all black. Gerard, he reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard, offers me one. I take it and I think it’s weird how right now I can feel so complete while Gerard, sitting across from me, just looks empty. Not sad, just cautious and far away.
“Thank you,” I say. I dig for a lighter and light mine, then lean over and light Gerard’s. Like nothing, he leans in towards me and I catch my breath because, for a split second I think, he’s close enough for me to touch his lips if I wanted to, just move my hand and brush the rough pad of my thumb against the soft skin there. The flame from the lighter illuminates his face and I just watch, transfixed. Pink lips, straight nose. Mile long lashes. The burst blood vessel under his eye. These are details I’ve spent years memorizing and a year trying to hang onto. It’s weird, I think, sitting here, knowing everything about each other but interacting like strangers.
I roll the window down a crack and the breeze comes in and the breeze smells like highway and earth and evergreens. It smells like Jersey, but not the part of Jersey we grew up in, the city part that smelled like city; it smells like the part of Jersey we’d drive through on our way to somewhere else and I can’t help but think how nice it might’ve been if we’d taken the time to take it all in.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice comes to me like a wave from the other side of the car. It’s then I realize, I’ve been starring blanking out the window for who knows how long, just caught up in my thoughts.
I blow out smoke, drop the cigarette out the window, “You.”
I don’t look at Gerard; I just let his silence say it all.
I continue slowly, trying to remedy the awkwardness I’ve just caused. “You’d come pick me up sometimes and we’d drive all over.” Looking out the window, I can see the ghost of my reflection emerging from the speeding black shapes outside and I think it’s really us moving though, not those trees. “You liked to speed down highways like this.” I smile. “You never got caught.” I look at Gerard. “It was nice.”
Gerard doesn’t say anything, just keeps his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.
“How’s school?”
I can feel Gerard’s eyes light up even though he isn’t looking at me. “It’s great. I got an internship. Cartoon Network. It’s paid too. I got it last week.”
“I knew you’d get one,” I say, a little too excited, but I can’t help it. “You’re so talented, Gee. You’ve always been.” There’s not nearly enough light to see, but I can tell Gerard’s blushing. I sit back. “I remember in high school, before we met, I used to sit behind you in math class and watch you draw over your shoulder. It was so cool.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gerard says, embarrassed. “I remember you used to lean over and give me the wrong answers when I’d get called on too.”
“It’s only because I wanted to talk to you,” I say fondly. “You were cute.” I look over at Gerard driving with his eyes on the road, this smirk on his face, and it comes out of me before I even know I’m saying it, “You still are.”
Gerard doesn’t look at me or say anything and I don’t do anything except sit there and want him so badly. I look out the window, above the trees this time, and, for the first time all night, I notice there’s stars out. Tiny, bright pinpricks of light dotting the sky. There’s a moon out too, small and far away because it’s getting so late it’s getting early. Back in Jersey, back in the city, you’d see like maybe one or two stars, but you’d never really know what you were looking at because sometimes, all of a sudden, these stars, some of them would just start beeping on and off and start moving across the sky and then you’d know they were satellites masquerading as stars, drifting through the night.
Once, when Gerard and I were living together in Jersey, we climbed up on the roof and spent the whole night lying on a blanket, trying to stargaze, trying to find what’s real and what’s not. Then, all of a sudden, Gerard turned to me and said, “Y’know, even if we could see real stars, they’re probably dead by now ‘cause, y’know, it takes that long for the light to get here. Billions of miles and whatnot.”
I’d thought about it. “That’s kind of sad, Gee.”
“I know,” he’d said, cuddling in close to me. “But it’s beautiful, y’know.”
I’d thought about it. “Yeah. I know.”
Just one of a thousand memories I have of Gerard. I have so many, sometimes it’s hard to even picture that there was a time when we weren’t together.
Suddenly, I can’t help it anymore. I turn to Gerard and, faster than I can think, I say, “I’m sorry.”
Gerard blinks and looks over at me, confused.
“For everything. Really. I’m just. So. Sorry.”
“Frank?” He doesn’t even try to hide the uneasiness in his voice, the wariness.
“Gerard,” I say. “I’m sorry I ever cheated on you with Ryan Ross. I was an ass. I was stupid. Someone tells me they saw you eating dinner with Bert McCracken and I just go and fuck up everything ‘cause I was jealous. I’m sorry.”
Again, Gerard doesn’t say anything, but this time it’s a shocked silence, not an awkward one.
“I just wanted you to know that.”
Silence. And then. Quiet as a whisper, “I know. I know. I listened to all the voicemails you left. And I would’ve taken you back, Frankie. Eventually.” He looks at me and his eyes are sad. Big, round beautiful hazel eyes I used to always stare into. “You left. Why?”
I look away. I just can’t take the honesty. “I didn’t deserve you.”
Silence. Then, “Why’d you call me tonight, then? There’s, like, a thousand other people who could’ve picked you up probably.”
I look him in the eyes and say, honestly, “Yeah. But you’re the only one I wanted to see.”
Gerard looks back at the road and I feel the car swerve as he gets back into his own lane.
“That’s why I’m out here,” I explain. “I was coming to see you. Tell you I’m sorry. Again. Beg to get you back. You called me last week and I guess you were going to tell me about you’re internship for some reason, but all you kept saying was you weren’t mad and you missed me and, well, I took it as a sign it was time to try to get us back together again.” I pause and add, “I never stopped being in love with you, you know.” Gerard, he keeps looking at the road and back at me. “Why’d you pick me up anyway?” I ask, “This has to be more than out of your way.”
Gerard smirks a little, the tension dissipates a little. “Because I miss you. Because, fuck, Frankie, if you were broken down in Nowhere, Alabama, I’d probably come get you. I was mad at you for a long time Frank, but I never stopped being in love with you either.” He pauses and adds, “And I always knew one day you’d show up.” He looks at me and smiles, “You never were good at staying away from me.”
I lay back, kick my feet up on the dashboard. Outside, the world is asleep and zooming by, but it only looks that way. In the sky, satellites are dancing with stars, waltzing past the moon and doing the tango till dawn sends them to sleep. Inside, I’m sitting next to Gerard and it’s warm and when I reach over, he just takes my hand, no questions asked. When we reach New York, City of Second Chances, the sky is faded black and you can just feel dawn approaching. We eat an early breakfast at some early morning diner and, when we step outside into the parking lot, dawn is piercing the night sky and everything looks beautiful.
We pause for a minute and watch the building light up and the shadows move as everything gets painted that dreamy gray-blue shade of dawn. Gerard is looking around, tired, bags forming under his eyes from me interrupting his nights sleep and, when, the light catches his eyes, they melt and change and turn green and I feel my heart beat in my chest.
Without thinking, I lean in and my lips catch the corner of his mouth. Gerard, he turns to me, eyes wide with surprise. His lips are slightly parted and I say, “I love you.”
I lean in to kiss him on the cheek this time, but he turns his head and I catch his lips instead. It’s a slow kiss, chaste. Gerard’s mouth is warm and moist and he tastes like coffee and pancakes and cigarettes. We pull apart and I say, “I missed you.”
Gerard, he looks at me with tired eyes, but he’s smiling. He pushes my hair back with his cool fingers and I close my eyes, get lost in the moment and, when I open them, he says, “I’m exhausted, Frankie. Let’s go home.”
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A/N: I actually wrote and finished this one before Stable Song, but it needed cleaning up. Anyways, here it is. Comments, as always, are greatly appreaciated <3