and is it worth the wait, all this killing time?
Bulk post from Black-Eyed Sinner's Pact, Brendon's POV
Gerard is kind of beautiful. That’s an understatement really. Gerard is absolutely fucking gorgeous. His face is round and soft, a little babyish, a little heart shaped but sharp in all the right places; the chin, the jaw line. His nose is straight, pixyish; his lips thin but pink and pouty. His skin is naturally olive colored- something he’s always hated- so he keeps out of the sun to stay pale. He’s so pale. But somehow that just enhances everything; his silky black hair, the delicateness of his tender face. And then there are his eyes, God, those eyes. I’ve never seen eyes that were more like multi-colored harmony. Pale green and warm, autumn brown. Sometimes they’re greener, sometimes they’re more golden. Sometimes they really stun me, by being the most beautiful to me when he’s showing me the least beautiful parts of himself.
*****
Coming down from a high is so not on.
Gerard's laying on his bed when I come back from the bathroom, arms flung over his eyes. The threshold where late night becomes early morning is well past gone, and I'm too sober to be here anymore. Can't go home, though. Can't go home because I'm supposed to be in Church.
"Fuck," I mutter as I run the heel of my hand across my eyes. It's too hard and it kind of hurts, but it alleviates the itching pressure for a moment so I do it again. "Jesus is going to kill me."
"Shrimp Toast." Gerard sounds flat when he says it, the twisted, maniacal joy lost in post-high resignation. "You're still here."
"Asshole," I retort, and, without pause, "yeah I'm still here. I feel asleep in your bathtub."
Gerard hums in his throat and fuck if I know what that means. Gerard tells me to go home a lot, but he never enforces it. Maybe he's amused. I'm sure he's fallen asleep in plenty of weird places.
Falling asleep in a bathtub hurts. Not only is there an awful crick in my neck, there's also a big bruise on my right hip that I woke up laying on. My pants were on, but that doesn't mean much of anything. It wasn't there when I woke up yesterday morning, and there are teeth marks, I discover as I rub out the kink, on my neck. "I'm missing church," I explain as I flop down on the bed next to him. The waistband of my jeans presses against the bruise on my hip, and I wince.
Gerard chuckles. Because he's an ass.
"This is your fault," I accuse. Because he's an ass.
Gerard lifts his arm to look at me finally, hazel eyes focused but still laughing at me. "Last time I checked you rejected Jesus Christ long before I came along with the special brownies."
My eyes narrow. "You never made me brownies."
*****
Pete could never have been that. He was that once and he could have been that again, but me and Pete, we're never lined up quite right. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong frame of mind. There's an inexplicable jam, the cogs of our machinery mashing, grinding to a halt. And inevitably, it's nobody's fault even though we stay mad at each other for a while, and just that much more off-kilter.
I stay mad longer.
Part of it is a penchant for the dramatic, part of it is hereditary stubbornness. Part of it’s a convenient self-defense mechanism. It's funny-sad, hilarious, ironic, however you want to read it-how we play out. I spend nights on stage singing words that aren't mine, these messages I didn't devise. I can try the best I can to own them for the sake of the audience (nameless, faceless), for Ryan, for Jon, for Spencer, for pride, but sometimes. Sometimes after the adrenaline has worn off and I'm coming down from a raw, hard, trembling performance, I'm left with is a stomach-plunging sense of missing. A sense of gone. Taken, like getting fucked-hard-and feeling empty once it's over.
Nothing left.
I don't want to be maudlin about it. I'm not Ryan, I don't wax poetic often. But when I do tap into that well, when I do speak of hurt and pain and goddamn unfair, it's never to the right people. It's to Pete, it's to Jon, it's to nameless faces from under a draining spotlight.
Gerard, he has no idea how bad off I am. Most likely, he never will. Mostly likely I'll never know how he's doing either, just like I'll never know why he broke it off in the first place. Because I'll never ask, and even if I did, he'll never tell. That's how we are-or were or fuck, I can't even separate one from the other anymore-with each other. Don't ask, just don't ask, and sure as hell don't tell.
Except that there were times when we did-his petrifying fear of the dark, of his own body. George and the horrible thing he did to him. The way he loved Billy. Not all of it in words, but all of it remembered, kept close, twisting and tangling up in the mess of us, so tight it's impossible to pull apart.
You can't blame me, then-can't blame me when I don't know what's mine to own anymore. Can't blame me when I don't try to have anything at all.
*****
The Misfits are a great band to get stoned with.
Pete and I attack the water heater in the storage room with Bob’s drum sticks. The great thing about getting high is that no one gets angry at you except for sober people, and Bob was definitely not a sober person so Bob wasn’t angry at us for using his drum sticks to attack the water heater. Which was great because angry people interrupting your water heater jam session is a downer. It’s more of a downer than pot even.
“That’s not even a fucking beat,” Bob says, laughing loudly over the Misfits and smoke and my water heater jam. “You both bite the big one.”
Pete and I both stick are tongues out at him and Pete gets unbalanced and falls over. The whole room explodes into smoky laughter and insane giggles and Pete says, “What the fuck there’s a dinosaur on the ceiling.”
I plop down next to him ungracefully and cock my head at the ceiling. It’s old and textured like old ceilings are and great for looking at really hard and making shapes out of the bumpy nothingness.
“Nuh uh.” I argue, shaking my head against the shag carpet that smells like marijuana and dust and the heaviness of the dusk from the open windows. “It looks like a penis.”
Everyone starts laughing really hard at the word penis and Pete furrows his brow until his eyebrows are knit firmly together, cocking his head like a curious puppy while he tries to see what I see.
“How do you get a penis from a dinosaur?” Patrick says around a giggling fit.
“What if it’s a penis that looks like a dinosaur?” Frank suggests quite seriously.
“That’s one fucking freaky penis.” Gerard breathes on an exhale, smoke swimming fancy circles around his black hair.
“No wonder Pete’s scared of them.” I say, exploding into laugher before the words are even fully out of my mouth.
“Fuck you guys. Whatever.” Pete cocks his head a full 180 degrees in pursuit of the ceiling-image penis. “I still don’t see it.”
Reaching over to pull him closer, putting our foreheads together I say very gravely, “It speaks volumes to me that you can’t see that penis.”
Pete smacks me but the great thing about being high is that even when other high people get mad at you and hit you, you don’t really feel it ‘cause your high too.
I reach out and smooth over Pete’s fake pout and fake anger with my hand and kiss him. He whimpers into my mouth in surprise and I take advantage of it and slide my tongue into his mouth, down his throat. A few people moan, a few people jeer, a few people applaud. I smile against Pete’s lips and I feel him swallow. Moments like this are perfect; when we’re all here together forgetting that half of us hate each other and half of us scare each other and half of us just aren’t very close at all. We’re all outcasts, united by drugs and tongues and the almost-Summertime.
Gerard is kind of beautiful. That’s an understatement really. Gerard is absolutely fucking gorgeous. His face is round and soft, a little babyish, a little heart shaped but sharp in all the right places; the chin, the jaw line. His nose is straight, pixyish; his lips thin but pink and pouty. His skin is naturally olive colored- something he’s always hated- so he keeps out of the sun to stay pale. He’s so pale. But somehow that just enhances everything; his silky black hair, the delicateness of his tender face. And then there are his eyes, God, those eyes. I’ve never seen eyes that were more like multi-colored harmony. Pale green and warm, autumn brown. Sometimes they’re greener, sometimes they’re more golden. Sometimes they really stun me, by being the most beautiful to me when he’s showing me the least beautiful parts of himself.
*****
Coming down from a high is so not on.
Gerard's laying on his bed when I come back from the bathroom, arms flung over his eyes. The threshold where late night becomes early morning is well past gone, and I'm too sober to be here anymore. Can't go home, though. Can't go home because I'm supposed to be in Church.
"Fuck," I mutter as I run the heel of my hand across my eyes. It's too hard and it kind of hurts, but it alleviates the itching pressure for a moment so I do it again. "Jesus is going to kill me."
"Shrimp Toast." Gerard sounds flat when he says it, the twisted, maniacal joy lost in post-high resignation. "You're still here."
"Asshole," I retort, and, without pause, "yeah I'm still here. I feel asleep in your bathtub."
Gerard hums in his throat and fuck if I know what that means. Gerard tells me to go home a lot, but he never enforces it. Maybe he's amused. I'm sure he's fallen asleep in plenty of weird places.
Falling asleep in a bathtub hurts. Not only is there an awful crick in my neck, there's also a big bruise on my right hip that I woke up laying on. My pants were on, but that doesn't mean much of anything. It wasn't there when I woke up yesterday morning, and there are teeth marks, I discover as I rub out the kink, on my neck. "I'm missing church," I explain as I flop down on the bed next to him. The waistband of my jeans presses against the bruise on my hip, and I wince.
Gerard chuckles. Because he's an ass.
"This is your fault," I accuse. Because he's an ass.
Gerard lifts his arm to look at me finally, hazel eyes focused but still laughing at me. "Last time I checked you rejected Jesus Christ long before I came along with the special brownies."
My eyes narrow. "You never made me brownies."
*****
Pete could never have been that. He was that once and he could have been that again, but me and Pete, we're never lined up quite right. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong frame of mind. There's an inexplicable jam, the cogs of our machinery mashing, grinding to a halt. And inevitably, it's nobody's fault even though we stay mad at each other for a while, and just that much more off-kilter.
I stay mad longer.
Part of it is a penchant for the dramatic, part of it is hereditary stubbornness. Part of it’s a convenient self-defense mechanism. It's funny-sad, hilarious, ironic, however you want to read it-how we play out. I spend nights on stage singing words that aren't mine, these messages I didn't devise. I can try the best I can to own them for the sake of the audience (nameless, faceless), for Ryan, for Jon, for Spencer, for pride, but sometimes. Sometimes after the adrenaline has worn off and I'm coming down from a raw, hard, trembling performance, I'm left with is a stomach-plunging sense of missing. A sense of gone. Taken, like getting fucked-hard-and feeling empty once it's over.
Nothing left.
I don't want to be maudlin about it. I'm not Ryan, I don't wax poetic often. But when I do tap into that well, when I do speak of hurt and pain and goddamn unfair, it's never to the right people. It's to Pete, it's to Jon, it's to nameless faces from under a draining spotlight.
Gerard, he has no idea how bad off I am. Most likely, he never will. Mostly likely I'll never know how he's doing either, just like I'll never know why he broke it off in the first place. Because I'll never ask, and even if I did, he'll never tell. That's how we are-or were or fuck, I can't even separate one from the other anymore-with each other. Don't ask, just don't ask, and sure as hell don't tell.
Except that there were times when we did-his petrifying fear of the dark, of his own body. George and the horrible thing he did to him. The way he loved Billy. Not all of it in words, but all of it remembered, kept close, twisting and tangling up in the mess of us, so tight it's impossible to pull apart.
You can't blame me, then-can't blame me when I don't know what's mine to own anymore. Can't blame me when I don't try to have anything at all.
*****
The Misfits are a great band to get stoned with.
Pete and I attack the water heater in the storage room with Bob’s drum sticks. The great thing about getting high is that no one gets angry at you except for sober people, and Bob was definitely not a sober person so Bob wasn’t angry at us for using his drum sticks to attack the water heater. Which was great because angry people interrupting your water heater jam session is a downer. It’s more of a downer than pot even.
“That’s not even a fucking beat,” Bob says, laughing loudly over the Misfits and smoke and my water heater jam. “You both bite the big one.”
Pete and I both stick are tongues out at him and Pete gets unbalanced and falls over. The whole room explodes into smoky laughter and insane giggles and Pete says, “What the fuck there’s a dinosaur on the ceiling.”
I plop down next to him ungracefully and cock my head at the ceiling. It’s old and textured like old ceilings are and great for looking at really hard and making shapes out of the bumpy nothingness.
“Nuh uh.” I argue, shaking my head against the shag carpet that smells like marijuana and dust and the heaviness of the dusk from the open windows. “It looks like a penis.”
Everyone starts laughing really hard at the word penis and Pete furrows his brow until his eyebrows are knit firmly together, cocking his head like a curious puppy while he tries to see what I see.
“How do you get a penis from a dinosaur?” Patrick says around a giggling fit.
“What if it’s a penis that looks like a dinosaur?” Frank suggests quite seriously.
“That’s one fucking freaky penis.” Gerard breathes on an exhale, smoke swimming fancy circles around his black hair.
“No wonder Pete’s scared of them.” I say, exploding into laugher before the words are even fully out of my mouth.
“Fuck you guys. Whatever.” Pete cocks his head a full 180 degrees in pursuit of the ceiling-image penis. “I still don’t see it.”
Reaching over to pull him closer, putting our foreheads together I say very gravely, “It speaks volumes to me that you can’t see that penis.”
Pete smacks me but the great thing about being high is that even when other high people get mad at you and hit you, you don’t really feel it ‘cause your high too.
I reach out and smooth over Pete’s fake pout and fake anger with my hand and kiss him. He whimpers into my mouth in surprise and I take advantage of it and slide my tongue into his mouth, down his throat. A few people moan, a few people jeer, a few people applaud. I smile against Pete’s lips and I feel him swallow. Moments like this are perfect; when we’re all here together forgetting that half of us hate each other and half of us scare each other and half of us just aren’t very close at all. We’re all outcasts, united by drugs and tongues and the almost-Summertime.