Geography [1-2-3-4/11] (Work in progress)
Author: inpurity
Title: Geography
Genre: Angst/Drama [4/11]
Rating : R
Pairing : Gerard Way/Frank Iero
Summary : Eleven days across the British and Irish Isles. Discovery, questions, the geography of love.
Dedication : to endless_crazy because she is my Frankie, she is incredible and I love her dearly.
Beta Credit and my eternal gratitude to schlaegt_links who nit picked, gave suggestions, corrected my atrocious grammar and made this chapter readable.
Disclaimer :This is a work of fiction, not written for profit. I claim no connection with any member of MCR, their families or friends. The events hereby narrated are absolutely false and are not meant to reflect the person's private life. No harm, misrepresentation, libel, malice or copyright infringement is intended. At no time is this meant to be construed as reality.
Author Notes:The story will follow the most recent MCR UK/Eire tour on a geographical basis,I tried to stay faithful to the dates and characteristics of every place mentioned.Few things have been altered to fit the dynamics of the story. If any of the people that will read this story was at any of the mentioned shows and notices that things were not exactly as they happened, please note that they have been modified for narrative purposes only.
Tell me what you think.
Enjoy
CHAPTER 1 / CHAPTER 2 / CHAPTER 3
His hands.
His hands are on my body, fanning shapes over my breastbone and my torso.
His hands on my hips and with a soft push I roll over and I can feel the alcohol in my bloodstream mixed with primordial fear. A consuming terror.
“Gerard? What are you doing?”
And my words are slurred, my voice cracked thin, so thin. Like a brittle, stale cracker.
He doesn’t reply and I can feel his hands move across the solid planes of my back, up above the shoulders, tracing the lines of my scapulae, down to the concave slope that tapers off into the globes of my ass.
I am scared and I am angry, because he can feel my fear but he is not saying a single thing and all I want is a word to reassure the panic that it’s slowly burning in the pit of my belly, up, up to my heart and my throat, choking my voice.
When his touch stops, I feel strangely bereft and I wonder what is wrong with me. What the fuck is wrong with us. And what are we doing about it?
He is still silent, his big, burning eyes lighting up around the pallor of his face, like ghastly will o’ the wisp.
I crane my neck up to look at him, but he has moved away and when my eyes follow the bent line of his back, I can see that he is retrieving a small bag from beside the door. I don’t know how I had missed it before, but I’m pretty sure that with my actual level of intoxication, inattention is justified.
I roll over on my side, pull up my knees and curl into a ball, my eyes still fixed on the shiny surface of his battered leather jacket. I don’t move when he turns around, but our eyes lock with infallible precision and that’s another one of those things that totally freak me out.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, Frank.”
“Not gonna let you.”
His smile is something soft and blurred. It could be the alcohol, but I don’t think so.
He walks back to the bed and when he sits back down I realize that the bag is actually his little case of colours and pencils. He uses it a lot when we have long journeys. He sketches everything, in hues and tints that have the power of shapes and the sound of words.
Talk to me you asshole. Please tell me everything is going to be all right, please tell me that I’m mad. Tell me I am imagining this. Anything. Just talk to me.
“Turn over.”
Anything but that.
I may be fucking wasted, but there is no fucking way I’m letting him fucking stick his dick in my ass.
I pull myself up and the world tilts sideways, giving his body a 45 degrees angle and I collide with his shoulder, my naked skin stark white over the worn out leather. He doesn’t touch me; our only point of contact consists of the burning where my shoulder tapers off into the sharp fall of my forearm.
“I’ve got no idea what you wanna do...I mean I do and you ain’t gonna do it.”
There is no smile this time, just his voice, treacherous like a quicksand and I can already feel like falling and falling and falling.
The tapered skin of his thumb brushes the outer edge of my cheekbone and then up to the bridge of my nose and up, up to the uneven line of my bangs.
“Lay on your stomach, Frank.”
“Gerard…”
“Trust me.”
I trust him, he knows I do. I told him. I told him at the skate park. I told him earlier, I tell him every day stepping on a different stage. I trust him to carry us all across this sea of insanity and I trust him not to let go when we all go fucking overboard. I trust him at being my friend. I trust him. So what is it that makes me so scared?
His hand on my hip is like a finger on a light switch, only I’m not sure if the lights have just gone off or have been turned on. I give in and at the gentlest push I lie down and roll on my stomach, my face buried in the pillow, breathing stale air and the sharp intake of vodka and fear.
Whatever he has in mind I’m pretty sure isn’t sex, or at least I hope so, because right now I feel as if I have been emptied, hollowed, like a gutted jack o’ lantern.
I hear a faint click and I know he has turned the bedside lamp on.
Expectation fills the cracks of my fear, but I don’t dare looking up and I feel, more than see, a knife of light chasing the shadows around my bed. He moves above me and the solid weight of his body settles on the back of my thighs, I stiffen again, my muscles seize up as if electrocuted and maybe he does want to fuck me. And if he does, am I going to let him?
”Relax your back.”
The quiet of his voice is a contrast of grey shadows.
It’s slick and liquid like water.
It’s viscous like a sticky kiss.
“Would you at least tell me what the fuck it’s going on? Gerard... am I the only one to think that… that this is fucked up?”
God forbid that he gives me a straight answer.
His silence provides a means of escape and a mask for my own shame at succumbing again.
His fingers are tracing the lines of my tattoos and the rounded vertebrae of my spine, I still remember the names and my voice is muffled by the pillow, but I know he can hear me.
“Cervical vertebrae… thoracic vertebrae… lumb -- lumb…”
“Lumbar vertebrae.”
He presses his thumb on the very last one and his voice is one short, toxic exhalation.
“Sacrum.”
There are no more words after that and I lay still, lingering between a state of acute awareness of his hands on my back and the odd sensation that I am floating.
I fold my arms and lay my tired face on them and there is no sound, nothing but the breathing coming from his mouth and the soft swishing of brushes and the wet squelching of colours being squeezed out.
The air smells acrid and sour and I like it. I used to lick paint when I was a kid, something that used to drive my mother insane with worry.
The first flicker of the brush on my skin is cold and I jump, muttering a curse. He offers no apology, just a hand on the top of my spine pushing me flat on the bed. I rest my arms by my side and he moves his brush with precise, long strokes.
We are a tableau of stillness and motion.
I really have no idea how long it lasts and why aren’t I asking why is he using me as his personal canvas why do I let him do things like this without questioning. Why, after all these years, is my trust, my affection, my friendship for this man is turning into an impossible riddle?
I just close my eyes and let the stillness on my body turn into sleep.
I trust him this much.
Morning brings a second-rate hangover and an uncomfortable tautness on my back that, at first, I cannot place. I stumble out of bed and when I stretch something on my skin cracks with a tiny sound and I remember.
I remember paintbrushes and the shadow of his wrist flexing over the slope of my shoulder.
I remember the tube of blue that had fallen off the bed, squeezed empty by his hands.
I remember that last wash of breath on my neck before I had fallen asleep, a painted word I didn’t hear but that I know, I know it was my name and maybe, maybe his.
With awareness comes the need for more coffee and a new array of questions and a new day of confusion and I swear loudly because I don’t know what else to do, because I’m not prepared to face him right now.
It’s like one of those really bad comic books Mikey and him are so fond of, filled with heroes that only come out at night and seem to possess the power to transform the trivial into something darkly magical. And it’s pathetic really. Because Gerard is not a hero and I’m everything but fucking magical and for fuck sake, I gotta stop thinking about shit like this. I gotta stop doing shit like this.
I pull on last night’s t-shirt and walk down the deserted corridor to knock at Mikey’s door. The fucker better not be with some skanky British ho right now, because I fucking need to talk to him, even more than I need coffee.
“Mikey? Open the door, tell your lady friend Frankie’s here. Frankie, your wife!”
I can hear rustling and one colourful cuss, I almost feel guilty for getting him out of bed, but not sleeping for fourteen hours won’t kill him for one day.
“Com’on you fucker. It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
He opens the door and his glasses are wonky on his nose, his hair flat and dirty around his pointy face. He is sporting a murderous expression, but I just push in and flop on his (blissfully empty) bed.
“Not that I don’t love you man, because I do. But what the fuck do you want at fucking 8 AM?”
He yawns loudly and scratches the flat plane of his belly with a spidery hand and, once more, I am reminded of how different and similar he is to Gerard. He lets himself fall on the bed and buries his face in the pillow, trying to escape the light, or me, or maybe both. But I am not going to let him.
“Mikey? Com’on man. I really need to talk to someone.”
“Again? What happened then? What the hell did you two do? Did you fuck?”
”MIKE! What’s with you wanting your brother to plough my ass? Do you have some sort of fetish? Dude, that’s some sick shit, even by your standards.”
The bastard has the cheek to actually laugh at me and I jump on him, pinning him on the bed with my weight, smacking his head with the other pillow. I have no idea why we turn into 10-year olds when we are together, but it feels good, it makes me feel as if things are normal; it makes me feel as if things are as they are supposed to be, like when I talk to Jamia and she says she loves me.
It’s right, familiar, known and loved. It doesn’t scare me, doesn’t confuse me.
I stop when his breath starts coming in small wheezing pants and I let myself fall beside him. I can feel my t-shirt sticking to my back and my body heat softens the paint, it will start running soon, staining the fabric, making my back a ruined canvas.
And I still don’t know what he has marked me with.
Because that’s what is really freaking me out, this mad idea that he has put a brand on me, like a calf, like a sheep and that’s how fucking borderline hysterical I am. How fucking in need of an explanation I am.
Mikey rolls on his side, eyes still unfocused behind his (still) crooked glasses and he just looks at me; waiting for me to ask for help, to ask for an explanation. Words have never been my forte, so instead I just stand up and pull my t-shirt over my head, dropping it on the floor. I turn around, so he can see my back, so he can be my mirror.
“Emily Dickinson.”
“What?”
I turn to face him and he has pulled himself up and now he’s sitting on the bed, his long, spindly legs tucked under his body, his hands busy trying to straighten his hair and his glasses. His eyes are so quiet, completely unfazed, so at least I know that Gerard has not painted a scene from some splatter graphic novel on my back or something equally artistically vile.
I don’t bother with my clothes and just kneel on the bed, beside my friend. My head is pounding, I need coffee and a wagonload of Advil, but I’ll settle for an explanation right now, anything to make sense of this fucking mess.
“It’s a poem by Emily Dickinson. It’s one of Gerard’s favourites.”
“It’s a poem.”
“Yes, Frankie. I’ve told you already, it is indeed a poem.”
“And why the fuck did he paint a fucking poem on my back?”
He rolls his eyes in an exasperated manner and then I can hear him sighing dramatically, before he leans across the bed and grabs his cigarettes and his lighter from the nightstand. He lights up and then looks at me, searching my eyes as if to see if I am really that thick, because apparently, I’m the only one that doesn’t fucking understand.
“Frankie, for the very last time. I am not Gerard! I have no bloody idea! You gotta talk to him, not me. People think we are fucking joined at the hip, but you? For fuck sake, you know me. You know him. So why do you keep coming to me to sort this shit out? I don’t know why he did it okay? Maybe he saw it in a movie, read it in a book, I don’t know. Clearly it didn’t bother you that much considering you let him do it.”
“I was drunk…”
And that is such a lame thing to say I cringe at my own words. He knows me too well, he can see behind all my fucking screens, telling him I let Gerard go all artsy on me because I was sloshed it’s fucking insulting his intelligence and our friendship.
He calls me on it, of course and his bullshit it’s loud and harsh in the first light of the day. And I don’t like it. I don’t like fighting with Mikey. Because, apart from the fact that he can kick my ass something royal, he’s my fucking best friend and I fucking hate not talking to him.
“Mikey, fucking hell man. I am sorry okay? But I am freaking out here. I really have no one else to turn to. Your brother… I don’t know. I can’t seem to be able to talk to him right now. He catches me in moments when I am completely fucking wasted, in every sense of the word and I… I can’t talk to him. Mike… I thought he wanted to fuck me last night and…I’m not sure I would have stopped him.”
He exhales a long string of smoke and I’m gagging for a cigarette, so I steal it from his fingers, just like Gerard did with mine and take a long drag. I’m about to give it back to him, but he shakes his head and flops back on the bed. He pinches the bridge of his nose and that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach grows stronger.
“Listen Frank…you know Gerard. Whatever you think is going on, whatever feelings you think you are having--”
“I HAVE NO BLOODY FEELINGS FOR YOUR BROTHER!”
“Chill the fuck out. I’m telling you the things as I see them. I’m telling you that Gerard is not easy to understand; he’s not easy to figure out. And not because he’s this tortured genius, but because he’s a closed up motherfucker okay? Fuck, I love him. Man, he’s my brother and all, but there are things that I just don’t understand about him. There are things that I’ll never understand and I just take them for what they are at face value. Listen…you couldn’t sleep. You could not sleep for days and then bang! My demented brother starts acting a bit on the batty side, okay a bit on the battier side and you start to sleep again. Just… just take it as a blessing okay? I have no idea why he’s doing it, why he has taken on himself to make you sleep, or even if he is trying to sleep with you. But what I know is that you don’t look like a zombie anymore. What I know is that you have been sleeping for the past two days, all I know is… it’s good to have you back and not look as if you had just been run over. It’s good to have you back…even if you are the biggest pain in the ass ever, Iero.”
I laugh then, because it’s barely after eight in the morning and I have never heard Mikey say so many words at one time, unless heavily intoxicated and I laugh because he’s right. Because he is my friend and he is trying to look out for me, as best as he can and that’s all I can ask. And yes, I still have no idea what’s going on, I still have no idea of how I am going to deal with Gerard or what I’m going to say to him about last night, but I know one thing. I know that I have a friend man enough to tell me that I am an asswipe and to listen to me even if he had just had four hours of sleep. And that’s means a lot to me.
“Come on Mikey, let’s get coffee. If I don’t drink some soon I’m going to die.”
“You’re sick, Iero.”
“You love it.”
I stub the cigarette on the overflowing ashtray, put on my t-shirt and decide to forget about the poem and Gerard and all that I cannot understand. Maybe is another easy route I am taking. Maybe is cowardice and not courage that is making me being so blasé about it after I have spent an hour freaking out. I don’t really know. But I am here now and Gerard is not. I am here and Mikey is scrambling for some clothes and we look a bit worse for wear, but I don’t give a rat ass about it, because he doesn’t give a flying fuck either. Because he is my friend and he is forfeiting more sleep to satisfy my addiction to caffeine and keep me on my toes instead of freaking out. And I love him for it.
We sit by the window in the pristine dining room, eliciting the usual disgusted looks and I have this almost irresistible urge to tell those fuckers that I am probably earning more money than they do and all I have to do is shaking my very fine ass while playing guitar, only I’m way too hung-over to even bother.
We order coffee and I decide to be a bit adventurous and try a full English breakfast. I tell Mikey and he chokes on his coffee, calling me a lame and telling me that if it wasn’t for the posh surrounding, this could be the cafeteria of our old high school.
We spend the good portion of two hours just talking and drinking more coffee and I’m still amazed of how easy it is for me to be with this guy, how fucking great is to have a friend like him, someone that knows me inside out and loves me nevertheless, someone that’s as close as family, maybe even more.
“I gotta call Jamia.”
“It’s five in the morning in Jersey, Frank.”
“Remind me later okay?”
“Remind you of what?”
His voice sheds shades of darkness and light according with the hour of the day and right now is bright and breezy, almost too light. We both look up and Gerard slips in the seat next to his brother. An obsequious waiter appears out of thin air or something like that and he orders a fruit salad. I look at him and he is the portrait of health, gone the pasty complexion and the chubby cheeks, long gone the dark circles under his eyes and the puffy, chapped lips. He’s too thin. I could see the tendons in his arms last nigh, the swish of his wrist was fragile, the skin there almost transparent.
Relax your shoulders, Frankie…
Mikey calls him out on being too healthy and Gerard smiles, telling him that he should try it sometime instead of stuffing his face with junk food.
“He does because he’s lucky. He can eat anything without putting any weight on.”
“What can I say, I am naturally slender…”
“Jesus, what’s this? Steel Magnolias? What a bunch of pussies.”
“Good morning to you, Ray. Slept well?”
Ray grunts a reply that sounds remarkably close to fuck off and we all laugh, because it’s easy and because this is us. And we don’t want to change it. Apparently Bob is out sightseeing with the red haired girl, taking full advantage of our morning off. I’m about to suggest Mikey we can do the same, but Gerard reminds me that I have a scheduled doctor appointment in half an hour and I curse my overly protective friends.
“I’m fucking fine.”
“Iero, you could be hacking a lung and you’d still say you are okay. Just shut the fuck up and go to see this doctor. They give lollypops to good kids..”
I flip Ray the finger and I say goodbye to the others, apparently a car is already waiting for me outside and I resign to spend our precious free time in a doctor’s office.
I’m about to ask the pretty girl behind the concierge desk about the car when I hear his voice calling my name across the crowded foyer, I turn around and he really is too thin, I can see his collarbone peeking out the bloody shirt he’s wearing and it looks sharp enough to slice diamonds.
“Frank, wait.”
I’m not gonna go to the fucking doctor with him, for fuck sake he is not my mother! I don’t let Jamia come with me when I sick, I’m definitely not letting him.
“Gerard, I don’t fucking need a babysitter! This thing that’s happening? It’s gotta stop. Now. You don’t wanna talk about it? Fine! But I’m telling you now that I’m not a fucking doll you can play with and then patronize.”
Way to go, Frankie. Eloquence. Check.
He looks at me with an amused expression, his green, green eyes glitter with mirth and I want to fucking punch his perfect little nose. Why is it that even when I try to act and talk like a rightfully enraged adult I can only manage to sound like a petulant kid?
“Have you finished?”
“Oh fuck off, Gerard.”
“Listen…I just wanted to ask if you wanted to share the car, I’m going shopping and your doctor appointment is in Notting Hill, I’ll check out the market and then we can have lunch, or you can come back to the hotel and take something for your PMS. Is that alright with you?”
Fucking bastard.
I laugh, no matter the previous anger, because he was all angelic and quiet and mature and then he just turned into the old, stupid friend I know and care for. The one that is a bit overprotective, but also has a fucking dry sense of humour that never fails to make me laugh.
Granted, he has managed to avoid the topic, once more, but to be honest, I wasn’t too eager myself. Because truth is, I have no idea what it’s going on and part of me hopes that there’s really nothing going on at all. So I can stop tripping over it and get on with my life.
The journey is a short one and we make small talk about how insane are our fans and about how he needs to buy a new leather jacket, the taxi stops in front a small, pristine building and he leans out of the window, the cold November’s air mussing his short bangs.
“So…what’s gonna be? Lunch or back at the hotel with chocolate and a copy of Pretty Woman?”
”Ha. Ha. What about you go and fuck yourself?”
“I’ll meet you here in one hour. Be a good boy, Frankie.”
“Fuck off.”
I make my way inside the surgery and I’m greeted by the prettiest nurse I’ve seen in my life. In and out of porn movies, she looks Asian and has the sexiest accent ever. See? I’m on the verge of getting a bit of a stiffy. I definitely like girls. So, now the question is, why am I almost sure I would have not stopped Gerard last night? Fucking hell.
“Mr. Iero? The doctor is waiting for you.”
The doctor happens to be a pot bellied man in his late forties, with a bad set of yellow teeth and a pleasant voice. Apparently our manager (but I suspect he was Gerard) has already informed him about my symptoms and what I have been taking to alleviate them, because he starts asking about my medical history and what I am allergic to.
“Can you please take off your jacket and your shirt, please?”
I do so and by now I had completely forgotten about the poem Gerard had painted on my back, so I’m unprepared when the good doctor starts reciting:
“It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
Someone the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all I have to bring. It’s one of Emily Dickinson’s love poems. A very unusual tattoo, Mr. Iero.”
I have the presence of spirit not to look too embarrassed and I just shrug, trying to look nonchalant and blasé about it, instead of telling that one of my closest friend did it, while I was laying semi naked on my bed, thinking that maybe we were going to have sex.
“It’s not a tattoo; one of my band’s mates has a strange sense of humour.”
“And he’s also an accomplished calligrapher or a very good artist, because I must say that is rather lovely.”
Rather lovely. God, I love the Brits.
Now I want to see it, I really want to see it, but how am I going to ask a perfect stranger about it without sound completely nuts? I’ll ask Mikey to take a picture of it later.
After a short, but thorough visit, the doctor informs me that I have chest infection and I have to rest as much as I can and take some antibiotics for the next ten days. He says he is going to send the prescription straight to the hotel pharmacy and I thank him and make my way out into the greyish light of London day.
I button up my jacket and, as absurd as it sounds, I can feel the painted poem burning on my skin, like some sort of scarlet letter that signifies how fucked up my relationship with Gerard really is.
I light a cigarette, regardless of the fact that I was just strongly advised not to do so and I wait for him to show up. He does so after few minutes,he waves from across the road and I nod, taking the time to look at him, to look at his body and his face, trying to figure out what has changed, trying to unlock the spell, to solve the riddle that makes me feel as if there is something inside my head, inside my heart that he alone can see and touch.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Where did you go?”
“Here and there.”
“Here and there?”
“Yep.”
I look at him trying to see if he is gonna tell me, but he doesn’t say a thing and just start walking briskly and I am left trotting behind him. Damn short legs.
”Hey! Sorry to ask, but where are we fucking going? And where’s the car?”
The smile that stretches his mouth is one of those enigmatic ones and I’m torn between the desire to wipe it off with my fist and mirror it with one of my own, only I’m not famous for the subtlety of my expressions, so I scowl at him and his smile widens.
“Kensington Gardens is just a ten minute walk from here, there’s a small restaurant there, and we can have lunch and walk across the park.”
“Jesus, Gerard--”
“What?”
“You fucking turn into Oscar Wilde every time we set foot in England!”
It’s common knowledge that Gerard is the skankiest dandy around, or so we think anyway, and we never miss an opportunity to call him out on it. I smirk and walk faster, until my steps are in sync with his and we walk side by side, talking rubbish all the way.
I am about to ask where the fucking gardens are, when we see the entrance’s gates and this long, long path stretches in front of us and the trees, albeit in the dirty, cold wind, still look majestic and very British in their snobby indifference.
We walk quietly for a while and it’s not awkward, it’s pleasant, as if words are not needed to fill this time and we just stand side by side, the occasional shaft of sunlight illuminating our faces.
After a couple of more minutes I spot what looks like a glass greenhouse or a pavilion and I’m informed that it is, indeed, the restaurant he was talking about. The wind has picked up and a gust of dusty air and dead, rotten leaves swirls around me, causing my cough to flare up and I am left doubling over, feeling my chest constrict and press, painfully, over my abused lungs.
I feel, more than see, his body behind me, one hand on my chest and one on my back, trying to soothe me, trying to make this stop. I’d laugh if I weren’t scared that the cough would kill me. Gerard has always had the Florence Nightingale complex.
“Gerard…I’m not choking; I don’t need you to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre.”
I feel his smile on my neck, but he doesn’t step away and this is a tad too close for my liking and we are in a fucking public place. I can just see the headlines on Kerrang: Gay rumours confirmed. Split reactions from fans…
I’m a douchebag.
He rubs my chest one more time and then moves away, sweeping away his long bangs. I know he wants to ask me how I feel, but I don’t think I’ll be able to refrain myself from punching him if he does, so I stop him before he has a chance and inform him that I am fine, I am fucking fine and as soon as I can get my antibiotics I’ll be even better.
“I see… Still battling PMS. Come on Frankie, I’ll buy you a nice slice of chocolate cake.”
“Gerard Way, the comedian.”
He bows and the curve of his spine is perfect, like a crossbow. My eyes follow the arched line until he straightens up and smiles once more, those green eyes shining behind the black bangs.
“At your service.”
“Oh for fuck sake, let’s get in before I starve.”
We are ushered to a table and we sit by the large windows, the décor is posh enough to satisfy Gerard’s inner dandy and I like it well enough. It’s not crowded at this time of the day and the few people sitting at the other tables take no notice of us, chatting amiably and going on with their business.
We order lunch and I order a pot of coffee, because I only had four cups ages ago and I need more, right about now.
Days seem to be immune from the awkwardness, the weirdness that fires up between us when the lights are out and our bodies cast long shadows across small, enclosed spaces. We sit and talk about stupid things for a good hour and it’s really nice. It’s not like with Mikey; we’ve never had that easiness between us, and we’ve never had that perfect understanding that comes from knowing each other inside out. I don’t think we’ll ever have that, but it’s nice nevertheless.
We share coffee until the turning of the clock tells us that it’s time to return to our real world, that world that is made of appointments and interviews and meet and greet and gigs. That world that, sometimes, can be really boring and tiring, but that is what, in the end, saved all our fucking lives, no matter how cheesy that sounds.
Gerard pays and we make our way out; the sky has turned a darker shade of grey and I can taste the metallic tang of rain in my mouth. We really have no time to wander some more, but he insists that we do and that I just have to see this statue that is near the south entrance.
We walk through solitary paths and after a while I can feel the first, fat drop hitting my cheek. He increases his pace and grasps one of my hands, dragging me behind him and after while we are all but running, more rain drops splashing our faces.
We stop after a short run and I can already feel my lungs burning as if filled with gasoline and I can barely stand, but he has not let go of my hand yet and his other one is pointing at this small bronze statue, standing in the middle of a clearance.
“Peter Pan.”
I look up at the statue and the sky behind it it’s the colour of lead and there is a sudden flash of lightening, green like his eyes and then it’s a downpour.
And I should not stand under the water and I should not be holding his hand and I should not indulge into his dandy whims and I shouldn’t, I fucking shouldn’t let him turn me around and push my soaked hair off my face and look at me with eyes flickering with the same storm that surrounds us.
“Let’s go…”
“Gerard…”
“You’re soaked.”
“So are you.”
“You’re sick.”
His hand rests on my chest and I cannot fucking find a single word inside my head. Water pours down on our heads and he pulls off his jacket and puts it over my head, a completely useless thing to do considering that I am already thoroughly drenched
I want him to say something. I want him to say that things will not be like this forever. I want him to recite that poem to me, as absurd as that sounds right now.
“Tell me about the poem.”
“Later.”
“Now! I’m already sick and I am not a fucking kid you need to look after. I’m your friend, not your son. Stop treating me as if I am going to break into a million pieces. Stop treating me like this…stop--stop making things so weird between us. Stop… just stop!”
His hand moves from the centre of my chest to the shallow dip at the base of my throat, his fingers splay over the wet skin and I want to scream in frustration, I want to punch him, I want to know why he touches me like this, with those eyes that reveal nothing and speak a language I don’t understand
But he doesn’t offer me any explanation, his skin leaves mine and his eyes rest, placid and murky green, they look at me with that old, fragile distance I am used to and I shake with rage, because I am not going to have any answer, I am not going to understand and now it’s my fault, now I know he has been trying to tell me something all along, but I can grasp it, I just can’t.
“Forget it...I’m just freaking out for nothing right? Forget it. Just no more fucking poems okay?”
He nods and I don’t add anything else, even if I want to. Even if I know he wants to. At this point I really don’t think it’d be wise to even linger, because there are too many things in my head right now and there are too many words I don’t want to contemplate and too many feelings that are way too tangled together.
We manage to find a taxi and I shiver all the way to the hotel, while he chats with the driver about the shitty weather and laughs at a lame joke, adding an equally lame anecdote of his own. When we finally arrive at the hotel the pretty girl in concierge gives me my prescription and I ride the elevator in silence, dripping all over the place, alone.
We have to go and record Top of the Pops in half an hour and I barely have the time to shower and change into something dry. I catch a glimpse of Mikey and he makes his way towards my room and as soon as he sees the state I am in, he narrows his eyes and that makes me even more furious.
“Don’t start. Shit, it’s just rain. You’re not my mother and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Yeah…and you better take that stick out of your ass or I will, k?”
I smile, even if reluctantly and mutter a sorry that he accepts easily.
“See you in a bit.”
“Yeah.”
I take off my clothes and leave them in a pile by the bed, I am chilled to the bone and still I feel hot and clammy. Thumbs up, Frankie. Let’s see if you can turn a chest infection into pneumonia.
I crank the water temperature to high and I stand under the scalding spray for as long as I can resist and when I look down, the water at my feet is swirling blue down the drain and all the words have liquefied, erasing the rhymes and words and images from the planes of my back.
Erasing last night.
Erasing his touch.
I wash quickly after that, ignoring the knot in my stomach and the pulsing headache between my eyes. I towel my hair dry and I am downstairs in time for our manager to avoid another heart attack. I am sick as a dog, but it’ll pass. Or so I hope. No way am I missing the gig tonight. No way.
The recording for the TV is exactly the same as the other millions we have already done. A haphazardly put together crowd that is told to cheer and clap at certain times and stage lights so hot I think I am going to pass out from heat stroke.
I am sweating buckets and make-up has to be called several times to fix my eye shadow and all that crap they slapped on my face. They are all looking at me as if I’m on my death bed or if I have the plague and I want to make a fucking scene and tell everybody to go and chill the fuck out, but I’m really too tired and it’s a miracle I can finish the recording without passing out.
After we finish at the TV studios we are ushered to Brixton again and I have to wonder how the fuck I am going to play in few hours because I really feel like crap right now and I don’t see how it’s gonna get better. We pile up into the usual black people carrier and Mikey slides in between Gerard and me, putting his hand on my forehead. I slap it away and glare at him, but he is totally unfazed.
“Hey Rambo…you’re fucking burning up.”
“That’s because I’m hot.”
Bob snorts and so does Ray, but Mikey doesn’t seem too impressed.
“No, it’s because you are a jackass and got soaked after you had been told you had a chest infection.”
“Yo, Mike. Really man, fuck off alright? You’re not my mom and I was with your brother. He got soaked too, worry about him.”
“He’s fine. You look like death.”
“Cheers.”
“Frank…”
“I swear to God if you say another word I am jumping outta the car.”
I can hear a muffled, fake bout of cough and I recognize Ray’s, not so subtle, drama queen and if I could reach over I’d hug him. Or maybe not, better not to spread the germs.
But, regardless of my spontaneous desire to throw my arms around him, I am thankful, because he has broken the tension and Mikey has backed out a little and Bob is grinning, quiet in the corner.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“You better, Iero. Not that you are that great of a guitarist, but we need you to fend off the rabid girlies.”
“You’re just jealous, Toro. Because they want me and not you.”
“Dream on.”
And maybe it is the antibiotic kicking in, or the four paracetamol I have taken, or maybe it’s my awesome friends, but I’m starting to feel a smidge better, I don’t feel like puking anymore. I guess I’m thankful for small miracles.
The usual throng of hardcore fans are waiting at the gate and I wave a bit before ushered in by Mikey; the girlies look upset, but I really cannot stay out signing shit tonight and it’s not just because I am sick, it’s because I can’t. I cannot do it. I can’t stand there and pretend I’m interested and that I care. Not tonight. Tonight I’m too confused and too fucking emotional and too fucking sick or I would not come up with this pathetic whining.
We dutifully sound check and then we all sit backstage trying to eat some of the shit they have delivered and just making the time pass before we are due on stage. I force down some soup and some noodles and I’m really feeling a bit better, so much so that I can still make red haired girl blush and Bob has to threaten me with a very close encounter with his fist in my guts if I don’t stop running my mouth.
Gerard has been quiet, but is nothing unusual and when Keith and the guys from Every Time I Die join us he engages them with some sort of story about the first time we played the UK and they all lap it up. One thing I can give to him, the guy knows how to tell a story. He knows how to make you look at him, how to believe him, how to trust him. I meet his eyes across the room and he smiles, his eyes crinkling and his nose scrunching up. Like a child.
Mikey doesn’t smile like that.
I sit in front the big mirror and opt for the red eye shadow again. I already look sick as fuck, I think it’ll add to it and maybe it’ll look as if I’d done it on purpose and not because I’m about to die of man flu.
I still have to fend off Mikey’s overprotective attitude, but it’s not too difficult and, secretly, I am happy that he cares about me this much. I’m glad I am taken care of.
I brace myself for the show, but it goes much better than I expected. The stage is not as hot as the TV studio and I have more room to actually stand in front of the fans and to stop for a moment or two in between songs, trying to catch up my breath and drink in order not to pass out.
And then there is the fact that this, this is my life.
This thunder of voices singing along.
This sea of people swinging.
This electric wire sparkling life along our spines.
This is what we love the most.
I give all I have, spinning against gravity and the burning fever that rushes in my blood. I spin and fall and sing, my throat raw and sore and still I do it because this is who I am. This is my life and I love it. In all its confusion.
Mikey gets caught in my vortex and we both fall on the stage and he laughs, bright and sweaty behind his glasses and I plant a kiss on his cheek, helping him up and hanging on his neck, my guitar crashing against his bass and his hand on the small of my back.
“I love you, man.”
“Love you too, you flaming pansy.”
The lights fall shut over our words and I’m so lucky.
I am so lucky.
The night is waning down into pale, apocalyptic greens and the palest, dusty pink and wearing only a pair of jeans and all my fears, I find myself standing at his door.
His eyes flash green and I speak.
“I can’t sleep.”
Title: Geography
Genre: Angst/Drama [4/11]
Rating : R
Pairing : Gerard Way/Frank Iero
Summary : Eleven days across the British and Irish Isles. Discovery, questions, the geography of love.
Dedication : to endless_crazy because she is my Frankie, she is incredible and I love her dearly.
Beta Credit and my eternal gratitude to schlaegt_links who nit picked, gave suggestions, corrected my atrocious grammar and made this chapter readable.
Disclaimer :This is a work of fiction, not written for profit. I claim no connection with any member of MCR, their families or friends. The events hereby narrated are absolutely false and are not meant to reflect the person's private life. No harm, misrepresentation, libel, malice or copyright infringement is intended. At no time is this meant to be construed as reality.
Author Notes:The story will follow the most recent MCR UK/Eire tour on a geographical basis,I tried to stay faithful to the dates and characteristics of every place mentioned.Few things have been altered to fit the dynamics of the story. If any of the people that will read this story was at any of the mentioned shows and notices that things were not exactly as they happened, please note that they have been modified for narrative purposes only.
Tell me what you think.
Enjoy
CHAPTER 1 / CHAPTER 2 / CHAPTER 3
His hands.
His hands are on my body, fanning shapes over my breastbone and my torso.
His hands on my hips and with a soft push I roll over and I can feel the alcohol in my bloodstream mixed with primordial fear. A consuming terror.
“Gerard? What are you doing?”
And my words are slurred, my voice cracked thin, so thin. Like a brittle, stale cracker.
He doesn’t reply and I can feel his hands move across the solid planes of my back, up above the shoulders, tracing the lines of my scapulae, down to the concave slope that tapers off into the globes of my ass.
I am scared and I am angry, because he can feel my fear but he is not saying a single thing and all I want is a word to reassure the panic that it’s slowly burning in the pit of my belly, up, up to my heart and my throat, choking my voice.
When his touch stops, I feel strangely bereft and I wonder what is wrong with me. What the fuck is wrong with us. And what are we doing about it?
He is still silent, his big, burning eyes lighting up around the pallor of his face, like ghastly will o’ the wisp.
I crane my neck up to look at him, but he has moved away and when my eyes follow the bent line of his back, I can see that he is retrieving a small bag from beside the door. I don’t know how I had missed it before, but I’m pretty sure that with my actual level of intoxication, inattention is justified.
I roll over on my side, pull up my knees and curl into a ball, my eyes still fixed on the shiny surface of his battered leather jacket. I don’t move when he turns around, but our eyes lock with infallible precision and that’s another one of those things that totally freak me out.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, Frank.”
“Not gonna let you.”
His smile is something soft and blurred. It could be the alcohol, but I don’t think so.
He walks back to the bed and when he sits back down I realize that the bag is actually his little case of colours and pencils. He uses it a lot when we have long journeys. He sketches everything, in hues and tints that have the power of shapes and the sound of words.
Talk to me you asshole. Please tell me everything is going to be all right, please tell me that I’m mad. Tell me I am imagining this. Anything. Just talk to me.
“Turn over.”
Anything but that.
I may be fucking wasted, but there is no fucking way I’m letting him fucking stick his dick in my ass.
I pull myself up and the world tilts sideways, giving his body a 45 degrees angle and I collide with his shoulder, my naked skin stark white over the worn out leather. He doesn’t touch me; our only point of contact consists of the burning where my shoulder tapers off into the sharp fall of my forearm.
“I’ve got no idea what you wanna do...I mean I do and you ain’t gonna do it.”
There is no smile this time, just his voice, treacherous like a quicksand and I can already feel like falling and falling and falling.
The tapered skin of his thumb brushes the outer edge of my cheekbone and then up to the bridge of my nose and up, up to the uneven line of my bangs.
“Lay on your stomach, Frank.”
“Gerard…”
“Trust me.”
I trust him, he knows I do. I told him. I told him at the skate park. I told him earlier, I tell him every day stepping on a different stage. I trust him to carry us all across this sea of insanity and I trust him not to let go when we all go fucking overboard. I trust him at being my friend. I trust him. So what is it that makes me so scared?
His hand on my hip is like a finger on a light switch, only I’m not sure if the lights have just gone off or have been turned on. I give in and at the gentlest push I lie down and roll on my stomach, my face buried in the pillow, breathing stale air and the sharp intake of vodka and fear.
Whatever he has in mind I’m pretty sure isn’t sex, or at least I hope so, because right now I feel as if I have been emptied, hollowed, like a gutted jack o’ lantern.
I hear a faint click and I know he has turned the bedside lamp on.
Expectation fills the cracks of my fear, but I don’t dare looking up and I feel, more than see, a knife of light chasing the shadows around my bed. He moves above me and the solid weight of his body settles on the back of my thighs, I stiffen again, my muscles seize up as if electrocuted and maybe he does want to fuck me. And if he does, am I going to let him?
”Relax your back.”
The quiet of his voice is a contrast of grey shadows.
It’s slick and liquid like water.
It’s viscous like a sticky kiss.
“Would you at least tell me what the fuck it’s going on? Gerard... am I the only one to think that… that this is fucked up?”
God forbid that he gives me a straight answer.
His silence provides a means of escape and a mask for my own shame at succumbing again.
His fingers are tracing the lines of my tattoos and the rounded vertebrae of my spine, I still remember the names and my voice is muffled by the pillow, but I know he can hear me.
“Cervical vertebrae… thoracic vertebrae… lumb -- lumb…”
“Lumbar vertebrae.”
He presses his thumb on the very last one and his voice is one short, toxic exhalation.
“Sacrum.”
There are no more words after that and I lay still, lingering between a state of acute awareness of his hands on my back and the odd sensation that I am floating.
I fold my arms and lay my tired face on them and there is no sound, nothing but the breathing coming from his mouth and the soft swishing of brushes and the wet squelching of colours being squeezed out.
The air smells acrid and sour and I like it. I used to lick paint when I was a kid, something that used to drive my mother insane with worry.
The first flicker of the brush on my skin is cold and I jump, muttering a curse. He offers no apology, just a hand on the top of my spine pushing me flat on the bed. I rest my arms by my side and he moves his brush with precise, long strokes.
We are a tableau of stillness and motion.
I really have no idea how long it lasts and why aren’t I asking why is he using me as his personal canvas why do I let him do things like this without questioning. Why, after all these years, is my trust, my affection, my friendship for this man is turning into an impossible riddle?
I just close my eyes and let the stillness on my body turn into sleep.
I trust him this much.
Morning brings a second-rate hangover and an uncomfortable tautness on my back that, at first, I cannot place. I stumble out of bed and when I stretch something on my skin cracks with a tiny sound and I remember.
I remember paintbrushes and the shadow of his wrist flexing over the slope of my shoulder.
I remember the tube of blue that had fallen off the bed, squeezed empty by his hands.
I remember that last wash of breath on my neck before I had fallen asleep, a painted word I didn’t hear but that I know, I know it was my name and maybe, maybe his.
With awareness comes the need for more coffee and a new array of questions and a new day of confusion and I swear loudly because I don’t know what else to do, because I’m not prepared to face him right now.
It’s like one of those really bad comic books Mikey and him are so fond of, filled with heroes that only come out at night and seem to possess the power to transform the trivial into something darkly magical. And it’s pathetic really. Because Gerard is not a hero and I’m everything but fucking magical and for fuck sake, I gotta stop thinking about shit like this. I gotta stop doing shit like this.
I pull on last night’s t-shirt and walk down the deserted corridor to knock at Mikey’s door. The fucker better not be with some skanky British ho right now, because I fucking need to talk to him, even more than I need coffee.
“Mikey? Open the door, tell your lady friend Frankie’s here. Frankie, your wife!”
I can hear rustling and one colourful cuss, I almost feel guilty for getting him out of bed, but not sleeping for fourteen hours won’t kill him for one day.
“Com’on you fucker. It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
He opens the door and his glasses are wonky on his nose, his hair flat and dirty around his pointy face. He is sporting a murderous expression, but I just push in and flop on his (blissfully empty) bed.
“Not that I don’t love you man, because I do. But what the fuck do you want at fucking 8 AM?”
He yawns loudly and scratches the flat plane of his belly with a spidery hand and, once more, I am reminded of how different and similar he is to Gerard. He lets himself fall on the bed and buries his face in the pillow, trying to escape the light, or me, or maybe both. But I am not going to let him.
“Mikey? Com’on man. I really need to talk to someone.”
“Again? What happened then? What the hell did you two do? Did you fuck?”
”MIKE! What’s with you wanting your brother to plough my ass? Do you have some sort of fetish? Dude, that’s some sick shit, even by your standards.”
The bastard has the cheek to actually laugh at me and I jump on him, pinning him on the bed with my weight, smacking his head with the other pillow. I have no idea why we turn into 10-year olds when we are together, but it feels good, it makes me feel as if things are normal; it makes me feel as if things are as they are supposed to be, like when I talk to Jamia and she says she loves me.
It’s right, familiar, known and loved. It doesn’t scare me, doesn’t confuse me.
I stop when his breath starts coming in small wheezing pants and I let myself fall beside him. I can feel my t-shirt sticking to my back and my body heat softens the paint, it will start running soon, staining the fabric, making my back a ruined canvas.
And I still don’t know what he has marked me with.
Because that’s what is really freaking me out, this mad idea that he has put a brand on me, like a calf, like a sheep and that’s how fucking borderline hysterical I am. How fucking in need of an explanation I am.
Mikey rolls on his side, eyes still unfocused behind his (still) crooked glasses and he just looks at me; waiting for me to ask for help, to ask for an explanation. Words have never been my forte, so instead I just stand up and pull my t-shirt over my head, dropping it on the floor. I turn around, so he can see my back, so he can be my mirror.
“Emily Dickinson.”
“What?”
I turn to face him and he has pulled himself up and now he’s sitting on the bed, his long, spindly legs tucked under his body, his hands busy trying to straighten his hair and his glasses. His eyes are so quiet, completely unfazed, so at least I know that Gerard has not painted a scene from some splatter graphic novel on my back or something equally artistically vile.
I don’t bother with my clothes and just kneel on the bed, beside my friend. My head is pounding, I need coffee and a wagonload of Advil, but I’ll settle for an explanation right now, anything to make sense of this fucking mess.
“It’s a poem by Emily Dickinson. It’s one of Gerard’s favourites.”
“It’s a poem.”
“Yes, Frankie. I’ve told you already, it is indeed a poem.”
“And why the fuck did he paint a fucking poem on my back?”
He rolls his eyes in an exasperated manner and then I can hear him sighing dramatically, before he leans across the bed and grabs his cigarettes and his lighter from the nightstand. He lights up and then looks at me, searching my eyes as if to see if I am really that thick, because apparently, I’m the only one that doesn’t fucking understand.
“Frankie, for the very last time. I am not Gerard! I have no bloody idea! You gotta talk to him, not me. People think we are fucking joined at the hip, but you? For fuck sake, you know me. You know him. So why do you keep coming to me to sort this shit out? I don’t know why he did it okay? Maybe he saw it in a movie, read it in a book, I don’t know. Clearly it didn’t bother you that much considering you let him do it.”
“I was drunk…”
And that is such a lame thing to say I cringe at my own words. He knows me too well, he can see behind all my fucking screens, telling him I let Gerard go all artsy on me because I was sloshed it’s fucking insulting his intelligence and our friendship.
He calls me on it, of course and his bullshit it’s loud and harsh in the first light of the day. And I don’t like it. I don’t like fighting with Mikey. Because, apart from the fact that he can kick my ass something royal, he’s my fucking best friend and I fucking hate not talking to him.
“Mikey, fucking hell man. I am sorry okay? But I am freaking out here. I really have no one else to turn to. Your brother… I don’t know. I can’t seem to be able to talk to him right now. He catches me in moments when I am completely fucking wasted, in every sense of the word and I… I can’t talk to him. Mike… I thought he wanted to fuck me last night and…I’m not sure I would have stopped him.”
He exhales a long string of smoke and I’m gagging for a cigarette, so I steal it from his fingers, just like Gerard did with mine and take a long drag. I’m about to give it back to him, but he shakes his head and flops back on the bed. He pinches the bridge of his nose and that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach grows stronger.
“Listen Frank…you know Gerard. Whatever you think is going on, whatever feelings you think you are having--”
“I HAVE NO BLOODY FEELINGS FOR YOUR BROTHER!”
“Chill the fuck out. I’m telling you the things as I see them. I’m telling you that Gerard is not easy to understand; he’s not easy to figure out. And not because he’s this tortured genius, but because he’s a closed up motherfucker okay? Fuck, I love him. Man, he’s my brother and all, but there are things that I just don’t understand about him. There are things that I’ll never understand and I just take them for what they are at face value. Listen…you couldn’t sleep. You could not sleep for days and then bang! My demented brother starts acting a bit on the batty side, okay a bit on the battier side and you start to sleep again. Just… just take it as a blessing okay? I have no idea why he’s doing it, why he has taken on himself to make you sleep, or even if he is trying to sleep with you. But what I know is that you don’t look like a zombie anymore. What I know is that you have been sleeping for the past two days, all I know is… it’s good to have you back and not look as if you had just been run over. It’s good to have you back…even if you are the biggest pain in the ass ever, Iero.”
I laugh then, because it’s barely after eight in the morning and I have never heard Mikey say so many words at one time, unless heavily intoxicated and I laugh because he’s right. Because he is my friend and he is trying to look out for me, as best as he can and that’s all I can ask. And yes, I still have no idea what’s going on, I still have no idea of how I am going to deal with Gerard or what I’m going to say to him about last night, but I know one thing. I know that I have a friend man enough to tell me that I am an asswipe and to listen to me even if he had just had four hours of sleep. And that’s means a lot to me.
“Come on Mikey, let’s get coffee. If I don’t drink some soon I’m going to die.”
“You’re sick, Iero.”
“You love it.”
I stub the cigarette on the overflowing ashtray, put on my t-shirt and decide to forget about the poem and Gerard and all that I cannot understand. Maybe is another easy route I am taking. Maybe is cowardice and not courage that is making me being so blasé about it after I have spent an hour freaking out. I don’t really know. But I am here now and Gerard is not. I am here and Mikey is scrambling for some clothes and we look a bit worse for wear, but I don’t give a rat ass about it, because he doesn’t give a flying fuck either. Because he is my friend and he is forfeiting more sleep to satisfy my addiction to caffeine and keep me on my toes instead of freaking out. And I love him for it.
We sit by the window in the pristine dining room, eliciting the usual disgusted looks and I have this almost irresistible urge to tell those fuckers that I am probably earning more money than they do and all I have to do is shaking my very fine ass while playing guitar, only I’m way too hung-over to even bother.
We order coffee and I decide to be a bit adventurous and try a full English breakfast. I tell Mikey and he chokes on his coffee, calling me a lame and telling me that if it wasn’t for the posh surrounding, this could be the cafeteria of our old high school.
We spend the good portion of two hours just talking and drinking more coffee and I’m still amazed of how easy it is for me to be with this guy, how fucking great is to have a friend like him, someone that knows me inside out and loves me nevertheless, someone that’s as close as family, maybe even more.
“I gotta call Jamia.”
“It’s five in the morning in Jersey, Frank.”
“Remind me later okay?”
“Remind you of what?”
His voice sheds shades of darkness and light according with the hour of the day and right now is bright and breezy, almost too light. We both look up and Gerard slips in the seat next to his brother. An obsequious waiter appears out of thin air or something like that and he orders a fruit salad. I look at him and he is the portrait of health, gone the pasty complexion and the chubby cheeks, long gone the dark circles under his eyes and the puffy, chapped lips. He’s too thin. I could see the tendons in his arms last nigh, the swish of his wrist was fragile, the skin there almost transparent.
Relax your shoulders, Frankie…
Mikey calls him out on being too healthy and Gerard smiles, telling him that he should try it sometime instead of stuffing his face with junk food.
“He does because he’s lucky. He can eat anything without putting any weight on.”
“What can I say, I am naturally slender…”
“Jesus, what’s this? Steel Magnolias? What a bunch of pussies.”
“Good morning to you, Ray. Slept well?”
Ray grunts a reply that sounds remarkably close to fuck off and we all laugh, because it’s easy and because this is us. And we don’t want to change it. Apparently Bob is out sightseeing with the red haired girl, taking full advantage of our morning off. I’m about to suggest Mikey we can do the same, but Gerard reminds me that I have a scheduled doctor appointment in half an hour and I curse my overly protective friends.
“I’m fucking fine.”
“Iero, you could be hacking a lung and you’d still say you are okay. Just shut the fuck up and go to see this doctor. They give lollypops to good kids..”
I flip Ray the finger and I say goodbye to the others, apparently a car is already waiting for me outside and I resign to spend our precious free time in a doctor’s office.
I’m about to ask the pretty girl behind the concierge desk about the car when I hear his voice calling my name across the crowded foyer, I turn around and he really is too thin, I can see his collarbone peeking out the bloody shirt he’s wearing and it looks sharp enough to slice diamonds.
“Frank, wait.”
I’m not gonna go to the fucking doctor with him, for fuck sake he is not my mother! I don’t let Jamia come with me when I sick, I’m definitely not letting him.
“Gerard, I don’t fucking need a babysitter! This thing that’s happening? It’s gotta stop. Now. You don’t wanna talk about it? Fine! But I’m telling you now that I’m not a fucking doll you can play with and then patronize.”
Way to go, Frankie. Eloquence. Check.
He looks at me with an amused expression, his green, green eyes glitter with mirth and I want to fucking punch his perfect little nose. Why is it that even when I try to act and talk like a rightfully enraged adult I can only manage to sound like a petulant kid?
“Have you finished?”
“Oh fuck off, Gerard.”
“Listen…I just wanted to ask if you wanted to share the car, I’m going shopping and your doctor appointment is in Notting Hill, I’ll check out the market and then we can have lunch, or you can come back to the hotel and take something for your PMS. Is that alright with you?”
Fucking bastard.
I laugh, no matter the previous anger, because he was all angelic and quiet and mature and then he just turned into the old, stupid friend I know and care for. The one that is a bit overprotective, but also has a fucking dry sense of humour that never fails to make me laugh.
Granted, he has managed to avoid the topic, once more, but to be honest, I wasn’t too eager myself. Because truth is, I have no idea what it’s going on and part of me hopes that there’s really nothing going on at all. So I can stop tripping over it and get on with my life.
The journey is a short one and we make small talk about how insane are our fans and about how he needs to buy a new leather jacket, the taxi stops in front a small, pristine building and he leans out of the window, the cold November’s air mussing his short bangs.
“So…what’s gonna be? Lunch or back at the hotel with chocolate and a copy of Pretty Woman?”
”Ha. Ha. What about you go and fuck yourself?”
“I’ll meet you here in one hour. Be a good boy, Frankie.”
“Fuck off.”
I make my way inside the surgery and I’m greeted by the prettiest nurse I’ve seen in my life. In and out of porn movies, she looks Asian and has the sexiest accent ever. See? I’m on the verge of getting a bit of a stiffy. I definitely like girls. So, now the question is, why am I almost sure I would have not stopped Gerard last night? Fucking hell.
“Mr. Iero? The doctor is waiting for you.”
The doctor happens to be a pot bellied man in his late forties, with a bad set of yellow teeth and a pleasant voice. Apparently our manager (but I suspect he was Gerard) has already informed him about my symptoms and what I have been taking to alleviate them, because he starts asking about my medical history and what I am allergic to.
“Can you please take off your jacket and your shirt, please?”
I do so and by now I had completely forgotten about the poem Gerard had painted on my back, so I’m unprepared when the good doctor starts reciting:
“It's all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
Someone the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all I have to bring. It’s one of Emily Dickinson’s love poems. A very unusual tattoo, Mr. Iero.”
I have the presence of spirit not to look too embarrassed and I just shrug, trying to look nonchalant and blasé about it, instead of telling that one of my closest friend did it, while I was laying semi naked on my bed, thinking that maybe we were going to have sex.
“It’s not a tattoo; one of my band’s mates has a strange sense of humour.”
“And he’s also an accomplished calligrapher or a very good artist, because I must say that is rather lovely.”
Rather lovely. God, I love the Brits.
Now I want to see it, I really want to see it, but how am I going to ask a perfect stranger about it without sound completely nuts? I’ll ask Mikey to take a picture of it later.
After a short, but thorough visit, the doctor informs me that I have chest infection and I have to rest as much as I can and take some antibiotics for the next ten days. He says he is going to send the prescription straight to the hotel pharmacy and I thank him and make my way out into the greyish light of London day.
I button up my jacket and, as absurd as it sounds, I can feel the painted poem burning on my skin, like some sort of scarlet letter that signifies how fucked up my relationship with Gerard really is.
I light a cigarette, regardless of the fact that I was just strongly advised not to do so and I wait for him to show up. He does so after few minutes,he waves from across the road and I nod, taking the time to look at him, to look at his body and his face, trying to figure out what has changed, trying to unlock the spell, to solve the riddle that makes me feel as if there is something inside my head, inside my heart that he alone can see and touch.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Where did you go?”
“Here and there.”
“Here and there?”
“Yep.”
I look at him trying to see if he is gonna tell me, but he doesn’t say a thing and just start walking briskly and I am left trotting behind him. Damn short legs.
”Hey! Sorry to ask, but where are we fucking going? And where’s the car?”
The smile that stretches his mouth is one of those enigmatic ones and I’m torn between the desire to wipe it off with my fist and mirror it with one of my own, only I’m not famous for the subtlety of my expressions, so I scowl at him and his smile widens.
“Kensington Gardens is just a ten minute walk from here, there’s a small restaurant there, and we can have lunch and walk across the park.”
“Jesus, Gerard--”
“What?”
“You fucking turn into Oscar Wilde every time we set foot in England!”
It’s common knowledge that Gerard is the skankiest dandy around, or so we think anyway, and we never miss an opportunity to call him out on it. I smirk and walk faster, until my steps are in sync with his and we walk side by side, talking rubbish all the way.
I am about to ask where the fucking gardens are, when we see the entrance’s gates and this long, long path stretches in front of us and the trees, albeit in the dirty, cold wind, still look majestic and very British in their snobby indifference.
We walk quietly for a while and it’s not awkward, it’s pleasant, as if words are not needed to fill this time and we just stand side by side, the occasional shaft of sunlight illuminating our faces.
After a couple of more minutes I spot what looks like a glass greenhouse or a pavilion and I’m informed that it is, indeed, the restaurant he was talking about. The wind has picked up and a gust of dusty air and dead, rotten leaves swirls around me, causing my cough to flare up and I am left doubling over, feeling my chest constrict and press, painfully, over my abused lungs.
I feel, more than see, his body behind me, one hand on my chest and one on my back, trying to soothe me, trying to make this stop. I’d laugh if I weren’t scared that the cough would kill me. Gerard has always had the Florence Nightingale complex.
“Gerard…I’m not choking; I don’t need you to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre.”
I feel his smile on my neck, but he doesn’t step away and this is a tad too close for my liking and we are in a fucking public place. I can just see the headlines on Kerrang: Gay rumours confirmed. Split reactions from fans…
I’m a douchebag.
He rubs my chest one more time and then moves away, sweeping away his long bangs. I know he wants to ask me how I feel, but I don’t think I’ll be able to refrain myself from punching him if he does, so I stop him before he has a chance and inform him that I am fine, I am fucking fine and as soon as I can get my antibiotics I’ll be even better.
“I see… Still battling PMS. Come on Frankie, I’ll buy you a nice slice of chocolate cake.”
“Gerard Way, the comedian.”
He bows and the curve of his spine is perfect, like a crossbow. My eyes follow the arched line until he straightens up and smiles once more, those green eyes shining behind the black bangs.
“At your service.”
“Oh for fuck sake, let’s get in before I starve.”
We are ushered to a table and we sit by the large windows, the décor is posh enough to satisfy Gerard’s inner dandy and I like it well enough. It’s not crowded at this time of the day and the few people sitting at the other tables take no notice of us, chatting amiably and going on with their business.
We order lunch and I order a pot of coffee, because I only had four cups ages ago and I need more, right about now.
Days seem to be immune from the awkwardness, the weirdness that fires up between us when the lights are out and our bodies cast long shadows across small, enclosed spaces. We sit and talk about stupid things for a good hour and it’s really nice. It’s not like with Mikey; we’ve never had that easiness between us, and we’ve never had that perfect understanding that comes from knowing each other inside out. I don’t think we’ll ever have that, but it’s nice nevertheless.
We share coffee until the turning of the clock tells us that it’s time to return to our real world, that world that is made of appointments and interviews and meet and greet and gigs. That world that, sometimes, can be really boring and tiring, but that is what, in the end, saved all our fucking lives, no matter how cheesy that sounds.
Gerard pays and we make our way out; the sky has turned a darker shade of grey and I can taste the metallic tang of rain in my mouth. We really have no time to wander some more, but he insists that we do and that I just have to see this statue that is near the south entrance.
We walk through solitary paths and after a while I can feel the first, fat drop hitting my cheek. He increases his pace and grasps one of my hands, dragging me behind him and after while we are all but running, more rain drops splashing our faces.
We stop after a short run and I can already feel my lungs burning as if filled with gasoline and I can barely stand, but he has not let go of my hand yet and his other one is pointing at this small bronze statue, standing in the middle of a clearance.
“Peter Pan.”
I look up at the statue and the sky behind it it’s the colour of lead and there is a sudden flash of lightening, green like his eyes and then it’s a downpour.
And I should not stand under the water and I should not be holding his hand and I should not indulge into his dandy whims and I shouldn’t, I fucking shouldn’t let him turn me around and push my soaked hair off my face and look at me with eyes flickering with the same storm that surrounds us.
“Let’s go…”
“Gerard…”
“You’re soaked.”
“So are you.”
“You’re sick.”
His hand rests on my chest and I cannot fucking find a single word inside my head. Water pours down on our heads and he pulls off his jacket and puts it over my head, a completely useless thing to do considering that I am already thoroughly drenched
I want him to say something. I want him to say that things will not be like this forever. I want him to recite that poem to me, as absurd as that sounds right now.
“Tell me about the poem.”
“Later.”
“Now! I’m already sick and I am not a fucking kid you need to look after. I’m your friend, not your son. Stop treating me as if I am going to break into a million pieces. Stop treating me like this…stop--stop making things so weird between us. Stop… just stop!”
His hand moves from the centre of my chest to the shallow dip at the base of my throat, his fingers splay over the wet skin and I want to scream in frustration, I want to punch him, I want to know why he touches me like this, with those eyes that reveal nothing and speak a language I don’t understand
But he doesn’t offer me any explanation, his skin leaves mine and his eyes rest, placid and murky green, they look at me with that old, fragile distance I am used to and I shake with rage, because I am not going to have any answer, I am not going to understand and now it’s my fault, now I know he has been trying to tell me something all along, but I can grasp it, I just can’t.
“Forget it...I’m just freaking out for nothing right? Forget it. Just no more fucking poems okay?”
He nods and I don’t add anything else, even if I want to. Even if I know he wants to. At this point I really don’t think it’d be wise to even linger, because there are too many things in my head right now and there are too many words I don’t want to contemplate and too many feelings that are way too tangled together.
We manage to find a taxi and I shiver all the way to the hotel, while he chats with the driver about the shitty weather and laughs at a lame joke, adding an equally lame anecdote of his own. When we finally arrive at the hotel the pretty girl in concierge gives me my prescription and I ride the elevator in silence, dripping all over the place, alone.
We have to go and record Top of the Pops in half an hour and I barely have the time to shower and change into something dry. I catch a glimpse of Mikey and he makes his way towards my room and as soon as he sees the state I am in, he narrows his eyes and that makes me even more furious.
“Don’t start. Shit, it’s just rain. You’re not my mother and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Yeah…and you better take that stick out of your ass or I will, k?”
I smile, even if reluctantly and mutter a sorry that he accepts easily.
“See you in a bit.”
“Yeah.”
I take off my clothes and leave them in a pile by the bed, I am chilled to the bone and still I feel hot and clammy. Thumbs up, Frankie. Let’s see if you can turn a chest infection into pneumonia.
I crank the water temperature to high and I stand under the scalding spray for as long as I can resist and when I look down, the water at my feet is swirling blue down the drain and all the words have liquefied, erasing the rhymes and words and images from the planes of my back.
Erasing last night.
Erasing his touch.
I wash quickly after that, ignoring the knot in my stomach and the pulsing headache between my eyes. I towel my hair dry and I am downstairs in time for our manager to avoid another heart attack. I am sick as a dog, but it’ll pass. Or so I hope. No way am I missing the gig tonight. No way.
The recording for the TV is exactly the same as the other millions we have already done. A haphazardly put together crowd that is told to cheer and clap at certain times and stage lights so hot I think I am going to pass out from heat stroke.
I am sweating buckets and make-up has to be called several times to fix my eye shadow and all that crap they slapped on my face. They are all looking at me as if I’m on my death bed or if I have the plague and I want to make a fucking scene and tell everybody to go and chill the fuck out, but I’m really too tired and it’s a miracle I can finish the recording without passing out.
After we finish at the TV studios we are ushered to Brixton again and I have to wonder how the fuck I am going to play in few hours because I really feel like crap right now and I don’t see how it’s gonna get better. We pile up into the usual black people carrier and Mikey slides in between Gerard and me, putting his hand on my forehead. I slap it away and glare at him, but he is totally unfazed.
“Hey Rambo…you’re fucking burning up.”
“That’s because I’m hot.”
Bob snorts and so does Ray, but Mikey doesn’t seem too impressed.
“No, it’s because you are a jackass and got soaked after you had been told you had a chest infection.”
“Yo, Mike. Really man, fuck off alright? You’re not my mom and I was with your brother. He got soaked too, worry about him.”
“He’s fine. You look like death.”
“Cheers.”
“Frank…”
“I swear to God if you say another word I am jumping outta the car.”
I can hear a muffled, fake bout of cough and I recognize Ray’s, not so subtle, drama queen and if I could reach over I’d hug him. Or maybe not, better not to spread the germs.
But, regardless of my spontaneous desire to throw my arms around him, I am thankful, because he has broken the tension and Mikey has backed out a little and Bob is grinning, quiet in the corner.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“You better, Iero. Not that you are that great of a guitarist, but we need you to fend off the rabid girlies.”
“You’re just jealous, Toro. Because they want me and not you.”
“Dream on.”
And maybe it is the antibiotic kicking in, or the four paracetamol I have taken, or maybe it’s my awesome friends, but I’m starting to feel a smidge better, I don’t feel like puking anymore. I guess I’m thankful for small miracles.
The usual throng of hardcore fans are waiting at the gate and I wave a bit before ushered in by Mikey; the girlies look upset, but I really cannot stay out signing shit tonight and it’s not just because I am sick, it’s because I can’t. I cannot do it. I can’t stand there and pretend I’m interested and that I care. Not tonight. Tonight I’m too confused and too fucking emotional and too fucking sick or I would not come up with this pathetic whining.
We dutifully sound check and then we all sit backstage trying to eat some of the shit they have delivered and just making the time pass before we are due on stage. I force down some soup and some noodles and I’m really feeling a bit better, so much so that I can still make red haired girl blush and Bob has to threaten me with a very close encounter with his fist in my guts if I don’t stop running my mouth.
Gerard has been quiet, but is nothing unusual and when Keith and the guys from Every Time I Die join us he engages them with some sort of story about the first time we played the UK and they all lap it up. One thing I can give to him, the guy knows how to tell a story. He knows how to make you look at him, how to believe him, how to trust him. I meet his eyes across the room and he smiles, his eyes crinkling and his nose scrunching up. Like a child.
Mikey doesn’t smile like that.
I sit in front the big mirror and opt for the red eye shadow again. I already look sick as fuck, I think it’ll add to it and maybe it’ll look as if I’d done it on purpose and not because I’m about to die of man flu.
I still have to fend off Mikey’s overprotective attitude, but it’s not too difficult and, secretly, I am happy that he cares about me this much. I’m glad I am taken care of.
I brace myself for the show, but it goes much better than I expected. The stage is not as hot as the TV studio and I have more room to actually stand in front of the fans and to stop for a moment or two in between songs, trying to catch up my breath and drink in order not to pass out.
And then there is the fact that this, this is my life.
This thunder of voices singing along.
This sea of people swinging.
This electric wire sparkling life along our spines.
This is what we love the most.
I give all I have, spinning against gravity and the burning fever that rushes in my blood. I spin and fall and sing, my throat raw and sore and still I do it because this is who I am. This is my life and I love it. In all its confusion.
Mikey gets caught in my vortex and we both fall on the stage and he laughs, bright and sweaty behind his glasses and I plant a kiss on his cheek, helping him up and hanging on his neck, my guitar crashing against his bass and his hand on the small of my back.
“I love you, man.”
“Love you too, you flaming pansy.”
The lights fall shut over our words and I’m so lucky.
I am so lucky.
The night is waning down into pale, apocalyptic greens and the palest, dusty pink and wearing only a pair of jeans and all my fears, I find myself standing at his door.
His eyes flash green and I speak.
“I can’t sleep.”