fic: In The Walls (6/8)
Headers & Main Post - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight - Bonus Content
Frank is standing at the coffeemaker when Gerard comes into the kitchen later that afternoon, and he looks mostly relaxed as he putters around, waiting for his coffee to brew.
Gerard breaks into a grin. "Frank!" he calls out, then crosses the room in long strides to wrap Frank up in a hug. "I take it you're feeling better now?"
"Yeah, I just needed to get over myself," Frank says into Gerard's shoulder, then hugs him back tightly. "I'm good now."
The coffeemaker gurgles in the background, and then the steady drip slows and stops. "Hey, coffee time!" Frank pulls away from Gerard and pours himself a mug, which he drinks right away. Once it's done he puts the mug down and says, "I haven't had any in two days and this headache is unbelievable."
"Oh, no, I believe it," Gerard says, and waits for Frank to finish pouring his next cup before he moves in to get his own.
They sit together at the table and drink their coffee. Gerard doesn't feel like there's any particular tension between them now, and he's more grateful for that than he can say. The talk they had clearly went a long way toward clearing the air between them, as hard as it was at the time. And he has no idea what kind of self-flagellation Frank got up to in the days he was locked in his room, but-and he hates to even think this-it must have done him some good, too.
"You're thinking too hard," Frank says into the quiet.
Gerard startles and looks up at Frank, who's smiling gently at him across the table. "I've heard I do that sometimes," Gerard says, smiling back.
And then the smile slides right off of Frank's face and his eyebrows knit together in concern.
"Wha..." Gerard starts to ask, but Frank is standing up, his chair scraping awkwardly against the tile floor.
"What happened to your arm?" Frank demands in a voice that's almost half-gasp.
Gerard turns in his seat to see Bob standing frozen a step across the kitchen threshold, like Frank just caught him in the middle of doing something he shouldn't. His arm is still wrapped wrist-to-elbow in gauze, and even from across the room Gerard can see the reddish spots soaked through to the surface over where he knows the cut to be.
"Nice to see you too, Frank," Bob says sarcastically, and he pulls his arm in close to his body like he's trying to hide it. "Sit down, it's not the end of the world."
Frank crosses his arms over his chest and doesn't sit down.
Bob rolls his eyes and comes the rest of the way into the kitchen, pulling out the chair next to Gerard's and deliberately sitting in it, pinning Frank with a stern look as he does. Only then does Frank sit back down, but he leans across the table to take what looks like a surprisingly gentle hold of Bob's hand and pull his arm back out from his body.
"What happened?" Frank repeats, far less accusatorily.
Bob sketches out the bare bones of the same story he'd told Gerard. Gerard watches as Frank's eyes get wider and wider until they're practically bugging out of his head.
"Why the hell are we still even here?" Frank asks plaintively.
"I keep asking myself that," Gerard sighs, and Bob nods his silent agreement.
Frank scowls down at his coffee. "You know I tried to leave yesterday, just to get out of here for a while?"
Gerard blinks at him. "I take it you didn't?"
"Nope," Frank shakes his head. "I tried walking out. I got all the way up to the gate and I could see the street through it and everything. I stood there for a long time, trying to make myself open the gate. But then, I don't know, I was getting all stressed out and anxious standing there. So I changed my mind and walked back up to the house."
"That's kind of weird," Gerard says.
"Since when do you change your mind?" Bob asks.
"I know." Frank puts his mug down. "I didn't even really realize what had really happened until I was already back in my room."
They're all quiet as they mull that over, and then Bob says, "I tried leaving a couple times, too."
Frank looks at him sharply. "And you couldn't do it either?"
Bob shakes his head. "Same thing happened. Except the second time I couldn't even make it out the front door. I just stood there with my hand on the knob, staring out the window for a while."
"That's fucked," Frank pronounces.
"Tell me about it," Bob agrees.
"I keep thinking about leaving," Gerard says into the silence that's come down around them like a heavy curtain. "But I never even try. I keep making excuses. Or when I'm outside smoking, I'll stand there and look at the gate or the fence, but I never move from where I'm standing. And then I'll come back inside and think about leaving again."
"Do you," Frank starts, but doesn't go on.
"Do I what?" Gerard asks.
"Nothing, it's dumb," Frank tries to wave it off.
"I won't laugh," Gerard tells him.
Frank sighs. "Does it seem to you guys like the house is trying to keep us from leaving?"
"What, like controlling our minds or something?" Bob asks, skeptical.
"Well you just said that you couldn't make yourself go out the front door," Frank says defensively. "What was stopping you from opening it if you really wanted to leave so bad?"
Bob doesn't answer.
"And it's not like that would be the weirdest thing that's happened so far!" Frank goes on, looking pointedly at Bob's arm.
Bob follows Frank's line of sight and stares, too. His inner conflict is showing in every part of his face, and finally he heaves a deep sigh and slowly says, "So, say you're right."
Frank nods encouragingly.
"What are we going to do about it?" Bob asks.
"I think we should try to leave right now," Frank says, suddenly urgent. "The three of us, we should go open the fucking gate and stand on the street just to fucking do it."
"What about Ray?" Gerard asks.
"We're not leaving forever," Frank says. "I just want to prove that we're not fucking locked in like prisoners." He gets to his feet and starts walking to the door. "You guys coming?" he calls back at them, then turns the corner without waiting.
"We may as well," Gerard says to Bob, who shrugs and gets to his feet without saying anything, and they follow Frank out of the kitchen.
Frank is almost to the front door by the time Gerard and Bob catch up with him. They watch as Frank takes a steadying breath and then puts his hand on the door's knob. He turns it decisively and it swings open easily when he pulls. "Okay, that was anti-climactic," Frank mutters.
He walks purposefully out the door and down the walk to the driveway. Gerard picks up his pace to keep up. He's nervous and it's getting worse the closer they get to the gate, which looms dark and imposing ahead of them. They stop a few feet away, the three of them lined up to face it down. The sun is low behind them and their shadows stretch long in front of them, across the asphalt and up the surface of the gate.
"Well?" Gerard says after a minute, when it becomes clear that Frank isn't about to do anything.
"Well what?" Bob asks.
"What are we waiting for?"
"If either of you want to go push the 'open' button, be my guest," Frank mumbles.
"Why don't you do it?" Gerard asks him.
"I'm working on it," Frank says shortly.
Bob turns. "What is there to work on?"
Frank glares at him. "Why don't you try doing it, then you tell me?"
"Fine," Bob says, then turns back to the gate, glaring.
Gerard half-listens to them argue as he tries to work up his own nerve to go push the damn button. It shouldn't be difficult, just a few steps over to the left and a firm press of a finger. There's nothing to it, but he can't bring himself to fucking do it. Every time he thinks he's about to break through and take the step, the anxiety roars up in his brain like a massive wave threatening to crush the very life from his body, and he stops himself in place to make it to subside. Really, the whole situation would be funny if it wasn't so weird and a little scary. "This is ridiculous," he mutters to himself.
"Why don't you do it, then?" Frank asks, anger starting to creep into his words. "What are you so afraid of?"
"Failure," Gerard replies simply, and the stark honesty of the answer takes him by surprise.
Frank looks completely taken aback. "Oh," he says after a pause, then falls quiet again.
Gerard's ears are ringing with the sound of his own heart thudding in his chest and Bob and Frank breathing on either side of him. The trees lining the property are rustling gently around them, and he can hear the background buzz of traffic noise down the hill. He keeps staring down the gate in front of him, which is split into sections by the shapes of their shadows as they stand there, doing nothing.
"I- This is weird. I can't do it either. I'm... I'm afraid of letting you guys down."
Gerard shoots Frank a look from the corner of his eye. He's standing with his chest puffed and his fists balled up, like he's trying to intimidate whatever it is that's affecting them with his physical presence.
"Is it fucking with us all the same way?" Gerard asks. "Bob?"
"Not being good enough." Bob says it quietly but with a certain weight, like the words are a burden he's been carrying for a long time.
They fall into silence again. It seems only fitting, like a tribute to their bravery in laying themselves open, fleeting as it may have been. Gerard certainly doesn't feel brave anymore, didn't really feel it in the first place-though he does Frank and Bob were, for their admissions. He wonders if he's maybe holding himself to too high a standard and he should cut himself some slack. But no, he thinks, his answer had been startled out of him, it shouldn't count.
"Seriously, can none of us go and push the fucking button?" Frank's impatience is cut through with a certain desperation, and he's practically radiating static electricity as he bristles in frustration. Gerard is almost tempted to touch him to see if he'll get a shock.
"Guess not," Bob says.
"So, what, are we fucking stuck in here?"
Gerard is sure Frank already knows what they're going to say, but that doesn't mean he wants to be the one to say it. He glances over at Bob, who's already looking at him. No magic is worked between them and no answer materializes from the ether, but then, Gerard wasn't really expecting anything. Bob doesn't look any more willing than Gerard feels, so neither of them end up answering Frank.
"Fuuuuck," Frank groans into their silence, and storms back towards the house.
Bob shrugs helplessly at Gerard and starts after Frank. Gerard stares at the gate for another few heartbeats. His shadow stretches up most of the way but falls a few inches short of the top. Not even his shadow can get past the gate, he thinks bitterly. Every single bit of him, right down to his fucking shadow, is stuck inside the Paramour's walls. Gerard finally forces himself to look away, and then walks back up the driveway.
When he gets back to the house, Frank and Bob are standing in the foyer like they're waiting for him. Frank seems to have calmed down already-most of the tension is gone from his shoulders and he's not shouting, which Gerard was sort of afraid he'd start doing.
"...haven't seen him at all in days," Frank is saying when Gerard gets into earshot. "I want to make sure things are cool between us."
"Maybe he's in his room," Bob says. "Haven't seen him yet today."
"Ray?" Gerard asks when he gets close enough to stand with them.
"Yeah," Frank nods.
"I haven't seen him today either," Gerard says.
"We should go find him," Frank announces.
"I think we all need to spend some quality time together again," Bob says.
Gerard nods emphatically. "Things have been pretty weird these last few days, it's true."
"Maybe we could try writing some more tomorrow," Bob offers carefully, then shoots a quick look at Gerard. Gerard nods at him, smiles a little. He's glad Bob seems to have taken their conversation to heart.
"No pressure," Gerard says. "We'll just see what happens."
"I miss playing," Frank says with feeling, then adds quietly, "I miss all five of us together."
"Me too," Bob agrees.
Frank kicks at something on the floor in front of him that Gerard can't see and isn't sure even exists. "I wish I knew how Mikey was doing."
"I talked to him yesterday," Gerard tells Frank.
Frank whirls to face Gerard, his whole face lighting up. "You did? How is he?"
Gerard bites his lip as he thinks about how he wants to put it, then settles on, "Better than he was when he was here. Stacy has him seeing a doctor every day, by the sound of it."
"Good," Frank says firmly. "That's really good."
Gerard nods. He wants to tell them that Mikey is worried about them. The words are right on the tip of his tongue, pressing against the backs of his teeth, but he can't bring himself to say it. He's not sure what Mikey told Frank about the house being haunted and he's pretty sure that Mikey didn't tell Bob anything, and if they don't already know about how Mikey feels then he doesn't want to tell them and make them worry about him even more. He forces himself to swallow the thought. It doesn't go down easy. "He says he misses us," is what he says instead.
"I would hope so," Frank says. He's smiling as he says it-it's like the good news is enough to chase away the lingering stormcloud over his head brought on by what had happened with the front gate.
By some unspoken consensus they start walking again, and they've just turned the corner to the hallway to the kitchen when they hear the noise. It's a thumping at first, hard and regular, and a moment later it's overlaid with what sounds like muffled shouting.
Gerard grabs Frank's arm and they stop dead in the middle of the hall. Bob bumps into them, not stopping quite in time.
"Why'd you stop?" Bob asks.
"Does that..." Gerard starts.
Frank's good mood is gone already, and now he looks concerned. "Is that Ray?"
Gerard tilts his head to try to hear better. "Sure sounds like it."
They start walking again, but slowly and carefully, trying to figure out where the noise is coming from. It gets louder as they walk, and the indistinct shouting starts to resolve into intelligible words.
"Let me out!"
Frank hisses in a breath through his teeth and mutters, "That can't be good."
Gerard tightens his grip on Frank's arm. Frank shoots him a quick glance but doesn't shake him off.
As they creep further down the hall, the thumping sounds more and more like someone's-Ray's?-fist beating on a door.
"Is anyone there? Guys? Anyone?"
Gerard's heart starts beating faster and he can feel the sweat breaking out along his hairline. "That's definitely him."
"Fuck," Frank mutters uneasily.
The noise sounds like it's coming from somewhere right in front of them now. They slow as they approach the doors and then come to a stop by some unspoken consensus. The shouting has died off but the pounding is still going, in spurts of rhythmic banging.
"Which door, do you think?" Frank asks tightly as he looks back and forth along the row of doors.
"Who cares? Just open them all," Bob says, then goes to start doing exactly that.
But none of the doors open.
"Hey!" Ray's voice comes through the door, and the pounding noise stops. "Bob? Is that you? Can you open the door?"
"Yeah," Bob calls back. He's turning his head from side to side like he's trying to figure out which door to address. "I'm trying, but the doors are all locked." There's a strange note in his voice that Gerard hasn't heard before, and it takes him a second to place what it is-Bob sounds terrified.
Gerard takes that as his cue to go start rattling knobs himself. He starts trying the ones on the side of the hall that Bob and Frank haven't gotten to yet, but of course none of them give. Of course.
"Fuck!" Ray exclaims. There are a couple muffled thuds, like he's beating the door in frustration.
"What's going on?" Frank calls loudly.
"Is Frank there too?" Ray asks through the door.
"We all are," Frank tells him. "Where are you?"
"I'm locked inside this fucking room," Ray says. He sounds pretty freaked out. Gerard doesn't blame him at all, but he thinks Ray sounds more scared than the simple fact alone alone should merit.
"Which room is it?" Frank asks. He's still rattling doorknobs like enough perseverance will coax them to open.
"It's a library or something, I don't know," Ray tells them.
"Okay, because none of the doors are opening at all, so we're not sure which one's you."
There's a brief pause, and then two really loud bangs echo through the hallway.
"That one's me," Ray announces. He sounds a little wild, like he's going to lose it if he's stuck in the room much longer.
"Sounds like this side of the hall." Bob gestures to the row of doors he's already facing.
"Is there something going on in there?" Gerard asks Ray, pitching his voice louder so it'll carry through whatever door Ray's behind.
"Not right now," Ray says carefully.
"But before?" Gerard prompts. A chill breath of air brushes against the back of his neck and he shivers.
Ray doesn't answer right away, and the silence feels like it stretches on forever. Gerard can hear his own heart thudding in his ears, so loud he can't help but wonder if everyone else hears it too.
"There were ghosts in here with me," Ray finally says, the words tight and sharp.
"But they're gone now?" Gerard asks.
"I can't see them anymore," Ray says.
"What were they doing?" Frank asks him.
"Fighting," Ray says, sounding sick. "Or I should say, one was beating the other."
Frank's eyes go wide. "Can ghosts do that?"
"Apparently." The retort is sharp, and Frank looks chastised for a moment before it gives way to him looking angry. Angry and scared. Bob looks much the same, and Gerard can only imagine what his own face is saying.
Gerard opens his mouth to say something when he gets interrupted by a sudden flurry of thumping that seems to rattle the very walls around them. He flinches instinctively away from the walls, pulling in on himself and making sure someone-Bob-is right behind him, at his back. He wants to run as far away as he can, find somewhere to hide, but he can't, he won't leave his band.
"Toro?" Bob yells, a little shrill. "Are you okay? What was that?" He starts trying doorknobs again. When none give he starts hitting the doors, with fists and feet both, like brute force will work where his other attempts failed.
"One of them- Ow, fuck, fuck, just started throwing books!" Ray's voice sounds like it's coming from farther away, like he had to move to avoid getting hit again.
And then the rapid-fire thumping drops off and the silence is jarring by contrast. Gerard lets out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He steps across the hall to start trying more doors, then nearly jumps out of his skin when it sounds like something hits the wall right next to his head. The new round of thudding is coming quicker than before, heavy and fast and very, very loud.
"Are you okay in there?" Frank yells. His hands are balled into fists and he's got them up like he's looking for something to fight.
"Not really!" They can barely hear Ray's words over the enormous noise of the repeating thuds. Gerard can't help but wonder how many books are getting thrown at a time; it sounds like it can't be anywhere close to just one.
"Fuck, we've got to-" Bob starts, but gets cut off by a high-pitched female scream that suddenly fills the air around them, nearly drowning out the heavy thudding of the books as they hit the walls and floor. Gerard winces and covers his ears, but the scream keeps going and going. It's a completely horrible sound that grates against his nerves and he can't block it out, not even a little. The sound is assaulting him full-on, and he can only imagine how Ray feels, trapped in a room with whatever-whoever-is making the noise.
The repetitive thumping of the thrown books finally drops off, but the screaming is still going. It feels like the noise is never going to end.
And then, with no warning, the screaming stops. The sudden lack of noise makes Gerard aware of a faint ringing in his ears, a steady drone that nags at him right at the edges of his hearing.
"Oh shit," Ray swears suddenly, urgently.
"What?" Gerard calls out.
"The light just went out." Ray sounds truly terrified. "I heard the bulb shatter. I can't- I can't see anything."
"Fuck," Frank swears under his breath. He starts working his way down the hallway again, trying doorknobs repeatedly, rattling them like he can terrorize them into opening. Bob's face is a thundercloud as he starts at the other end of the line, forgoing trying the knobs in favour of beating them and kicking the doors as hard as he can.
But they all stay firmly closed.
"Fuck!" Frank swears again, louder, and kicks a door in frustration. There's a loud cracking noise, and then the door pops open. Frank freezes, momentarily startled, and then sticks his head in through the door, his feet still firmly planted in the hallway. "Empty," he declares disappointedly when he turns back to the hall.
And then an unfamiliar male voice fills the air around them. "You can't do this to me, I won't let you," it says, a croaking rasp of half-formed consonants.
"You're not my master," comes a thin and breathy female voice. "You don't have any say in this."
"Watch your tongue!" the man snaps, and then the vivid flesh-on-flesh sound of a hard slap rings through the air.
Silence echoes after it, and then the screaming starts again, even louder than before, even more piercingly, even more desperately terrified. Gerard staggers back, pushed by the sheer force of it, and as his back hits the far wall of the hallway he curls in on himself and sinks to the floor, trying to defend himself against the awful noise. As hard as he presses his palms to his ears he can't block out the fleshy thumping sounds, the sound of heavy panting, of grunts and groans and gasps. What sounds like the crack of a skull against something hard and unyielding makes him nauseous.
He looks up and sees that Bob and Frank are doing better than him against it, but only by a little: Bob is leaning hard against the door he'd just been attacking, pressing his hands hard against his ears as he keeps kicking the door; and Frank is vibrating with anger and still rattling doorknobs one at a time even while he has his head bowed, shoulders hunched up high by his ears, and legs spread wide to brace himself against the force of the noise.
Gerard forces himself to stand up again, to fight back against the overwhelming assault of sound. Each step is harder than the one before it as he strides across the hallway, going back to the door he'd been trying when the noise started. It still doesn't give and doesn't give. When he kicks it, all he gets for it his trouble is hot pain blooming in his toes.
Then the whispering starts. "Please don't kill me," the woman pleads, miserable and pathetic. "Don't do it, don't do it, it's not right, please, we can talk about-" She gets cut off by another loud, fleshy thud. A moment later, Gerard hears a couple mucousy sniffles followed by what is unmistakably a sob. "Please, don't do it, we can-"
They never get to hear what the ghosts can do because the desperate pleading turns into a high-pitched shriek that keeps going and going. Gerard has no idea what's going on but there's no way, not a chance in hell, that it's good. He's not sure who or what is in the room with Ray but he's sure right in his guts that he's listening to the woman-whoever she is-get killed.
He grits his teeth against the pain and starts kicking doors again, along with Bob and Frank. If Frank got one open like that, then surely they can get the rest to open, too.
The pounding starts up again, thudding and booming in the hallway, but it's a regular beat and after a second Gerard realizes that it must be Ray.
"Come on, we've got to do something," Bob urges them, kicking at the door in front of him as hard as he can. He finally gets it to pop open in its frame, but that room is empty, just like the first.
Ray keeps pounding, and even through the screaming Gerard can hear him begging, "Please open, please open, come on, let me out, please open..."
He hates feeling so helpless in face of Ray's obvious torment, even though he's doing his very fucking best to get the doors open. But as hard as he tries, twisting and shaking and cajoling the knobs each in turn, kicking and beating the wood in hopes it'll crack and swing open, none of them so much as give the tiniest bit under his hand.
And then the shrieking stops, and all Gerard can hear is a soft gurgle. He doesn't want to think about what the noise could be, even though he's seen enough horror movies that he's got a dozen possibilities, none of them good.
The four of them pounding and pounding on solid wood is loud enough to drown out the lingering gurgling once it starts to drop off, which Gerard appreciates more than he can put into words.
Another door pops open then, giving way under the force of Bob's kick, and that room is empty too. Bob swears and moves on to the next door.
They're actually running out of doors that Ray could be behind, Gerard realizes. As long as they can keep getting them open they'll have him rescued soon enough. If his door will open at all, a nasty little voice in the back of Gerard's mind pipes up, and Gerard sets his jaw and ignores it as he keeps trying to beat down the door in front of him. It finally cracks and then creaks open on rusty hinges. Gerard's blood roars for a moment before he sees that the room is completely empty inside.
He's moving on to the next door down when Frank gasps loudly. When Gerard turns to see what's happening, he sees Ray nearly falling through the doorway in front of Frank in his haste to get out of the room. And then Frank's got Ray caught up in a hug, clinging as tightly as he can, his hands spread wide across Ray's back like the more of him he's touching, the safer he is.
Gerard's heart soars in his chest and he rushes over, puts his hand on Ray's shoulder to reassure himself that he's okay. Ray turns and smiles at him-weakly, but it's still a smile.
"I- Holy fuck, that was... wow, fuck, oh my god," Ray says in a rush, and he sounds relieved but still deeply rattled. Gerard doesn't blame him at all.
"Do you need to sit down?" Gerard asks. There's not exactly a chair nearby for Ray to sit on, but he looks like he could probably make it to the kitchen before he falls over. Maybe.
"I'm okay," Ray says. He lets go of Frank and goes to take a step away from the door but then loses his balance. Gerard rushes forward instinctively to try to catch him but Bob gets there first, grabbing Ray's arm even as he catches himself against the door frame. "Or not," he mutters. He starts inching away from the door, leaning on the wall the whole way.
Gerard glances at the door they just opened, and then takes a deep breath and peers into the room. He's expecting to see some sort of evidence that what they'd heard actually happened-books all over the place, damage to the walls, upended furniture, a body on the floor-but it turns out he can't see anything at all: the room is pitch black, so dark that he can't even see vague shapes. He belatedly remembers Ray telling them that the light had gone out, so he gives up on trying to pin things down and turns back to the hallway, more than a little disappointed.
"So you're not hurt," Bob says to Ray, sounding... not quite jealous, Gerard thinks, but maybe getting close. But then, he wouldn't blame Bob if he did. He still notices Bob staring down at his bandages in disgust when he thinks nobody is looking.
Ray purses his lips as he thinks. "I don't think so. I only got hit by a couple books, so..."
"You should sit down," Frank insists. "Come on, the kitchen's not far."
They stick close together as they walk to the kitchen, and when they get there, Bob solicitously pulls a chair back from the table and offers it to Ray, who sinks into it gratefully. The rest of them pull out their own chairs and drag them so they're clustered protectively around Ray.
"God, I never thought I would get out of there," Ray says quietly.
"But you did," Frank says. "It's over, it's okay."
"Do you know who the people- the ghosts were?" Gerard isn't trying to change the subject per se, but his curiosity is gnawing away at him. He has half an idea skipping around the back of his mind, but he can't pin it down and isn't sure how to articulate it.
Ray shakes his head. "It was a man and a woman if it was anyone, but that's all I've got."
"Oh." Gerard sinks back into his chair and jams his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie.
They lapse into silence. Gerard watches Ray out of the corner of his eye, and he can see that Bob is doing the same. Ray looks okay, though. Sitting down for a while has visibly helped a lot; he's got most of his colour back and the trembling in his shoulders looks to have subsided.
"Do you know how long you were in there?" Frank asks.
Ray shakes his head. "What time is it now?"
Bob checks his watch, and then says, "Almost five."
"Five?" Ray repeats incredulously.
"Yeah," Bob says simply.
"Fuck," Ray breathes, "I was in there for twelve hours."
"Seriously?" Frank boggles.
"Yeah," Ray says heavily. "I couldn't sleep last night so I went wandering, and I somehow ended up in that room and then... I just couldn't leave."
"Did anything happen before... before we found you?" Gerard asks.
"No," Ray shakes his head. "It was really boring, right up until right before then. I saw... flickers of shapes? Like parts of ghosts. Not the whole thing. It was weird, but nothing too bad." He breaks off and sighs. "And then, well, you guys heard what happened next."
"Twelve hours?" Frank breathes incredulously.
"Looks like," Bob says.
"Wow," Ray says. He's finally starting to relax, his shoulders dropping slowly from where they've been up near his ears, and Gerard wishes he could do more.
"You going to be good?" Gerard asks.
"Yeah," Ray says kind of absently. "It's just, now that I think about it? I'm really hungry." And he laughs, clipped and a little stifled, but it's a real laugh. "Is it wrong that that's all I care about right now?"
"No way, fuck, of course you are!" The words tumble out of Gerard's mouth as he gets to his feet. "We probably still have some frozen pizzas left. Or do you want something else? I'm not sure what we have, but I can go look in the freezer-" He cuts himself off when he realizes he's babbling, but putting a pizza in the oven is something he can do-and even if it isn't much it still means a lot in the face of the increasing horror of the house they're fucking trapped in.
"Pizza is fine," Ray tells him.
Frank pulls his chair a little closer to Ray's, then leans in to hug him again. "I'm glad you're okay."
"Me too," Ray agrees with feeling.
Frank makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "No kidding." He pulls back but keeps his hands on Ray's shoulder, holding him still at arm's length like he's inspecting him carefully. "So, hey," he starts nervously. "It's totally cool if you're not up for it yet, but, uh, we were thinking of maybe getting back to work tomorrow? Just to be doing something again."
"Hell yes," Ray agrees quickly. "I hate this feeling like we're suffocating, you know?"
Gerard finds himself nodding-Ray managed to put exactly his feelings into words that easily. And the way Frank's face lights up, Gerard can tell that Ray really nailed it for him too. Bob is nodding, too, and the matter is clearly settled.
* * *
When Gerard gets woken up suddenly in the middle of the night he's struck with an immediate surge of panicked déjà vu. The last time he got jerked out of sleep was because of Mikey, and now he's got this crawling sense that whatever comes next is going to be something strange and creepy.
But this time, it's only somebody knocking on his door.
"Gerard? Gee, you awake?" It's Frank, and he sounds upset, like whatever it is, it's urgent.
"What?" Gerard croaks.
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah-" And before the word is entirely out of Gerard's mouth his door is swinging open and Frank is shuffling in.
"Sorry to wake you up," Frank says, hovering a few steps inside the doorway. He still sounds really shaken.
Gerard blinks his eyes hard a few times to try to clear the sleep out, and then sits up and squints at Frank. He looks pale, though that could just be the moonlight coming in, but he looks pinched, too, and he's limping, which is probably not a trick of the light.
"You okay?" Gerard asks.
"Um," Frank starts hesitantly, "can I sleep in here?" Which isn't an answer, except for how it is.
"Sure." Gerard agrees almost without thinking, and then bites down so hard that his teeth click. Fuck, it's like a running theme in his life now, that when he gets woken up in the middle of the night something is off-something is wrong-and somebody else is sleeping in his room. He wonders if Frank knows that Mikey spent most nights curled up on Gerard's floor, wonders if that's one of the things Mikey told him... but he's still too tired, too groggy to get caught up in resentment. Besides, he can't say no to Frank, least of all when he's so visibly shaken up.
Gerard pulls back his covers from where they're bunched up around his shoulders and turns down a corner for Frank, who smiles at him as he makes a beeline for the bed. Frank climbs in and pulls the covers back up to where Gerard had them before. Even though the bed is more than big enough for them to have their own sides with room to spare in the middle, Frank scoots over until he's only inches from Gerard, then curls up on his side, facing him. Now that he's up close Gerard can see the wild look in his eyes, and something clearly isn't right.
"You okay?" Gerard asks again.
Frank shrugs.
"What happened?" Gerard asks, then fights down a yawn. He readjusts the covers around his face, then frowns. Normally Frank is pretty warm-Gerard's certainly slept on him enough times over the years to know-and he should be able to feel it now, warming him up right away. But all he feels is the normal chill of his bedroom. Gerard reaches for Frank's hand and squeezes it: ice cold.
"Something was chewing on my leg," Frank whispers.
It takes a second for the words to register with Gerard, and when they do, he blinks again and says, "What?"
"I woke up in pain, and there was a giant fucking white dog chewing on my leg."
"What?"
"And then I looked again and the dog was gone, but I could see these glowing yellow eyes in the corner, and... Fuck that, you know? I couldn't stay there." The words come out evenly, like Frank is talking about what he had for dinner or something, but Gerard knows that Frank is trying to trick himself into calming down.
Gerard scoots a bit closer and lets go of Frank's hand so he can wrap his arm around Frank's shoulders and pull him in close. "Is your leg okay?" he asks.
"Still hurts. I think it might just be, you know, 'cause I'm still kinda freaked out."
"'Kay," Gerard says, and yawns again. "You good to sleep?" he mumbles. He still hasn't fully woken up and he suspects he's about to pass out again at any second, but he wants to-has to-make sure Frank's okay.
"Yeah." Frank tucks his head in, and his hair tickles Gerard's chin. The feel of it pings at Gerard's sense memory; this could be any other night they've had to share a couch or a twin-sized bed or a sleeping bag in the back of the van. But it's not. This is new and something else completely and Gerard hopes he never has to feel it like this again.
But then the soft puff of Frank's breath on Gerard's throat pulls him back to the moment, and Gerard yawns once more and then he's asleep again.
The next time Gerard wakes up, Frank is shaking his shoulder, hard.
"Gerard," Frank hisses, then shakes him again. "Wake up, come on, wake up."
Gerard grunts something he hopes comes out as "I'm awake." He can't get convince his eyes to open.
"Come on," Frank says, more loudly. His hand stills on Gerard's shoulder, and he starts squeezing hard instead.
"What the fuck," Gerard grumbles. "I'm awake, I'm awake, what?"
"Look," Frank says urgently, pointing down towards their feet.
Gerard finally cracks an eye open and all he can see is red. Frank's hand is red and Frank's leg is red and the narrow stretch of sheet between his feet and Frank's is red.
They weren't last night.
"What the fuck!" Gerard jerks upright, suddenly very awake. His heart is pounding with the quick flood of adrenaline. He barely has his bearings, isn't completely sure what's going on, but fuck, something is so, so wrong. He shuts his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. When he opens his eyes again and actually looks, the red is still there but it's not nearly as bad or as much as it had seemed at first from right up close. He looks at Frank, then, trying to figure out what happened. "Is this your blood?"
"Yeah," Frank says, strained and incredulous. He's got one leg of his sweatpants rolled up and he's staring at his calf. At the angry, bloody mess of his calf. "I mean, I wasn't bleeding last night, right? One of us would have noticed." He grimaces. "I didn't even realize it broke the skin," he says anxiously, turning and twisting to try to get a good view of what Gerard now sees as a distinctly bite-shaped wound.
Gerard reaches down and carefully unrolls Frank's pants. A chill pricks at the back of his neck when he finds all the fabric intact. "There are no holes in your pants, Frankie. Bite-shaped or otherwise."
"But there are holes in my fucking leg!"
"Yeah." Gerard can't argue with that. The evidence is right there in front of him, raw and red and bloody.
"I don't think that dog was real. It wasn't real, but it fucking bit me." Frank sounds scared; his breath is coming faster. Gerard is worried Frank might start hyperventilating soon.
Gerard reaches out to stroke Frank's hair. "It'll heal and you'll have a badass scar," he says. He doesn't know what else to say.
"I hate this place so much," Frank says sullenly. "I want to leave. I want to get the fuck out of here." He leans in and presses his face to Gerard's chest, curling in like he's hiding from everything-his leg, the house, the whole world.
"Me too," Gerard says. He really means it now. He wraps his arms around Frank and holds him because he can't think of anything else to do to help, short of finding them some way to get out. He doesn't know what the fuck he was thinking earlier when he thought they could stay. They need to leave, all of them, and get the hell out while the getting is still good. "We can bring it up to Ray and Bob today, if you want. We can find a way to do it."
"I hope so," Frank says.
Gerard hopes so, too.
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