Chapter Forty-Four Love: Part One: Survival 3 страница

There was a ridge, nestled and burrowed deep within the palm, that stopped abruptly in both of us. When we clasped our hands together, those ridges lined up, and connected us. We were filling a void in each other. I did something for Gerard as well as he did something for me. I was left wondering what exactly I had done for the all knowing artist, but I wasn’t given much of a chance to think.

“When did all of this happen?” he asked, a slight pang of sadness in his voice, making us both realize that he had missed one of the most important events in my life. Honestly though, I needed to do it without him, but I couldn’t have at the same time. It was one of those odd things that worked together; kind of like us.

“When I was gone,” I said, with the same slight pang. “After I was at the hospital and got my rape kit done –“

“You had a rape kit done?” he asked, the bottom falling out of his question. He was shocked to his very core, but out of all the things I had told him that night, I didn’t think that would have been the thing to do it. I didn’t realize the term was so sensitive to other people; I had been flinging it around as a point in my argument for so long, it was in my normal vocabulary. But it wasn’t just the word that scared Gerard, it was the whole meaning behind it.

“Yeah, but don’t worry,” I assured him with a squeeze. “The doctor said I had no trauma, and there wasn’t anything conclusive from it. Didn’t they tell you this?”

“No,” Gerard answered, not helping to have the bitterness leak forward in his voice. “They wouldn’t tell me a single thing about you.”

“Oh…”

I heard almost everything about Gerard’s side of the case; the bail conditions, his charges, and even Tom had told me he met with him. Again, I was so used to something that I had taken for granted as normal. But this wasn’t normal, we weren’t normal, and just like Gerard had said, he could never be normal. This affected him so much more than it did me.

The next thing I knew, the camera had fallen back into my bag and the only object between us was our beating hearts next to each other. Gerard reached over and wrapped me into an embrace, his hand resting on the back of my head, threading his fingers into my hair and rocking me almost like a child. But I didn’t feel like an innocent, helpless creature in his arms; just someone who needed comfort, though I knew he needed more than I ever thought possible.

“I’m so sorry they put you through that,” he oozed, squeezing me tighter. I let him hold me, and pressed my own body into his. It felt good, touching him like that, in a nonsexual manner. It felt so good to feel how warm he was, and remember how his hands and arms just fit in with my body. We blended then, touching chests and heads and souls and whatever the fuck else we wanted. I let my fingers go through his hair, rocking him so that we were one big fucked-up mess of comfort. It was nice, and it felt good, just enough to cancel out everything that had made us both want to just give up from before.

“I don’t care,” I assured him, referring to the rape kit. He clutched me harder at the words, not wanting to let me go as I kept talking. “It was worth it, to prove you innocent. I love you, Gerard. It was okay.”

The rock in our hug stopped slightly, and just turned into mere clinging. Clinging to something solid to prove something as vague and immeasurable as the emotion I had flung into the air once more.

“Frank,” he said, not in as much pain as before. “Saying it out loud over and over again won’t make me change my mind. I can’t say it.” His breathing was sad, yet accepting at the same time, and though I nodded into his shoulder, I wasn’t as accepting.

“I know, you don’t have to,” I started, unsure of where this was going or where I wanted it to. I told myself I was okay if he didn’t say it, but I knew deep down, I craved it. It was one of the only reasons I did keep saying it over and over again, other than I just fucking loved the way it sounded. I wanted something more.

“You don’t have to, but there are some things I may want you to do.”

“I can’t…”

He wasn’t being selfish in that moment in time, feelings wise. He was never that selfish to begin with, offering me everything he had, but as far as feelings went, it was rare for him to deny himself what he wanted. Artists were selfish that way. He was breaking out of his shell for me, valuing just how I felt. I knew he loved me. That was enough for me at that point. Besides, I had him in my arms. I had everything to begin with all over again.

“Just kiss me,” I said, changing the request from my previous statement. I knew how feminine the words sounded coming out of my mouth, but Gerard didn’t seem to really care. His troubled expression lifted for a moment, as his eyebrows raised slightly at the proposition. We had not kissed, despite being so close to it, since I had gotten there. As I felt him go closer to me slowly, I began to realize how much I missed this small and simple action. I never understood how much the meeting of lips could have so much merit. I also wondered where the fuck kissing had come from, and why it felt so good to begin with. It shouldn’t have as much as it did, but when feelings other than the physical sensations were involved, it was ten times better than fucking breathing itself.

Gerard touched my lips gently with his own at first, while I stayed stationary. I didn’t want to be too eager and meet up with his right away. Gerard needed to take the first step into reclaiming this relationship again. The night we had first had sex, I had been the one to kiss him. I had practically cornered him against a wall as well to do it. His lips met mine chastely, but as soon as I felt him settle more into the action, moving around and gripping me tighter, sliding his hand to my neck again, I gave into him fully. All of our kisses, I knew were something special all by themselves, but considering the climate and the conditions around it all, I knew this was my favorite by far.

I slipped my tongue into his mouth after tracing it outside his lips for a while and I felt him do the same. Though we had had so much time apart from each other, we were not going at a fast pace. We were still going surprisingly slow, like that first night. We were building our own little world again, our own little secret to keep. People knew about us now, even if there was no solid proof, so we had to be even more careful, appreciate every minute more because we knew it was tittering on the edge of the end. The thought scared me, making me press him closer to my body, feel him in as many ways as I could before it was gone and over. I didn’t know how much more time we had; for all I knew it could have been three hours, three days, or three years. Whatever the amount, I wanted to spend it with him, kissing him right there by the bay window.

Things soon progressed towards more than just kissing as my urge took over, and I found my smaller body practically in his lap, my lips all over his neck. I was still going as slow as I could in my motions, but in progression, things were picking up speed. I had been masturbating when I was at home, but not as often as I would have liked to. The first few days I had been too upset and shell-shocked to feel anything other than anger or fear, so my hand had had a nice rest. When I had gotten some of my sexual drive back though, I felt like my parents were on constant supervision of me, especially alone in my room at night. It was as if they were expecting some forty-seven-year old to come through my window, or for me to moan his name while I slept or pleasured myself. All situations were highly unlikely, but I still felt awkward. My sex drive was way beyond normal for an average teenage boy I was sure too, probably because of the constant attention I would get at Gerard’s. Now that I was out of their watchful gaze, in the man’s apartment, and in his lap, where I could feel him getting just as excited as I was, it was hard to contain myself.

“Do you want to go to my room?” Gerard asked with a sudden serious tone.

His question took me by surprise. I would have usually just gotten up and ran there anyway, stripping my clothing as I went, but I had been too preoccupied with Gerard. Now that his voice had knocked me out of my task, I realized how uncomfortable I was, and how inviting the black door on the other side of the room looked. I got up and stuck my hand out for him to take it quickly as we descended upon our destination.

I noticed as we went through to the other side that my handprint was still on the door. I felt myself beam inside, my smile aching my cheeks. He had not gotten rid of me. At least, not in his mind. We were not over, but we would be eventually. I wondered if he would still keep me there, keep me on his nothing door, which became something and close to everything when I marked myself on there. I hoped it would, because even if we faded into the background and tore apart in a thousand pieces, then at least there would be the small reminder of everything we used to have. Even if we weren’t still together, I still hoped we had everything. Or at least the concept of it.

My thoughts became a distant memory as I felt his lips on my own. We pulled each other to the bed, myself getting down first on the bottom, waiting for him to get on top of me. When he placed himself merely beside, I felt my heart fall a little. I had wanted him on top of me for a reason; he was heavy, and it made the situation real again. I needed a weight inside of me, a weight on top of me, keeping me warm and secure. It would be a long night though, hopefully, and I figured this was yet another way of going slow. He was still with me, just beside and kissing me gently as we brushed noses together tenderly. My hands wandered all around his torso, tickling and touching his lower back and the areas I could not have reached while we were by the window. I tried to enjoy each brush of my fingertip on him, whether it was on his clothing or hot flesh, preserving a better memory in my mind than the last time we had had sex.

Though none of the times with Gerard were bad, I began to realize that the last one had been in sheer desperation. My head was cloudy, foggy, and in shambles from the mess I had thought I had created with Jasmine. I had wanted to have sex just to prove something then, when now, we had nothing to prove. We were being intimate again, not tearing each other’s clothing off and going for it. My hand still wandered around the hemline of his shirt, occasionally sneaking my fingers into the heated area between flesh and fabric, and so did his own, but it was a lot more secure of an action.

He broke away from the kiss first, trailing down slowly to get my neck and shower it with the same kisses I had given to him plentifully on the bench. I had forgotten how sensitive my neck was, and from being unexposed for a long time, I melted under his soft tongue, gripping him hard and letting fluttering moans escape my mouth. I wasn’t too loud at first, having been silenced in so many ways from before, but as Gerard’s hand hit the flesh on my taut stomach, I let a louder vocalization roll off my tongue and into his ears. He seemed more encouraged by the noise, so I made it as often as I could. He moved his head, his hair tickling my chin as he looked down at me.

“Can I take this off?” he breathed, panting a little hard from his actions. I had thought my moaning had been answer enough for him, but when he still looked down on me with unknowing eyes, I rolled around under his small grasp on the fabric, my hands meeting his own.

“Go ahead,” I told him, helping him get the infernal piece of black off. My eyes were half-open and I was barely paying attention as we got back into our kissing regime, this time switching things up as I now sucked on his neck. He was bracing himself with his elbow, leaning on his side while I was flat on my back. I wrapped my arm around his back, trying to pull him on top of me and cover me from the chill of the room, but he stayed put. He extended an arm over to reach my other bare side to support himself, but that was all the moving he did. I wrote it off as going slow, and just focused on finally being with him again.

When my lips ventured round to his mouth and our tongues mingled for a while, his hands began to work their way over my chest, massaging deeply on their way down. He stopped at my nipples, rubbing them gently, barely brushing on some strokes and leaving me whining a moan into his mouth for more contact. He started to kiss me slower, more reluctantly, as his hand draped lower, making contact with the brim of my pants. It stayed there for a few moments too long, I thought in aggravation. But almost anything was too long for me. I had been waiting for so long, and I was getting so hard. It was different from the first time because I wasn’t as nervous. I knew I wanted to be with him, I knew it didn’t matter if I was gay or not, young or old, and I knew the sex would hurt, if it even did at all this time. I just wanted to do something and I was growing impatient.

“Can I take this off, too?” Gerard asked again, breaking the kiss. His voice was quieter this time, a little more despondent than usual. He looked down on me, his question displaying in his eyes as well. We were all about consenting to actions, even before this shit had happened, but most of the time, it was only the eyes that did it. We had gotten so good at communicating without saying a word that I almost felt scared in that split instant in time that we were losing our own language. You couldn’t forget a language though, not one like this. It was like riding the bike or playing the piano. You may not do it for a while, but there is some part in your brain that just knows. I needed to get Gerard to remember.

“Of course,” I insisted earnestly. Gerard nodded a bit, draping his eyes down to my jeans and starting to unbutton them slowly. I watched as he did, helping him to shimmy them off my waist when the fly was down.

I began to notice something about his slow movements; they weren’t being made out of sensuality. There was something else there. I almost wanted to say a fear or uncertainty but that didn’t make sense, not coming from Gerard. We had discussed that stuff prior and gotten rid of it with a single kiss. It was gone, maybe not in the past, but definitely not in the present. Gerard shouldn’t have been afraid anymore, and honestly maybe he wasn’t, I thought to myself. I was horny and I was having Gerard take off my pants. My mind was in other places, located below my waist.

I pressed my head into the pillow, feeling the cool air hit my skin, and threw the thoughts away at that moment. Gerard looked back up at me in that deliberate pace, before we locked lips and his hand hit my cock.

His touches at first were the ones I was used to. He gripped me solidly through the fabric, and when I lifted my hips up and slid the rest of the barrier down, he was still okay. He took me skin to skin in his strong fist, a little more sluggish than usual, but he began to pump me up and down rhythmically soon enough. I moved myself to his neck, feeling his hair tickle me and breathing in and tasting him again and again no matter how many times I licked the same area. Not even a minute into our new action, I began to feel a change in his movements. His grip became a lot looser; he moved from the middle, where he had pumped and clutched at me, to my head where he barely touched. He did that sometimes, when he wanted to tease me and coax me, but again, it wasn’t the same kind of touch. He was unsure when he barely touched my cock; I could feel it in his fingertips. He began to switch back and forth between the two touches, sure and unsure, strong and weak, making me write myself off even more. I sunk into the pillow, taking my lips away from his neck and letting him just do whatever the fuck he wanted.

“Does this feel good?” he asked through the movements, his voice thick and raspy. His rasp wasn’t sexual like it usually was. It was that same feeling, that unsure and uneasy one, etching itself into his vocal chords and choking him.

“Yeah,” I answered, biting my lip and in taking in a sharp breath as he hit a really good spot. “It always feels good. Nothing’s changed in how I feel for you. Or when I’m with you…”

I wasn’t lying either. Whatever Gerard did to me, kissing, touching, or just laying naked with me had always felt good. I felt connected when he was there, like I knew someone as much as I knew myself, how little or how much that varied on the days. I felt comfortable with him. I could take my clothing off, have sex with him, and do things like this and have it not be a big deal in terms of stressed-out emotions. We could just touch each other’s cocks and not have it be some huge big thing that we needed to talk and discuss about. We just did it because it felt good. And we wanted to make that other person feel good. Really, though we acted like it was nothing in terms of distressing emotions, the fact that we could do those kinds of things with another person meant everything and was the strongest thing I could feel for anyone out there. Even with Jasmine, it had been a bit awkward and weird, just going over and touching her. I had avoided it for the most part, because it didn’t feel like Gerard and I. We could touch each other, jerk the other person off in the morning with smiles on our faces, without having to ask, and it felt good. It felt right.

“Good,” Gerard stated to my response. I opened my eyes and looked down at him, watching as he stared off at an inanimate object in his room, his hands gripping me semi-tight and pumping.

“Good,” he stated again, slightly weaker and drawing his eyes to my stomach and chest. “I only ever wanted you to feel good, Frank. I never wanted to hurt you in any way, shape, or form…I never wanted to hurt you, Frank. I’m so sorry if I ever did.”

“Hey,” I called out immediately, something jarring me. My breathing was still a little jagged from his hand on my cock, which removed itself as soon as I cried out. I grabbed for the hand and took it, placing it back on my body, just above my waistline and linking it within my own fingers. Gerard looked at me hesitantly, like I was crystal ready to break. He was so scared right then, but I realized it wasn’t of the cops or anything of the sort. He was afraid for me, afraid of hurting or touching me in any way I didn’t want. I did want it, though, and I didn’t know how he could suddenly misinterpret these feelings or sensations. Even the first night when I had admitted to being afraid, he was not this gentle, this concerned, and this out-right disturbed. There was something else up here. Gerard wasn’t telling me the entire story, and I almost feared to know the things he had left out. Everything had already been horrific. I didn’t know if I could take anymore.

“Gerard…” I started, rubbing my thumb over the base of his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied, biting his lip. He looked at me, and then away again, recounting something in his mind.

“It was the cops, wasn’t it?” I questioned, cocking my eyebrow and trying to look deeper inside. “Did they hurt you?”

He scoffed. “No. Not physically, at least.”

“I know they made you feel like a monster,” I stated, clutching at desperate ends for sympathy. “I know it hurt.”

I looked down at him, watching as nothing seem to register in his mind. If it was the cops that had hurt him, I realized, then he would have perked up, he would have listened or at least tried to convince me otherwise. But now it was as if he was in his own little world, recounting other events. I strained my mind to think of anything else that had happened, when I realized something: Gerard was old. I hadn’t been born for half of the things in his life and though I liked to think I knew a lot about him, I didn’t. He talked a lot, and told me things, but the hours he talked would never compare to the lifetimes I had missed.

“Gerard, there is something you’re not telling me,” I declared, stating the obvious. It woke him from his catatonic state, his eyes flaring up at his secret half exposed. I took what I had, grabbing his other hand and drawing him closer. “Tell me. You can trust me. It can’t be that bad.”

He let himself come closer to me, but there was still deep-rooted pain in the action. “You’re right,” he finally said, with a heavy sigh. “No one hurt me.”
“Who then?”

Gerard took a deep breath, bringing his fist to his mouth and thinking for a moment. He turned to me and tried to look me in the eyes. When he realized he couldn’t do it, at least, not yet, he just did up my pants instead. Pressing his hand slowly across the fabric, smoothing it out, he started to speak hollow-sounding words.

“No one has ever hurt me. Even my father, even with the beatings. I never let him crush my spirits. I just got better at hiding myself. I thought I was strong, and really, I was strong. I am strong. But it’s the things that hurt other people that affect you the most. It’s the things you can’t stop, just watch, that tear away parts of yourself never knew existed. I was never hurt, that is, until Mikey was.”

Gerard had only mentioned his brother on a few occasions; I had yet to see the guy’s face, even in a picture, but with a name like Mikey, such a contrast from Gerard, I remembered it. Since I wanted to know everything about this man in front of me, broken but not yet shattered, I had committed the name to memory. And because I still wanted to know everything about him, I kept quiet and let him go on with his story, no matter how painful or jagged the words came out.

“Ever since Mikey was seven, he had been abused,” Gerard started, right away his words hitting a chord in me. I crushed my eyes closed, feeling sympathy swell and almost burst for these brothers. Gerard carried on with himself, not looking at me or anything else other than a distant, but persistent, memory. He told the story in flat terms and narrative, but something like this had to be told that way. If told with emotion, he may have died right in front of me. With that thought in mind, I clung onto his body, listening to him speak the delicate words.

“It wasn’t the typical situation, though. It wasn’t a priest or a teacher or even a family member who had abused him. It was a boy in the same fucking school, only three years older than him.”

Gerard paused there, so soon, more for himself than me. I could have asked a question there if I had really wanted to, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even think my mouth was working properly. Besides, this was not something you questioned; it may have sounded like I was doubting him. I just needed to sit there, be quiet, and realize what was happening all over again.

“It wasn’t too bad at first. Just kids ‘having fun’ as his father put it. Keith was only grabbing and touching Mikey when he really shouldn’t have. But apparently, kids are curious of their own bodies, or some other bullshit the father was shoveling down his own kid’s throat. He was probably doing the same fucking thing to Keith at night.”

There was a sneer on Gerard’s face, and he lurched forward slightly. I almost thought he was going to be sick, but the only form of vomit that came out of his mouth were the words that stunk just as foul. “Keith and Mikey were best friends, or at least, that’s what Keith told him. He was older and he knew he could have control over Mikey. Mikey liked being around older kids; it made him feel important. I should have just let him hang out with me. He always knocked on my door, so much that I eventually made a sign to tell him to stay out. Even that didn’t work. I should have just let him sit in my room – that was all he wanted. Our father was never at home, and our mother was too busy cleaning or working another job to pay attention to Mikey. He needed attention; he craved it. He just wanted to sit in my room to have another body next to him. I should have let him…”

Gerard sighed, bringing his hand to his face and brushing his bangs. “Honestly though, I didn’t want him around me. I didn’t want anyone around me. I just wanted to stay in my room and draw. I couldn’t stand people over my shoulders constantly watching me. I wanted to be alone, and well, Mikey couldn’t stand solitude. He needed people around him, and when he couldn’t find it in his house, he went other places for it. I just wish the people he chose to seek solace in hadn’t touched him like that.”

Gerard breathed a jagged breath, his anger rising in him. There was another memory fighting its way inside his crammed head. He had so many memories in there, I realized. Almost half a century’s worth. With the way he acted some days, I felt like he was just as old as me, or at least had as many memories. I could not have been more wrong. He had things in there I had no clue about, like this whole business with Mikey. I wondered what else he kept in there, filed to one of the distant back corners, hopefully never to be used again. I wondered what else I had missed in his behaviour; if I had been paying more attention to him, could I have picked up on this whole Mikey business? I wasn’t sure. Gerard was just a mystery, as simple and as complicated as that. I had to appreciate the fact he was unraveling something now, and I wondered if I was going to be able to extract anything else tonight, no matter how horrible, sad, and disturbing.

“Keith was such a nasty fucker, aside from his behaviour and his father. He was messed up in the head. I used to see him throw rocks at cats, kick his younger siblings, sometimes older, and Mikey, too. Once Mikey came back with a horrendous bloody nose he said he got from falling off a slide at the playground. I found out a week later that Keith had given it to him, and then done the same thing to himself. I have no idea why the kid chose to give himself a bloody nose too, but he had. Like I said, he was fucked in the head. I never said anything, though. I didn’t know what to say. I thought it was just kids goofing around…” Gerard stopped the motioning he had started with his hands, a particular memory coming to him rather quickly. “I saw Keith throw a squirrel across the road one day, right when a transport truck was coming.”

I gasped. It was the first time I had ever made any kind of vocalization or noise, other than my shallow breathing as I listened intently. I simply had to gasp there. I hated it when animals were hurt in any way. Even in movies, when people would die I wouldn’t really care all that much, but when an animal bought it, I got very pissed off, and more often than not, very sad. Like many things I was coming to realize, this was not a movie, but very, very real. Some sick ten-year-old fucker had thrown a squirrel at a transport truck. And though I didn’t want to ask too many questions, I felt lost.

“What happened?”

“What do you think?” he scoffed, turning to look at me with fire in his eyes. When I receded back and he saw the fear inside me, his face grew somber. With a quick squeeze of my hand, he looked back out at his visual plane of events and picked up the story from where he left off. “It got hit, of course. Mikey was there. It way the first day he had ever come home crying from Keith’s. It surprised me; Mikey was never a kid to cry. Even when he got that bloody nose, he had barely shed a tear, other than the ones that were knocked out of him from the blow. I couldn’t figure out why he had cried, and the image of him bawling into his pillowcase that night has stayed with me. I realized later on that Mikey had been abused for nearly a year by that point. It had been the act of killing an innocent animal to finally break him. Breaking only made him weaker, though. And being weaker made Keith stronger, something he did not need at all.”

There was a looming tone in Gerard’s voice, signaling what was going to happen next. I held my breath, making myself feel like I was going deaf as the next point came into focus.

“It was shortly after that event when Keith raped Mikey. He was nine.”

And after that point, I really did go deaf. I couldn’t take hearing about the string of young childhood abuse. It was too hard, and hearing Gerard speak in such a manner, such a harsh and horribly factual tone, made me ache and feel sick inside. I wanted to throw up, and I wanted Gerard to throw up right along side of me. He needed to purge these details from his system. He needed to get rid of the horrible monstrosity that had happened not to him – but his brother. With the way he had been carrying on that night, I would have thought he was the one who had been abused. It made a lot more sense in my mind. I thought it would be easier to deal with his brother’s abuse because it wasn’t happening to him and he could shut it out.

It was the complete opposite. Like he had declared when he started, it’s the things that hurt others that affect you the most. Gerard didn’t want to shut out his brother – his brother did that to him. Abuse made you look at everything differently. It made you question everything, and view relationships in another manner. Keith was giving something to Mikey that Mikey thought he couldn’t get anywhere else: friendship. He was also taking from Mikey, but telling him that it had to be that way. Mikey had not known any different. And eventually, his will for people around him turned into a will for Keith around him, abuse and all. When Gerard saw that something wasn’t right in this situation – even if he didn’t know exactly what yet – and he tried to get in, he couldn’t. Seeing it all unfold in front of his eyes, but never knowing how to stop it or help, that hurt more than being abused himself.