Revive

Most everything has become a blur. Outlined in shadows that only define my chaotic state of mind. Yet somehow, I'm calm; amidst all this destruction and damage, I have managed to stay in one piece. I wonder how long I have until I, too, fall apart. I watch the old-fashioned grandfather clock across the room, but the numbers mean nothing. I can't even distinguish one from another. But at the same time, they mean everything.

How much longer do we have?

The clock doesn't count down seconds; it ticks out fading heart beats.

"Your head, Gee. There is...so much blood," Frank mumbles in two separate breaths, almost incoherently. He is already half-way lost to the delirium within his head, the walls of unconsciousness rising up between us. Cutting me off from him. His head tumbles to the side, cheek pressing into the stiff, bloodied carpet. His eyes fight to stay open, eyelashes fluttering against corpse-like cheeks. They roll back in his head a little, and then swivel back, unsteadily locking on mine. The breath he pulls in comes painfully ragged, shuddering his fragile chest. It's so cold in this lonely hotel room, the shattered window bringing in the dusky morning, but sweat beads along his hairline and follows the same rigid tracks that his tears once sketched upon his face. Those tears that were lost in the dawn.

Tick tock, says the clock. Where time had once been lost in the anger of the earthquake, it now seems to speed up.

Tenderly, I pet back his hair with frozen fingers. "It doesn't hurt, honey," I tell him, "I can barely even feel it." My head splinters in almost ironic response. Little white lie bashing in my head. Why should I add my pain to his? A nauseating dizziness floods through my entire body, weighing down each limb, and everything turns just a shade blacker. A shade deadlier. Another layer of numbing ice wraps around my heart. Still, it continues to shred into invisible strips that sting the inside of my stomach like acid.

He chuckles with heated delirium. "You're broken." How he seems like a child with a broken toy, possessiveness shadowing the sickeningly truthful words. How it is me who is broken, and he who is irreparable. How soon, neither of us will exist at all, except in the grayest of memories.

Gerard Way, fucked-up lead singer, brunette's last fuck, selfish brother, shameless liar.

Frank Iero, little lost angel, harmony-maker, shameless lover.

Why was I ever so ashamed? Those lips on mine that night, a Godsend for sure. His arms, a stranger's arms, pulling me away from the train wreck. What a beautiful crash we made that night.

That night, that night.

Tick tock, laughs the clock. Why did you ever waste all your time being so goddamned ashamed?

The saddest smile dresses up my lips. "So make me better."

A kiss to his dry lips. What a selfish human being I am, stealing away his life. How selfish I've always been, prolonging the wait in the name of denial. Lover and Liar and let's never speak of it again. My shame is enough to burn both of our skins.

I curl up to his wasted side, wrapping my arms around his waist. From here, the chandelier looks like a monster, mouth wide-open and black. Each crystal shines a dagger-like tooth, blood encrusted on the carved glass. I shudder and curl my body around his to protect him from the beast that has already killed him.

So close now, a siren screams. But help is not what I'm looking for anymore. I only hope that Frank is there with me when I can finally close my eyes and sleep. At the end of our days, I will finally be able to say what I mean. And I will be able to fix him, as broken as we are. I will be able to fix all the damage I have done and the Liar will become the Lover as well.

"Let me fix you," he breaths, his mouth pressed to my shoulder. I know it takes nearly all of his energy, but he lifts his head so that our lips can fit together again. My eyes close, but his picture is painted into my eyelids for Eternity. Not this broken marionette who is struggling to stay here with me, but Frank. Frank who I thought put his entire heart into his guitar and the fluid notes, but was really putting his entire heart into me. Frank who I thought was screaming into the microphone for the electric thrill, but who was really screaming because we were so close, only feet away, but so, so far away. Frank who got lost in his thoughts, a broken smile worn upon his tired lips. Who was always thinking about what should have been. What always was.

Tick tock, the clock whispers. Siren song, closer and closer, a menacing tune.

"Do you k-know how long it took..." he gasps as I climb atop his waist, "for me to f-fall in love with you?"

"How long?" I breathe as blood from my chest drips onto his ripped t-shirt.

"Two seconds. Five minutes. Six hours. Three years." He grimaces as if the words pain him, but I see the open gash that runs along the ribs on his right side. It bleeds a little more with each shallow breath.

"Which one?" I ask him.

He runs his hands down my shredded chest, yet I only feel the tingle from his fingers. The pain is there, but only in memory. Now I'm only feeling the strangest sensation, as if he is slowly peeling back all of my layers. Skin, and then fat, muscle and bone, all the way, one-by-one until my heart is exposed. Suddenly beating so strongly for him and the fingers that lure my fading heart out of the careful cage I've imprisoned it in for so long.

Tick tock, purrs my heart, aching for the calloused fingers that peel away everything I was always scared of. And suddenly, I am refreshed. I can close my eyes and feel new Life budding inside of our entwined limbs. Not this life, this one that will surely end in a matter of hours, but this wonderful new Life being painted before us. The one where we are no longer breathing, and our hearts have stopped pumping blood, but we are still living. Living on our secret hearts that beat only for each other, once all the shame and regret can finally be swallowed and forgiven. Jump-start my heart and revive me, darling.

We will live on..

"All of them," Frank finally replies, palms resting on my chest. "I fell in love with you in the two seconds it took for you to s-stumble through the backstage door and fall to the floor. And I fell once a-again during the five minutes where Mikey introduced you to me and we had our first conversation. As drunk as you were, you still m-m-managed to talk to me." He smiles, closing his eyes as they roll back in his head once more. Almost as if he is searching for memories. "The...the six hours we spent in my h-hotel room that night...that night when you...you fucked me, Gerard," he whispers huskily, "I fell in love with you then too."

I'm still holding onto my breath and his hips, my ears straining for that last time expression that he used. His back arches as he struggles to rake in a breath, and there begins my fear that it will be his last. Once his body relaxes into the carpet once more, his hazel eyes reopen with a new sort of intensity. A determination to live.

"And every day since. Three goddamn years I've woken up every day only to fall in love with you all over again. When you sing. When you call your parents up on the phone. When you talk to Mikey, and Ray, or when you're getting y-yelled at by Bob for doing some s-stupid shit." His voice snaps. "All those times I fall in love with you, Gerard, and it fucking hurts. It hurts so b-bad."

Like a magnet, my lips seek out his in the pastel lights accompanying the early morning. But like help has turned its head on us, Frank turns his face to the side so that my lips barely graze his earlobe. I reel back on his hips, feeling the pressure building inside of him. Then I look into his eyes, and I see the contradictory hesitation. The battle of body versus mind that we're both afraid to win.

"You don't want me," I say, and it is a statement. His eyes paint me a graphic picture of the pain I have caused him, and suddenly it is impossible to see fragile little Frankie ever desiring something so poisonous.

My broken reflection glitters back at me from within his marble-eyes. "I...Gerard, I d-don't want your p-pity," he whispers, blinking back tears of gold, "I just want you to fix me."

But I know that I can't. I can't fix him, and I can't erase all the damage I've done. I guess in the end, it was all too much.

A scuffling sound rakes the walls outside the room. Then a frantically familiar voice.

"This is my brother's room, 614. Please, hurry, help him, please," chokes the voice.

Fix him, breathes my heart.

"Mikey," Frank sighs, "Gee, Mikey's outside. Did you hear his voice just now?"

I realize that I can no longer see his face. The blur has become total blackout.

His entire body relaxes under me, sinking into the mutilated carpet. My mouth, dry and pasty, tries to form around a response, but I'm falling forward instead. Falling down onto his chest, pinning him to the floor like the monster chandelier. A weak smile lifts my cracked lips as my face presses into his shirt. Right over his heart, which has been straining to beat for me all along.

Thank God, I only managed to keep it still beating.

"Gerard?" Frank squeaks in panic, his voice brimming with worry. One of his hands climbs up to shake my back. "Gerard, this isn't f-funny!"

Of course not, honey. What's so funny about death?

Just waiting for the rescue. For you to be revived. All along I have been broken, just like you said. But I'm going home now, darling. I'm going home.

"Gerard! Gerard, we're coming to get help!" Mikey's voice cries, shrill, from the other side of the thin, wallpapered plaster. I can feel his desperation radiating across the chilly hotel room. But my skin has gone cold as well.

Such a peaceful smile upon my lips.

Still trapped under the dead-weight of my body, I hear Frank's ragged sobs. They rip through his already too-torn body. My name is a garbled constant upon his bloodied lips. He tries to revive me, but I'm healing now. Soon enough I won't be broken anymore.

And I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you.

Tick, says the clock. And then its ancient face freezes, kind eyes smiling down upon us.

Frank's chest freezes in his sudden onset of hysteria, stomach muscles wildly contracting beneath me. But his painful gasps of air are like the most sickening lullaby.

Just fall asleep now, I'm here, right here. And I'll carry you home. I'll fix you.

The smile is still frozen on my face as I hear his heart cease its ragged beating. But it is our secret hearts that continue to pump. A beat for a beat, soul for a soul. Love for hidden love. Our secret hearts are fading away in the distance, carrying us home, as the hotel door finally bursts open two seconds, five minutes, six hours, and three years too late.

The. End.