Light.

The hairs rise on Frank’s forearms with a shiver, eyes trained sleepily on the increasing sheet of light ahead. The heater’s long broken; outdated tape player scratching out songs that Frank vaguely remembers from what must be a long time ago now. He smiles up at Gerard, pushing his palm forehead to chin and yawns, lilac circles gathering under his eyes.

“Hey.” Gerard reaches over and twists a strand of Frank’s hair around his index finger. “Sleep if you’re tired.”

Frank just smiles and turns his head to kiss Gerard’s palm before rubbing his curved hand back and forth across the goosebumps on his forearms.

“Nah, it’s too cold to sleep. The sun’s about to come up anyway, it’ll be pretty.”

Gerard laughs at that, muttering something about Frank being a ‘fucking girl’ but keeps his eyes on the empty road. Frank just watches him drive, rubbing at his eyes and reaching for his polystyrene coffee cup, face falling when he finds it empty.

“Wanna stop for a while?” Frank asks, catching Gerard’s hand and playing with his fingers.

“There’s no service station for another like, hour,” he states, staring ahead onto the half illuminated road before them, completely deserted besides a few dead bushes by the side of the concrete. Frank sighs as if this is the stupidest thing to say.

“Yeah, I know, but we can just stop and watch the sun come up,” he smiles up at Gerard through heavy eyelids and brings the pale hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it then each knuckle individually. Gerard can’t refuse and keeps his eye straight ahead for moments before pulling into an unofficial lay-by at the side of the roughly mapped road. He cuts the engine and both he and Frank are absorbed by darkness, illuminated only faintly by the pale glow seeping up from the horizon. They're sheltered by absolute silence for what feels like the first time in their relatively short lives, the weight of absent sound pressing down on their chests.

“Oh.” Gerard’s hand falls from Frank’s grip as they both take in the empty silence of the dark landscape around them; not another car around and mainly a flat plain with a few pieces of nothing here and there.

Then Frank’s fingers reach out, grazing across Gerard’s cheekbone and pushing round to grip the back of his neck, pulling him close and pressing their mouths together. Gerard’s hands fall uselessly on Frank’s knees, limp and aching with cold and the strain of gripping the steering wheel. Their bodies are the only source of heat in the car so they pull closer, cleaving for the other's faint warmth.

When Gerard reaches for Frank’s collar, pulling him desperately close, Frank breaks the bond grinning.

“We’ll miss it.” And he’s out of Gerard’s arms in a second, replacing the warmth with a cold breeze against his closed eyelids as Frank leaves the car. He, however, remains in the car, staring in half agony as Frank clambers onto the hood of his shitty car. It may be shitty, but it’s his. Sighing, he opens the door with a childish groan at the despairingly low temperature outside and follows Frank’s lead. He climbs ever so carefully onto the stained metal and pulls a packet from his jeans, opening it to tug a cigarette out and place it between his lips.

Both sit similarly, legs bowed with the rubber soles of their shoes propping them up to prevent them sliding away from the metal surface. Gerard rests his head on one arm while the other carries the cigarette back and forth from his mouth in a steady inhale exhale motion. Frank folds his hands on his stomach for a while, fingers numb and stiff with the cold. After a while, he starts to shiver too much and shifts over, tucking himself into Gerard’s side, Gerard’s arm automatically curving around the smaller boy’s shoulder.

“Do you think they’ve noticed yet?” Frank asks, reaching to tug the cigarette from Gerard’s mouth and draw from it slowly before replacing it.

Gerard shrugs, breathing out swirls of smoke into the air, curling and fading before his eyes. “Probably not. It’s still early as fuck, they’ll be sleeping.”

Frank nods, agreeing and they’re silent for a while, eyes following the motion of the haze Gerard exhales and the slow disappearance of stars above them.

“Think we did the right thing?” Frank again, voice low with his eyes dropped, staring intently at his knees.

“We fell in love, that’s not wrong,” he states it sharply, rough as though he’s working to convince more than just Frank. He refuses to feel guilty. “They didn’t like it so we left. Right thing, definitely.”

Frank just shrugs and then they’re silent for a long time, watching the stained sky brighten and bruise into deep shades of pink and yellow. They lie still, breathing in unison until everything is bathed in a pale blue glow, the sun rising up from the ground to brighten the empty landscape around them.

A car passes and Gerard flicks a cigarette butt onto the ground and turns to look at Frank; silvery eyelids closed over hazel eyes and his lips parted as his body rises and falls with his deep intakes of breath, asleep. He traces his lips over the line of Frank’s forehead before shaking his shoulder lightly.

“Frank, we gotta go.” He manages to slide him off the car and guide him into it. Frank immediately pulls his knees up to his chest and falls back into slumber before Gerard has reached his side.

The car starts, fanning dirt up from beneath it as it speeds away in the dull glow of early morning, and they are gone.