I Can Transform You

POV: Frank

Now that Gerard dropped by to visit me every afternoon, my days no longer dragged by without purpose; I had real motivation to drag myself out of bed in the mornings. The nurses liked to tease me and say I was obsessed with ‘making myself pretty for Gerard’ but they could fuck off. All I did was have a shower and clean myself (and my room too) for him, really. I didn’t exactly have my best outfits here with me to put on and impress him with; I just had to work with what I had, which was two pairs of slightly baggy jeans, two hoodies, and two t-shirts that my mom had picked out and dropped off for me. Yeah, thanks mom. For fucking nothing.

But still, Gerard always seemed impressed, making sure to slip me a number of compliments throughout his visit, to the point that I got slightly suspicious of his motives. Take last Wednesday, for example: we were joking around and being our usual flirty selves and he was all, “Those jeans look really good on you. They might look even better on the floor though.” I know he was only joking; he could barely keep a straight face whilst saying it, but that didn't stop me getting off the bed and sitting down on the floor, with my legs stretched out in front of me, saying, “Ooh, you’re right, they match the carpet and everything.” He responded by throwing a pillow at my head and we both fell about laughing like a couple of losers for about five minutes.

The flirting is mostly harmless though. We always laugh the sexual tension between us off, even if it never puts out the flame of burning desire between us entirely. It’s still there, under the surface. And if it was up to Gerard, we definitely would have given into by it now, but I call the shots between us and I refuse to take things any further than holding hands and napping together in a spooning position, at least until we are officially dating.

“So, you want me to court you first? What are you, fifty-seven?” Gerard mocked me when I told him about my rigid rules regarding sex.

“Fuck off!” I punched him pretty hard in the arm - accidentally hard enough to leave a bruise. “I just want to get it right this time, okay? And that means not rushing into anything.”

That conversation happened two weeks ago, and we were still taking things slow and steady. Lucky for me, Gerard understood why I was being so – for lack of a better word – frigid, and he never tried to make a move on me or pressure me into anything. The most he ever did was kiss me on the forehead when he left, and yes, I always fell asleep with a smile on my face.

It took a lot of self-control to refrain from jumping him the second he walked into my bedroom most days - today especially - but I was freakishly strong-willed about it. I was determined not to give my heart to anyone else until I was 100% sure they weren’t going to break it, so I was going to keep Gerard at a far enough distance, in the ‘just friends’ zone, for as long as it took me to be sure that he was the one. I had a whole lot of trust issues, okay. I wasn’t ready to fully open up to him and let him into my heart.

“Hey!” he greeted me brightly on this particular afternoon, standing outside my door like a polite guest waiting to be invited inside, and holding up two plastic carrier bags of stuff. “I come bearing gifts!”

I managed a jaded smile I only ever manage for him and pulled him into my room impatiently by the arm, kicking the door shut behind me, right in the faces of all the nosey, crazy people in the corridor. They always stared at Gerard like he was an alien from outer space, coming here every day to try and break me out of this place and take me back to his homeland. I totally wouldn’t say no to that if he offered… Anywhere would be better than this soul-sucking prison.

I sat down cross-legged on my bed and Gerard followed my lead, sitting in front of me and emptying out the goods into a pile in the middle. My eyes went straight to one particular item and I actually gasped in delight.

“You brought twizzlers!” I snatched up the packet at lightning speed and began tearing it open, as if I had been starved within an inch of death. To be fair, I hadn’t been able to access any sweets lately, let alone my favourite ones.

Gerard chuckled at my enthusiasm.

“Thought you’d enjoy them.” God, he knows me too well. “I also bought poptarts, but they’re more for me,” he added, eagerly helping himself to one. “Oh, this is for you though.” He threw a mysterious can at me and I flinched so dramatically I dropped my twizzler out of my hand, which would have been upsetting if I wasn’t so distracted by this random new item in my lap.

“Hairspray?” I looked up at him and started to laugh, but then I paused and frowned. “What are you trying to say, dickface?”

I know my hair has grown longer than I planned it to, and okay, kind of gone out of control recently, but is it really too flat for him or something?

“I’m trying to say: quit whining about your lack of hair products, you hair-obsessed freak,” he grinned, then rolled his eyes at me.

Oh, please! I wasn’t whining, I was just simply stating that my hair looked fucking awful without my special shampoo and strong-hold hairspray, thus, he shouldn’t look directly at me...

“I’m not a hair-obsessed freak!” I screwed my face up in protest. “But well. If I was, I’d probably do this…”

Without further warning, I launched myself at him, hairspray raised in my right hand as my choice of weapon. The sudden attack sent his poptart flying across the room and nearly made him do a complete backwards roll off the bed; he was halfway to the floor when I pinned his body down with my own, straddling his waist and smirking evilly down at him.

“Frankie!” he exclaimed loudly in protest, trying to wriggle free, despite hanging half off the bed. But he couldn’t escape me as I ran my fingers through his previously neat hair and sprayed it all over his head somewhat aggressively. “The fu-uck!”

I showed no mercy for five solid seconds, carrying on until his hair was literally standing up on its ends, like he had just been electrocuted, but then I had to stop because we were both about to die from the fumes. I had a slight coughing fit and fell back onto the bed, allowing Gerard to scrabble back into a sitting position and stare at me like I was a bear that had just mauled him. The sight of his hair turned my coughing fit into a laughing fit.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he demanded, looking bewildered as he tentatively touched a hand to his hair. “Brilliant, now it’s hard,” he noted, expressionless.

“I bet it is,” I winked, kicking him in the thigh playfully, dangerously near his crotch.

He narrowed his eyes at me and suddenly declared, “You know what, I’m taking the twizzlers back.” I gasped dramatically and made a frantic grab for them, but he snatched them up with cat-like reflexes.

“Hell is filled with people like you,” I hiss-whispered, looking him up and down in disgust.

“No, it’s filled with people like you, who create hairstyles like this,” he gestured dramatically to the hilarious nest type thing on top of his head, drawing my attention back to it, and my stony expression cracked into a smirk.

He stared at me through narrowed slits before abruptly jumping off the bed and heading over to my mirror on the wall, still clutching the twizzlers. His eyes widened in horror at his reflection staring back at him and he gripped onto the frame like he was going to rip the whole thing off the wall.

“Jesus Christ, what have you done to me?” he whined melodramatically, only finding sympathy in his own reflection. I was still in fits of laughter behind him, watching him try desperately to flatten his stiff, spiky hair, all to no avail, and I wasn't prepared for the packet of twizzlers that flew across the room and hit me in the head.

"Ow, you fucker!"

“I look like Edward Scissorhands!”

“You do," I agreed, like a bitch, "Just without the whole scissors-for-hands thing.”

“Right, there’s only one thing for it,” he muttered more to himself than me, stomping straight over to my on-suite bathroom and disappearing inside, still cursing and grumbling under his breath.

I considered running after him and pushing him into the shower fully-clothed, but decided I’d probably annoyed him enough for one day. Oh well, you know what they say: old habits die hard. And picking on Gerard had been my favourite pastime for six years now… Admittedly, things were a lot more playful and a lot less violent between us now. I could barely remember the days before we became friends. Mainly because I was trying to forget them, because thinking about the awful way I used to treat him made me so ashamed I wanted to cry.

I didn’t deserve his friendship after what I’d put him through, and I definitely didn’t deserve his love, but I was too selfish to even consider giving him up now. I needed him right here by my side, where he belonged, though I was terrified to admit it. Terrified to accept the fact that I was hopelessly in love with him.

After leaving me alone with my own wearing thoughts for several minutes, Gerard finally returned to the room with wet, completely flat hair, stuck to his head, to find me sitting exactly where he left me, staring into space.

“It’s gone! I am back to my normal, sexy self,” he declared proudly, but I barely even heard him over the heavy pounding of my heart in my ears. I didn’t know what was happening, but my chest was feeling tight and a lot like it did when I was about to have a panic attack.

Fuck.

“You okay?” He suddenly materialised at my bedside and put a gentle hand on my shoulder, staring down at me in concern. My heart rate sped up even more at this and I swallowed dryly and wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans, before hesitantly looking up at Gerard and meeting his worried gaze.

There was a long silent pause where we just stared deep into each other’s eyes and my heart only got more erratic, and then it suddenly hit me that I wasn’t having a panic attack; I was just feeling again. The numbness I had grown so used to in the last month was slipping away, and I felt like I had just woken up or something. There was something other than hollow emptiness inside me.

“Yeah, I just… um,” I trailed off faintly, playing nervously with my bed sheets. I didn’t know how to explain this. “Nevermind.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at me and sank slowly down onto the bed next to me. I thought he was going to keep questioning me, but instead he just slipped his arm behind my back and pulled me closer, without a single word. He knew better than to push me for answers these days. I cuddled up to him like he was my own personal human-teddy-bear, keeping him close for whenever I got scared.

“Wanna watch a film?” he asked after a moment’s content silence.

I considered this idea for a second before rejecting it with a shake of my head. Watching films was usually how we spent our days, but I wasn’t in the mood for it right now; there was something else weighing heavily on my mind and my chest.

“What do you wanna do then?” he asked slowly, definitely confused by my strange behaviour.

I lifted my head from his chest and sat up for a moment, staring straight ahead at the wall and trying to gather my erratic thoughts into one coherent response, before finally turning back to him and meeting his curious eyes.

“I wanna kiss you,” I revealed nervously, focusing on his lips for the longest second, frozen where I was, paralysed with fear and desire combined.

His eyes widened slightly, clearly taken aback by my shameless declaration and sudden change in attitude. I was actually pretty shocked at myself. Up until this point, I’d been so determined not to let us get too close, because of my own fears and insecurities. And they were still there, but they were no longer holding up a barrier around my heart and keeping me from feeling anything else. My guard was officially down and the love I felt was clearer and stronger than ever, and I was utterly powerless to it.

“Okay,” he spoke slowly, not taking his eyes off me for a second, “Kiss me then.”

I bit my lip and swallowed anxiously, feeling my heart pound harder against my ribcage, resounding in my ears. Gerard stayed where he was, leaning back against the headboard, watching me closely and waiting patiently for me to find the strength inside myself to follow my heart’s desire. I was so nervous, it was kind of ridiculous. I mean, we’d kissed multiple times before; it wasn’t like it was the first time… So, why did I feel like it was?

Maybe it was because our last kiss felt like a lifetime ago, and we’d been through so much since, it practically was another life… Or maybe it was because I knew this kiss might just be the start of something new. Something amazing. Something real.

I reached out a shaky hand and touched Gerard’s cheek tenderly and he closed his eyes for a second, seeming to savour the sweet caress, and when he reopened his eyes, they just drew me in like magnets; it was a force I couldn’t resist and I finally stopped trying to, and I just leaned in quickly and fearlessly, catching his lips with mine.

He responded immediately, kissing me back with such urgency, I wondered how he had controlled himself up until this point. It was literally like he had been waiting for this moment for the last four weeks and now it was here, he was going to savour every single second of it. His hands flew up to hold my face, while mine curled round the back of his neck, winding in his damp hair.

It was the kiss of a lifetime, passionate and desperate and full of emotion, but it stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving me feeling almost dizzy with want and need and lust, not to mention love. I didn’t even realise I was the one that pulled away until Gerard suddenly croaked out, “Frankie?”

I blinked my eyes open and found his beautiful face mere inches from mine, his questioning eyes locked with mine in an intense stare-out.

“I love you,” I whispered, and I meant it with every ounce of my being.

In that moment, sense was absent in my mind. I vaguely knew I shouldn’t be putting my heart on the line like this again so soon after getting it broken, and I was partly in a state of disbelief at myself for doing so, but my self-control was fading fast. I was still so scared of what the future held for the two of us, but he had broken down all the barriers around my heart and I couldn’t fight my feelings anymore. I was putting my hands up and surrendering, offering him my heart to do as he pleased with it.

I was so overwhelmed by this point, the tears started leaking from the corner of my eyes before Gerard even said a word, and in a matter of seconds, I was reduced to a trembling wreck.

“Hey, don’t cry!” He cupped my face in his hands affectionately, looking at me with bright eyes as he wiped away my tears with his thumbs. “I love you too,” he added quietly, with a small smile. I sniffed and managed a small smile in return.

Even though we’d said ‘I love you’ to one another before, this time felt like the first. Maybe because I knew I really meant it this time, and I wasn’t confused about my feelings anymore; they had never been clearer to me. And this time, it was like the opening of a new chapter of our life together, rather than the ending. The start of something amazing. Now all I had to do was just let go of the past…

I leaned in to kiss him again, but froze centimetres away from his lips when he spoke again.

"Are you sure this is what you want? Do you - do you really want me?" He tried to sound strong and patient, but I could practically feel his desperation. I knew how long he had waited for me, and now I was finally so close to being his... He was scared, just like me. Scared of losing me again.

"Yes," I breathed, knowing my own heart this time. Unlike all the other times; all the times I led Gerard on just to push him away. And all the time I wasted, crying over Lydia and overlooking the fact that my soulmate had been by my side throughout it all, holding my hand. I didn't know why it had taken me so long to realise Gerard is the one.

However, this was still a giant leap of faith I was taking and possibly the dumbest move on my life, putting my trust in someone else again, but what kind of life would I have if I didn't? We all needed that one person to rely on, right?

“I’m scared,” I admitted weakly, resting my hand on his chest, feeling his heart pounding beneath my touch. It had a strange calming effect on me to know his heart was in sync with mine right now.

“Don’t be,” he whispered back, his hot breath tickling my lips, “I’ll protect you.”

I swallowed nervously and rested my forehead against his, closing my eyes and just trying to control all these emotions inside of me. Now that I was no longer numb, I was feeling the pain again; I was vulnerable to everything, including my memories of the past. And though I wished Gerard could protect me from them, like he so desperately wanted to, I knew he couldn’t. I had to help myself. I had to work these psychological issues out for myself and get the hell out of this place. I could be free again, if only I could forget the past… If only I could just open up to someone and tell the truth for once in my sorry life… If only I was strong again.