Words

It’s like something out of a child’s picture book. A fog of pastel skin and harshly-sketched ink hair against the backdrop of a waning moon. If Frank were to be truthful, Gerard against his pillow looks like a porcelain doll Frank’s grandmother once had sitting on her bedroom shelf, a waxen nymph with rose red lips and eyelashes made of silk. Lily white fingers spread like crooked branches and a pink tongue nestled among tiny pearl teeth. Too lovely to be anything but beloved.

If Frank were to be honest with himself, he would admit in words that this morning he wants almost nothing more than to tuck Gerard away on his shelf for the rest of their days.

Outside his bedroom window the streetlights are starting to flicker off one by one as the sun stretches above the horizon of warped building tops. They snap into darkness with an almost imperceptible buzz of static electricity, but with each bulb that blinks dead, a smooth morning light of lavender sweeps in to take its place. The air above the street looks soft enough to touch, solid enough to grab. The sheer haze of sun is not yet dense enough to warm his cool skin.

Frank rises up on his side, propping up his head with the palm of one hand and looking down at Gerard sleeping with his just-woke-up eyes making everything soft around the edges and grainy, like a bad television signal full of color in the quietest shades. Somber blues and blacks, shy pinks and purples, tender off-whites and peaches. The kiss-red birthmark just under Gerard’s eye. He sees the clock and knows that in half-an-hour he’ll have to wake Gerard up, tease him out of bed, get him to maybe eat something in the kitchen just to get him to stay twenty-minutes longer. Watch him leave the apartment and go to work and accidentally leave his jacket on the couch or the bedroom floor.

It’s not something they ever talk about, but Gerard is always leaving things around Frank’s apartment, always showing up a few days later saying, “Did you notice if I maybe left my watch on the shelf above the bathroom sink?” and always, always ending with them back in bed.

And in the morning, all Frank ever wants to say is, “Just stay,” but he can never bring himself to actually vocalize the words.

It’s not that he doesn’t try. Gerard sitting in the bathtub with his hair curling wet in his face and his pale, bare feet spilling over the raised edge of the tub, rambling innocently about his friends and his brother and the kids show that he’s sketching for in that office building downtown. Squirting shampoo onto his head and then forgetting to wash it out so that he’s just sitting there in sudsy water with his hair all creamy and sticking close to his skull. Frank will open his mouth and all these words will come to him like synapses to his brain, jolts of, “Why don’t you call in sick today, Gee?” or, “Maybe we could spend the weekend together.”

But the words just never come out and then Gerard is laughing at him, that deep, shocking laugh that never fails to make Frank’s heart twist into positions his yoga teacher would be proud of. Gerard saying, “Frankie, close your mouth, you’re letting the flies in,” or maybe even just kissing him with his soapy lips so that Frank forgets he is even fluent in the English language.

All those words bottling up though, they hurt him sometimes more than Gerard actually leaving ever does.

Lying in bed, Frank reaches out and carefully brushes a few strands of Gerard’s dark hair from his face, resting his hand along the curve of his skull for a few moments. Gerard’s breath weaves up from between his parted lips and sweeps over Frank’s cheekbones, his ear. Each breath is accompanied by a quiet little animal snore.

It’s so rare that he gets a handful of moments like these in a row, long minutes where Gerard is just still, fully present and real enough for Frank to touch. So often Frank is alone in this apartment, waiting for Gerard to rush in and out again in a flurry of kisses and touches and whispered words. Gerard is loud and so goddamn dramatic and-- although Frank knows that it’s nothing personal--very brief. He comes and goes at sensitive hours, staying long enough for a fuck, or even sometimes just time enough for them to exchange a kiss and a few words. He will blow in through the door, yelling for Frank that he’s got fifteen minutes left of his lunch break (three hours before his next meeting, forty minutes before his train, etc.), and Frank will come running from the next room where he’s got a sauce simmering on the stove (reading a book in bed, watching 60 Minutes with his dog curled up in his lap, talking on the phone with his mom). It’s not as if he doesn’t like the thrill of it all; Frank loves nothing more than the urgency of pulling off his clothes, the raw scrape of hurried skin, sometimes forgetting to even close the front door.

Sometimes it’s hard though, watching Gerard leave again and knowing that it could be three or four days before he has another spare moment to come watch Frank’s favorite movie with him or to blow him on the couch.

Once Frank made dinner for the two of them, making Gerard promise that he would be there at nine o’ clock sharp, no matter who he was supposed to be going out with for drinks that night or where he had to be at seven the next morning. He sat on Gerard’s stomach and pinched the skin along his bare arms until Gerard surrendered with a squeal and that laugh (oh God, and Frank loves that laugh), and they set the date and sealed it with a kiss before Gerard flew out the door (his socks draped over the television stand), already ten minutes late for a doctor’s appointment he had downtown.

Frank went to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients he thought he might need, took an extra long shower and used up all the hot water, agonized in front of his closet before calling up Gerard’s brother Mikey to help him figure out what to wear. He let the vegetarian lasagna cook for just the right amount of time so that the crust was golden brown and the cheese was thick and gooey and the vegetables were tart with juice. After consulting with his mom via telephone, he chose the perfect red wine and set the chocolate mousse (Gerard’s favorite) in the refrigerator to chill.

By eleven o’ clock the candles had burned down enough to drip wax on Frank’s best tablecloth and he had finished the bottle of wine. Gerard didn’t show and the dog needed to be walked. He went to bed drowsy, upset and tipsy enough to unplug his home phone line (but he still set his cell phone to vibrate on the night stand) and woke up at noon the next day to Gerard’s loud voice in his hallway.

Gerard was all excuses at first, and--when he finally learned that his getting dragged to an impromptu office party wasn’t what Frank wanted to hear—he turned to apologies and attempts at makeup sex. They ended up on the living room floor eating cold lasagna and watching sitcom reruns for an hour and a half before Gerard had to run off to some nowhere again, leaving Frank with a hastily thrown undershirt and a pile of dirty dishes.

Not that some little part of Frank doesn't love Gerard’s boyish absentmindedness and school of thought that everything can be fixed with kisses and a backrub—he just wishes sometimes that Gerard would stay two consecutive nights in a row and make the goddamn bed when he leaves.

The digital clock by the bed is blinking closer and closer to the time when Frank will kiss Gerard awake, fending off his grumbles and, “Just give me a few more minutes, Frankie.” Frank rolls onto his back and feels Gerard’s hand on his thigh, just resting there serenely as if it’s actually a part of Frank himself. Gerard is so much like a child when he is sleeping, for once unaware of time or responsibility. The sheets are tangled up around their hips, knotting them together. Frank can’t even remember falling asleep here last night, only that the last thing he can recall is being out in the living room watching Halloween II or III—he can never really tell the difference—while Gerard did his taxes at the kitchen table. He must have crashed on the couch with his dog Sweetpea, and Gerard would have carried him in here rather than slept all night on that old ratty couch that Frank just can’t stand to give away, even if Gerard offers to buy him a hundred new couches (which is pretty fucking useless anyway, considering he only needs just one).

The sun is high enough in the sky now that it trickles into the bedroom, moving over their skins and causing sweat to bead on Frank’s lower back. Traffic is starting to build up in the streets too, bringing with it car horns and tire squeals and the chatter of people on foot. All the things that Frank loves about the city he can’t help but hate sometimes.

He thinks about getting up and starting the coffee and bringing in the newspaper and feeding his dog. Starting breakfast and hopping in the shower. Practicing his guitar. But all he does is just flip back onto his side, pressing his lips softly into the milky white of Gerard’s shoulder.

In his sleep Gerard cries out softly, the same sounds he makes when he’s coming, and Frank smiles with the thought of what they’ll probably do when he finally wakes Gerard up. The anticipation alone has Frank hard, and he presses himself along the length of Gerard’s body with a quiet moan.

In the hushed morning light, Gerard’s eyelids flicker open and his tongue darts out to wet his sleep-dry lips. He glances at the ceiling for a moment before turning his body into Frank’s, pressing their fronts flush together with a sloppy kiss.

Neither of them speak, although Frank’s mind is still rushing with Gerard, always Gerard, and he’s got all of these words jumbled up inside of him, eager enough to be released, even if it’s through his very fucking pores. He starts to pant a little, rubbing himself on Gerard’s leg as they deepen the kiss. Sweetpea whines at the foot of the bed and Frank shoos her away with a gentle nudge. She unhappily retreats to the living room where she’s got a little bed of her own, and Frank makes a mental note to totally make this up to her just as soon as Gerard leaves for work or Mikey’s or wherever the hell he has to be.

Frank jerks Gerard off underneath the sheets, as much as to thank him for taking him to bed last night as to encourage him to return the favor once he’s finished. Gerard comes with a breathless cry that never quite suits how boisterous and drawn out he is about everything else in his life and then rests against Frank’s chest until Frank starts to whine with impatience. It doesn’t even take half as long for Frank to come, and then they just wipe each other off with the bed sheets and lay there again, measuring their breaths and feeling the sun rise up into the sky.

The digital clock continues its countdown and Frank revels in his last few minutes before gently kissing Gerard’s swollen mouth and then sitting up. His cock is still sensitive and he winces as he pulls the sheets back.

“Time to get up, Gee,” he mumbles, standing up and stretching out the muscles in his back. He pads out into the hallway, gathers Sweetpea up in his arms and gives her a big, apologetic squeeze. She snuffles loudly into his ear, not quite giving in that easily, but acquiesces at Frank’s promise of tofu bacon once he gets breakfast going.

He returns to the bedroom to put some boxers on so that he can retrieve the newspaper in the hallway, setting Sweetpea down on the bed where she takes his spot at the curve of Gerard’s chest. The way Gerard reaches out and rubs her fat belly, kissing her tenderly on her wet little nose makes Frank’s chest go tight. He could picture them living here together if Gerard would just stop moving every goddamn second of his life.

It’s not that Frank isn’t happy, it’s just that there are some nights that all he wants to do is just go to bed and know that Gerard will be there in the morning. And he wants to tell him—he’s sure as hell thought about it enough—he can just never find the right words, the ones that will make Gerard take a day off from the rest of his life and just be with Frank.

Frank pulls on a shirt—the same shirt that made Gerard come over here last night in the first place, saying, “You wouldn’t have happened to have noticed if I left my favorite shirt here last weekend, would you?”—and bends over by the side of the bed that he can’t help but think of as Gerard’s-side-of-the-bed. “Hey, sleepyhead, get up. You’ve gotta be at work in an hour,” he murmurs against the side of Gerard’s cheek, as if Gerard would ever actually forget the million-and-one places he has to get to, the people he has to see.

Gerard just yawns with all of his tiny teeth and wraps his arms around Frank’s middle. “Why are you out of bed, Frankie?” he asks drowsily and tugs on Frank until he loses his balance and ends up straddling Gerard’s naked hips. He’s already half-hard again, the bastard, and Frank can’t help but marvel at his stamina.

“I’ll make you pancakes.” Frank plants a kiss to the shell of his ear. “And coffee with sugar.” A kiss to his temple. “And fresh fruit.” A kiss to the sharp tip of his nose.

Gerard chirps happily against Frank’s cheek, bucking his hips up a little. He opens his eyes through the veil of sunlight and says, “I don’t know how I ever leave you,” and the way he says it, it’s almost like he knows that Frank has all of these words in his mouth that he just can’t say. He brushes his fingers tenderly over Frank’s jaw and neck and says, “It’s the most perfect thing in the world to be here with you in the morning.”

And after all these months Frank finally knows what he wants so desperately to say to Gerard, what words, because Gerard has just said them with his adorable morning mouth. He leans down and presses a warm, deep kiss to Gerard’s lips and cradles his mussed up head, rubbing Gerard’s chest with his hand. It means everything to him just to see Gerard tranquil, deliberate and leisurely for just a few hours out of his life.

In fact, Frank thinks that this twelve-hour night may have been the longest that he and Gerard have ever actually been in the same room with one another at one time.

The kiss is light and relaxed, and Frank breaks it before he has a chance to get hard again. “You’ve really gotta get in the shower, Gerard, or you’ll miss your train downtown.”

He tries to get up, but Gerard holds tight on his wrists. The look in his eyes is the way that Frank has always hoped Gerard would see his own eyes as they stood in the doorway hugging goodbye. He can see his own stupid morning hair reflected in Gerard’s black, elongated pupils.

“Let’s not rush for once,” Gerard is saying in his sleep-tired voice. Around them the sun is painting the bedroom lavender, gold, a blue so bright and thin that you can almost see right through it. In the kitchen the timer for the coffee is going off.

And for once Frank doesn’t actually have any words, nothing to say, nothing bundled up inside of his too-tight chest to make Gerard stay for just ten more minutes. He curls up into Gerard’s side, lets his leg fall over Gerard’s knees. Kisses the hollow at his throat. There is finally peace, a silence in his mind and heart that is sacred and smooth.

The sun stays high, swallowing them in blessed light.