These Eyes Are Blind

Frank wakes up in the morning feeling like hell on his feet. His eyes are all dried out like someone took a vacuum and absorbed all the moisture. His limbs are sore from sleeping at an awkward angle. His head is screaming at the pain of an oncoming headache. His heart is aching a little at how he poured himself all out last night. Mostly, he just feels like he never wants to leave the house again.

Unfortunately, that is not an option for him, as he has to go to school. His mom must’ve already gotten up, because he can tell she’s not there anymore. Frank feels like such a child, having to crawl into bed with his mother, almost like he’d had a nightmare. Though it wasn’t a nightmare that scared him, it was the nature of his own existence.

Frank groans, and pushes the sheets back, instantly regretting it because it’s cold in the room. The heating in this house is not fantastic, and he is going to get sick of it in less than a week. The air outside is beginning to get ever colder so he’s going to have to deal with that for the entire season in all likelihood.

Frank walks over to his dresser and grabs the first shirt and pair of pants that he gets his hands on. He doesn’t care if they match. The fact that he can’t see means that people don’t judge him as much for having mismatched clothes. He slouches his way from his room to the kitchen wear his mom is rustling around with something, but he doesn’t much care what it is she’s doing.

“What time is it?” Frank asks, finding one of the chairs to sit down.

“You have about twenty minutes before you need to head to your bus stop.”

“Great,” Frank says without any emotion.

“You okay? Do you want me to drive you today or-”

“No!” Frank insists, “The last thing I need is to act like today is anything but just another ordinary day. It’s just a regular Monday.”

His mother sighs with something like disappointment, but Frank disregards it and puts his head in his hands on the table. He really is going to have to do something about this headache, but right now he just sort of wants to sit down and pretend he doesn’t feel like shit.

“You hungry?”

“I don’t know,” Frank shrugs, “I guess.”

He’s not sure if that’s an answer or not, he just sort of lays his head on the table and closes his eyes, though that doesn’t make much of a difference in how little of the kitchen he can actually see. His body tries to convince him to go back to sleep because it doesn’t want to be awake right now, and he’s almost convinced to let himself fall asleep again, but that’s not really a choice. He has to go back to school, or more accurately, go back to hell.

“Are you going to be home right after school, Frank?” his mother asks.

“Uh, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just thought you might want to see Gerard.”

“I would love to see Gerard, but that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to see anything.”

“Frank,” she says in a disappointed tone, “I just meant, are you going to hang out with him maybe?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. My life doesn’t revolve around Gerard or anything. I’ve only known him a week,” he responds.

“I didn’t mean...” she starts, and Frank’s aware that he’s being rather frustrating today, but he doesn’t care. “I just thought that you seem happy when he’s around.”

“I don’t know,” Frank says, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

A minute later, a plate is put in front of Frank and he puzzles his eyebrows together, not knowing whatever the hell it is. He sniffs for a second before deciding it’s toast which is easier to eat than a lot of other things. Not as much of a risk of spilling it all over himself.

She sits down across the table from him, and he pretends he doesn’t notice, reaching out to grab the toast when his stomach decides that it does want food.

“Frankie, you okay?” she asks.

“I guess,” he says, because he’s not as torn up as he had been last night. He just feels mostly numb at the moment. In a lot of ways, feeling numb is a million times worse. He’s functional, more so than he had been yesterday, but he doesn’t feel much of anything. He just feels like he’s sort of there and not much more than that.

Numbness is kind of like a break off from the despair, but it’s not preferable. It’s almost better to feel like you’re dying than to not feel anything at all. It makes him care a lot less about anything or everything. Even thinking about Gerard right now doesn’t make him feel all that excited. He knows he likes Gerard, but he just feels sort of unenthusiastic about him.

“You don’t look okay,” she says.

“Neither do you,” Frank says, “You look rather blurry.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Sorry,” he shrugs. “I guess, I mean, I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

The chair scrapes, and Frank’s not even aware of how in tune his mother can be with most of his thoughts, because not a minute later she’s setting a glass down in front of him and an Advil. Frank sometimes thinks she might be a mind reader, but they do hang out with each other a lot because of Frank’s codependency on other people to not accidentally kill himself doing menial tasks.

For the next ten or so minutes Frank just keeps his head on his arm and waits for his mom to tell him that he should head out. He doesn’t know where he wants to be, because right now he definitely doesn’t want to go to school, but he also doesn’t want to be at home. He wants to be nowhere all by himself.

Finally, he hears, “Frank, you should get going.”

“Okay,” he replies, picking himself up and walking into the adjacent room.

“Wear your coat,” she calls after him.

“Where is it?” Frank asks, because there’s still boxes randomly around the room, and he doubts his coat is on the floor anyway so his cane isn’t really going to do the job.

“By the door,” she says, and then he hears her coming into the room, and grabbing it for him. Frank accepts it and shrugs the jacket on carelessly.

“Can I go then?” Frank asks after getting his feet into his shoes, which really seem rather clunky if you ask him. His mother is overly paranoid that he’s going to slip on the ice though. You slip once, one measly time and ever since she just expects it to happen every time he leaves the house.

Frank walks at a snail’s pace to the bus stop. He’s memorized the route by now, after all it’s not that complicated. The air isn’t all that cold, but he’s pretty sure the tips of his ears are turning a pale shade of red anyway. It doesn’t bother him though.

Frank’s gotten used to the silence that falls over the patrons at his bus stop when he approaches, and it only annoys him a minor amount. People seem to think his only goal in life is to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, which is not true, but no one ever considers that.

Time is both slow and fast right now. In one part of his head it feels like the bus doesn’t come for another twenty years, but on the other end of his brain, it’s like it takes a few seconds. His senses are muddled and he doesn’t care, he just knows that he climbs up the familiar feeling steps on the bus after some amount of time.

Not unlike the bus stop, the bus itself hushes a little. No one wants to have the blind guy know that they’re there or something. He’ll never understand the logic of sighted people. In a lot of ways, he feels that they’re dumber, but that’s probably just because he’s somewhat arrogant.

The bus stopping becomes a mindless distraction to Frank. He hasn’t actually counted how many stops are between him and Patrick. It’s something like three, but he’s not paying attention enough to know how many stops they’ve had so far.

Frank just knows when Patrick is sitting down next to him, because no one else wants to sit next to Frank.

“You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Frank says, “you look ugly.”

“That’s always a nice thing to hear from a blind guy,” Patrick replies.

"I'm glad I could make your day," Frank says nonchalantly.

"Never said it made my day," Patrick answers back just as dryly. Patrick sighs and slouches in his chair just a little. "Want to talk about it?"

"You should know me well enough by now to know the answer to that," Frank replies in a dry tone.

"I was just trying to be a good friend."

"We're not friends," Frank snaps, but keeps his voice low.

"Right."

Frank doesn't say anything else and neither does Patrick. Frank remembers all of his epiphanies he came up with a few days ago, but right now he doesn't care about all of that. He doesn't care about hurting people's feelings by saying they're not his friends. He doesn't care if he's in Gerard's presence or not at the moment, because he's liable to push him away. Frank isn't worrying about anybody but himself in this moment.

Frank's not sure how much time has passed when he counts the stops to his hell. He just knows he's glad to be getting out of the thick air of the bus. Patrick moves to the side to let Frank pass first and then follows him off the bus. They remain silent as they approach the school and when they enter the hallways, Frank knows eyes are on him. They always are.

What makes people think he wants to be the walking joke? What makes them think it's okay to make him more uncomfortable than he already is, by being the only guy walking around with sun glasses in the winter and a cane? Why didn't these kids’ parents teach them some manners?

Patrick opens Frank's locker for him and Frank mumbles a thanks. Patrick grunts a reply and Frank sighs. He doesn't want Patrick to be mad at him, but he also doesn't want to apologize either. He's really indecisive today. He doesn't know which way is up or right.

Frank keeps missing the hook for him to hang up his coat and he groans angrily.

"Would you mind helping me with this?" Frank grumbles.

"Sure. Whatever you need," Patrick takes the coat and laughs when he misses the first time. Frank laughs too because he felt Patrick's arm hit him with the miss.

Frank smirks, "I guess not everyone who can see is better than blind guys after all."

"I would never claim to be better than you. You can see with other parts of your body. You have super heightened senses. I would love that. I would love to hear danger coming two blocks away rather than when I'm already on the ground. I'd definitely love to have a cane to whoop ass with. You're better than most people, you just don't like to admit it," Patrick goes back into Frank’s locker and then closes it once he's done. "Let's get you to class."

"Great. Asshole central," Frank spits, referring to Blake.

"Forget him," Patrick says with a shrug. "Or hit him in his balls with your cane.”

“How tall is he?” Frank asks, “I’d hate to aim for the nards and actually hit him in the shins.”

“He’s taller than me-”

“That doesn’t take much,” Frank says.

“You can’t even see me and yet you make the short jokes!”

“Who wouldn’t?” Frank says, “No but seriously, I think I could get him if he bothered me. Like a video game.”

“Rather strange video game.”

“Well I haven’t played a video game in ten years, I don’t know what they’re like. Actually, I recall them being stupid. Who the hell wants to stay inside to try to get a frog across a stream? Frogs are amphibians, they like water, but the frog dies if he falls in the water! What a stupid concept.”

“You know, video games have made some progress since Frogger.”

Frank shrugs, and follows Patrick’s voice to his class. Patrick’s got his own class that is all the way across the school and up a busy flight of stairs, so Frank remembers to realize how much Patrick is going out of his way for this. He really shouldn’t be helping Frank at all with the way that he’s acting.

Patrick leaves him once Frank’s found the classroom with his bitch of a teacher, who he would really love to hit with his cane as well. He’s one of the first people in the room though, so Frank just slips to the back of the class and hopes that no one decides to bother him. No such luck though.

He’s only been sat down for a minute when he can feel some mouth breather walk into the class, and he makes a contented noise when he spots Frank. Frank knows who it is before the guy opens his mouth.

“Look at who it is,” Blake says.

“Who?” Frank asks, “You’re going to have to tell me, I can’t see.”

“Blind freak.”

“That is not my name.”

“Why do you need a real name? You’re just a cripple.”

“Well you’re just a dumbass,” Frank says.

“Your mouth is pretty big even without any of your body guards. Where is your boyfriend when you need him?”

“Since when does getting a coffee with a friend institute a love affair?” Frank asks. Blake doesn’t respond to that, possibly because he’s not good with big words, as his brain is too slow to process anything that can’t be spelled in a word search on a kids menu.

“You didn’t deny anything.”

“Well so what if you did see me with my boyfriend? Why would that matter to you? It doesn’t concern you,” Frank says, staring straight ahead of him without even bothering to turn his head in the direction of where Blake’s voice is coming from.

“You’re just a fa-”

“I’d advise you not to finish that sentence if you want to have children someday,” Frank says, pulling his cane out in front of himself and brandishing it tightly in his fist.

“You’ve got another thing for me to steal then?”

“You’re really so unattached to your genitalia that you wouldn’t mind me hitting you there? Repeatedly?”

“You’re blind, you can’t even see me,” Blake says.

“Nah,” Frank says, “But I can hear you.”

“So?”

Frank grins and thinks of Gerard for a moment before saying, “Well, I’m like Daredevil. I may not be able to see, but all my other senses are heightened. My aim isn’t bad, but we can both find out together just how good it is.”

Blake doesn’t reply at all, and Frank knows that he wants Frank to think it’s because their teacher just entered the room, but he’s not that dumb. The teacher doesn’t like Frank and it’s an institution at almost every school that football players are treated like saints by the teachers. It’s a stupid rule, and he’s never going to understand it, but schools give very few shits about education, and quite a few shits about sports teams. Blake could probably murder Frank with an audience and the school would still condemn Frank for instigating the argument in the first place.

Frank decides that he won this round. The day, that only an hour was looking incredibly bleak, is picking itself up a bit already.

Frank’s been dreading the moment that lunch comes around all day, so when he’s walking into the cafeteria he decides to take his time. He feels his shoulder being grabbed and his body rushing forward with the person.

"Why ya walking so slow there, Frankie?" Brendon asks in a teasing voice.

"It's rude to push people," Frank says quickly.

"It's rude to act like you don't want to tell your frie-" Frank looks at Brendon warningly, deterring him from saying what he was going to say, "-acquaintances how your dates went."

"They weren't dates, and this is exactly why I didn't want to come in here," Frank accuses.

"Awe, come on Frankie," Mikey says somewhere in front of him as Brendon plops him down in his seat, and sits next to him. "We just want to know when to plan the wedding. I will be the best man, however."

"There won't be anything for you to plan if you don't get out of my face Mikey. I will sharpen my cane and stab you in your jugular," Frank spits.

"Damn Frankie, and I thought Mikey was the crazy one," Pete says as he sits on the other side of Frank.

"Stop calling me Frankie!" Frank shouts.

"How come Gerard gets to call you that?" Patrick speaks softly, obviously across from Frank and next to Mikey.

"What is this? Monkey see monkey do? Grow up Pat," Frank would roll his eyes now if he could.

"Did you just give me a nickname?"

"No, I was simply teasing you with one, since you like to tease me with mine. Plus I'm too lazy to say your whole name."

"I do not like to tease you," Patrick argues.

"Just shut it guys. Who cares?" Pete interrupts.

"Right. What I care about is whether or not you've kissed my brother yet?" Mikey asks, as if he's entitled to that answer.

"That is none of your business. Do you always keep tabs on people your brother tries to pursue? Do you ask about the first hand jobs and blow jobs too?" Frank asks smarmily.

"Oh please, as if. Gerard doesn't date many people. He's probably lucky you can't see," Mikey insults his big brother.

"Hey, don't say that, man. Gee looks good," Pete defends Gerard.

"He's alright, but really, who's the stud out of us two?" Mikey asks with a smirk.

"Gerard is prettier than a stud. Pretty usually beats stud. At least it seems it would for Frank," Brendon intervenes.

"We're not friends anymore, forehead," Mikey answers annoyed.

“Wait so, how big is your forehead?” Frank asks, because he keeps hearing about Brendon’s forehead, but he has no idea what it looks like.

“Huge,” Mikey answers for him.

“Hey!”

“Don’t try to deny it,” Pete says, “Your forehead is massive.”

“Ugh,” Brendon says, “Yeah, well you’re stupid.”

“Good comeback,” Frank laughs.

“I haven’t even started with you, Frank,” Brendon says, “Word is that you and Gerard slept with each other!”

Frank almost snorts the milk he’d been trying to drink at those words, and he coughs, trying to breathe again. All the while being laughed at.

“So it’s true!” Mikey says.

“No!” Frank shouts, a little too loudly. “I mean, I guess, well, he slept in my bed, if that’s what you mean. Gerard fell asleep in my bed and it was, he was-”

“So you did sleep with Gerard,” Mikey says.

“I didn’t!” Frank says, “He was unconscious relatively near me, but that is all. For fucks sake, I don’t even like him!”

Pete snorts, “yeah, and I don’t like pizza.”

“I don’t!” Frank says, “Why can’t I just, like, interact with him in a completely platonic manor?”

“Because you like him,” Mikey says.

“But I just told you that wasn’t true.”

“You were lying.”

“I was not,” Frank says, “jeez, I don’t even... I hate all of you.”

“What’d I do?” Patrick asks.

“You’re just sitting there, and you abandoned me the other day,” Frank reminds him.

“Yeah but you wanted to be alone with Gerard,” Mikey says, as if he’s stating a fact of absolute certainty, “You spent an awfully large amount of time with a guy you supposedly don’t like. You went out for dinner, and made out. You read comic books, and made out. You two probably woke up when you were supposedly ‘just sleeping’ and then made out.”

“Okay, so maybe that stuff happened, but we didn’t make out. All we did was, like, fall asleep in the same general vicinity.”

“After you made out.”

“There was no making out!” Frank says, “Why on earth would I make out with a guy I’ve only known for a week.”

“You’re eighteen Frank, not fifteen.”

“Are you calling me a slut?” Frank asks.

“I don’t believe in that word,” Mikey brushes him off and then says, “I just don’t think you didn’t kiss Gerard.”

“That was a double negative,” Brendon says.

“Shut the hell up, asshole,” Mikey says, “I think Frank kissed Gerard at some point in the last three days. There, better?”

Frank shakes his head, “Well you’d be wrong, I swear.”

“Yeah whatever,” Mikey says, “I just thought you were honorable enough to admit to kissing my brother in front of your friends at the very least.”

“Okay, so there’s a lot of fallacies in what you just said. Firstly, you are not my friends. I don’t have friends. Secondly, don’t think for one second that I’m honorable. Third, I can’t admit to something that didn’t happen. I did not kiss Gerard. I don’t want to kiss Gerard, I will never kiss Gerard, I would rather kiss anyone in the world,” Frank says. The last few statements weren’t exactly true, but he hasn’t kissed Gerard and that’s a fact. He kind of wants to, although you’d have to put Frank through rigorous torture to ever get him to own up to that.

“Don’t say never,” Mikey says, “you’ll regret saying that when I’m the best man at your wedding.”

“Why would anyone even marry a blind guy? Mikey, I do not want to kiss your brother. I would never even dream of it.”

“You so want to kiss his brother,” Pete says.

“Agreed,” Brendon says. “You may not have already kissed him, that might be true, but you totally want to.”

“Why would you get to be his best man?” Patrick asks.

“Because Gerard is my brother,” Mikey says.

“Yeah, well I’m Frank’s ‘acquaintance’ too and doesn’t he get some say in it?” Patrick replies, and Frank can tell he put air quotes around the word acquaintance.

“Wait so can I officiate?” Brendon asks.

“Aw, I was going to ask to officiate!” Pete groans.

“Beat you to it, ha!”

“Why are you planning my wedding to a person I don’t even like?” Frank asks, putting his hands on his head, like his head is about to explode with all the stupidity happening around him.

“Frank, we’re planning your wedding to Gerard,” Mikey says, stringing the name out like Frank’s the idiot, “we’re planning your wedding to someone you do like.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Don’t like who?”

“Gerard!”

“Oh, that guy you like.”

“I don’t like him!” Frank splutters.

“Who?”

“Gerard!” Frank shrieks, “I don’t like Gerard.”

“Liar liar pants on fire,” Brendon murmurs under his breath.

“I will rip your tongue out of your throat and force-feed the bloody appendage down your throat,” Frank threatens.

“Well that was colorful,” Pete says.

"Your eye is going to be colorful if you don't cut the crap. I don't like him and that's that. We haven't kissed and we won't kiss. We’re just two people who meet up occasionally," Frank spits.

"Who sleep together," Brendon adds.

"I fucking hate you," Frank growls.

"Hate is a strong word," Pete says.

"Apparently the word isn't as strong as Brendon's forehead, the way you guys tell it," Frank laughs and the guys join in.

"Hey, fuck off alright?" Brendon pouts and puts his chin in his hand.

"I think your forehead fits you," Patrick says quietly.

"Thanks Pat," Brendon replies and Patrick shrugs after grimacing at the name.

Frank clears his throat, "Now that the love connection is over."

"Shut up, Frank," Brendon almost yells.

“So, anyway, besides the topic of the nonexistent relationship between Gerard and I, what else is up?”

“Frank you had better hope I don’t become a lawyer someday because I will call you to the bench, and ask you what your feelings for Gerard are, and you can’t lie under the court of law, so you will have to admit to it,” Mikey says.

“Nah that won’t work,” Brendon says, “because you’ve gotta go to school to become a lawyer and that’s going to take a couple of years, so Frank and Gerard will be married by then.”

“Fucking hell,” Frank exasperates and then lets his head fall down onto the table.

“Aww, we’ve embarrassed Frankie,” Brendon says, putting his hand around Frank’s shoulder, in a very different way than when Gerard does the same. When Brendon does it, it’s to tease Frank and demean him, but when Gerard does it, there’s something entirely different about it. Franks not sure exactly what the right words are to describe it, there’s something like a spark when Gerard touches him, that is not there right now.

“Get off me,” Frank says, pushing Brendon away by the face, and then he notes, “Wow, you really do have a huge forehead.”

Brendon pushes Frank’s hand away while Pete laughs on Frank’s other side.

“You guys are awful,” Brendon says.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Frank says.

“Brendon, we’re not awful if we’re just stating the truth.”

“Oh, if that’s the case than Mikey, you only have four different facial expressions. Pete, you have a codependency on things with caffeine or sugar, and Patrick, you try too hard to be nice to everyone.”

“And me?” Frank asks.

“I thought that one was obvious,” Brendon says, making Frank worry for a moment about what he’s about to say, “you underplay your relationship with every human on the planet.”

“You know, I’m not going to lie,” Pete says, “Those were all fairly accurate assessments.”

"It's just no one’s business how I see people I occasionally converse with," Frank shrugs. "The sooner you all learn that the better."

"Whatever Frank. You so want to kiss my brother. That's what we all grasp from seeing you two together," Mikey states as a matter of fact.

"If you guys were considered my friends you'd be the worst of the worst," Frank says snappily. "Just shut up and fuck off."

"We'll fuck off when you and Gerard do," Brendon enters.

"Oh fucking hell!” Frank shouts, causing the whole lunchroom to look in their direction.