These Eyes Are Blind

There’s a definite feeling like an amusement park ride around Frank most days, and he’s not even sure if it’s technically a roller coaster, or a broken ride that leads you to your ultimate peril. It’s kind of like a broken Ferris wheel to be honest. There’s a very slow incline, followed by a standstill where he stays, and then it goes back down again, just as steadily, but ultimately it feels quicker. Then it’s over and he’s back where he started. On the ground. Feeling kind of broken. Feeling kind of used. Feeling kind of torn up and pushed aside.

Life just seems to be going through a cycle of emotions he doesn’t know and doesn’t want.

As hard as he tries, and as much effort he puts into it, Frank’s found it very difficult to ever feel like things are going well.

Frank wanted, hoped, for most of his life in the dark that finding someone who cares about him, who really really cares about him, not because they have to like his mother does, but because they want to, he thought that would be like a cure. He thought that the feelings of pure dread and depravation he feels about his life could all just go away if someone really cared about him. He’s a dreamer, and he knows he is, but it’s always seemed like the common story from books.

It’s always when they meet the love of their life when people’s lives stop being depressing. It’s all so sudden, and it’s all so fast, and Frank thought that maybe that could be real life. Maybe this was real, and maybe the movies weren’t lying for once.

But everyone’s always lying to Frank. They’re always trying to make him feel better by lying straight to his face. It’s almost like the fact that he’s blind makes them think he’s an idiot. They think, just because he can’t see with his eyes means that he can’t see straight through their lies. He does though, he sees right through them.

And that’s why, for the past month, the high he’s been riding with Gerard seems to be falling ever so slightly, daily going down, until he feels like he’s hit rock bottom.

It’s not Gerard though. It’s not him at all. Gerard is perfect. He’s making Frank happy, he really is, and Frank would rather completely have his eyes taken out of his skull than lose the guy, but, he just thought his life would be fixed when Gerard entered it. He believed too much in Hollywood, and now he’s having it come back to hit him in the face in the way that nothing seems to have really changed which he had thought would change.

Frank smiles more often, sure, and his life is better, he knows it is, but that hasn’t stopped anything from feeling like a waste. It hasn’t pulled him up from the dangling thread he’s been holding to keep his sanity intact. The thing is that it’s hard to see the improvement when you’re caught in the middle of it all. When you look on as an outsider, it’s easier to see the change, but Frank’s on the inside, and he doesn’t have that perspective. So he knows he’s getting better, and that the days are brighter, but he doesn’t feel any different from day to day, because the change is too subtle.

The part that sucks is that, at the end of the day, Frank still falls asleep sad. He still wakes up into a world of dark. He still walks outside, feels the sun on his face, feels the cold winter air hit him like a train, and he still can’t even see the world around him. He can hear it all, and he can touch it all. He can smell things, feel things, sense them, but he can’t see them, and it hurts.

It feels like he’s trying to thread a sewing needle but the end keeps splitting. It’s a constant reminder that he can’t do it. There’s just this urge, like a word on the tip of his tongue, and every time he blinks his eyes he’s trying to thread that needle, trying to get it to go through the head, try to just do it, and yet, every time he comes up short. Every goddamned time he closes his eyes, that needle is there, and every goddamned time he opens them, he’s failed once again.

The best way to describe it is like getting a failed test back. It’s like getting that math test that you studied for until four in the morning the day prior, and then getting it back to see that you’ve failed. Every time he opens his eyes, he gets that sensation. Every time he blinks, that’s what he feels. He can’t stop blinking though, because being blind doesn’t exempt him from the basic human function, he still hast to blink and every time, it doesn’t work. He’s still blind.

And Gerard is the best person Frank has ever met. He’s this light, almost like a beacon that Frank can actually see, actually make out in his sea of darkness. He can see Gerard and he sure as hell can feel Gerard. Gerard has complete and utter faith in the fact that someday in the future Frank will be able to see again. He believes that so wholeheartedly that sometimes, Frank kids himself into thinking that Gerard might be right.

But it’s just like Hollywood. It’s just like a movie. Gerard tells him it can happen, and Frank believes it for a fraction of a second before the world comes tumbling back in on him to remind him that it’s just one big lie. Maybe Gerard believes it himself, but it is just one huge, gigantic lie. That’s when the Ferris wheel seems to jerk him downward and he finds himself on the ground again, chewed up and spit out.

Sometimes Frank just wants to run away from it all. He wants to get away, leave everything behind and just have peace. He’s not asking to see again, though that would be ideal, he just wants to get away from people. He wants to get away from people telling him this or that, or trying to make him feel better about that or this.

Frank kind of wants to stop everyone from talking. He wants people to stop telling him he’s not disabled, because he is and he knows he is. He wants people to stop telling him that he is disabled because he feels like he’s better than a label, better than people who try to tell him he can’t do things because of his disability. He wants to stop people from telling him that he’s good at things for a blind guy, and for people to stop telling him he’s good at things for anybody, because he doesn’t want people putting him in a box of blind people, and he doesn’t want people to think he’s special for being good at things just because he’s blind.

Frank just wants to be a cookie cutter. He wants to live in a house that looks like all the other houses, he wants to drive a car that looks like all the other cars, he wants to have a job that’s like all the other jobs and have a cubicle as small as all the other cubicles. He wants to hate the way he looks in the mirror the way all the people do, and he wants to judge people on a vapid scale by how attractive they are. He wants to be boring.

He wants to date Gerard and tell him all the dumb things that other people tell their boyfriends, like he’s got pretty eyes and a nice smile. He wants to have friends who don’t feel obligated to walk him to and from class. He wants to be bullied for being a prick and not for being an easy target. He just wants to be a plain, normal, lifeless, over-stressed high school kid.

Frank is none of those things. He’s a sympathy case. He is and will always be the blind kid. Frank would rather be anything. Literally anything.

Gerard is fantastic and Frank would never deny that. He’s patient and he cares, and he sympathizes with Frank, but the cure Frank always hoped he’d be, Gerard can never really be. He can never fulfil that need in Frank. He’s a Band-Aid. He makes Frank feel better, but he’s not a cure. When Gerard is away is when Frank feels the full effect of that. Gerard has done his part in making the minutes of Frank’s life feel better, but he hasn’t made Frank’s life suddenly colorful. Frank’s had too much faith in movies. Too much faith in the idealism of a fairytale.

But some days it’s kind of like the world is really in tune with Frank’s head. It’s like his thoughts are put into a projector and he’s living in a page made out of his own thoughts.

It’s like when he finds himself in the back of Gerard’s car, parked in front of a kids playground around eleven o’clock at night, totally just making out with the guy like there’s no tomorrow. On the one hand, yes, he’s very happy right now and there’s literally nothing that could unwind the glee in his chest, but on the other hand, the irony of the world just decides that it has to fill the happiness with enough gloom to balance it out, and that’s why it’s raining buckets down onto the car.

It’s about a month after their first kiss, and Frank hasn’t gotten even the slightest bit tired of it yet. He can’t stand how much he likes to be near Gerard. It’s just insane the number of times Gerard is on his brain.

When you look at it one way, everything that can possibly be right in Frank’s world is right. He’s got Gerard there, kissing him like he’s the only supply of air that there is, with his hands all strewn into Frank’s hair, keeping him close, keeping him alert. But then there’s just this hammering rain, so loud it could be a literal hurricane out there, and it’s kind of intruding on the fact that Frank’s trying to have a moment of peace with Gerard. It maybe doesn’t count as just a moment, they’ve been here for about ten minutes, but still. There’s just too much irony in the way that the sky hates him this much. All he wants is one fucking day where he can have things go the way he wants, but the world, literally, decided to rain on his good time.

"Hey... hey..." Gerard breaks the kiss and looks at Frank. "You okay?"

"Yeah, it's just..."

"What? Do you want me to stop?" Gerard interrupts, worried that he may be applying too much pressure on Frank.

"No!" Frank shouts a little too loudly in the car. "God, no. It's just... the rain. It's too loud."

"Would it help if I turned the music on?"

"We could try that."

Frank finally opens his eyes for no reason, because it's not like he can actually see Gerard's ass as he leans forward to turn the key and mess about with the radio. After about a few moments Gerard finally finds a station without much static due to the rain. Gerard comes back again and Frank closes his eyes.

"Let me look at you for a second."

"I believe you already are."

"I meant with your eyes open," Gerard can see the way Frank has stiffened, but he opens his eyes anyway. "After all the times I've seen your eyes you'd think you'd be comfortable with me seeing them by now."

"After all the times of you seeing them you'd think you wouldn't want to anymore," Frank snaps back.

"I'd never tire of seeing your eyes, Frankie."

"Hmm, good to know," Frank reaches up and puts his hands in Gerard's hair. "Just kiss me."

Gerard smirks and Frank knows he does because he's very in tuned with Gerard’s actions by now. Frank lifts his head up and Gerard meets him the rest of the way. Their lips connect again and it's a little better than before. He can only hear the rain a bit and the music happens to be something Frank enjoys. Gerard smiles into the kiss when Frank moans low in his throat.

Their tongues move together and Gerard's fingers are in Frank's hair again. Frank lifts his leg and wraps it around Gerard's waist and Gerard moves one of his hands to Frank’s thigh to help him keep it up. Gerard digs his nails into Frank's thigh as he pushes into Frank's crotch. They both moan when their clothed cocks connect and Frank tugs on Gerard's hair. Gerard hisses as Frank tugs on his lip a little with his teeth. Frank's never been this hot before, but God does it feel good.

"Switch," Frank pants out.

"Huh?" Gerard speaks into Frank's neck as he licks and sucks there.

"Mmm, positions. Switch... position."

"Oh... oh, okay."

Gerard sits up and helps Frank up.

"Sit down so I can straddle you," Frank moves his hands up Gerard's arms until he gets to his shoulder and starts pushing him down.

"You know... for a virgin you can be very naughty," Gerard maneuvers himself on the seat until he's comfortable.

"I know. It's probably because I'm a Scorpio," Frank climbs into Gerard's lap. "We just kind of know sex." Frank smirks and Gerard bites his lip looking at him.

"Do you know how fucking sexy you are?"

Frank pretends to be thinking and then gives Gerard an impish smile.

"Yeah. This, what I assume to be, sexy guy, named Gerard, he tells me sometimes. Plus, I just kind of know."

Gerard chuckles and moves up to connect their lips again. Frank smirks into the kiss and Gerard moves his hands to Frank's hips. His lips begin to trail over Frank's jawline and down to his neck. Frank exposes his neck more and grinds his hips down into Gerard. Gerard lifts into him and Frank moans.

Frank moves his hands up Gerard again until they're in his hair. He keeps rocking his hips down and Gerard moves up, moaning and gripping Frank tightly. He moves his hands under Frank's shirt and pulls him into him more. Frank drops his head on Gerard's shoulder and Gerard moves his mouth to Frank's ear.

"Is this okay?" Gerard licks at Frank's earlobe and Frank shudders.

"God, yes."

Frank’s not sure what’s happening, but he likes it whatever it is. He’s not used to this kind of attention, it hasn’t gotten old or ever grown to be anything but surprising for all this time he’s known Gerard. It just seems to be so foreign to him, but he’s really into it.

He likes the way that Gerard’s sort of making this growling sound in the back of his throat, and the way his hands are so warm and strong around his waist. He’s finding cohesive thoughts hard to come up with as everything just seems to be stringing along together in some fanciful little production he doesn’t have the script for.

It’s like nothing he’s ever felt though. There’s this extreme warmth all over his body, so warm that he doesn’t even understand how he’s not on fire, but it’s not heat from the car or anything, it’s coming from him. It’s like he’s producing heat that parallels the sun, and it’s all over him, and it seems to be fueling him. He thinks it’s Gerard. Gerard’s somehow just making him feel this weird sensation like all he wants in the world is to just do everything with him. He wants all of it, the entire world, he wants it all, but he wants it with Gerard. There’s no other way to put it.

But then Frank’s feeling Gerard pushing back at him, Frank’s so into it that he’s dizzy when he feels himself being pushed away. It’s like the oxygen stopped going to his brain, and his whole head has been turned off. It’s now trying to reboot, because all he knows is that he’d had Gerard’s mouth all over his neck and now he’s looking down at Gerard from almost a foot away and he doesn’t know why that is.

“Oh god, Frankie, I... I’m sorry, but no. No,” Gerard says, pushing Frank up and away, and Frank feels like a neglected puppy or the guy voted off the first episode of American Idol.

“Wha- what?” Frank asks as Gerard pushes him off and tries to relocate himself in a sitting position which is made hard by the fact that Frank’s got both his legs around him. He hurriedly tries to detach himself from Gerard completely, and is also really ready to get up and leave the car so that he can cry in one of the kiddie slides or something.

“God, sorry, just, calm down, Frankie.”

“Calm down? I’m calm, I just, what, why?” Frank asks, tripping over his words because of the uncertainty of what he’s supposed to say, or allowed to say. He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, because he was literally grinding against the guy a second ago and now it feels like Gerard might as well have stabbed him in the stomach.

“Frank, hey, Frank, okay, you’re not calm, you’re not breathing.”

“I’m breathing! What the fuck did I do?”

Gerard cringes when Frank raises his voice at him and tries not to take it to heart, because he acknowledges that he’s being confusing right now.

“You didn’t do anything! It’s just not the right time,” Gerard replies.

“Not the what? But, like, what’s wrong with me?” Frank asks sadly, moving over to the corner of the car, as far away from Gerard as he can get, where he can then put his knees out in front of him because he’s got a bit of a problem that he would really rather go away right now.

It feels like the ultimate form of rejection. Frank’s mind is wandering to all the worst possible conclusions. Gerard likes him but would never sleep with him, because they’re not that close. Gerard finds him ugly and repulsive. Gerard still sees him as this little boy who’s too immature. Gerard doesn’t want to have sex with a blind guy. Gerard’s been pretending to like Frank this whole time, but Frank’s gone too far. Every horrible possibility runs through Frank’s head at a mile a minute and he’s afraid he’s going to explode.

“Frank,” Gerard says, and Frank knows he’s being serious because he never calls Frank ‘Frank.’ It’s almost weird hearing him say it by now, because, for the past nearly two months, he’s been Frankie. He’s gotten accustomed to it, and when it’s Gerard saying it, he likes it.

“What?” Frank asks, loudly, almost louder than the music. Gerard stirs across the seat from him, and Frank really wishes he could see the guy, but it’s too dark in the car to even make out his form. He can’t even see Gerard’s head. It’s just pitch black. He just hears Gerard moving around and then the music is abruptly stopped mid-word. Frank now feels the cold silence, even though it’s not quiet at all with the rain still pouring down on the car roof above them. It still feels quieter now without the static there to guide Frank’s thoughts.

“Listen, okay?” Gerard says, coming back to sit where he was, but Frank can tell he’s closer now, so he tries to scoot back more, but he’s come to a corner so there’s no more space. “Frank, I’m sorry!”

“What’d I do?” Frank asks, again, and even he can’t deny that he sounds a bit like a toddler having a temper tantrum. His own tone of voice makes him wish he could just crawl under a rock and live there for the next thirty years, but unfortunately he cannot. He just wants to get out of the car, but part of him is curious as to why the heck Gerard stopped whatever was about to happen, and he does not want to go out in the rain anyway.

“Nothing, Frank. Listen, you did nothing. The fact is that, I do not want to pressure you. Okay? I absolutely do not want to do this right now for a few reasons, okay? One, we’re in my car, this is not all that romantic, I’m not going to sleep with you in the back seat of a car, okay? Second, I’m really scared that you only want to do this because you think you should. Like, what I mean is that, I like you because you’re you Frank, I don’t expect to get into your pants. I don’t expect that. Do I want to? Yes. But I don’t want you to think you have any obligation to do that at all. Even in the slightest. The last thing I want from you is for you to feel that pressure to give me something in return for the fact that I like you. Third, I know we’ve been dating for a little while now, but it really hasn’t been long enough in my books. I don’t want you to regret this especially, because, like, in a month, you might decide that you never liked me at all, which would be a bummer, but if that’s the case then so be it.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Frank says quietly, trying to digest all of Gerard’s words all at once. He’s like at least eighty percent sure that he doesn’t get what the fuck Gerard is saying in the slightest. Part of him sort of does, but most of him is just bitter because he really thought that hey, maybe now would be an okay time to lose his virginity. There’s no better time that he can think of really.

"How do you know that, Frank?" Gerard looks over at him.

"The same way you know everything, and because I know how I feel," Frank answers a bit bitterly.

"How you feel now can change Frank. It can always change," Gerard watches as the boy's head snaps in his direction.

"So why even take it this far? You're basically saying you have no faith in what we have."

"That's not what I'm saying-"

"It is! You're saying that how I feel will change. You're telling me that all the butterflies and warmth I feel around you aren’t real because it'll change a month from now? That... that I won't feel happiness anymore, or that you won't. Because this can go both ways. That’s sort of an obligatory fact, that if it goes one way, it’ll go the other."

"Frank-"

"No, shut up! I'm talking," Frank looks at Gerard in the darkness, not even caring that he can't see for once. "If I can stop feeling this way then you can too. If all of this is going to change... if I'm not going to want to spend every moment with you anymore... if I'm not going to want to smell your scent or touch your hair... if I'm not going to... to get weak whenever you touch me anymore then I guess it's a very good thing that I haven't told you that I love you."

Frank is expecting some sort of crashing sound of string instruments to start playing from the heavens, but that doesn’t seem to happen. It just sort of turns all quiet and the only thing to hear is the rain. There’s pouring, and somewhere off in the distance a rumbling of thunder, but apart from that it’s just quiet in the car and nothing else.

"Except... I think you just... well, did," Gerard can't believe what he’s just heard.

"No... no, I..."

"You love me?" Gerard asks and his voice is shaking. It feels like he’s trying to stop himself from saying something, probably trying to stop himself from calling Frank stupid. He doesn’t like it. Frank hates it when people keep things from him. It’s unpleasant to know that someone doesn’t think you can handle being told the truth.

"Why does it matter? It'll all change in a month. Apparently. I mean, I don’t know why you think you have the right to say that," Frank spits. “Like why the fuck do you get to tell me how I’m going to feel about this? I just, I know what I know, and how I feel, and I am positive that this is not going to change, how I feel, it’s not gonna change. But you’re the fucking master of knowledge or something, way smarter than me, so what the fuck do I know?”

“God, shit, Frank, it won’t change! I didn’t know, and you’re mad at me, and I don’t want you to be, because, basically, I love you too, Frankie," Gerard moves closer to Frank.

Frank’s caught up on riding the wave of annoyance and anger at Gerard, so he doesn’t even really hear what the guy says. He doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t process it, just assumes Gerard’s saying something that’ll piss him off even more.

And then he stops. And he thinks. And he plays back what Gerard just said, and he feels his heart seem to slow down a little.

For a minute that feels like a life age, Frank can't believe his ears. He knows they're one of the strongest senses in his body, but he's sure he’s heard wrong. He's sure that he can't hear at all because he can't even hear the rain anymore. All he can hear is his heart beat and the sound of the seat groaning as Gerard gets closer. Next thing he feels is Gerard's lips on his.

He just sort of turns into a statue. He can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t even kiss back. He just feels like someone’s injected him with chalk.

He searches around his head for what he’s supposed to do, but he can’t think of anything. He’s never said the L word before. Ever. Other than his mom, he has never ever said anything like that to anyone ever, and he’s certainly never had anyone say it to him. That just doesn’t happen.

Then again, none of this happens. He doesn’t kiss guys in the back of their car. He doesn’t try to have sex with guys in the back of their car either. He doesn’t do this. He’s just Frank. He’s just the little blind kid who wants to be a regular person, which includes having the ability to see what his fucking boyfriend actually looks like, and yet, he’s just sort of lolling through life right now.

And Gerard is kissing him. Gerard Way. His boyfriend. The guy who he literally just confessed his love to, he’s kissing Frank.

At first it’s like this really soft kiss, nothing even remotely like that other one where they were basically trying to eat each other’s faces. This is like their first kiss almost. It’s really gentle and sweet and Frank’s falling in love with it. At that thought he has this crippling fear because he just told Gerard that same thing, but he said it to his face. He said that out loud. He admitted to something he didn’t even know to be true himself until he heard himself say it. Then he remembers that Gerard had said it back and he feels like giggling to himself.

Gerard loves him. Frank smiles widely when that sinks in, because he can’t even believe that this is possible. How is it possible for someone to love him?

Frank actually does giggle, not even being able to stop himself, because this feeling he has right now, this feeling right in the middle of his stomach, is the closest he’s ever come to true happiness. He’s never felt this way before.

It’s raining buckets, he just got turned down by the guy he likes, he’s still as blind as he’ll ever be, and he’s got a six page paper due for World History in two days, but right now, he’s so happy. Gerard, the guy he’s in love with, loves him back. It’s not possible to be happier about anything.

“Why are you laughing?” Gerard asks, sounding concerned.

“You said you love me.”

“I-I know. I was there.”

“But I love you too.”

Gerard blinks at Frank confusedly, “I know. I was there for that too.”

“It’s just good. You know. Just really really good.”

“What is?”

“The fact that you love me.”

Gerard’s quiet for a minute, but it’s not the uncomfortable kind of silence. There’s just a moment of calm while he gathers what he’s about to say next.

"I get what you mean. You wanna know something?" Gerard asks.

Frank lays his head on Gerard's shoulder and nods. Gerard wraps his arms around Frank's waist and rests his chin on his head.

"I never expected you to love me. I mean, I knew I loved you, but I didn't know if you'd love me back. So I don't know everything."

"You do," Frank lifts his head to 'look' up at Gerard. "Because I just told you everything you need to know."

Gerard stops breathing and kisses Frank. Frank lets out a content sigh and smiles.

"Maybe I should get you home."

"Only if you promise you'll stay with me."

"Of course, I'd rather waste my time with you."