All We Need Is Daylight

Frank can immediately sense that there is a difference in the air when the rest of the team gets on the ice with him. It’s not something he could explain, it’s just a feeling he has. It starts with the glare he gets from Morgan, which is somehow so horrific that it curdles the blood of his unborn grandchildren.

From the second Gerard starts them off on their drills which are monotonous and routine as always, it already feels like Morgan has it out for him. Frank isn’t prepared for being backchecked by his own fucking teammate, while he’s just trying to pass the puck to Pete. It sends him sprawling to the ice below him, too caught off guard for him to try to prevent it. He doesn’t even have time to put his hands out, and his stick catches him in the ribs as he goes down, which knocks the wind out of him.

Frank looks up after the attack, to see Morgan laughing as he skates away. Frank looks around to see if Gerard or anyone else noticed what just happened, but Gerard is busy talking with Coach about something, and clearly didn’t notice, because he’d probably have killed the guy if he had seen it. Frank gets back to his feet as quickly as he can, because he doesn’t want Morgan to think that he’s gotten to him. Frank finally looks over at Pete to see that he’s looking just about as scandalized as Frank feels. Pete is glaring over at Morgan who is laughing with one of his muscled friends who looks like a monkey that accidentally got mistaken for a human and just started playing along. Pete looks ready to attack, but Frank catches his eye and shakes his head, telling Pete no.

Frank shakes it off, as best as he can, and continues on with practice, thinking little of it. Until fifteen minutes later when he feels an elbow to his side, which doesn’t throw him to the ice, but leaves him with a jabbing pain and dull ache that he can tell will leave a bruise tomorrow.

This time, Gerard does see it, and he starts screaming at Morgan. “What the fucking are you doing, dude, he’s on your fucking team? This is a fucking practice, if your own teammate ends up with a broken rib because you hit him in practice, you’re going to be on the bench for his entire recovery!”

“It was an accident!” Morgan shouts at him, with this little sneer, that says it was anything but an accident. It’s been about nineteen years since anyone has believed a word out of Morgan’s mouth, his own parents probably realized he was a bad egg once he started preschool.

“Your birth was an accident, you fucking asswipe!” Gerard replies, and then Frank watches as Coach berates him for his unprofessional language. Gerard shakes his head in a way that Frank immediately reads as a refusal to apologize. Coach just sighs, and shakes her head. The little time Morgan was given to be an asshole to Frank in private is now over, because everyone suddenly becomes aware that Frank is the newest target.

Frank stays acutely aware of Morgan from that point on, realizing very quickly what this must mean. Morgan has switched his attention from Mikey to him. He doesn’t know what has caused this sudden reversal, but Frank isn’t exactly unsurprised. He knew this was coming, it’s been in inevitable danger he’s been aware of for about two weeks now.

Frank hates that if something terrible does happen, it’ll be his own fault. He’s the one who gave that interview, he’s the one who allowed that article to go out. It’ll be his own fault, whatever happens to him, just like it was his fault when Brendon and Mikey were Morgan’s targets.

He knows he probably should be relieved that it’s him who’s being attacked now and not the innocent people he put in the line of fire, but he knows that wouldn’t be honest. Frank is kind of selfish, and he’ll deny that to anyone who asks, but it’s still true. He doesn’t want to be hurt, attacked or anything. He also doesn’t want his friends to be hurt or attacked, but he’d still rather they were in pain than himself. That’s the sort of thing that he knows makes him a bad person, but he can’t talk himself out of it. Besides, most people are equally as bad, because all of us would rather bad things happen to other people.

Frank is almost attacked by Morgan one last time before the end of practice, but he swerves out of the way in time, causing Morgan to hit the wall painfully, and this pisses him off quite greatly. It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull, it only makes him angrier, and Morgan angrier than his usual eternally venomous self is a terrifying sight to behold.

Eventually, and very thankfully, Coach declares practice to be over, and excuses the team to the locker room. Frank is very glad to be leaving, so that he can put some ice on the bruise in his ribs, and then lie around in his bead for an hour moaning about how hard his life is. This is going to be a hard couple of weeks, and to make the past few weeks any worse than they already were is an achievement itself.

Frank doesn’t get to leave immediately, however, because Gerard beckons Frank over to him with a wave of his hand. Frank sighs a little bit, fairly sure that he can guess what it is Gerard is going to want to talk with him about. Frank skates over to where Gerard is, standing against the glass in front of rows and rows of seats. Frank stops so that he stands directly opposite Gerard, who is about a foot taller than him when he’s standing in the bleachers, as opposed to the usual three inches he is when they’re both on the ground.

“Frank, is there any particular reason Morgan is trying to kill you?” Gerard asks him and Frank just sighs, lifting up his shoulders. He obviously knows why, and so does Gerard, he just doesn’t want to have to say it outloud.

“He thinks I’m a communist,” Frank replies, and Gerard frowns, because apparently this isn’t the time for jokes.

“Frank,” Gerard says in the tone of a mother scolding her child.

“I don’t know, Gerard,” Frank says. “He’s going to go after everyone on the team until he can weasel out the bubble-blowing baby. It was only a matter of time until he came to me, and honestly, I’m surprised that it took him so long.”

“Frank, you’re not taking this as seriously as you should be,” Gerard says, and Frank groans, turning his head to see that everyone but him has already left the ice, and he’s going to be the last one to get to the locker room, which is going to suck.

“Gerard, I’m not going to let him get to me,” Frank shrugs. “He’s just a dick who’s being his usual dick self. He’ll get bored eventually, and move onto someone else. Just be thankful it’s not Mikey he’s after anymore.”

“Frank, all the players matter to me,” Gerard replies, leaving out the part where he wants to say ‘especially you.’ Gerard wasn’t as scared for Mikey as he is for Frank, and it’s not because he cares more for Frank than his brother, because that simply isn’t true. He just doesn’t believe Morgan was ever really going to hurt Mikey, because Morgan knows the ramifications for that would be greater than anything else he could possibly do. In Morgan’s eyes, Frank means nothing at all to him, or at least, far less. Frank is in quite a bit more danger because of that.

“I’ll be fine,” Frank assures him.

“You could get hurt. Morgan already dislikes you more than he usually hates people, so you’re probably going to get it worse than Mikey and Brendon both.”

“Brendon is fine, so is Mikey. Besides, I’m a big boy, Gerard, I can handle it.”

“I’m not trying to say you’re not strong, I’m trying to tell you that Morgan scares me. I am scared that something bad is going to happen to you,” Gerard says, and images flash in his head, each worse than the last. Gerard doesn’t want to think so narrowly, but there’s always the possibility that Frank will be so injured he won’t be able to play for a portion or even the rest of the season. Frank matters more to him than hockey, but still, that concern is there, lingering in the back of Gerard’s mind like a fly buzzing around his ear.

“Well, look on the bright side, Gerard,” Frank says. “If something bad does happen to me, you’ll finally have your reasoning to kick Morgan off the team.”

“That’s not funny, and you know that. I don’t want you hurt, because I do care a lot about you Frank. Not just as a player, but as a friend.” And as something more. “And even if that does happen, if Morgan and you are both off the team, then we cannot win anything. You’re our best player, and as much as I hate it, he’s our second best. We can survive without him, but we cannot survive without you. If both of you are gone, we might as well throw in the towel now. If that’s the case, then so be it, it’s just a game, but I don’t want you to get hurt in the first place.”

“So, what do you want me to do? Quit the team on the off chance he’s going to mortally wound me? That’s not going to happen, Gerard. If he’s going to injure me to an extent that I can’t play, I want to be on the team so that you’ll have justification to kick him off. I’ll lose in any event, but if I’m going to lose, then I’m taking Morgan down with me.”

“Frank, I’m just scared for you,” Gerard says, in a tone that shows Frank his weakness in a way that he’s never seen it before. Gerard looks on the verge of actually breaking down, and Frank doesn’t know how to handle that. He wants to hold Gerard, kiss him and tell him everything will be alright. Of course, it would be a lie, because Frank doesn’t know if anything is going to be alright. He’s hopeful at the very least. Hope does nothing. Hope just gives people unrealistic expectations.

“Don’t worry yourself too much before anything has even happened,” Frank says. “I’ll be careful, I promise, okay? Just tell yourself everything will be alright and it will be.” Oh, how wrong a person can be.

By the time that he’s finished talking with Gerard, Frank knows he’s already going to be the last one in the locker room. He doesn’t like leaving Gerard, he hates the departure, it always has. He gives Gerard one last small smile of encouragement before they part ways, tries to calm him down, even though all Gerard has to respond to the smile with is a worried face, with scrunched up eyebrows.

Frank is then heading to the locker room, his feet starting to cramp from having been in skates too long. His feet always hurt if he tries to stand on his skates for long periods of time, there’s very little support in a skate for just standing or walking, which is why you need to constantly be in motion when you’re on the ice.

Frank makes his way into the locker room, only a few stragglers left behind, no one that Frank cares particularly for. Morgan is still there, though, along with his goon, so Frank makes the decision to hurry and get changed as fast as he can. He wants to steer clear of them as much as he possibly can. Gerard may be a little bit too worrisome, but that doesn’t mean that Frank’s not in some amount of danger.

Frank keeps his back away from everyone. Trying to get changed as quickly as he possibly can becomes more and more critical as feet patter away towards the exit. Frank doesn’t want to be left alone with Morgan, he’s sure the results of it would be catastrophic at best. He doesn’t want to be alone at all, actually. He feels much less safe when he’s by himself. Right now, he is, because Pete, Mikey, and everyone else are all already gone. They probably didn’t realize they were abandoning Frank, and he’s not angry with them for that, he just longs for them, any of them. He sends out a message with his heart hoping that someone will return.

Frank pulls his clothes on so fast that his shirt is actually inside out, but he doesn’t care. His heartbeat has started racing, and all of a sudden it feels like he’s in a horror movie, battling against a clock, and when his time runs out, he’ll be brutally murdered with a chainsaw, or hacksaw, or something else equally as painful and cliché. The man behind the hockey mask will ultimately be Morgan.

Frank doesn’t see it coming when it happens, he doesn’t even hear the sound of Morgan creeping up on him, because he’s too distracted in his own thoughts to pay him any mind. He kind of thought that Morgan left, knowing someone else was still in the room, but he assumed, or maybe hoped, that it wasn’t Morgan.

All Frank knows is that one minute he’s standing there, shirt and pants on, and getting ready to pull on his shoes and socks, when all of a sudden, his head is being jammed hard and painfully into the locker in front of him. It comes out of nowhere, completely unexpected, and it sends Frank spiraling down to the floor, as he’s not entirely sure what’s just happened or what to do about it. It dizzies him, as most head injuries do, which is why he can’t prevent falling to the ground, giving him a sense of déjà vu.

Like before, he’s unable to stop his fall with his hands, which sends his head to hit the bottom edge of the locker, which is sharp, and digs into the already pained spot where he’d just been pushed.

Frank isn’t entirely aware what’s happening, it’s that kind of pain which takes you out of your surroundings entirely, and for several moments he doesn’t know where he is or what just happened. It doesn’t occur to him that someone has pushed him, as his eyes have gone temporarily white as the pounding starts to thrum up in his head, the makings of what is sure to be a migraine to end all migraines.

Frank raises a hand to his head, tries to right himself, regain his balance even though he’s flat on his ass on the locker room floor. He blinks a few times, tries to regain his ability to see, and the world starts to come back into view when he sees Morgan standing over him, his dark, ominous form like a vampire in the night.

His head is in unimaginable pain, the small blows to it having done their fair share in messing his whole head up, and he’s genuinely considering whether he’s even going to be able to stand up, he might even be in a concussive state, when Morgan jumps down, and pushes him to the ground by the back of his head. His face smashes to the dirty, smelly locker room floor, which Frank would probably gag at if he weren’t so focused on the fact that he’s about to be beat the fuck up.

Frank feels Morgan’s cold, clammy hands on his wrists, and feels them being pinned down, but doesn’t know what to make of it, because he’s still groggy from the fall.

Then, Frank feels Morgan’s elbow as it jams into his neck, completely cutting off his airway in a startling display of brutishness. Frank’s not sure why this is happening, but he supposes that he knew it was inevitable. Gerard’s worries were more than accurate. Morgan is going to beat him up, just like his attitude has been threatening to do for the last several weeks. He’s going to beat Frank to a pulp, leave him bruised and battered on the locker room floor, and there’s nothing he’s going to be able to do about it.

Morgan is built like a train. He’s got hefty shoulders, and nearly a foot in height on Frank, but Frank’s short to begin with, so it’s not saying much. Morgan’s also colossally stronger, the kind of strong that doesn’t happen overnight, but is built up to for years and years of protein shakes and weight lifting instead of studying. Frank knows there’s no way he can escape Morgan’s grip. His oxygen is cut off, his head is dizzy and painful, and both of his hands are pinned down by one of Morgan’s massive ape-like hands. He’s helpless.

Frank just resigns himself to his ‘punishment’ because to some extent, he thinks he might deserve a black eye or two. It’s his fault that this is happening to him, if he’d never done that article, this surely wouldn’t be happening. Frank’s just going to have to live with it. Yeah, it’s going to hurt, like a fucking lot, but it’s nothing he won’t be able to get through.

He is slightly concerned that Morgan might break a bone, however, which would be less than ideal. A broken bone would take him out of the game for six or more weeks, and that’s not something he can just be okay with. Now to be fair, if Morgan breaks something he might have grounds to get the guy kicked off the team, but like Gerard had said, what’s the good in that if Frank can’t play either?

Frank’s starting to get worried, because it’s been about thirty seconds now and Morgan’s elbow is still choking him, with no air at all for him to get through to his lungs, not a single space for him to breathe any of it in. He thinks he must be turning blue, as he attempts to flail about for the will to push Morgan off, but he just can’t. He’s exhausted from practice, his head is pounding, the lack of air coming through is only amplifying both of those things.

At long last, Morgan removes his elbow from Frank’s neck, and he starts gasping, making these loud, painful noises as he gasps air down his throat, suddenly appreciating just how pleasant and amazing it feels to breathe. He takes his breaths in deeply, but he’s only got a moment to spare, before Morgan is pushing his head down onto the floor again. He’s pushed face first into the ground, still trying to gasp air into his lungs so he gets a mouthful of the floor, which he spits out the best that he can.

He tries to use the new position to his advantage, tries to get his arms underneath him to push himself up and onto his feet so that he can run the fuck away, but he doesn’t have the chance to before Morgan is sitting on him, knees pressed into his back. Frank doesn’t know what he’s doing at this point, other than being his vindictive, evil self, but he knows that he doesn’t like it. He turns his head to the side, his lungs still burning, and he tries to choke down more of the air that he so desperately needs, as he prepares for whatever the worst is, which he’s sure is yet to come.

It hits Frank like a meteor crashing to earth with the force and velocity to wipe out an entire nation. It’s an earth shattering, sucker punch but far worse. It’s all Frank can do to just squirm and try desperately in his last moments of strength to escape.

His heart rate picks up to a speed that he can’t bear, and he tries oh so desperately to push Morgan the fuck off, but to no avail. Morgan is stronger than him even when Frank doesn’t feel like he’s been through a garbage disposal. It’s all Frank can do to muster up a scream of unparalleled terror and desperation. He screams with every amount of energy he has in him. It’s the most frightened, terrified scream that’s ever been made.

No one is there to hear it.

Frank begins to hyperventilate, tries to scream again, but Morgan just grabs one of Frank’s socks from the ground, stuffing it into his mouth, and nearly choking him. He tries to spit it out, but it’s too far in his mouth to get at without the use of his hands. He continues to make relentless noises of fear, and horror, but they come out so muffled by the sock that he might as well let them go.

He doesn’t.

Not throughout any of it.

He keeps screaming into his sock.

Keeps squirming.

Keeps trying to get away.

Keeps on resisting.

But it doesn’t work.

None of it works.

It’s pointless.

Futile.

There’s nothing he can do.

Things just keep getting worse.

Eventually, he just stops.

Gives in.

Frank puts his head to the ground, clenches his eyes together, and just allows his entire world to blow up.

Everything’s falling apart.

Breaking.

Shattering.

Dying.

Nothing.

Throughout it all, Frank would love to say his mind goes blank. He’d love to say that the trauma is too great, and that his mind shuts itself down so that he doesn’t have to experience it. But that’s not true. He’s acutely, vividly aware. The entire time. Everything is clear as day.

Morgan leaves Frank lying there on the locker room floor. He leaves the shell of what was once Frank. Because Frank doesn’t think he’s here anymore. He doesn’t think at all. He’s just, sort of, there. Not really though. He’s not aware. Doesn’t want to be. He wants to escape. Wants to escape to the nothing of the world behind his eyelids. Wants them to grow so heavy that they guide him somewhere else. Forever. Wants to be carried away.

He vaguely hears the sound of footsteps as Morgan walks away, hears the sound as it echoes off the walls of the room around him, and Frank doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel now. Relieved that it’s over? No, he doesn’t feel relief. He’s depressed that he’s not dead. Death is honestly the only way for any of this to be okay, because at least then, he wouldn’t be stuck here on the locker room floor feeling like this.

Ten minutes pass and he doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t do anything. He just lies there. He just feels it all at once, which makes it feel like nothing at all. Eventually feelings start to come back though. Emotions begin to return, his limbs all begin to reform. He wishes that none of it had to ever come back.

Frank becomes aware of the fact that he’s lying on the floor. He starts to become aware of the fact that he’s feeling many different emotions, and all of them are bad. They’re beyond bad. There’s no word for the depravity of how he feels. There’s many different words that come close, though. He feels used, disgusting, cold, depressed, numb, shattered, tired, dirty, and most of all broken.

He is broken, though, he feels like vermin. He feels like the absolute scum of the earth. He’s dirty. He’s cold. He’s heartbroken. He’s never felt this unearthly gross or decimated before. This is how it must feel to be dead. This is what it feels like to have your corpse buried deep in the ground, being devoured by worms.

Why would he be forced to live after this? Why does he have to be cursed to live on? Why didn’t Morgan just kill him, because that would be so much preferable to the feelings that Frank is now forced to deal with.

He looks around him, not even having noticed that his head is against the floor. He picks himself up a little from the ground. If it weren’t for the fact that he feels like this, he’d probably be disgusted by how gross the floor is, but at this point, things can’t get any worse. There is no way for anything from this point to be worse than it already is.

Then he looks at the ground, sees blood there, and he lifts his hand to his head, feeling wetness on the back of it. It stings when he touches it, but he can’t remember getting the deep gash there. It must have happened during… during…

Frank doesn’t care about his head, though. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a little blood, it’s nothing.

He doesn’t cry. Frank doesn’t have it in him to cry. He feels far worse than the benchmark for tears. There is not enough life left in him right now to muster up crying. He just lifts himself up from the floor, slowly, somberly.

He fixes his clothes, and when he’s pulling his pants up, it sinks in, and he’s practically struck to the ground again. He’s hit with the pain of remembering. Somehow, it’s worse than what had actually happened. Frank feels himself drop to the ground again, only seconds after having stood up. He hits his head again on a locker as he falls into a sitting position against it, but he doesn’t care. It’s nothing to him, he might be fucking concussed but he doesn’t care, that doesn’t matter. That’s not what’s important. Nothing is important at all.

That is when the tears hit him, he’d been too distraught a minute ago to allow them to come, but now he’s sunk even further. There’s levels to these sorts of things: tears, too sad for tears, and then so sad that tears are inescapable, and Frank has sunk that low.

Then he’s weeping, practically wailing, and he wants someone to stop him, he wants someone to make it go away. He wants his mom, honestly, he wants her to tell him that everything is going to be okay, even though he knows it’s not going to be, because he knows nothing will ever be okay again. He’ll never be the same anymore, he’s going to live with this forever, and right now, the pain is at its peak, but it can only get worse from here.

It’s funny sometimes how you can fill an emotion to the brink, have so much of it that it becomes infinite, and yet somehow, still expand upon it. Expand on an infinitive. Impossible, yet somehow frequent, and common.

Frank stays like that, on the locker room floor, for over an hour. He’s unable to move, unable to do anything but feel pain and feel gross, dirty, unwashed, used. It takes him past an hour, another twenty or so minutes, before he’s finally able to stand up and drag himself to the showers. He can’t stay in these clothes any longer, can’t allow himself to be contaminated for even one more second. He needs to wash it off, wash off every trace of him that might be there, and then some.

He wants to scrub three layers of skin off, but being without a sponge, he’s only able to scrub until his bar of soap all but disappears, becoming so small that he can’t hold it in his hand anymore before it slips away.

But still he feels dirty. He doesn’t feel any cleaner than he had before showering. He doesn’t feel any less dirty. It’s like he’s been branded, permanently scarred, not just mentally, because he knows he’s that too, but it feels like it’s visible. Everyone will be able to see what Morgan did to him. Everyone will know.

He has to keep scrubbing. He scrubs, with just his hands. Tries to get everything off, until finally, he starts to scratch, maybe if he claws the skin off no one will be able to tell. Frank is in the middle of furiously clawing the skin of his thigh when he realizes that he’s leaving gashes. He looks down, seeing blood dripping down his legs and into the drain, and there’s some blood coming from some parts on his arm that he’d scratched as well.

He hadn’t realized he’d even been hurting himself. He had been so desperate to remove the evidence that he didn’t realize he was tearing himself apart in the process. Frank sinks to his knees again.

He’s a mess. He doesn’t even know what to do with himself. He sits under the shower head, feeling it sting his skin all over.

He wants everything to stop. Not necessarily to die, but for everything that hurts to stop hurting. He wants it all to go away. Wants the world to just stop turning for a moment, even if just for him to catch his breath.

But he doesn’t think he’s ever going to be catching it again.

Frank peels himself from the floor, turns off the shower, and then slowly, very slowly, he puts on the spare clothes he leaves in his locker. He doesn’t even want to touch the clothes he’d been wearing. Doesn’t want to ever have to look at them or remember them again. He stuffs his hand in a spare sock, scrubs the small patch of dried blood he’d left on the floor with his used clothes, before throwing the clothes, including the sock he’d used to touch them, all into the trash can. He’s tempted to set the damn thing on fire, but it’s too much work. He just wants to go home.

But then Frank remembers that he is home. This is where he lives. And this is his skating rink. This is supposed to be his favorite place in the entire world. His favorite place ever. And yesterday, it was. Now he knows he’ll never be able to look at it the same again.

All of a sudden, its paramount that he’s away from this place. He needs to be as far away as he can possibly get from the rink, so he starts hurrying out, feeling like a hobble, because when he walks, and it kills him almost more than it had before, he can feel Morgan. He actually feels what Morgan did to him, and it’s not in his mind, it’s an actual, real pain. It almost stops him multiple times before he’s even able to get to the door, because he’s close to crying again.

Frank needs to get away though, so despite the fact that he has to slow down and walk rather than run, he exits the rink as quickly as he can. It feels like a limp, the entire walk. It feels like he’s dragging himself.

There’s no one out and about, or at least, no one that he can see. Frank doesn’t know what time it is, but it must be very early in the morning by now, it’s certainly past the time when it’s acceptable for people to still be out, especially on a Monday of all days.

Frank makes it to his dorm, unlocks the door for himself hurriedly, and then rushes through the halls, desperate to collapse into his bed so that he can be in pain in peace and quiet, feel safe. Well, kind of.

Morgan is still on this campus. He’s probably sleeping right now, in his dorm, somewhere, feeling proud of himself while Frank is here feeling like death would be a mercy. Frank’s never going to feel safe in this place again. He’ll probably never feel safe anywhere again.

It sinks in like a cold lump in his throat, that nothing is ever going to be the same.