Witness

“It wasn’t me!” I screamed once more, trying my hardest to resist the meaty hands pulling at me. I knew their faces, I’d seen them before. They’d killed my father.

“Your finger prints were on the gun, there was nothing I could do,” Gerard said from above me, smiling cruelly. “I told you not to mess with shit like that,”

With a short, sharp yelp I sat up on the old mattress that had been lugged down the stairs of Gerard's basement room to be used as something softer for me to sleep on in the night.

Instantly, without any thought on the matter, my hand flew up to my forehead to feel the same smooth skin that had always been there. No scars. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in and flinched as Gerard voice filled the room.

“That movie messed you up?” he asked; assuming that I couldn’t handle a little horror film. I’d seen far worse, I just couldn’t tell him that.

“Uh – something like that,”

“It wasn’t that scary,”

“I know,”

“Then why are you frightened of it,”

“I…I’m not,” I just couldn’t lie to him.

“Then what were you just dreaming about?” He asked raising an eyebrow realizing that this conversation had just gone in a circle.

“Have…Have you ever had a reoccurring nightmare about something that’s happened in your life?”

“No,”

“Well then you can’t understand,” I said, my voice cracked in pitch with the last word.

“Frankie,” Gerard sighed slightly. “Come up here,” he said, pulling his own covers back.
I did as he said, and climbed under the covers, curling instantly into his chest. “What happened?”

“I-I can’t tell you,”

“Frank, it was just a dream,”

“I know, but it links to something that…it’s com—” I started before being cut off.

“Complicated, I know,” he sighed. He wasn’t showing open annoyance with me, but you could tell that he was annoyed, and that made me feel guilty. “I just want to be able to help you,”

“You are, more than you know,” I admitted, closing my eyes and letting out a sigh curling myself further into the heat of his body.

It wasn’t weird for me, being this intimate with someone I’m not dating, I used to do it all the time with my friends back in California, but there was something a little bit different about Gerard's arms around my body, the way we just fit. That was it. Like two pieces of a simple jigsaw puzzle.

His hands rubbed slowly up and down my back. “How?” he asked slowly, unsurely.

“How what?” I murmured back, kind of wanting to sleep now, but afraid I’d dream again.

“How am I helping?”

“You’re amazing. You…You don’t push for answers about my past yet you still provide the comfort that I need now more than ever,”

“There’s something about you Frank. There’s something that you’re keeping to yourself, and I know you just need to talk about it,”

“I do need to talk about it,”

“Can you tell your Mum?”

“She knows, I just can’t tell her because I need someone who isn’t going to be affected by it as well,”

“Then tell me,”

“I can’t,”

“Can’t,” he started, sighing. “Or won’t?”

I stared at him for a short while, his eyes never left mine as I mulled slowly over his question. The obvious thing to say would be that I can’t tell him, because it’s the truth. There are so many restrictions on me now. If I told the wrong person, then it was certain to end in my funeral.

Thinking further into it though, I remembered the day in the bathroom with Gerard at the beginning of the week. I’d come so close to telling him, to just spilling everything I needed to say, but it was my mother’s voice in the back of my head that stopped me and brought me down to earth. This is our secret. I couldn’t deny that, and I wouldn’t risk her burying her son.

“Both,” I said meekly.

“Why won't you tell me?” he asked curiously.

“For my mum’s sake,” was all I answered, before I pushed my arms underneath Gerards that were curled around my body, so I could cling to him, my face nuzzled into his chest as I closed my eyes and let myself drift away into a peaceful slumber.

More peaceful than any I’d had since Friday last week.

* * *

Soft breath hitting my face in short-sharp wisps; it tickled my face and I giggled slightly, bringing myself further from the depths of sleep.
My eyes fluttered open to find another face at a close proximity to mine, but I sure as hell didn’t mind, especially once I realized who it was. I lay still for a while, just staring up at his closed eyes, smiling every time his eyelids would twitch as his eyes moved around under the paper-delicate layers of skin, blocking out the light that was slowly beginning to creep through the window that I hadn’t noticed before, because the sun had been setting when I was first here, and the window was obviously facing the way the sun rises away from all the other countries that have been or are still enjoying its happy rays.

It was only a matter of time until the light filled the room enough for Gerards eyelids to no longer keep it out, but I was content until then, just watching him.

His small pointed nose twitched every so often, and his arm muscles flexed under my side occasionally. Probably to stop numbness, I’d been lying on the arm all night. I’d move to allow more blood to flow freely, but I was so incased in Gerards arms that there was no way that I could move without waking him, and I wanted to wait for the sun to do that.

It wasn’t long before Gerard shifted slightly, and let out a small mewling noise. His eyes opened slowly, and he looked at me, his eyebrows knitting together, before his face softened and he smiled.

“You confused me for a second,”

“I noticed,” I laughed back.

He opened his mouth to speak again once more, but the door at the top of the stairs flew open and Mikey came bounding down.

“That film last night was shit scary! I didn’t get any sleep at all last night!” He ranted before stopping as he noticed Gerard and I in what could be considered a compromising situation. “It appears Frank thought so too,”

Gerard chuckled uneasily, and unclasped his arms from my body, me doing the same and we shuffled away from each other.

“Uh, yeah. A bit of a pansy, me,” I laughed, shooting Gerard a look to let him know that I didn’t really want Mikey to know of my psychological discomforts.

“N’aww, poor little Frankie,”

“It’ll be poor Mikey if you don’t get out of here,” Gerard laughed, picking up his pillow and throwing it at his little brother. He went to put his head back down and groaned. “Before you leave, Mikes, can I have my pillow back?”