The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder [Frerard]

Scrutiny Is A Sin

The paint on the walls of the corridor is chipped and burgundy, but the familiar hue isn't making Gerard any less anxious, or comfortable for that matter.

He's staring at the backs of Ryan's moccasins, following him towards the cafeteria. The air is thick but he is cold anyway, and he can feel a few loose threads of his sweater sticking against his bitten fingernails as he's pulling the sleeves further over his palms. He’s slightly nauseous, but it’s only because of the stress, and the rain that’s threatening to spill from the clouds outside is the only thing keeping his mind in a relative state of calm. He doesn’t like the sun, he feels like it could burn that little pinch of sanity he’s got left in his brain.

It's hard to breathe, but focusing only on Ryan and not the entire hallway of students is keeping him on a nearly safe distance from a panic attack. The lobby is cold with a crude stone floor and his head is down, so the fact that he gets lost in his thoughts for a moment, bumping into the first person to walk beside him, doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. He stutters out a ‘sorry’ as the girl waves him off and pushes past him nonchalantly, while Ryan glances at him with an encouraging nod to keep walking. It feels just slightly degrading, since Gerard has always been the one to look after his pride a little bit too much, but he’s seen a lot worse so he doesn’t mind. Kindness and pity aren’t destined to mix, he reminds himself.

“Chin up, nobody’s going to hurt you,” Ryan offers, brushing his arm carefully. Gerard flinches on reflex and Ryan recoils, “Sorry.” His face is glowing with guilt and Gerard doesn’t like that, it makes him want to punch himself in the face.

“No, it’s cool,” Gerard mumbles insecurely. “I’m, uh, twitchy, I suppose.”

“I get it,” Ryan smiles. It’s slightly surreal how Ryan’s words work like anxiety medication, but it’s understandable, since all of his brightness is bound to affect Gerard’s overall darkness in one way or another.

When they get to the door, he shudders a bit, realizing just how many people there are in that single, badly-lit room. The thunder from outside is loud and making him abandon any wish he previously had for a smoke, while his knees feel weak just from glancing through the thin glass dividing him and the cafeteria. He looks at Ryan, but he doesn’t wait, so he opens the door and holds it for him. His lips twitch in a somewhat grateful gesture, and Ryan closes it after they walk into what Gerard considers to be his own, personal version of hell. There’s something pulling him back, appearing inside his gut and all across his body, towards the insides of his elbows, and it makes him feel like Ryan is going to walk away any second now and leave him there to decompose on the cold floor while everybody’s watching.

He doesn’t, though, and even though Gerard almost loses him he’s still there, fixing his floral headband and smiling at him from a few meters away. It’s only when Gerard comes over to him that he realizes that he’s talking to someone, a girl sitting at the table in front of him. Gerard feels alarmed for a second, but his heart rate immediately slows down when he recognizes the freckled, pale cheekbones, choppy black hair and familiar dark brown eyes of the librarian he’s met just yesterday.

“So, uh, Gerard- this is my friend, Jamia,” Ryan motions at the girl, who just smirks knowingly as Gerard is biting is lip and trying not let his embarrassment show on his face. The tension is thin but it’s crawled all the way down to his lungs, and he’s pretty sure no one by him is feeling it. “Am I missing something here?”

“We met at the library yesterday,” she grins wickedly, but it’s not mean, just teasing and Gerard appreciates it at that moment more than he does the fact nobody else in the room is paying attention to them. It’s a little unnerving, because both Ryan and Jamia seem to be somehow out of the ordinary dynamic of the general student body in this school- but it’s also keeping him at ease in the sense that he supposes he might not seem so off after all here. He’s not sure what he’s thinking, he’s kind of disoriented, but he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be continuing her thought just about now.