Disgusting (Frerard)

Chapter twenty one - blue stitch

Chapter twenty one – blue stitch


Don’t question the title. I am a weird, tortured artist person. I can say nonsensical stuff and pretend it’s serious and none of you are allowed to say anything. Ha.

;)


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Every single cell in my body felt like it was on fire. Pain shocked through my nerves; a shot of agony with each heartbeat. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. I struggled to force my limbs into action, but I had lost control of my body. I couldn’t move.

I started to feel quite frightened. I didn’t know where I was, and I could barely remember why I was here. All I could think about was the pain. I tried to latch on to that, to focus on that– not the fact that it hurt, but the fact that it was a steady constant; the only thing in the world I was sure of right now.

I began to count the seconds, and by the time I had reached the late ten thousands, the pain had been reduced to a dull ache. Every now and then a sharp sting would jolt through my veins and I would lose track of the numbers, but soon it would pass and I would return to counting.

It wasn’t for about six hours that I began to become aware of my surroundings. I could hear the muted sound of voices. They were vaguely familiar voices, but it confused me that I couldn’t recognise them. I felt like I should be able to.

“How the hell did they manage to stitch him up?” a soft but disbelieving voice asked. “The both of them?”

“Apparently the president’s guards are a lousier shot than even Gerard,” another said.

“Oh…”

Gerard. That name was familiar. It made me want to smile.

This was weird.

“Do you know when they’re going to wake up?” the softer voice asked.

“The doctor said to give it an hour or so.”

“Oh.” There was a sigh. “They look awful.”

“Well, I wouldn’t count on you looking peachy keen if someone had just cut open your chest without anaesthetic.”

There was silence after that. I wanted to open my eyes and see these people, remember who they were and remember why I was here, but I couldn’t. I was frozen in place. Stuck.

----

Hours passed, and I still couldn’t move. I could hear, though. And feel. The pain was still there. It alternated between a dull ache and unbearable agony. Sometimes I felt myself crying – just the sensation of warm tears streaking my cheeks – but I couldn’t wipe my eyes, or even open them.

After about thirty hours (I was still counting), in the middle of the night, I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that there was someone next to me. Someone in a bed beside mine. They seemed to have just woken up, because they had been peaceful and silent all the time before, but all of a sudden they were breathing shallowly and crying.

A little while passed, and then the person got up and shuffled across the room to my bed. They sat down at the end of the bed and curled their fingers around mine. “Frank,” he whispered. It was definitely a boy. “Frankie.”

I managed to open my eyes, and though it was dark (I’m fairly sure it was night), I could see the boy’s face. I recognised him. He was really quite beautiful. “Gerard,” I whispered back without thinking.

Gerard. Gerard.

Then everything came back to me and I scrambled away from him, barely breathing, terrified and confused. “You’re dead,” I spluttered. “I’m dead. I don’t– how did–”

“Frank,” he said gently. “It’s okay. We’re alive.”

“W-we’re alive?”

“Yes.”

I stared at him for a little while, utterly lost, and then I blacked out.

----

When I woke up, nothing hurt.

There was just an odd, warm, numb feeling everywhere. My joints kind of ached, but it was more of a tired ache than a painful one.

It must have been day because the room was light at the edges, sort of glow-y from the pale yellow that was seeping in through the curtains. The room itself was blue, intended to be calming, I supposed. It wasn’t working. I was still very confused and quite anxious.

The pain had gone, but what was scaring me was finally seeing what had been hurting me so much. My stomach and chest were wrapped tightly in layers and layers of bandages, but they seemed to be doing little to stop the large stain of dark red in the middle soaking through.

There was dried blood all over my hands and neck, sticking my hair together in clumps, and my clothes were ruined. I wasn’t wearing a hospital gown. I was still wearing my white shirt and jeans. Well, mostly wearing them. They had been completely saturated with blood and half cut apart, and hung off me in tatters.

Gerard was asleep in the bed beside mine. He looked better. The purple circles under his eyes were fading. It looked like he’d had a wash, and most of the dried blood was gone from his hair. He still looked tired, though, and I didn’t want to wake him, so I laid still for a couple of hours, just thinking.

The question I couldn’t stop running through my mind was how the hell we were alive. We’d both been shot in the chest. The fucking chest. Shouldn’t I have had a punctured lung or something at least? Surely they couldn’t stitch up my heart after a bullet wound.

When the doctor finally came in with Ray and Mikey, I couldn’t stop talking. Unfortunately this gave them no time to answer any of my questions.

“Frank!” Ray said. “Slow down.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just– I don’t understand. How am I alive?”

“We managed to stitch up your heart,” the doctor said like it was just a simple routine thing.

“You what?” I spluttered. “How?”

“Well,” Ray said. “You know that weird stuff they injected Bob with?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. I wasn’t sure where this was going. “Please don’t tell me now I’m some sort of superhero too.”

“No,” Mikey said, rolling his eyes.

“Once Bob was recovered from the tower along with you guys,” Ray said, “the doctors managed to extract a small quantity of it from his system, and after analysing it they discovered that one of the properties of the serum is anaesthesia. As well as the fact that it seems to heal any wound ridiculously quickly, which really helped with sewing up your heart.”

“But– they gave Bob an antidote,” I said, confused. “It was supposed to reverse the effects of the serum.”

Mikey snorted. “Well, the serum was supposed to make him do exactly what they wanted, and see how that worked out.”

“So that healing stuff’s still in his system? He’s alive?”

Mikey nodded. “Oh, yeah. And we’ve got some more good news too.”

I raised an eyebrow expectantly. “What?”

“The president’s dead,” Gerard perked up, having apparently just woken.

“What? Who the hell killed him?”

“Oh,” Mikey said timidly. “Me.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was a little unexpected. But I thought all you guys were dead. I was really angry.”

“Wow,” I said slowly. “I’ll never fucking underestimate you again.”

“Lovely,” Mikey said, pleased. “But that wasn’t the good news.”

“Oh?”

Everyone was smiling now; Mikey, the doctor, Ray, and Gerard. Really really huge smiles. It was just a little bit scary.

Mikey took a deep breath. “They got rid of my cancer.”

I stared at him in shock. “How? It’s been– it’s been like, a day.”

“It’s that stuff they injected Bob with. Healing properties, remember?”

“And it just magically got rid of all the cancer?”

Mikey nodded.

“Holy shit,” I laughed. “And they just gave that to us. The council were just a bunch of rich idiots, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, basically,” Ray said with a smile. “Anyway, they’re all dead now.”

I gaped at Mikey. “You killed the whole council?”

Mikey ducked his head shyly. “Ray helped.”

“I shot like one guy,” Ray said. “Most of it was you. You did freakin’ amazing.”

“Whatever,” Mikey said, blushing.

“My brother, everybody,” Gerard said. “He can kill ten men and not even flinch, but compliment him and he’ll blush like a little schoolgirl.”

Mikey flipped him off and laughed.

“So basically everyone’s okay?” I asked incredulously. “Well, everyone on our side?”

“Pretty much. I’m fairly sure even the army’s fine. No casualties, as far as I know.”

“Oh, god. We had a whole army, didn’t we?” I mumbled. I’d forgotten about that. “What happened?”

“They freed all the blacks that were locked up and then shut all the guards in the cells,” Mikey grinned.

Gerard was beaming. His dream had very literally come true.

“Gerard, you’re incredible,” I said, climbing out of my bed to hug him.

He laughed, a little surprised, and wrapped his arms around me too. This was amazing. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real. How did everything end up going our way? Everything was perfect.

Well. Almost everything.

I wasn’t sure how things stood between Gerard and me.

Gerard still had his arm wrapped loosely around my waist when Ray and Mikey started talking again, and I did have a vague memory of him saying something significant to do with our relationship right before I blacked out in the tower… but all my memories after I got shot were blurry and kind of patchy, and I just couldn’t quite put the scene together in my mind.

I really wished I could remember, because I had a feeling he’d said something important. Every now and then, Gerard would look at me expectantly, and I would just smile awkwardly. I had a hunch this had something to do with what he’d said right before I almost died.

As soon as we were alone, he looked scared. Probably more scared than I’d ever seen him. “Frank,” he said quietly. “I meant what I said before.”

I stared at him blankly.

“I really need to know how you feel so I can, um. Make some decisions,” he said shyly.

‘How you feel’? What he’d said up in the tower... He couldn’t have possibly said that he loved me– could he?

“Frank, I really need you to answer me because this is important. I have never felt like this, ever. And I’m kind of scared. And you’re not answering.”

“Say it,” I said softly.

He blinked and looked down. “Say it?”

“I need to hear you say it again.”

He hesitated, and then looked up to meet my eyes. “I love you, Frank,” he said honestly.

“Oh,” I mumbled in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” he said in a small voice. “I love you.”

It was sort of awkward for a few seconds. I couldn’t get my brain to function, nor my mouth. Gerard looked so vulnerable, and I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, but my voice just wasn’t working.

“Okay,” Gerard said, masking his hurt. “It’s fine. Just pretend I never said that. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have–”

At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do to shut him up, so I took his face in my hands and kissed him.

He was a little taken aback at first, flailing his arms and making a small noise of shock, but he soon settled, closing his eyes and wrapping his arms around my waist.

I still wasn’t sure this was real. It was all too perfect. Everything had ended up going my way, like in a fairytale or a Disney movie or something. I half expected the end credits to start rolling and cheesy music to start playing there and then as we kissed.

Everything felt surreal, but apparently everyone was alive and Gerard fucking Way was in love with me, so – unfathomable as the whole situation was – I just decided to go with it. Anyway, if it did turn out that I was actually dead and this was heaven, then man. It was a pretty sweet deal.