Chapter Text
There was so much to think about that I couldn’t think about any of it. It took me a long time to come down, laying there half-asleep while Frank, somewhat dutifully, even ritualistically, cleaned me up. When the excitement and the adrenaline had worn off, the sight of my blood sent all colour draining from my face and I mumbled something about feeling lightheaded and Frank kissed me on the forehead and told me to close my eyes, so I did. That part didn’t make any sense to me, the blood exciting me during and making me want to throw up afterward, but it was the least of my worries. There were other, more pressing things, like the fact that he was a vampire and I was in love with him and for all intents and purposes there was no way we could actually be together. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there was more than one of him, that I had probably been living around them, maybe even interacting with them, for my entire life.
Frank tore off a strip of the t-shirt he had been wearing with his teeth and wrapped it delicately around my shoulder and the wound he had made, smiling shyly at me and reaching up to brush my hair back from my face.
“You’re pretty,” I mumbled shyly into his palm when he cupped my cheek and he hummed a little, looking more tired than I had ever seen his energizer bunny self, and that was when things really did start to sink in for me. Frank’s thumb smoothed over my cheekbone and at the corner of my eye, and when I heard him pull in a shaky breath my chest caved a little along with it.
How fucking stupid was I being?
Frank had spent years, maybe even decades, entirely alone. Frank hated what he was and so did the people that worked so hard to keep him quiet, invisible, isolated. Frank had been so desperate and low for a fucking connection that he’d taken me in against his better judgement, despite the fact that it could have gotten both of us killed, and it still could. There was something backwardly romantic about it, at face value, but the longer I looked at him and drank in the sadness and the shadow of regret in his perfectly clear brown eyes, the worse it made me feel.
He had endangered himself as much as he had endangered me and yet I didn’t care so much about the threat to my life. Maybe that’s because I didn’t believe it, entirely, because the conspiracies at the level that he was describing just felt insane and unrealistic to me. Nothing that huge could ever be that much of a secret.
“Frank?” I mumbled, my eyes fluttering closed and then open again quickly, not wanting my body to betray me and pull me to sleep no matter how badly I needed it, afraid that when I finally did wake up again he would be gone, again. He hummed in response, getting up off the bed to work his way back into his clothes, to my dismay. Please don’t leave, I screamed internally at the back of his head, at the tattoos between his shoulders.
“What do we do now?”
He looked over at me and there was a sad look in his eyes, eyebrows pulling together, before he looked away and started rooting around for his cigarettes. The longer he stayed silent, the worse I felt about it, because I knew exactly what the answer would be.
“I don’t know,” he murmured, placing a cigarette between his lips, fingertips hovering, and taking it back out again. “Go to sleep,” he whispered, “you look kinda peaky.” It was the last thing I heard before my head hit the pillow again, as if something so light could beat me instantly unconscious.
*
It was the first time in weeks that I slept without dreaming.
*
I woke up to Frank’s hands moving slowly through my hair. I jolted, at first, but he shushed me, pressing a gentle kiss to my temple as I tried to blink away the fog in my eyes, relaxing back against his body almost immediately.
“You okay?” He mumbled against the top of my ear, the hand that wasn’t in my hair light against my bare ribs, and I could only grumble in half-agreement, squeezing my eyes closed against the sudden invasion of a rampant headache. He hummed a little, slowly prising himself away from me, fingers lingering as long as they could, by the feel of it.
“You got any aspirin?” I whispered, hoarse and garbled and bordering on nonsensical, and he just chuckled.
“Best I can do is more disgusting coffee.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, my hand reaching out weakly in his direction as he got off of the bed and dropping down, defeated, when I couldn’t find him. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you can drink this shit,” he sighed when he set a cup down on the nightstand, his hand catching mine carefully when it flailed out toward it. “Careful.”
“Don’t think you’re one to be poking fun at what I drink,” I muttered, forcing myself to sit up and balking a little as the nausea shifted around in my stomach. Frank laughed weakly and I opened my eyes, flinching at the light and relaxing the moment I could focus on him. Sight for sore fucking eyes.
“Fair point,” he sighed, smiling timidly and a little wider the longer I looked at him, before nodding with his chin toward the steaming cup of questionable coffee. “C’mon, fix your head.”
“What time is it?” I hissed against the surface of the practically molten sludge as I drank it, and I almost spat it straight back out when he told me it was five in the morning. “Oh, fuck, Frank, it’s Christmas.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, nonplussed, smiling just a little. Grinch. He stayed quiet for a little while and it was just disconcerting enough for everything that had happened before I fell asleep to sink back in, solving the mystery of why my shoulder was stinging and why he looked so bleak and why I couldn’t quite feel my body and why the room smelled slightly like rusted nails. The word vampire barged into my head so quickly I almost dropped my coffee.
It was obvious then that Frank was retreating back up into his head and that it was probably, at least a little bit, my fault. I remembered I’d derailed his attempt at trying to explain himself because I’m selfish and I wanted to get closer to him physically to solve my own loneliness, with no regard for his. He lit a cigarette and his breath was shaky enough that I could hear it, see it in the way the smoke stuttered out of him and climbed unevenly toward the ceiling.
“Frank,” I mumbled anxiously, frowning, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” he murmured around another small cloud of smoke. “You look tired.”
“S’okay,” I mumbled, but I yawned, eliciting a small, humourful hum from him.
“You can go back to sleep,” he whispered, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth before leaning in to kiss me once at the corner of mine, looking up at me through his lashes as he pulled away. “I’m not going anywhere. Someone’s gotta guard the door.” A sad, useless smile.
“Well, what I actually need to do is go home,” I sighed, and he hummed as if he’d already considered it. “I think I scared the shit out of Mikey.”
“I took care of that,” Frank whispered, lips pursing together in a shameful smile of apology, and I glowered at him when I realised what he meant. Can we just stay out of people’s heads, Frank? Just for a little while?
“Seriously?”
“I needed to get you alone.” I let the words hang in the air for a little while before sighing and rubbing my hand over my face. He might have sounded a little remorseful about it but an apology would have been nice.
“What am I supposed to tell him?” The whisper was as harsh as the realisation that now that I knew Frank’s secret, I was well and truly alone. Frank didn’t even bother shrugging, looking to the other end of the room and appearing to zone out. “I mean… Where do we even go from here, now?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered again, eyes falling shut, cigarette forgotten between his fingers.
“And… What exactly are we supposed to—“
“Gerard,” he said, bluntly, slowly, soft like a punch in the nose. “I don’t know. I’m thinking.”
The reprimand slipped me into a stiff silence and I felt too self conscious to even move.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said eventually, and I noticed that he was stubbing out his cigarette in the palm of his hand, not even aware that I was watching. Just watching turned my stomach but I forced myself to in the hopes that it would help me remember just how real all of this was. But I think I could have watched him do that a hundred times a day for the rest of my life and it would never quite sink in. Same with a lot of things. “Just… it’s not like I have a plan, alright?”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, thoughtlessly, uselessly, because what good does an apology do us now? Frank flinches a little and shakes his head again.
“It’s my fault, not yours.”
“It’s not your fault you are what you are.” I catch the tail end of a miserable smile and he nods, brushing so quickly at his eyes that I almost didn’t see it at all.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, self-conscious and even starting to roll his eyes, shoulders squared. I’m afraid to reach out and touch him, not knowing how I’ll handle it if he shrugs me away. Frank sniffles and mutters something under his breath as though crying is the worst thing he could have done tonight. “Y’know, I don’t think anybody’s ever said that to me.”
“Duh. Catholic.” I force a small smile and he returns it, eyes softening as he looks over his shoulder at me again, like he’s inviting me. I lean forward and place my chin on his shoulder, his eyes darting down to my mouth and straight back up, and when I hum in the back of my throat he kisses me, just once, the tip of his nose nudging at my own. “What do you want to do?” I ask him as he pulls away, and he chuckles dryly, leaning his head back on my shoulder and staring up at the damp-smattered ceiling, blinking slowly.
“Now there’s a question.” I kiss his temple and brush a hand back through his hair and his eyelids flutter, breath slipping out of him slowly. “Hm.”
“Tell me,” I mumble against his skin, shifting my weight enough that I can support his, putting my arms delicately around his waist and trying not to squeeze him but I can’t help it. Soft. He doesn’t seem to mind. His lip ring shines in the dim light like it’s smiling at me.
“Short of driving to Alaska, I have no idea,” he breathes out, head rolling a little against my shoulder and leaning into my hand.
“Alaska, huh.”
“Mhm.” His lip tugs upward slightly. “Y’know, cold, dark, remote, no fucking cops on my ass.”
“You know they still have cops in Alaska, right?”
“Hm. Killjoy,” he grumbles, still smiling, one of his hands tracing the bare skin of my forearm as it presses against his waist. “You got a better idea?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I mumble, letting my nose brush the tail of his eyebrow, “maybe storm a government building or two, stage a coup, get some laws changed.” He can feel me grinning and I can feel him grinning too, savouring the sound of his bitter, yet somehow still carefree, laughter.
“You really must love me.”
“Hm.” My hand finds his and twists around it, tattooed fingers slipping in between mine and holding them tight. There’s a persistent pang of dread yanking at the inside of my chest, like barbed wire being wound tight between my ribs. “You’re not… Actually going to Alaska, right?”
His eyes find mine again and his mouth drops open by a millimetre or two.
“Depends.” My heart stutters in its place.
“On?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbles, repositioning his head against my shoulder as if to prompt my hands to start moving again. I didn’t even realise that they’d stopped. “I think it’s less about what I want and more about what you want.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His hand squeezes mine, just a little, just enough. He hesitates, no longer blinking as he stares up at the ceiling light, the slow movements of the ceiling fan, pupils the size of pinpricks.
“If I asked you to leave with me, would you?” I can tell the words hurt him to get out, and I’m not sure what I’m even supposed to say.
“I’m sorry, is that a question?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles, quieter, less conviction than I’m used to hearing from him. I wish I could say I wasn’t offended but it just wouldn’t be true.
“It’s a stupid question,” I say instead of giving him a solid answer and he scoffs weakly, nostrils flaring a little as he closes his eyes again.
“Not really.”
“Frank,” I mutter, disappointed and maybe panicking a little, “there is no way that you’re going anywhere without me, not again.” Apparently, that’s all it takes to get him incensed.
“Yeah?” He gently pulls away from me and stands up, looking down at me in my place on the bed. His sudden inflammatory tone catches me by surprise. “Alright, well if that’s supposed to be so obvious, you wanna tell me how you think that’s gonna work out without me ending up dead and you hooked up to a fucking ventilator with your memory sucked out of you?”
What?
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” I snap back, unable to resist it, and he sets his jaw because I can tell he wants to do the exact opposite of that. I narrow my eyes. “Alright, so I am, whatever. You still fucking told me, didn’t you?” His face falls by a fraction.
“Yeah, but–”
“Frank, you can’t just ditch me. Not after this.” I gesture loosely to my half-naked body and the section of his t-shirt wrapped around my gently maimed shoulder.
“So? What do we do, genius?” That hurts. “You can’t tell anybody and I’ve got one friend in the entire fucking world and he’s sick of my bullshit. He’ll cut me off if he finds out I’ve gone after you again.” It takes me a second, but then another piece of the puzzle slides into place.
“Ray’s a vampire too?” Not really important, Gerard, but okay.
“Yeah, and I can’t ask him for his help anymore. I’ve already asked too much of him.” The way he looks at me feels like getting impaled in the head with a fucking nail gun. “You can’t tell anybody, Gerard. I mean, shit, I don’t even feel good about your brother knowing my name, what I look like.” Do not come for my fucking brother.
“Mikey’s good,” I bargain, “we can trust him.”
“No, we can’t.” He notices the fire starting to rage in my eyes and his own squint uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Gerard, but, no. Everybody always talks. It’s bad enough telling one person, but–”
“He’s my little brother!” I screech out, and Frank flinches and panics at the volume but I don’t care. “I can’t just abandon him and not tell him why, alright? And he…” It kicks in, really kicks in, what I’m considering doing, and I don’t doubt that Frank can feel my unsteadiness now. “He wouldn’t tell anybody. He’d understand.”
“Gerard, this could get him killed,” Frank says softly, evenly, a plea to get me to lower my voice, maybe. “Think about that for a second, alright? This isn’t just me, or you, or me and you. This has stakes. Real-life, in the fucking flesh, stakes. There are consequences and there are–”
“How do you know?” I might not have said it if I wasn’t so fucking pissed at him for implying what he did about Mikey. I might not ever have questioned it again.
“What?” Frank looks at me like I’m speaking fucking Russian.
“How do you know? You’re warning me, threatening me, even, with all of these things that I need to be scared of, but how do you even know that it’s gonna happen?” His face cracks like a dam.
“Gerard–”
“I’m serious! How do you know?”
Frank’s face flits through several different emotions at lightning speed, like I’m watching him on fast-forward. His eyebrows pull together and his mouth moves around wordlessly, uneasily, a hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
“I just…” There was a small sigh of defeat. “I just know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“But–”
“Here’s the thing, Frank, you’re telling me that somebody is gonna pull up in a van and whisk me away to suck my brains out through my nose, or that some fucking Men-In-Black super secret vampire agent is gonna show up and put, what, a stake in your heart, or that I’m gonna get shot execution-style just for being here with you, but have you ever, just once, actually seen it happen?”
He’s just standing there staring at me, eyes huge and jaw clenched so hard it’s a wonder his teeth don’t break and breathing slowly but hard enough that I can hear it.
“Exactly,” I mutter, “you can’t, can you? Because, Frank, it sounds to me like you’ve just been fucking manipulated and scared into thinking something’s gonna happen if you let somebody in, just because they want to control you, because–”
“This is my life,” he yells over me, so startlingly sharp and edging on being cruel. “What the fuck would you know about it? You’ve known about it for what, an hour? I’ve been living with this for twenty-five fucking years, Gerard, do you really think I don’t know?”
“Don’t yell at me,” I mumble, flat and taken aback like my voice is just a flame that’s been extinguished, nothing left but smoke.
“You don’t know shit,” Frank hisses at me. “You don’t know shit and maybe that’s my own damn fault because I don’t even know where to begin with explaining all of this but–”
“You’re telling me I’m in danger and I’m asking you where the fuck the danger is, Frank!”
“What?” He laughs out, pushing his hands back through his hair and holding onto the back of his head, biceps taut and pale. “You think, what, just because there’s not a fucking SWAT team kicking the door down that you’re safe? That this is safe?” He gestures wildly at the space between our bodies, and I can feel tears stinging in my eyes at the way his voice is climbing up in pitch and speed, dripping with blind terror.
“No, I’m just–”
“I told you because I love you,” he moans, exasperated and spitting the words out like he doesn’t like the taste, and for a second, everything is silent save for the drone of the ceiling fan and the ominous clicking and clanging of the - probably poisonous - heater. “Because I can’t let you go,” he says shakily, hands coming down to wipe at his eyes, tear tracks smeared over his cheekbones. “I can’t, and it’s scaring the fucking shit out of me. Because I can’t be with you without endangering your life, or mine. And I can’t leave, and I can’t be without you, and I can’t let anybody take you away and I’m…” He stares straight into my eyes like he’s the deer and I’m the headlights and I’m looking at him just the same way. “I’m fucked,” he croaks, sniffling around a sob that turns into vicious, almost sarcastic, bewildered laughter.
“You’re not making sense,” I mumble, drowned out by him laughing.
“I’m a monster,” he whines, gesturing to himself, with his delicate hands that know how to be the right amount of rough, at the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, staring at me with eyes the colour of Central Park in fall. I know he’s right and yet, I can’t make myself look away. “There’s no being with me. There’s no normal life, alright? There’s not even a life at all.”
Yes there is. I’m living proof, because you gave me mine back.
“Frank–”
“There’s no being in public with me,” he says, carrying on before I can get a word in. “It’s not like we can just date. There’s no restaurants, no bars, no gigs, no fucking movie theatres. There’s no holding hands in the street, there’s no grocery shopping, there’s no long walks on the fucking beach.”
“So what?” I snap, folding my arms, and he recoils slightly.
“The fuck do you mean, so what?”
“Fuck that. I don’t care about that.”
“No?” There’s a tease of a twisted smirk on his face and I want to get up and slap it off of him. “What about your brother? You think I can just go ahead and get involved in your life like that, endanger everyone?” I roll my eyes, the words give me strength burning the back of my tongue. “What about when Mikey, God help his fucking soul, starts asking you why I won’t come over with you, why we never get together, just the four of us? What about your parents? Hell, Gerard, it’s Christmas, and where the fuck are you right now?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I breathe, scrambling to think of something that might make him believe me but I’m not even sure I believe myself.
“It does matter,” Frank says, with an edge. “I can’t go anywhere with you. I can’t be seen with you and I can’t fucking believe I brought you here in the first place when I should have just walked away but it’s the truth, I can’t just be your boyfriend, and I can’t just be some monster freak fantasy you can dip your feet into whenever you fucking feel like it, alright? It’s bigger than that and it’s worse than that. So you can keep asking me what I want to do about it, but I just don’t know, alright? I don’t know how to be with you and keep you safe at the same time and you’re being so insanely fucking stupid about it.”
“Not wanting to leave my brother behind without an explanation isn’t me being stupid.”
“Then it’s him or me,” Frank says bluntly, and my eyes just about shoot out of my skull.
“What did you just say?”
“Did I stutter?” Even before now, he’s never been quite this cold with me, not even when he was leaving me, tears in his eyes notwithstanding. My limbs turn to jelly before going completely numb and I can only imagine how pathetic I look right now. “I’m not compatible with a normal life. They’ve seen to that, and if I just stay here with you like this out in the fucking open then it’s all over anyway.”
“I’m not choosing between you and my brother,” I retort, and it takes a moment for his expression to change.
“Fine. Let’s say you choose your brother, alright? We’re both miserable but at least I know you’re safe. At least. And yeah, maybe I’ll never get over it, but you will, because you’re human and that’s what you do.”
It insults me to the point I feel radioactive, nuclear, but he interrupts before I can even start.
“Let’s say you choose me. Let’s say we go somewhere far away.” He chokes a little on the last word and I can tell it’s what he wants, what he really wants. He clears his throat and levels himself out just enough. “When I got arrested,” he says, “the cops could smell you on me. They told me they could smell you. And that means I’m being watched. I don’t know how, and I don’t know by who, but that’s what that means. It means that they’re waiting for me to slip up, and that means they’ll be waiting for you to slip up. And the next time I go to a blood bank - because I have to go to a blood bank, because if I don’t eat I can’t physically be around you, at all, by the way - that shit’s gonna be in my file, and I’ll still have your fucking stink all over me. And if they’ve not already, they’ll search my house, and they’ll smell you in every fucking crack in the floorboards, and they’ll find your blood, and they’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt what I’ve done, and that’ll be it for me.”
“Then don’t go home.”
“Christ, Gerard, aren’t you getting it? There’s a network for shit like this, alright? I’ve been pulled in for fucking murder and I’m on paper for interacting with fucking humans beyond anything I’m allowed to do. Anywhere, wherever we go, someone will pick up on it and when they do, it’s over. They’ll find me, and that’s if they don’t find you first.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re seriously telling me that there’s that many fucking vampire cops out there that they have the time to monitor this fucking bullshit? What about all the murders, Frank? Isn’t that infinitely more important than who you’re fucking?” In love with. “Do you really think you’re that important that you’ve gotta be looking over your shoulder your entire life?”
“I can’t–”
“Have you ever tried?”
Frank looks at me like I’ve punched him in the gut. There’s a glint of something hopeful in his eyes but it diminishes the moment he blinks. His eyes crease gently at the corners and he frowns, lips gently parted.
“I don’t—“
“Have you?” I lower my voice and tilt my head slightly to one side, itching to get up and just touch him, hold him, get this into his head. “Have you tried, living like nobody is out to get to you?” His mouth opens and I hold my hands up to him. “Don’t start telling me that everybody is out to get you, Frank. I’m asking you if you’ve ever taken the chance to find out.”
“That’s not the point,” he mumbles, voice cracking with desperation and tears, and I have to try my best not to fall completely apart.
“Just answer the question,” I whisper back. “Don’t you wanna find out, Frank? Don’t you wanna at least take the chance? Don’t you wanna find out whether, maybe, just maybe, we can do this? That it’s not as hard as it seems?”
“Not if the other option is you ending up dead,” he mumbles, reluctantly, and I know I might be finally getting somewhere.
“That’s not any way to live,” I say, and he flinches like he knows I’m right.
“But I can’t change what I am,” he argues, softly, like he has to fight for the words to get out at all. “And if…” He shakes his head and makes a grim expression with his mouth. “If you get hurt, because of me, because of what I am and because I’m not meant to be anywhere near you then, I’m stuck with that. Forever. And I’ve got enough things left in me that are gonna go unforgiven. I can’t add you to that list.”
“You said that this was about what I want,” I pose, tentatively, and there’s a flicker of a reluctant smile.
“This isn’t what I meant.”
“But if I asked you to try, would you?”
The words hang in the air between us to the point I can almost see them, like the motes of dust suspended in the sunlight in my dreams. Frank shifts uncomfortably on his feet and stares down at them and I can hear his lip ring clacking against his teeth as he chews on it. I get up from the bed and approach him slowly, my hands resting steadily on his waist, his own hands flinching as they rest on top of mine.
“Would you?” I whisper, nudging at his nose to get him to lift his chin, and I stare down into his eyes, the way that they’re blown out and dizzy and exhausted but so focused at the same time, smouldering and golden like a goddamn bonfire.
“Gerard,” he breathes, the start of something uncomfortable, something harsh, and I let my lips skim his as he starts to shake his head, because I don’t know any better, because I want him above all else, because it’s Christmas, for crying out loud.
“Come home with me,” I say, squeezing at his hips, pressing in with my fingers like I had claws and I could hook him just by doing that.
”Absolutely not.”
”Please?”
“I can’t,” he chokes out, his head leaning into mine, hands smoothing up the lengths of my arms. When I kiss him softly on the mouth his breath stutters.
“If you didn’t want to,” I murmur, kissing him again, and again, and again, “you would’ve gotten up inside my head and made me forget about it.”
“That’s not true,” he strains, kissing me back anyway, and my hands are vibrating against his body I’m so fucking nervous and overexcited.
“Yes it is,” I mumble against his lips, and he makes a pained, dubious noise, a mixture of consent and dissent at the same time. “Just try,” I insist, half an octave away from begging. “Try. And if I’m right, then you’ve not got anything to lose, right?”
His fingers press in gently to the top of my arm, clinging, like if he lets go he’ll fall over.
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then you run,” I mumble as his lips part to make way for mine again, like it’s that simple. “And I’ll be right behind you.”
*
It takes me about a half hour to get Frank out of the motel room. He’s quiet, surly, maybe even seething, but he does it without complaint; he’s just procrastinating, insisting upon a shower, taking his bag into the bathroom with him like I was thinking about going through it - and I was, but it’s besides the point. When he comes out he’s relaxed a little, and when I move in to kiss him - because apparently that’s something that I have the guts to just do, seeing as I managed to talk him round to actually going outside - he’s reluctant about it, and I get a whiff of iron on his breath.
“Were you drinking blood?” I whisper, like it’s scandalous, and maybe it is, and maybe I just need to get over it if I’m going to do this, taking a vampire home for Christmas. My mom is gonna shit.
“Yeah,” Frank grumbles, voice perfectly clear like running water, light like distant church bells. “You’re taking me into a house full of humans against my will, would you rather I go hungry?”
Yeah, maybe don’t massacre my entire family. God, what am I even doing?
”Guess not,” I mumble, and he shoots me a sarcastic smile.
I watch him closely as he gets ready to leave, one of my legs bouncing nervously against the bed where I’m sat, already bundled up inside my coat. I’m trying to figure out what it is that I said that made him give in, but I can’t. Maybe he does believe me, just a little. Maybe he does want this just as badly as I want it. My heart swells and shudders in my throat as I watch him, how fucking beautiful he is and how nonsensically proud I am that he’s mine, monster or no, just for today or no. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he came back for me. My shoulder aches and itches beneath my sweater but I don’t mind because it’s nothing more than proof that he was here. In the space of a minute or maybe two, I pinch myself hard on the arm six times, just in case I’m dreaming. I wonder how long I’ll be doing that for.
When we do finally get outside, the sky is just barely starting to break apart at the horizon to make space for the sun. Purples, pinks and oranges streak through the moody clouds and it’s a dry kind of cold, no longer snowing and there’s hardly a whisper of a breeze. I shiver a little and hunch my shoulders deep inside my coat and Frank looks me up and down as he locks the door behind us, a cigarette already hanging from between his lips.
“This is a dumbass fucking idea,” he mutters around it, and I can’t hold back my smile because at the end of the day I still won, but there’s nothing I can say to that. We start across the parking lot and he stops in front of a black, piece-of-shit car that as far as I was aware, doesn’t belong to him.
“What?” I ask him dumbly when he raises an eyebrow at me, and he scoffs.
“We’re not walking.”
“This isn’t your car,” I say, like an idiot, and he rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, I stole it, big deal. You getting in?” The words spin a little inside my head and I set my feet firmly in the snow on the ground, glaring at him.
“No, because we’re walking.”
”Gerard,” he moans in protest, and I untuck my chin from my jacket and stare him down.
“With God as my witness, Frank, you will be seen in public with me.” His nostrils flare a little and he sighs, loudly, dramatically like the shithead kid he is. Doesn’t matter that he’s fifty. “And it’s, like, what, six in the morning? Who’s gonna see you?” He grumbles something unintelligible and shoves the car keys back into his pocket and I reach for his hand, my fingers reddening in the cold. He hesitates, lip trembling in between his teeth, and I thrust my hand forward with every ounce of foolish fucking arrogance I’ve got left in me to curl my fingers around his palm. “Come the fuck on.”
The streets are quiet, like you’d expect them to be on Christmas morning in Belleville. When the occasional car drives past us Frank flinches and his hand goes limp in mine and I have to squeeze it back to life, pulling him forward with me as he looks over his shoulder until the car turns a corner or falls out of view. It’s quiet, our breath visible in front of our faces, feet crunching on snow and ice as we make our way into town. I permit Frank his silence and chainsmoking for a few blocks, until another car speeds past us and his back stiffens like a hissing cat.
“Will you stop it,” I hiss, lacing my fingers between his and pulling his hand into my pocket in the hopes that, first, my hand won’t freeze and drop off and second, that if he makes a run for it I might have a second to stall him.
“Sorry,” he mumbles thickly, mouth full of smoke.
We lapse back into silence for a little while until we’re downtown and we’re walking past Lucky’s, Frank’s eyes following mine to the alley down the side of it where he found me.
“You gonna tell me how you got your photo on that wall?” I ask him, nudging his shoulder gently with mine, and for the first time in a long time he laughs, quiet like he’s afraid someone is going to hear him, but laughing nonetheless.
”I dunno.” He hunches his shoulders a little more, turning his face away from mine. “We used to play there kinda regularly, before we took off, but it was never much of big deal. I guess we must have gotten a bit of buzz after I died, that’s my best guess.” He says it so nonchalantly that it takes me a few seconds to catch up.
“You took off, huh.”
”Yeah, a little.” Something sour to his tone now. “Didn’t last long though.”
I don’t know which line of questioning is worth pursuing more.
“Was that… I don’t know, was that what you wanted to do? Back then?” In 1981 when I was fucking four. He looks up at me and smiles, boyish and shy and sad.
“Yeah. I don’t know, I guess music was kinda just the be-all, end-all.” His jaw clenches for a second and he sighs through his teeth and he speaks with a devastating, gut-wrenching air of nostalgia that I almost trip over my own feet right there on the sidewalk. “I can’t even play guitar anymore, not really.”
“Why not?” He shrugs weakly.
“Feels kinda pointless. And I’m not good at it like I used to be. Kinda like there’s something missing, you know? Like, my soul or something, I don’t know.” There’s still that horrible, heartbroken smile on his face but his tone is so forcefully lighthearted that it breaks me. “And it just bums me out. Guess I kinda just miss the stage, and all that.”
”So vampires don’t play in bands?” Frank chuckles weakly.
“Not in any of the good ones.” He hums around his cigarette, eyebrows tugging together. “I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed about the whole thing, but we were like—“ and he holds up his finger and thumb, barely an inch apart— “this close to getting a record deal, you know?” It’s strange to me, this being the most Frank has ever spoken to me about anything personal, this being perhaps the most normal interaction we’ve ever had.
“So… what happened?”
Frank shrugs. The sun is splitting through the clouds now and it’s a warm and thin buttery yellow on his skin, his eyes squinting against it. He’s so fucking beautiful. He motions with his chin to the other side of the street, to the shade, and I follow him.
“We were playing a show in New York, I don’t know, just this shitty little club in Soho. Felt like a big deal at the time.” He pushes out a small puff of irritated breath. When I watch his eyes they aren’t really focused on anything, fixed ahead. “And the show was good, y’know, really good crowd, and we killed it. ‘Cause we always killed it. But I’d had a lot to drink, and I was kinda fucked up, y’know, because it was my birthday and everything. So—“
”Sorry, I— your birthday?” That’s just not fucking fair.
“Yeah, Halloween.” He shoots me a weak, fleeting smile. “Ironic, right? But, anyway, I ended up outside, like, around the back, and…” He shrugs, taking a long drag on his cigarette, gesturing a little with his hand as he pulls it away and I’m still reeling from the fact that he died on his fucking birthday. “I don’t really remember what happened after that. I woke up in the hospital for like, five minutes, and I was all strapped down to this gurney and I was screaming and shit, but after that it’s…” He rolls his wrist around in the air, shrugging with his mouth. “I dunno. Hazy.”
“And that was it?” I don’t know what I was expecting. Try not to sound too disappointed about it.
“Yeah,” Frank sighs, “that was it.” He looks around and twice over his shoulder and then smiles a little to himself, glancing up at me bashfully through his lashes. You’re so pretty I want to jump into traffic. “We got time for a detour?”
Frank leads me off the street and through a couple alleys, my throat getting thick with nerves at one point and then thicker with utter despondency at realising that he still knows these streets, remembers them, that they were his long before they were ever mine. A shiver hammers its way through my spinal column and I brace myself against the cold to keep on going.
We end up in the park, somewhere I’ve not been for years now, and Frank’s almost entirely changed, yanking at my hand, telling me to hurry up.
“I used to smoke here,” Frank says with a small contented noise as he looks around, at the smooth, untouched snow and the bare trees casting claw-like shadows across it in the sun. Every so often, I notice him rubbing at his eyes whenever the light crosses his face. “God damn, what’s it been, like twenty fucking years since I was here last?” He brushes the snow from the two seats of the swing set and sits down, motioning for me to sit down on the one next to him, and I do. I hold onto the chains for maybe a minute before my hands start going numb and I thrust them straight back into my pockets. Frank had gotten so animated there for a moment that I’d assumed he would just keep talking, but as I look over at him and watch him rocking back and forth on his heels on the swing, shoulders curled up tight and chin resting on his knuckles, I feel a tug somewhere deep behind my navel.
“You believe me now?” I force myself to say, and Frank looks over dumbly like I’ve pulled him out of a deep thought, like he didn’t hear me. “See? No cops, no guns, no pitchforks, no men in white coats.” Slowly, he looks away again.
“I know what you’re doing,” he sighs, adjusting the hood of his coat when a stray strand of sunlight starts to dance on the back of his neck. “I get it. You think that if I can go a day without anybody showing up to arrest me then I’ll realise how stupid and paranoid I am and we can just go on like everything’s okay. Right?” He leans his head against one of the chains of the swing and blinks slowly, smiling fondly, like I’m the village idiot and my stupidity is just so adorable to him. He hums when I say nothing and looks away. “I don’t blame you for trying. I’d do the same thing if it was the other way around.” My heart is going to explode. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
”Doesn’t it?” He smiles and shakes his head, closing his eyes. I’m expecting him to argue back a little more, but he doesn’t.
”I thought I’d feel better here,” he says, “you know, when I left the city. Thought it would help. But, I dunno, it kinda just feels like I’m walking around a haunted house.” His eyes snap open and he points vaguely across the park, sighing with a wistful, peculiar misery. “I used to live right over there. Last time I was here, my parents were still putting up ‘MISSING’ posters.”
Do not ask him if his parents are dead. Nausea curls around my small intestine and squeezes. He’s been alone for so long. He deserves a second chance.
“I’m sorry.”
”I don’t think there’s anybody left that would recognise me if it’s been this long,” he sighs. “I’m not worried about that, really, I just can’t stomach being here.”
In my head, I’m weighing everything up: leaving Mikey behind; leaving my parents behind; never coming back to Jersey like I’d always intended, just under different circumstances; going somewhere new and no matter where it is, Frank will always have one eye fixed on the door, one ear tuned into police radios, because of me. What would I do? How would I spend my life, when half of it was entirely a secret, like he was suggesting? Would I fall for it, eventually, being scared of getting caught, just as he was?
There’s no saying I couldn’t do it. There’s no end to the lies I could make up if I had to, like getting a job on the other side of the country or always being sick over the holidays. I wouldn’t have to tell anybody about Frank at all, but my words from before came back to bite me, viciously, in the fucking throat. That’s no way to live. And then there was Mikey - he’d know I was lying. One way or the other, he’d know, because Mikey always knows. He’d never forgive me, and I’d never forgive myself.
“You could always turn me into a vampire,” I blurted out, before the thought had even fully formed, and from the corner of my eye I could see Frank glaring at me.
“Yeah, alright,” he scoffed. “Do you take anything seriously?”
“Just a thought,” I shot back defensively, cheeks burning, wanting to force out a laugh but it just came out like some dreadful, strangled rasp. Just a thought. There was something appealing about it at face value; eternal life with Frank at my side.
“You’re a moron,” Frank muttered, but I could tell he was smiling, because maybe he really did think it was a joke. “All of this not enough for you?” Well, no, not really. For the first time in a long time, it was occurring to me that eventually, I would die. I would die, and Frank would carry on living. It didn’t sit right with me. It felt like the cold was setting me on fire.
“But, what happens when I die?” I whispered, sideways out of the corner of my mouth, feeling my eyebrows knitting together and my stomach starting to get uneasy.
“Beats me,” Frank chuckles out, the chains of the swings creaking as he pushed himself slowly back and forth.
“No, I mean…” I shrugged, wringing my hands inside my pockets. Shame and anxiety took over my body and I couldn’t finish the rest. There was no way I was about to start suggesting that Frank would actually stay with me for the rest of my life, if he did stay.
“Oh,” Frank mumbled, and I would have thought he was back up inside my head if not for the complete, dreadful clarity I was thinking with. “I…” He had stopped swinging and he was frowning at the floor, feet shuffling together awkwardly in the snow and turning it to slush. “Can we not—“
”Yeah, I’m sorry,” I breathed, swallowing hard and struggling to clear my throat. “I know we’re not, I mean…” Get a fucking grip.
“If you’re about to say something about how we’re not serious I’m gonna put you through the fucking floor,” Frank laughs out, leaning over and getting his face in front of mine, searching my eyes. Straight to Hell, please. I want to cry. Maybe I already am, but I’m so damn cold I can’t feel my face. “I’m about as serious about you as I am about getting a fucking stake in the chest,” he murmurs, breath warm against my mouth, and I’m looking at him like I’m fucking terrified. “Which is why I’m here instead of halfway to fucking Alaska.”
”You wouldn’t be halfway to Alaska already,” I mumble without thinking, immediately wanting to smack myself upside the head for it, and Frank laughs and peels himself up out of the swing and pulls me up by my arms.
“You’d know if you’d bothered to come with me when I asked,” he said, stretching up on his toes to kiss me once, softly, on my lips that I’m certain are starting to turn blue. I can’t say a word because all I can think about is dying but Frank’s voice snaps me out of it, different to before, as he pulls back to look at my face in its entirety, mouth hinting at a playful smile. “Y’know, it’s a shame we weren’t alive at the same time.”
An uneasy laugh sputters out of me. The fuck am I supposed to say to that? I think if he keeps reminding me that I’m alive and he’s not, quite, I’m going to pass out and I’m going to throw up. Doesn’t matter if there’s nothing in my stomach but motel coffee and smoke, it’ll come up anyway.
“I would’ve been all over you,” he sighs, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, alarmingly and deliberately tender.
“I don’t see how this is any different,” I breathed out, my cheeks stinging. Because if I’d had you alive and things were different and better and maybe even working out and you disappeared on me on account of turning into a vampire I would have fucking killed myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have let it happen to him. Maybe I wouldn’t have left his side for a second. Maybe we would have suffered the same fate and we’d be damned to eternity together.
“It’s a lot different,” he whispers, and there’s a weight to his voice that almost makes it snap, bursting with everything that maybe he wishes we could have. I smile as if that’s enough to say sorry and he smiles back, as if that’s enough to say I love you and maybe it is. He stretches up to kiss me again. “Idiot,” he mutters into my mouth without any real reason when I kiss him back but I know he’s right, and my heart flutters in its place, butterflies eating up all my nausea when I realise exactly what he’s doing, what it means for the two of us right now in this moment. When he pulls away he’s only looking at me, and then it’s my turn to look around, watching for black vans and special agents, just to prove a point.
“Hey, look, you kissed me in public and no one died,” I tease, grinning in spite of myself because apparently, even the tiniest victory is worth celebrating. For a moment, everything melts away, nothing left but me and Frank standing in the middle of our shithole of a hometown like there really isn’t anything that could stop us at all. There’s a spark of something rebellious and exhilarated in Frank’s eyes and they’re the colour of neat whisky as the sun floods into them, his skin golden and starting to give off very real, very warm steam as he stares up at me.
“Yet,” he whispers, fingers curling around my jacket and pulling me down to kiss him, my face shielding his from the sun as it breaks through the clouds again.