Chapter thirteen - Vomit, lemons, and the terrifying notion that Gerard Way may actually have a soul

im not sad right now

it's cool im enjoying it while it lasts

---- ---- ---- ----

I keep getting flashbacks of things I don't remember.

---- ---- ---- ----

"Training," was Gerard's first brisk word upon waking me up the next day. No mention of 'good morning'. No 'thank you for practically carrying me to my room last night then staying there with me even though you despise my guts'.

I had slept on the floor, curled up in a ball in the corner of the room in an effort to stay warm. I was grumpy and exhausted, and Gerard was the last person in the whole world I wanted to be in the presence of right now. I gritted my teeth at the thought of being stuck with him in training for the next two hours.

At least I would get to hurt him. That was always pleasantly calming.

---- ---- ---- ----

"Frank, calm down," Gerard said in exasperation. "You throw that hard and it'll just end up swerving." He gestured at the knives scattered on the ground around the target.

I huffed. "I thought we were doing hand to hand combat."

Gerard frowned. "Well, you need to learn how to throw knives as well. That always comes in handy, trust me."

"Just please let me kick you. Please."

"Boy, you're not usually this eager. What's–"

"What's wrong?" I finished in a mocking tone. "I spent my whole night on your bedroom floor. My neck aches, my legs ache, and I think I have a misaligned spine. I was hoping to take it out on you, since you're the one whose fault it is I'm in all this pain."

Gerard shrugged. "You didn't have to stay."

"You looked like you were a second away from dissolving in tears, I couldn't just stalk off."

"I wasn't crying," Gerard grated out.

"Oh, really? I guess you just had some salty water in your eyes?"

"I wasn't fucking crying."

"Of course," I said. "Pussy."

Gerard's hands were around my neck in half a second. I tried to suppress my laughter. He was so easy to provoke.

"It's all right to be sensitive," I attempted to say sarcastically, but his hands were painfully tight around my throat, and I was choking too violently to form the words.

"Fuck you," he spat, releasing my neck and kicking me down to the floor. "Fuck you, Frank."

His heavy boot was pressing into my stomach and pushing the air out of my lungs. I didn't reply. Gerard dropped to his knees, grasped my hands and pressed them above my head to the cold hardwood floor. A splinter of wood dig into my hand. There was pure hurt in Gerard's eyes; he wasn't even trying to disguise it anymore. His breaths were shallow, and I could see his chest rising and falling at quick intervals. "You don't know what's in my mind," he said. "Fuck you."

I expected him to go back to strangling me after that, or at least hitting me, but his hands stayed pressed to mine, pinning my wrists against the floor.

I hesitated. The only sound was our breath clashing. "Tell me then."

"What?" Gerard asked.

"You're right," I said. "I don't know what's in your head. So why don't you tell me?"

For the first time, I saw confusion on Gerard's face. The dead eyed mask peeled back a little. "It's–" he began. He was preparing himself to speak. But then he exhaled harshly. Slumped. His grip on my fingers loosened. "I can't."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "It's all a fucking mess right now." He shook his head and let go of my hands. He hauled himself up onto his feet and straightened his red tie, smoothing it down carefully, almost in a caring way. Then he tentatively let go of the tie and held out a hand to help me up.

"Thank you," I mumbled, taking his hand and pulling myself onto my feet. "You, um," I said. "You wear that tie a lot, don't you?"

He watched the floor. "Yes," he muttered. "My brother gave it to me when we were young. It was a birthday tradition back home. We used to save up to buy each other a piece of fabric from the clothworks to wear as a tie for occasions, every year. Before." He stopped abruptly.

I found a tiny smile forming on my face. "That's sweet."

"Yeah," Gerard laughed uneasily, shaking his head. "Look, we should get back to training."

"Yes. Of course."

Gerard turned on his heel and swiftly lifted a dagger from the chest in the corner. He spun it expertly between his fingers and quirked a half-smile. There was a little pause, then he looked up at me. "Thanks for being there, pretty boy," he said, ruffling my hair with his free hand. "Sorry about before."

"Thank you. Uh, anytime," I said, feeling a little bewildered. This whole situation was blatantly strange. Gerard and I were being civil. Perhaps this training thing wasn't going to be that bad.

---- ---- ---- ----

The first thing I awoke to the next morning was an albatross singing. I felt light, and cheerfully prepared to face Gerard with a dagger. Today was going to be a good day.

I dressed and washed with my ration of water, then headed to the dining room for a delicious, only slightly grub-infested biscuit. Gerard and Ryan were sat at the table kissing rather enthusiastically, and I took that to mean that they had resolved their relationship problems.

No, today was not going to be a good day.

Training was going to be a lot less progressive with Ryan pulling Gerard to the side every four minutes for 'quick' kisses or to tell him a hysterical private joke. Or to bring him nutritious snacks of slightly wrinkled lemons. Or to shove his hand up Gerard's shirt.

I had made an effort to like Ryan, at first. I really had. But he wasn't exactly facilitating a good relationship between us. I needed adequate combat skills soon or the captain wouldn't let us visit Hayley, and although that would be a week and a half of wasted sailing time, Captain Bryar was severe and followed through on his threats.

---- ---- ---- ----

The positive side of Ryan persistently interrupting our practice sessions was that it distracted Gerard and made knocking him down absurdly easy. But, another drag to add to the list was that Gerard misinterpreted my repeated wins to mean that I had improved, which in fact was not the case at all– he had just got worse.

Unfortunately this led to a lot of slacking on his part as a teacher, and after several hours of constantly pestering him to fight me and getting no response, I came to the conclusion that I would just have to candidly attack him. Potentially after breakfast. Breakfast was when the kissing would start, and I hoped that if I cut it off at the source point, then theoretically, I could stop it for the rest of the day.

My plan backfired, just a little bit, when I walked into the dining room the next day and neither Gerard nor Ryan were actually there. I had purposely risen a little late that morning to ensure that they would be in there– maybe I had come in too late and they had already departed.

I traipsed around the ship, trying to look as nonchalant as possible and not like I was about to go and assault the first mate with a plank. After some time, my search was beginning to look futile; I had been wandering the halls for at least twenty minutes and still there was no sign of them. But we were in the middle of the ocean. There were only so many places they could be. There must have been a room I had missed out.

It turned out that that room was the stock room. They were fucking again. Up against the shelves of lemons in the stock room.

This would perhaps be a little too difficult to intercept. With a shudder, I backed out of the room and made my way back to my bunk. I slumped down on the bunk, a twisting feeling in my gut from the picture in my mind. I was disconcertingly struck by the fact that I couldn't seem to recall anything about the way Ryan looked, while the image of Gerard, black hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, mouth slack and head tipped back, seemed to be stained behind my eyelids. Every time I closed my eyes, every time I blinked, just lurking there in that space at the back of my mind.

I had only managed to capture an image, and I knew that would be all I would be able to cope with without vomiting, but some small, strange part of me wondered what Gerard would have sounded like, too. What he would have felt like. Tasted  like. I shivered. An unfamiliar, twisting, burning feeling was building up in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't decide whether I felt like I was going to be sick or combust. This was going too far.

I distracted myself talking to Dewees and Stump for the rest of the day, and made no mention of combat training again. I couldn't meet Gerard's eyes. I didn't know what was wrong with me.

To my dismay, Dewees started to get grouchy around midnight, and refused to talk to me any longer. He mumbled something about a growing boy needing his sleep before he dozed off, and I sincerely hoped that he wasn't talking about himself.

I spent the rest of the night futilely trying to wash away the perpetually lasting images of Gerard that relentlessly invaded my dreams.

---- ---- ---- ----

shit is happening lmaooo

xoxo