Chapter Fifty-Three Letting Go: Part One Learning 3 страница

I blushed and closed my eyes. All my life (which really only began since I met Gerard), I had only wanted his approval. I wanted him to tell me I was good, that I had done something right, that I was smart and just as brilliant as he was. I was finally hearing it, all at once, and I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I didn’t want approval because it meant something far worse than slight embarrassment and having people pick apart my soul. It meant I was ready. I had tried so hard to achieve this and avoid it at the same time, that it hit me from polar ends. I was denying this fact harder than I ever had in my life, trying to find anything to prove to him that I was not ready.

But our opinions of ourselves are invalid. He taught me that, and I had learned. I had learned so much but I still felt like an open book, ready to absorb. I could do that by myself now though, and I began to see more things I could learn from off myself. I had been denying my feelings of readiness harder than average because I was ready. I scanned my thoughts, all of my experiences he was talking about. He didn’t even know that much about my father and I, how we had somewhat repaired the shit of a relationship we had possessed before. He knew I could still do that on my own. He had faith in me. And I was gradually starting to build tat faith in up myself. He believed it me. It wasn’t supposed to be a bad thing. It as supposed to be one of the best things in the world.

The more I pushed the idea against my brain, the more and more it started to sound appealing. I was ready. That was okay, I guessed. I could do this, I guessed. Everything was pure guess work though; I knew nothing for sure. In life, that was supposed to be the moral. I knew that, and it was something Gerard didn’t have to teach me.

I brought my eyes up to his and instantly, we understood what was going on. I could see the pride in his eyes, set against the backdrop of green. He was proud of me, because I really was ready to go. But I still had a tight feeling in my chest that I wanted to abolish.

“I may be ready,” I started, admitting the truth out loud and having it sound so much better than inside my head, “but that fact doesn’t mean you have to go.”

Since being ready had happened before my very eyes without me knowing, I could just as easily fall out of it. Gerard needed to stay by my side to keep me on track. Of course, he differed on his opinions.

“Yes, it does,” he stated soundly. “I need to leave you. The only way you can learn to be on your own is if I let you go.”

I swallowed his words whole, but they broke apart inside of me. I had no idea it would hurt this much. The thought of our end had always been a fact in our minds, but when exacted on reality, it was hard to face. I just wanted this conversation to be over and for us to start all over again. I just wanted to reverse time, go back to the days when we had sex all morning, talked all afternoon, and then repeated the process with some paint or music involved. The times were clothing was forbidden and we went outside to the park just to touch ourselves. The conversation we had engaged in that night flooded my mind like the tears that had stopped flowing, if only for a moment.

“I thought I was your dove, Gerard,” I stated, making eye contact. His eyes widened, remembering the beautiful creature I would always be to him. “You told me you wouldn’t let me go until I could fly. I can’t fly just yet.”

“I know, but you can fly, you just haven’t done it yet.”

“No…”

I could take hearing that I was ready. But being ready to fly was something entirely different. You only flew when you wanted to get away from something. I didn’t want to get away, but stay forever, even if it was impossible.

“Yes. You can fly, Frank. You’re ready. But you’ll never use your wings if I don’t make you.” Gerard touched the side of my face suddenly, making me pay attention. The tears had all but dried from his eyes, but there was a sadness there, all too necessary. He took a deep breath, the action paining him. “That’s why I’m leaving.”

“No, no. You don’t have to leave for me to fly. I’ll just fly back to you.”

The sad air was broken suddenly with the thought of Gerard’s bird. She had escaped that one night, when I had been kidnapped by Sam and Travis. I had tried to fly away then, though it was not on my appeal, but I had still come back. I had been flying, I realized, but it was within very small perimeters.

“I know,” he stated, confirming the thoughts we shared. Sometimes I fucking thought we were telepathic. “But you don’t want to just fly around this apartment like my dove does. It’s fun at first, because you don’t know where all the nooks and crannies are, but eventually, you find them. You know them and then, they become boring. You crave more. You can go beyond these walls, Frank. There is a whole other world out there that you need to explore.”

He smiled, talking with his hands for the first time since we were tangled in this pile of broken and sweaty flesh. His skin was so fucking white, and the way his fingers fluttering mimicked the bird that I was. I knew he was right; we had both thought the same thing. Sometimes you need a taste of freedom and then confinement, to truly appreciate what you really want. I hated the outside world though; they never seemed to understand. I liked the world I had with Gerard; it was something that I felt I could keep forever, whether that time span existed or not.

“Hey,” I uttered, a sudden idea hitting me. Gerard’s eyebrows raised, curious to my inquiry. It was the first time I seemed happy, or at least excited about the words that came out of my mouth. And really, I was. “Take me with you.”

“Hmmm?”

“Take me with you,” I repeated, a smile coming on my face. “To Paris. I want to come.”

I was positive I had found the perfect solution to everything. I understood why Gerard had to leave. He wanted to achieve his dream, the one that had gone unfulfilled for so many years. I could accept that, I told myself. I could respect that. But it made everything easier to cope with, my new flying abilities and whatnot if I could just fly there with him. I could go beyond his apartment, to another land and just be with him. I could go, and I knew we could make it.

It was the perfect idea, and my eyes spoke what my words couldn’t to Gerard. He sighed, a smiling coming over his face as he fingered my hair again. I smiled wider, thinking that I was finally getting somewhere with him. And then my hopes were crushed.

“No,” he said, the smile dissipating. “You can’t come with me.”

“Why not?” I nearly yelled, the pain and precision of everything finally too much to bare. I thought I had found the answer that could make us both happy. Why did he have to shoot me down like this? I could feel the tears coming on again, but I blinked them back, looking at him and fucking demanding an answer. He gave it to me, the words coming too strongly and smoothly off his tongue, like he had practiced them before. Maybe he had, I thought. Maybe this idea had come into his head as well, and he needed to find a reason to not let it happen.

“You can’t come with me because you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. You’re only coming because you want to be with me. It has nothing to do with your dream, and what you want to do with your life.” He spoke clearly and concisely, despite the temped nature of everything. He wanted me to come, I could see that in his eyes, yet he was fighting so hard.

“But, you are my dream,” I blurted out the first thing that came to my aching head. I had cried too hard, and was probably dehydrated, making my brain feel like it was swelling in between my skull. Gerard was about to open his mouth and object, but I kept going. “I want to go to Paris, too. I can take pictures, I can do art. I can do something. ”

“Then you have to find your own way there,” he told me, somber clinging to his voice like my arms on him. “If you really do want to go to Paris for your own reasons, Frank, you will somehow find a way there. An opportunity will present itself and you will take it. Just like I’m doing now. It wouldn’t be right for me to just take you along. You have too much here. It will feel so much better when you make your own dreams come true by yourself. Don’t just tag along for the ride. You wouldn’t have someone else paint your picture for you, now would you?”

I crushed my eyes closed, scraping my lip over and over again with my teeth. I needed some kind of physical pain to distract me from my mental anguish. Like fucking always, Gerard was right. If I wanted anything to get done in my life, and actually feel good about it, I needed to do it myself. All the time when Gerard had been teaching me, he was just showing me what to do, not actually doing it for me. Sometimes, he didn’t even show me what to do before the thrust me into a situation. He just expected me to learn on my feet. I had been getting good at that, and though I was learning, I wished it was easier to accept knowledge.

He began to stroke my hair, meeting our lips together to get me to stop biting mine. I kissed him willingly, for the first time since our sex we did not quiver as we did so. Our actions were still slow and jaws lacked, but we were kissing. It felt good, too good, and I felt dread creep over me again.

“What if you die?” I asked suddenly, pulling away from the kiss. Gerard looked down at me funny, furrowing his brows. I touched the gash on his face gingerly, watching him cringe slightly, but not push me away.

I normally hated the topic of death with Gerard. I was well aware that if we lasted beyond the few months we had been together, that he would die before I did, and probably well before that. It was just what happened when I was dating someone who was thirty years older than myself. I had always pushed those thoughts from my mind though, focusing on the present. The present was too painful, and I needed to think of the future. If I ever did make my way to Paris after him, how could I be sure he was still there?

“I didn’t die,” he stated solemnly. He took my hand away from his cut, gripping it tighter than he needed to for the small gash and a death at least a decade away. When we looked in each other’s eyes though, there was a deeper meaning we both understood.

“We won’t die,” he added, squeezing my hand so hard I had to shut my eyes.

“How do you know?”

“Because we’re faithful to each other,” he stated, taking my hand and kissing my fingertips again. “There is no such thing as cheating in a relationship. This is not a game; we are not a game. We are human and though we love each other, people may come and go in between us. That doesn’t discount what we have now and always will.” He paused, sucking on my pinky longer than usual as his mind wandered. “You’ll always be my dove, Frank. Even if Jasmine is your turtle dove and you are connected or not, you will always be my dove.”

He gazed at me for too long and I had to push my lips against his own. Our kiss was slow, cringes and grimaces folding our lips together, tongues coming out but only for a second. He broke the kiss, pulling me into a hug.

“You are my dove, Frank. That’s just who you are. I’m your keeper, but that doesn’t mean I always have to keep you by my side all the time. I don’t need to anymore.” I heard his voice become choked with emotion, and I felt wetness accumulate against my shoulder, his tears spilling down from his eyes again. I was glad he was crying, because I didn’t feel like such a baby anymore. He was an adult, just as ready as I was and we were both crying together. Though I was crying from pure sadness, I knew his was also mixed with overwhelming joy. I couldn’t fathom how he could feel that way. I didn’t understand how he could be happy. He was leaving me, soon, too fucking soon and I may never see him again.

“But… die…” I choked out, hoping he could see what I was getting at through blurry vision.

“Good art never dies, Frank, like the doves that set you free,” he informed me, his voice surprisingly clear. He pressed me back into the mattress which seemed to engulf me. He looked at me, but I could barely see him through everything around us.

I could understand his art comparison. Art never really did die. Even if the picture was burned or stolen, the impact it had, at least on the painter, was still there and always would be there. I could understand that with us. He would always be there in my mind, if he was alive or dead, in Jersey or Paris. But doves did die. They were a bird, a living creature just like us. They gave up and expired, they were buried six feet under the ground like people, sometimes shallower than that. It made no sense.

“But doves die…”

“You’re right,” he told me, making my validity seem confusing. “But the idea of the dove, the freedom they carry and the image they mean…” He took a breath, motioning with his white hands again, making them fly. “That never dies. That stays present in people’s minds. That is timeless.”

He looked down at me, half-smiling to see if I was okay with that explanation. I was, or at least, as much as I ever could be. I knew that I could never die in his mind, and he never could in my own. But I still didn’t want to leave him, and the whole idea that we were having this conversation hit me to the very bone. I wrapped my arms around him tighter, pulling myself up to him and making it so that we could just fucking hold each other. We had talked enough then, my words seeming useless for the time being. I felt like I should have said something back to his dove remark, but I didn’t know what I could say without crying over and over again. My eyes stung too much, and I was too thirsty to expel any more liquid from my body. My skin felt tight and raw, and inexplicably dry, even with the amount of sweat and heat between us. I started to kiss Gerard, because that was all I knew how to do at that point in time.

It occurred to me that we were timeless just like the doves we tried to embody, but that wasn’t true. We loved each other, and we were scathingly close to freedom, but we weren’t timeless, of all things. There was no such thing as timeless with us at that moment. Time was of the essence; Gerard was leaving tomorrow. I wished everything had been timeless, so I could sit on his bed with him, kissing and holding him for the rest of what I called a life. Instead, time slipped away faster and faster, and not even fluttering wings, like heartbeats, could keep up.

Chapter Fifty-Three
Letting Go: Part Two
Teaching

The day started to pass, and though there were no windows in his small black room, I saw the sun move across the sky and I felt the shadows twisting around in its place. Gerard and I stayed in his room awhile longer, just kissing and holding each other. We switched positions around, so I was no longer trapped underneath him, though it was hardly a trapped feeling. I felt secure, but I knew that the lock was being picked away from the safe we had created with our bodies. We didn’t talk too much after, just tried to collect ourselves into a whole human again, one that didn’t burst forth into tears with the mere mention of names and birds. It was harder than it sounded.

At one point, I turned on my side, trying to look away from Gerard just for a second, so I could compose myself, but he turned with me, slinking his arm around my waist and pulling me closer to him. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t have much time with him now. Barely twenty four hours, but I was intent on spending all of it with him, whether I looked like shit or not. I didn’t care if I spent all the time crying anymore because I knew that he’d hold me for it, or he would be sobbing right there with me.

We switched positions on the bed a lot after that, reversing it so my arm was around him and I was curved into his body. I got on top of him, letting my head rest on his chest, feeling his heart beat through the layers of skin. I wanted to touch him everywhere, and I found my hands relocating to all the regions of his body. I touched the places that we always went straight for, his nipples, chest, and cock, though none of them were in a sexual manner. I just wanted to touch him and I could no longer name the emotion behind the act. I also touched the places we seemed to forget existed on our own bodies like his elbow, knees, toes, and even his armpits. I wanted to feel and explore everything one last time, and he let me, returning the favor to my body as well. I closed my eyes as his hand caressed me, appreciating the sensation of his rough hands. His nails dug in at some points, and his palms massaged me. At one point, he asked me to turn over, so he could rub my back, working out all the stress that had accompanied. And trust me, it was a lot. His strong hands worked out the kinks, seeming to grab the knots my mind had manifested into my body and twisting them into shape again. He must have done it for hours, but he could never get them all. He gave up eventually, kissing my back instead. He laid his body next to me, our lips finding the others clumsily.

“What about your stress?” I asked him, moving my hands to the base of his back, our crotches meeting in a warm burst.

I was hard, at least getting there, but I didn’t want to come again. He would touch me every once in awhile, but I always made him stop before everything got too intense, even if my balls felt like they were going to fall off from all of the pent up energy. I didn’t want to come again, because there would be too much finality in that. The last time we had reached a climax I had burst out into tears, and I wanted to avoid that. Not releasing gave a sense of never-ending; timelessness that we tried to hold onto. Those things would never come in real life, so I had to pretend with my body, trying to control something.

“I don’t care about my stress,” Gerard answered, but still kept my hands where they were. “I only want to make you feel good.”

There was too much solemnity in his voice, but it wasn’t the same kind as before. He wasn’t thinking about his abused brother, and the possible sexual pain he was inflicting on me. At that moment in time, both of us just wanted the other person to be okay because we didn’t have a lot of time.

What made me feel good was being with him at that moment. I leaned forward and kissed him, our lips still not used to the emotional action. I whispered into his neck that I wanted to stay with him, be with him here as long as I could until he left for the next morning.

“I want to come to the airport with you, too,” I added, running my fingers down his spine. He shivered, and nibbled my ear, breathing the answer into my neck.

“There are some things I have to do alone, Frank,” he informed me, sending revolts of pain tingling in my being. “I need to be free just as much as you.”

He kissed me hard on the neck, wanting to distract us both from his prior words. It was a welcome disruption and I took the kiss, lolling my head back to make more room. Nothing was sexual about all of this, though we were naked, kissing and touching each other. It was all about being intimate, preserving something in our minds. Even our kissing wasn’t too stellar, our lips too swollen from crying, faces too taut from the tear stains. We just kissed to taste each other, and to go over the body to create a mental picture.

“I want to remember all of this,” I whispered to him, my tongue going down his arm. I had been sucking on his fingers like he had done to me, and I was realizing the attraction of it. Gerard had always loved hands, the way they formed, how you could read them, and they were becoming my favorite thing to kiss.

“I should get my camera,” I realized, looking up to him, his hand still in my own. I was laying next to his body, both of us face up on the bed. “I want to capture every bit of you on film. I might not see you again for awhile.”

Gerard didn’t say anything for a few moments, just moved the hand I had been kissing to interlock fingers with me. I waited for his approval, watching as he bunched his lips together.

“What’s your favorite picture of me?” he questioned instead, his eyes wandering and not meeting my own. I didn’t have to think hard to know the answer.

“The one with you in the kitchen,” I stated, trying to rouse his memory (though I knew it was probably crystal clear) with my forthcoming details. “You were smoking, sitting at the table and looking at my other pictures. The way the smoke clung around your head and your body – it just drew me in. I had to get down on my knees though, in order to get the picture right.”

Gerard nodded when I was done, then brought his eyes to mine. “Why is it your favorite picture?”

This required more thinking than the last inquiry.

“Because it’s you,” I uttered, then realized how lacking the answer was and quickly tried to add more on. “It shows all the aspects of you that people don’t always see, that even I didn’t see at first.” I paused, thinking of the danger of the smoke, yet the caring in the way he had held the stick. He held me that way, with delicate fingers that were interlocked with my own. I took a deep breath, looking at him as I rounded off my thoughts. “It shows you and everything about you and I love that.”

There was a brief pause, where we both anticipated the next response. “I love you.”

He brought his lips crashing down on mine, showing me his answer in a delicate touch. His hand traced along my jaw, down my throat and over my shoulder. I felt like he was taking a picture of me with his hands, and in essence that was all we should have been doing.

“You don’t want to remember me how I am right now,” he stated once the kiss was through. He motioned down to his battered and beaten body. I cringed and swallowed hard, feeling the anger rise up towards my father. It was because of him that Gerard was leaving; the beating had conjured up an epiphany in his mind and made him realize his dream. Although I knew the action was needed, it was topped off with a bitter edge.

“I don’t care how you look, Gerard,” I stated honestly, grasping at his hand. “I just want to remember you.”

“And you will,” he said earnestly. “You have that picture already. That represents me, just like you said. It’s something that I could never tell people, never show them through my own work. I refuse to.” He paused, thinking of his own rule. “I didn’t want to paint myself, because I was always afraid to see how I turned out. I’m still afraid to paint myself.”

“Why?” I asked, wanting more detail. It was one thing to be afraid before, but I would have thought that with my picture as a base, Gerard could become more in terms with himself.

“I know who I am,” he stated after a long deliberated pause. “But it’s taken a long way to get there. I don’t know even know if I’m there at the moment.” He placed his hand on his chin in a pensive stare, but didn’t say another word. I waited, my own thoughts spilling over, but not really making sense of what he was saying.

He was always so put together, cocky and arrogant over every action he did. He was flamboyant, but not in an overtly gay way. He was passionate, not prissy. He was just Gerard, the reclusive artist who only made rare appearances. And when he did, you took notice. How could he not see that about himself? I shook my head, chalking it all up to the ragged emotions we were both feeling for the day.

“I still want my camera,” I told him, trying to rouse him from the silence.

“I know,” he stated, bringing our gaze to meet once again. “But you have a camera inside your head, your hands, and your lips. They can form the shutter, the lens, and anything else you may need. Use that today. You won’t want to remember this on film with our eyes waterlogged from crying.” He squeezed my hand, running his other one up and down my other arm. “You want to remember the feeling of us together, because that’s all we ever have been.”

He reached down to kiss me, seeing if I accepted his offer of the new camera I held. I met his lips, letting our tongues touch for more comparison. I abruptly recalled the memory exercise he had me do when we were painting together. He had me stare at blades of grass for hours on end, making me compute everything to my recollection before I was ever allowed near a paint brush. I wondered if Gerard was doing the same thing just then, and if he would paint it all down eventually. He told me that he only painted things when they were over. He told me he bled his soul for people when they ended, either their chapter or in death. Though I knew we would remain faithful, I couldn’t help thinking this was the end, at least in some regard. The thought was too depressing, though my curiosity to see what that image would be was still present, I pushed it from my mind and worked on taking pictures with my hands.

I felt his body more and more with acute precision and grace. We flipped around, all over the bed, working at reaching places, cupping them and grabbed to make sure they were still real and present. Gerard laid on his back for me, my tongue going from his bruised kneecaps up his white thighs to his erection that was starting to form again. I was surprised, knowing that it was sometimes hard for him and I thought it would be even harder being so emotionally drained. This was our last night together though; I figured he wanted to put as much effort into all of this as possible.

I grabbed his cock in my hand, hearing a faint sigh come from the small grasped. I pumped him slowly, my tongue finding the inner regions of his thigh, doing the first thing sexual in a long while. Like my own requests, Gerard asked me to stop before he got too close, not wanting the finishing feeling to resonate within our bodies anymore. I smiled, thinking we were too alike for our own good. I gazed up at his white stomach, folds of his skin tucking around everywhere like a bed sheet. The belly of fat that he did have was flattened when he was lying down. It rolled over his sides into love handles that felt thick and robust in my hands. His weight came together in the center, meeting and folding over his pubic bone. I started to kiss and touch the area as I held onto him.

As I gazed up again, I was met with the stains that riddled his skin. The scrapes looked so much more violent and angry in my mind and I couldn’t help but trace my fingers over the ridges, wincing more than he did. I snaked my hands up his bare bruises, scarcely touching, but asking if it hurt regardless.

“Not as much as other things I have experienced,” he answered, a grave nature to his voice. I thought of all the other beatings he had received, mostly from his father. Gerard was used to getting beat up for what he was, I realized. It saddened me how he could just sit there and take it. My father had done this to him; an essential stranger. I could see him not fighting back to his own father. That was family, and he was much, much younger then. My dad was the same age as him and he had no prior feelings for him. It didn’t make sense.

“Why didn’t you fight back?”

Gerard sighed, his damaged skin rising and falling under my embrace. “It wasn’t my place.”

“What do you mean?” I kissed his flesh once more, before I rolled off him to the side, my face right in line with his own. I placed an arm around him, trying to make him look at me. He was staring off into space, some other meaning or quality he was portraying that wasn’t in his somber voice.

“This was between you and your dad,” he spoke again, only giving me vague tid-bits of what I wanted to hear.

“But he was hurting you.”

“But this battle was between you two,” he rebutted, his choice of words sending shivers down my spine. How did Gerard know about our war? “I was not involved in this, merely used as a weapon.”

My mouth hung open, surprised he was comprehending the situation with my father fully without actually having been there. He had only met my dad that night, and he didn’t really meet him. He met with his fist to his face, over and over again. I didn’t speak that much of my father when I had been with Gerard in the past, but like with most things, he just seemed to know. He understood without learning, which had always astounded me.

“I wanted to keep the peace, or at least some kind of peace between you two,” he started again, looking off into the distance. Again, his word choice made me stop and think, almost tripping over my thoughts.

Doves were another symbol for peace. They were such versatile and beautiful creatures, and as I watched Gerard continue talking, I wondered how he was just a keeper and not one himself.

“If I had fought back, then there would have been even more turmoil for you two. You didn’t need that.”

I touched his waist with the tips of my fingers, his words digesting. He hadn’t fought back to save me, and though he had been successful, in a way, I almost would have much rather spent my last moments with him in an un-battered state.

“You didn’t need it either, Gerard,” I stated, cutting him off from his memory, his head turning towards me. He looked down at my hand, and his chest, closing his eyes with a flashback of pain. Emotional or physical, I wasn’t sure.

“Yes, but…I know how your dad feels. I’ve felt that anger and pain before with someone. When Keith hurt Mikey, I wanted to kill him too. If I had been given the chance, I would have taken it. I would have done the exact same thing your father had done.”

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Дата добавления: 2015-11-14