Tattooed apples
Title: Tattooed apples
Author:
alles_luege
Pairing: Gerard/Frank
Rating: R
Summary: Gerard is hiding during the break in his house, and Frank just has no idea what is wrong this time. Gerard’s cryptic hints aren’t of much help either.
Warning(s): Sex, angst, maybe some twisted imaginary
Author’s Notes: This is the first of seven fic(let)s with the Seven Sins theme. They are not connected, stand alone, and with various pairings. If you’re not sure which sin inspired the story, just click ‘end’, if you want to know. *smiles*
Word Count: 1.412
Beta: tygermine
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real.
~+~
Gerard is biting on his nails again. Frank knows he doesn’t do it consciously. It’s just a bad habit, or Gerard’s oral fixation. It’s slow and lazy; like he isn’t even aware he does it. Maybe he isn’t.
He’s sitting on the couch, his knees pressed to his chest. His eyes not quite closed, listening to something on his iPod.
The floor is a mess. There are pencils, paper and pastels everywhere. Half finished drawings. Crumpled and forgotten, maybe. And it isn’t new. Gerard was always messy, more than any other person on earth Frank knows. He doesn’t even want to think of it. He sighs.
“I know…” Gerard says quietly, finally acknowledging Frank’s presents, and Frank looks up from the floor.
“I didn’t say anything,” Frank replies, a drawing of a half eaten apple catching his eye.
“It’s crap…”
“If you say so…” but he bends down and picks the paper up, smoothes it out to take a closer look. “I like this one.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
~+~
It seems to Frank that all Gerard is doing on the break is lying on the sofa, knees pressed to his chest. Unwilling to do something, anything. Not willing to feel maybe. He just sits there, while the paper fills up the room.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes…”
“When?” Frank asks, the paper (crumbled work in progress, abandoned) makes a sound distinctly like leaves in autumn when he takes a step.
“I can’t remember…yesterday?” It shouldn’t be a question Frank thinks. It really shouldn’t be a question. “I had coffee this morning…” Gerard adds as if that would make things better. It really doesn’t.
“You should eat something.”
“I’m not hungry…” Gerard answers softly, he sucks on a pen, maybe because his nails are bitten so far down, there is nothing left, just some bloody skin.
“You should do it nevertheless.” Frank replies, his voice firm. Gerard shrugs, as if arguing with Frank would be too much effort. And he just can’t do it right now, because he doesn’t have the energy. “What do you want?”
“I don’t care…”
“Gerard.” Frank says, Gerard looks at him, a faint smile on his lips, he’s bitten them too. They are angry red and wet, from playing with the pen.
“I really don’t care…”
“Do you want to starve yourself?”
Gerard shrugs again. “I didn’t entertain the thought.” He says after a while.
“What thoughts did you entertain then?” Frank wants to know, clearing a place to sit down.
“I…” he begins and then shakes his head.
“What?”
“Didn’t think at all…” he says a bit surprised.
“Hard to believe.”
“I know…but Frank?”
“Yeah?”
“Look around you…” he says, it sounds defeated. His head rests on his knees, his hair falling over his eyes.
Frank does, but there is not much change from the first few times he was here over the last two weeks, just more paper. He randomly picks one up and looks at it. It’s a sketch of an apple again, there are marks carved into the skin. Like brandings or maybe etchings. He doesn’t know about that shit. He looks over at Gerard on the couch who doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, tired.
“Go on…pick another one,” he says after a few seconds.
The next sketch is of an apple too, half eaten already. Frank picks up a few more: An apple, rotten to the core, an apple rotting from the inside, an apple with marked skin, an apple with tooth marks, an apple with tattooed skin…
“I see a pattern…” Frank says, but he is at a bit of a loss here. He doesn’t know what Gerard is trying to say.
“Yeah…” Gerard sighs.
“Is this some catholic crisis?” Frank wants to know unfolding another piece of paper: Tattooed apple again. He knows the tattoo. It’s one of his.
“Maybe…”
~+~
“Sin is your motive then?” Frank asks as he visits Gerard two days later. There is still more paper on the floor, Frank is sure none of these drawings are finished, all are sketches in different states of progress. Abandoned again. The air smells like stale smoke, graphite and coffee.
“Motivation…” Gerard answers. He speaks in one word sentences since the last time, as if he couldn’t bring himself to do more. It grinds on Frank’s nerves.
“Seems it’s the only motivation you have left…” And that worries Frank, it really does.
“Have you eaten?”
Gerard shakes his head.
“Are you going to talk to me?”
“No…”
“Gerard…” Frank stresses, because he isn’t stupid, but he really doesn’t know what to do. Drunk Gerard was easy - get him to throw up and then put him somewhere soft to pass out. But this Gerard is creeping him out. How do you handle self destructive, distracted, in-his-own-world Gerard without causing a mental implosion?
Gerard shakes his head again. Frank picks up the sketch that lies beside Gerard on the couch. An apple again - strangely twisted, tattooed, erotic…somehow.
“Okay, wow…” Frank breathes…because. Okay. Apples shouldn’t be erotic ever, and with these tattoos- his tattoos. “You’re obsessed…”
“Yes…” Gerard doesn’t sound sorry, he doesn’t sound much of anything, really. Just flat, as if he couldn’t muster up the energy to put some emotion into his voice.
“With apples…”
“No.” Gerard answers not blinking, not doing much of anything. Frank knows that, he isn’t stupid. It was meant as a joke, an attempt to lighten the mood.
“With sin…then.” He says quietly. “Original sin?”
“Obviously.”
“With…”
“You.” Gerard states.
“Obviously.” Frank replies not looking at Gerard. Staring at the strangely erotic, twisted apple.
~+~
He tries not to think about it. But it’s no use. He really can’t help it.
He isn’t surprised to find Gerard on the couch, again, knees pressed against his chest, biting his lips, when he lets himself into the house in the middle of the night. The smell is even worse now somehow…stronger. And Gerard looks like he hasn’t showered in a while. He looks up as he hears Frank’s steps through the jungle of papers crumbled on the floor. But that is all.
“I…” Frank begins and stops, he combs his fingers through his hair, sighs and pulls out the last drawing, the twisted apple from his pocket. “So, that’s what you want?” he asks.
Gerard doesn’t answers, just looks at him through heavy lidded eyes.
“Because if you do…” and he doesn’t know how to actually end that bloody sentence. He doesn’t need to, Gerard nods. Just once.
And it shouldn’t surprise Frank by now - because it’s been weeks since he’s seen Gerard actually do something - but it does anyway.
Gerard doesn’t do anything.
He let’s Frank remove his clothes, watches as Frank removes his own. It’s strange, it’s not that there is no passion, there is, but it’s lazy, dulled, with something like silent despair underneath it all. Some unwillingness to care for heat and frenzy on Gerard’s side. Gerard’s hands run slow patterns on Frank’s skin, he maps the tattoos out one by one, line by line. It’s not hot, but it’s strangely erotic.
Gerard tastes like stale smoke and unwashed skin, sweat. His fingers taste like saliva and blood from biting them again, like do his lips. They are chapped. And Frank doesn’t care. He kisses, bites and licks every patch of Gerard’s skin, opens him up slowly, even if he wants to rush. He can’t; not with Gerard’s body so heavy, so lethargic under his own. So he teases with one finger, pushes in, out, in…for a while until Gerard gasps and grabs his wrist, then he pushes in another one. Slow, lazy and it’s hot that laziness, the softness, the dullness, the silence of it all just broken by soft moans and the whisper of paper.
And as Frank finally pushes in, Gerard bites his lip so hard it bleeds. He moves his hips slow, giving Frank a rhythm he really doesn’t want to keep, but Gerard’s whispered, ‘slowly’ lets him do it anyway. He pins Gerard’s wrist down to the floor, not letting him touch until he comes.
He watches Gerard jerk himself of lazily amidst the scenery of crumbled papers, drawn sins, watches his back arch as he comes, watches his breathing slow down.
“You think you’re cured now?” Frank asks with a smile. Gerard looks at him.
“What do you thing my sin was?” Gerard wants to know.
“Lust?”
Gerard smiles.
“No…” he answers and kisses Frank hard.
~end~