Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, don't sue.

***

Waking up to the feeling of dried saliva and mascara and whatever the fuck else you've smeared on your eyelids is not pleasant. Especially not with a killer hangover from a tequila-and-NyQuil flavored night.

Naturally, this is what I've woken up to. That, and the sight of one Frank Iero sprawled out on my bed (fully clothed, mind you), pulling off the 'Flock of Seagulls' look quite nicely.

I'm sitting on my bed, trying to find some sort of comprehension--some sort of clear memory--in the tangled mess of last night. And the only thing that I can think about is Frank and his eyes and his voice and his lip ring catching the artificial 60-watt light. And the only thing that matters is that I don't care. I don't care what happened last night, because it was with Frank and anything involving Frank can't be that bad, right?

I remind myself to thank Gerard, because God knows without him, last night would've been my history paper.

_______________

What you have to understand is, I've known Frank for only half as long as I've known Gerard. And considering I've known Gerard my whole life, I've known Frank for almost nine years. Nine years is a long time to know someone. But three is what matters.

Three years is how long I've been suffocating or drowning or bleeding. Three years is how long I've bitten my nails and chewed my lip and taken extra care to look extra nice. Three years is how long I've loved Frank. Love is a very strong word, and it's probably not the best one, but it's the closest to what I have. I have love, or lust, or something in between love and a seriously unhealthy crush, and it's a fucking disease. It's an infection. It's Gangreen, spreading from my heart into my head and my lungs and my fingers and toes until I'll either die or be cut into little pieces.

Or I'll learn to act and self-medicate and do whatever else it is that I have to. Do whatever it is that will make me feel one step closer to OK, whatever that is.

Something tells me that three years of trying to not feel is about as far from OK as I could ever get.

Luckily, that's exactly where I am.

_______________

We're in Gerard's basement on the couch watching some B-List horror movie from the 30s. 'We' being Gerard, Mikey, Ray, Frank, and I. Gerard and Mikey are watching the movie intently, despite the fact that they've seen it x-number of times, and I'm staring at the TV, too, but nothing is registering. All that I can think about is how Frank undoubtedly doesn't care about last weekend. Frank is used to the bitter aftertaste of cherry-flavored NyQuil and the lingering burn of tequila. Frank is used to not remembering anything. Frank is used to teaching himself to not care.

I, on the other hand, am not. I'm familiar with the taste of Marlboro lights and the feel of Vaseline on my eyes at night when I wipe off my Urban Decay eyeshadow. I'm familiar with the stale, minty taste of Crest toothpaste in the morning and ten minutes of staring blankly at a white ceiling, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Trying to figure out what it was that I did to send me spiraling into such horrific monotony.

I am not, however, familiar with gaping holes in my memory, nor am I familiar with the warm fuzzy feeling that's been residing in my stomach for the past week, because I got drunk with Frank and I slept in the same room with Frank and now we have an unspoken, barely-there connection. We have a bond. Because it was just Frank and me, and no one else. No Gerard or Ray or Mikey to spoil the 60-watt light and the 100-watt smiles Frank shoots me from the bed as he throws back the last of the tequila. There was no anyone to ruin that Friday night or Saturday morning or whatever it was.

I've been thinking that maybe we were timeless for a little while. Maybe we were living by the amount of liquor left and not the dry 60-second minutes everyone else was living by. Maybe we were special. Maybe, for that bottle of tequila, we were infinite. We were whole and warm and on fire.

I remind myself to ask Gerard about another bottle or three as the zombie begins to devour the girl's severed arm.