The electricity flickered thrice before powering down with a hum that could heard miles down the many crumbling roads away from home. The daylight was scarce as heavy droplets of rain thundered against the tiles of the roof far too quickly for them to be counted, the tallies marked in Frank's notebook had long since been abandoned on another page ever since the downpour unleashed its full potential onto the earth. It started as a raindrop here and there, casting a fine web of mist across the windows from the chill outdoors and the warmth pressing up against the inside part of the glass from the heater pushing warm air into the hose through the slits of the vents. The humidity lingered and his palms felt clammy to the touch, swiping continuously against the sides of his jeans so imprints of his fingertips wouldn't press into the pages of the notebook resting on the lid of his grand piano. His pencil was tucked behind his ear along with the swooping curl of his black fringe normally resting neatly on his cheek.

Frank had been waiting for the rain to fall for days. The skies brewed with oncoming gray clouds filling him with hope, but they managed to dissipate and allow sunbeams to bleed through before they knitted themselves together again as the sunset broke over the dewy fields of vegetation beyond the scattered houses closing in on the green. He came alive again the moment the touch of rain soaked through the soil of homely earth, much anticipation curled up inside of him upon its arrival. All he could smell was the presence of rain carried by darkened clouds lurking above his head, falling in the afternoon to create a film of fog desperately clinging to the windows. Fog was somewhat promising, he told himself, and the pleasant surprise the future delivered to him was the saturation of rainwater soaking into the soft earth, drumming against the roof and splattering onto the windows in diamond-like droplets sliding downwards in paths or coalescing into one another.

As a result to the downfall of warmth and lighting, Frank found himself being surrounded by the magnetic glow of dancing flames inside ceramic candle holders filled with wax to be melted underneath the fragments of fire. The increase of their glow drew Frank's attention away from the scribbles of music notes in his notebook. He twisted around on the sleek piano bench and found Gerard delicately cupping his hands around the stem of a bronze candelabra. The matte coating was slightly dull, yet grappling as flames kissed the wicks sprouting from the tops of thin candlesticks protruding from the decorative arms of the candelabra. What glistened the most was the polished shine of Gerard's red nail polish chipping the slightest bit at the corners. The orange glow of the fire flickered over the polish and warped their brilliant red shade the slightest bit, bathing the color with an autumn embrace.

Gerard looked up when he sensed Frank watching him. His lips filled in impeccably with ruby red lipstick curled into a small smile, deepening the dimples at the corners of his mouth promising kisses tasting of artificial cherry and stains in the wake of them. His mess of raven colored hair hadn't been brushed through after his shower in the morning, but the softness of his tresses couldn't be denied as a pitch lock fluttered in front of his eyes, forming into a waving pattern curling in at unorganized intervals. Frank found himself smiling back while mesmerized by the shadows of Gerard's long eyelashes appearing on his cheeks.

"I don't know how you can work in the dark. Doesn't it strain your eyes?" Gerard commented. His voice was tranquil like the silence of the town as rain cascaded over the land. He didn't mind the power outage much, neither did Frank.

"It doesn't. It's not evening yet." Frank glanced out the window. "The sun doesn't set until an hour from now."

"Mm. It gets dark sooner when the sun is hidden." Gerard hummed. He stood upright as he finished touching licks of fire from the lighter in his hand to the wicks of the candles now illuminating the center of their scraped coffee table in need of a thorough dusting. He blew at the smoke curling from the tip of the long lighter, tucked it under his arm, and lifted another candle that rested on the couch cushions into his hands, cradling his palms around the porcelain carried as though it was a fragile bird he gathered from the ground. He delivered the candle to the lid of Frank's piano a few spaces away from the open notebook resting there.

Frank watched with a sliver of pyromania fluttering at the back of his mind as Gerard brought the flame spewing from the mouth of the lighter to the crooked wick resting on top of the pure white candle inside the porcelain. The orange light threw an incandescent glow onto Gerard's face, blending into the shadows and the darkness of his hair. Frank may have been more fascinated by the beauty of his lover more than the sight of fire catching onto the fragile branch of the wick awaiting to be burned.

"The sun likes to hide away sometimes." Gerard whispered when he was finished. He set the lighter aside and languidly leaned down onto the lid of the piano, propped up by his elbows, gazing out the nearest window to watch the deluge of rain outside.

"Mhm?" Frank watched Gerard's pale hands slowly grasp onto each other in a loose grip, simple to the way one clasped their hands together in prayer. His fingers began wriggle and weave together before pulling apart again, the needle lace trimming the exaggerated long sleeves of his black blouse catching onto his three moonstone rings instead of falling away — one on his ring finger, one on the pointer, and the other on his smallest finger on the right hand. His fair skin drained of pigment in contrast to the black and brilliant lash of red coating his nails.

"Mhm." Gerard returned Frank's questioning hum with an answering tone taking his version of it with a different spin. "You wanna know what I was thinking?"

"I always want to know."

Gerard smiled faintly. "Sunshine is brilliant. The brightest star in the universe, but the tragedy of it all is that we can't stand to look at it or we'll blind ourselves. The sun's heart breaks to give us its all only for us to turn away and wish it wouldn't shine so furiously. It asks the rain clouds to cover it so it can weep in private, but its tears soak through them."

Gerard created tales in his mind to tie to the daily occurrences and cycles of life. He was an artist at his tongue, but scribbling the words onto paper ailed him, the tap of his lips was meant to be listened to instead of seen. Gerard weaved together a reason for that odd trait of his and explained to Frank that listening was a virtue, learning through sound rather than sight was his gift. Only true artists could listen to the pour of the rain and hear the whisper of mist curling around the droplets, the sound of music encompassing the trees through the forest and past the hidden creek placidly bubbling atop of the webs of moss spreading across smooth stones. When Gerard spoke, Frank could hear the river of art within him, trailing through the melancholy and into the chromatic soul carrying the tune of an artist's most desired dreams, the song of the earth and the feeling of it sinking underneath your footsteps after the embrace of rain.

Gerard's tongue was a rain cloud, his lips were rubies hidden underneath a bank of pure snow. Frank was a gilt-edged desert expanding towards the horizon, but the need for the blessing of raindrops and colorization left the skies vacant and bleak. They were a match made in heaven; Frank dipped the barren tip of his pen into the forever inspirational banks of Gerard's crimson river. All hues of red, a scale becoming a favorite of Gerard's.

"So that's why it rains?" Frank asked after Gerard trailed off.

Gerard smiled wistfully. "Yes. Wouldn't you want to hide your face away too if no one could stand to look at you?"

Frank nodded. He dragged his notepad away from his piano when he found a tune forming in the way Gerard's hands restlessly played together in front of him. As he scribbled, Gerard continued.

"My mind kept racing once I came up with that one. It's kind of silly, something a person could roll their eyes at. No one thinks about these things so deeply, and they think the people who do are exaggerated."

"It's not silly at all. Not to me. Tell me more?"

"I'm glad you don't think so. Well, rain clouds must feel like a security blanket. They hold a stronger purpose than that, but they don't mind befriending the sun every once in a while. They aren't strong enough to keep the sun's tears in."

Frank's mind filled with images of sunshine casting light down onto the song floating in his mind, lifting the rhythm to the heavens to be dragged under again by the shadows of tranquil rainwater flooding the river of keys he imagined pressing his fingers onto.

"That's why I don't feel too happy when it rains." Gerard sighed. "But you like the rain, don't you, Frank?"

Frank's pencil hovered above the page. He looked up and caught dark hazel eyes peering down at him. His question may have sounded somewhat bitter considering the context to one who didn't know how to listen for each movement of Gerard's voice, but Frank spent so long learning to capture every syllable he uttered with insight that he knew Gerard was merely sharing an observation, asking Frank how he felt about the storm. He waited patiently for Frank to speak, toying with his rings.

"I do." Frank answered and bit his lip. "I like the way it feels."

Gerard cocked his head in the strange way he did when he was curious. "How does it feel to you?"

Frank stared out into the downpour beyond the comfort of their home. He listened to the sound of it landing on every surface it collided with, filling puddles overflowing inside of every possible dent in the earth. He found no turmoil in the flow of water and his heartbeat slowed into a calming rhythm in sync with the sound. Without the hum of electricity coursing through the wires and the appliances, he could hear himself breathing in and out. He wasn't able to detect such a thing as easily when he was surrounded by noise.

"Peaceful. Pure. It should be a disturbance, but it isn't. I feel fully alive." Frank found words he could use to describe the feeling, but none would ever be enough. His eyes followed the trail of a single droplet of rainwater before it merged into another one lingering forgotten at the corner of the window. The droplet soon became too dense to hold itself and disappeared into the frame around the glass.

The touch against Frank's cheek was evanescent, but the shock of cold skin brushing against him claimed his attention all at once. He turned his head and saw Gerard slowly drawing his hand away a few centimeters, but it hovered. His eyes were glowing in the orange light from the candles and his lips were curled into the smallest hint of a smile.

"You're freezing cold, rosebud." Frank took Gerard's hand between both of his and gently massaged warmth into the frigid fingers placed between his palms.

"The heater shut down with the rest of the electricity." Gerard chuckled through his nose, so quietly that the rain nearly drowned out the sound.

"But you're always a little cold, now that I think about it."

"Not all of us have nurturing hands." Gerard caressed Frank's skin with his thumb to emphasize what he meant. Frank would have denied his statement if he hadn't known Gerard would protest.

Frank gazed down at Gerard's pale hand in his grasp. From the cold, the peaks of his knuckles flushed a hint of rid, and the pearl shade of his fingertips were filled with the softest flush of pink. Frank's thumbs swept across the ridges of his knuckles and trailed to the prominent blue veins underneath the back of his hand. His skin was soft to the touch, but the sides of his thumbs and middle fingers were roughened by the chapped healing skin he'd peeled away at with his digging nails. His heart longed to become the healing song for the self inflicted wounds brought on by Gerard's anxiousness. Frank brought Gerard's hand to his lips and pressed a warm kiss to the knuckle underneath his middle finger. His lips brushed one of his silver moonstone rings that heated up far quicker than his skin.

"What are you writing?" Gerard asked after Frank traded in his left hand to warm the other. It could have been a trick of the shadows, but Frank thought his cheeks were stained pink.

"It's new." Frank had almost forgotten about the song. "I'm inspired."

"By the rain?"

"Yes, and you." Frank gently chafed warm into Gerard's hand through the swell of his heart pouring a pleasant shiver all across his body, ending in warm tingles fizzling under his skin. "Always you."

"So sweet." Gerard whispered, slowly lowering himself onto the bench beside Frank. The movement of his limbs remained just as fluid as they once were when he used to rule the surface of every stage he ever twirled across in the fluorescence of the limelight. After sustaining an injury to his ankle during a solo performance, the doctors apologetically informed him that if he were to continue to dance, the torn ligament would never heal properly and the pain would evolve into an unbearable state he couldn't carry on with even if he pushed his body beyond all of its limits. The tragedy of Gerard's demolished dreams came with the woeful months following after his injury had been acquired. His laughter didn't fill the halls for weeks and the carnations of his sweetness were absent from his presence, he'd been emptied and left aching from the void he couldn't fill with anything other than the passion of dance.

Frank remembered returning home one evening after providing the ballet studio he met Gerard in with the expertise of his piano playing. He found Gerard dancing in the backyard, weeping from the pain of his throbbing injury bringing a sharp stutter to his movements, but he continued forcing himself to move in violent surges of his body tossing himself into the dark ravine of anguished dance. Frank bolted towards him and immediately stopped him from causing any more harm to himself, piecing together the broken pieces of a miserable man sobbing helplessly into his chest until ever tear had been spent. Frank has no choice but to fall with him.

Gerard was better these days. He substituted his yearning for dance to listen to Frank write and perform, watching over him as his fingers glided along the row of keys without needing to glance down at them to guide him. There were times where he simply twirled, pointed his feet, swayed in various positions with his eyes drawn shut as he imagined the way he'd move if he could dance without the phantom of pain bolting up towards his leg. A ballet dancer or an artist by the fantasy on his tongue, Frank loved his rosebud the same, a blooming flower surrounded by the prickle of spiny thorns, petals adorned in red with every passing season.

"It's a shame that it's raining on Valentine's Day." Frank thought out loud. He sat still so he wouldn't disturb Gerard whose head rested on his shoulder, and so he wouldn't move away if he sensed Frank's movement underneath him. Gerard smelled of strawberry fields and blades of dewy grass. His skin was touched by the woodsy fragrance of smoke from when he spent his time illuminating their household with flickering candlelight.

"I would imagine a lot of plans have been spoiled." Gerard commented.

Frank hummed softly. He turned his head slightly to angle it towards Gerard and the soft tickle of his inky hair brushed up against his cheek. "Are you sure you don't want to do anything?"

He nearly giggled from the tendrils of hair tickling across the curve of his jaw as Gerard pressed his face into the crook of Frank's neck and nodded his head. He shook the instinctive laughter from his chest and felt it shift into a twinge of guilt sitting solemnly in his heart despite Gerard's answer.

"It's a special day. We could do anything you want." Frank whispered.

"Not anything. The storm."

"Right. The storm." Frank buried a kiss into Gerard's hair. "Is that implying that there was something you might have wanted to do?"

"No. We don't celebrate Valentine's Day, Frankie."

Frank felt as though his mind longed to recall a reason why, but he came up short, ending his brief silence with words. "I assume you're against it."

Gerard sighed against his neck. It was a warm blast of air fogging against Frank's skin, eliciting a shiver running through his back from the tailbone to the underside of his scalp. Gerard's lips weren't quite touching his skin, he'd been cautious not to smear the cherry color filling in the delicate shape of his small lips.

"It's a celebration of love," Gerard's words breathed across Frank's neck. "Why should we chose one day of the year to be appreciative of the love we receive when we should be doing that every day?"

Frank became thoughtful. When his thoughts flurried in a rapid motion, inspiration trickled in, blooming in all the creases of his brain and urging his fingers to lead themselves to the keys close enough to touch. Astounded by the impact of Gerard's sayings, his hands hovered above the piano keys only slightly obscured by the shadow of the lighter tones of gray fading out from the sky to gradually transition into dark charcoal. The candles adjusted his eyesight and provided dozens of guiding lights for his hands to retreat towards the song he built in his mind.

"I'm thankful for the love that's grown here." Frank murmured as he pressed the opening keys to the vision unfolding before his eyes, colorful swirls powerfully surging into the tips of his fingers. His eyes fluttered shut and he submerged into the transition of notes forming a chain, gliding through the rivers of a sound so tranquil if it wasn't listened to closely enough. There was sorrow underlining the peaceful rhythm using sharp keys and a deeper sound twirling around the lighter affair of the higher pitch rising above all else. He instilled the droplets of rain he witnessed becoming one on the windowpane and the chill of Gerard's hands into the song, the poetry running silent in Gerard's mind and shining out through piercing hazel eyes. The slow transition leading to the hymn of a quicker tempo was the spirit of love.

"It's everywhere." Gerard sounded the way he did when he was in awe. It was subtle, ghosting past his red lips like the emotion frightened him, but he was always afraid in the beginning before he felt it filling the void crying out for all he lost. Terrified of letting anything else in. Frank didn't want him to fear art, he wanted him to embrace it, and relief rose up in him at hearing Gerard's fascination. It channeled through the music in the tinkling sound of sweet high notes wrapping around their touching bodies.

"Keep talking to me." Frank couldn't rescue the words being swallowed whole by the sound of music in his head, soon enough he couldn't recall what he desired to say. All he wanted was to listen.

"You can hear it in the walls if you listen closely enough." Gerard's whisper was right up against Frank's ear, as warm as a summer breeze. Frank knew what he meant, for he felt it as well, a third invisible soul.

"It's in the candles." Frank's heartbeat quickened and his lips parted as his fingers flew with more aggression over the keys. Transcending, forming without thought.

"You can smell it blending into the scent of rain. It smells like nature, and nature is pure." Gerard's hand stroked Frank's arm. His fingers were no longer carrying the essence of snowflakes, but Frank bet they were the shade of freshly fallen snow resting on slopes of untouched hills.

"It's inside of your hands, isn't it?" Frank twitched slightly as his finger slipped against a chord he hadn't meant to press, but the sound of it rang out through the wide space with a resonating cry powerful enough to make the both of them gasp. He pressed it again without stopping, imagining it was the sound of himself when he reached climax inside the holy bedroom or the sound of Gerard shouting out onstage when his ankle twisted gruesomely those years ago. No, not one or the other — it was both.

"My hands?" Gerard curled his fingers loosely around Frank's shirt bunching around his hips.

"Your palms, your fingers. It's there." Frank licked his lips and kept his eyes shut. Gerard's warmth bled through the cotton of his shirt and confirmed his claims, even if the latter didn't sense it so specifically.

"I don't feel it."

"You don't need to. I feel it when you touch me."

"I like touching you . . ."

Frank's chest quivered pleasantly. "I know you do."

"You wanna know why?" Gerard whispered.

Frank nodded, attempting not to appear too eager, but his stomach roiled with desperation to hear Gerard speak of things no other entity could in a manner demolishing the restraints of humanity to let love be free on top of a single tongue, a pair of lips. It was meant to be raw and blunt in a supply of few words.

"It's in your blood. The way it hums under your skin, the feeling is indescribable when I touch you." Gerard's hand dragged across Frank's stomach, closing over his chest, above where his heart was located behind the flesh and bone. "It's right there. The center of it all."

"It's all for you. I exist to love you." Frank sounded absentminded, overpowered by the song singing so vividly in his pulsing veins churning blood through his system. A thin layer of perspiration formed at the back of his neck in heated prickles crawling under and over the skin. He became his craft when he worked, it was imperative to elicit a euphonious sound from his instrument with a fragment of his soul on his fingertips or there would be no meaning to music at all. It would only be noise, devoid of all definition, regardless of whether or not the audience conveyed their own meaning behind it.

"No, you don't." Gerard guided his hand to Frank's throat. His palm was pressed to the hollow to feel his breath tunneling in and out as he began to pant ever so slightly, fingers spreading out. To an outsider, it may have seemed that Gerard awaited to close his fingers around Frank's sensitive throat to cut off the air flow. Frank knew his gentle hand would remain there, soaking in his pulse, and he didn't know what he existed for if his heart didn't thunderously pound in his chest whenever Gerard's laid so little as a finger on him.

"Then what do I exist for?" Frank's tongue swept out over his parted lips, tasting the beginning of sweat gracing his upper lip. The salt sting on his tongue caused him to retract it and swallow down the flavor to rid of it.

"This." Gerard removed his hand from Frank's throat. He stroked along his shoulder, his arm, leading down to the beginning of his flitting wrist until he closed his fingers around it slowly. Frank halted as his hand became inaccessible. His free hand froze up a centimeter above the keys and the sudden halt allowed the space to be filled with the ringing echo of the previous chords he pressed onto with gusto. He noticed how his breath fluttered rapidly and his curl of black hair came tumbling down towards his face to rest on his cheek.

Opening his eyes, Frank looked down at his wrist Gerard had a hold of. Gerard's hand unfurled and released his wrist, but his fingers stroked down the back of his hand, tracing the thin tendons barely showcasing themselves through the thin skin. He followed the path of Frank's veins and crossed the valley of his knuckles, reaching his tattooed fingers poised above the piano keys. Shaping his hand around Frank's, Gerard gently pushed down on Frank's fingers, triggering the sound of music emitting from the instrument. His fingertips pressed against the ivory keys again, but the sound was ephemeral as there was barely any pressure placed onto them. Frank swallowed and soaked in the warming softness of Gerard's skin with dizzying admiration, grand enough to evaporate the desperation to teeter off of the edge after being completely overcome by music.

"You exist for music." Gerard whispered right against his ear again. "It's in your fingers, your veins, your bones, it lives in more spaces than love ever has. If you existed only to love me, I would never requite it."

Frank breathed in shakily, turning his head towards Gerard, but not moving his gaze away from their hands. The warmth of Gerard's breath floated in the mere inches between their faces.

"Why?" Frank flipped his hand over slowly underneath Gerard's palm. Their fingers tangled together, two tones of fair flesh, one stained by ink and the other splashed with crimson paint at the tips of his fingers.

"I fell in love with your music before I saw your face." Gerard tightened his grip gently. "Through the walls, you could hear it even though you were on the floor above the studio."

Frank remembered the days he spent practicing apart from the studio, above the room where figures of grace glided across the wooden floors and hoisted themselves up onto the tips of their toes until their legs began to quiver in the slightest. It was a time before Gerard was his own, but the day they'd met, Frank was suddenly ready to perform for the ballet dancers; anything to be graced by Gerard's presence again and again for the years to come.

"You wouldn't have loved me if I didn't play?"

"No," Gerard slowly shook his head, "There would be almost nothing to love if there wasn't desire for song in you. It's shaped the way you think, how you see everything, and the way you love me."

Frank inevitably felt the opening of a wound at the corner of his heart at the thought. Through the ache, he knew there wasn't anything incorrect about the words being spoken to him, and he immediately sought out to vanquish the crawl of hurt nestling deep in the cavities of his chest.

"I know." Frank whispered, almost in shame, but there was nothing shameful about the art in his soul, molding the man who presented himself in front of a piano in the present.

"Who would you be if you didn't have music? What would you be?" Gerard's brushed his lips against the tip of Frank's ear, the softest butterfly kiss of movement making Frank withhold a series of pleased shivers.

The question was trite; Frank wondered the same far too often. He would deliver his practiced and familiar answer, but his throat cut him short, cutting off a flow of words with a ragged little gasp dragging down into his chest. The answer was harrowing, as bleak as possible, Frank couldn't recite it out loud.

Humankind's worst fear was the unknown; the unknown was the answer to Gerard's question.

"I . . ." Frank sighed shakily. His hands were suddenly jaded and trembling from composing without giving his fingers a break. He hated to become hyperaware of his own skin, his notebook filled with art, his pencil abandoned on the surface of his instrument.

"I wouldn't be the one you're touching right now." Frank whispered.

Gerard's velvety lips planted a scarlet kiss underneath his ear, Frank could feel the smooth texture of his lipstick securing an imprint onto his skin.

"Never undermine yourself as somebody who only exists for the one you love." Gerard clasped Frank's hand into his own, bringing the tips of his fingers towards his lips to kiss them as softly as the tender sweep of a dove's feathers. Frank almost gave into the temptation to mimic the action with Gerard's pale fingers, but he didn't have the amorous stain of crimson dragged across his lips.

Frank turned to Gerard as the emptiness he became corrupted with at the thought of living without music dissipated in a vivid splash of color behind his eyes as he blinked. He awakened in the present yet again after his spirit floated above him in some other plane of existence and the sight of Gerard's lips crept into every crease of his heart, seizing a tightening grip rushing blood through his veins like darkened rivers filling his veins.

Frank gained control of his hand and pressed the tips of his pointer and middle finger against Gerard's lower lip without placing any pressure on his sensitive flesh. Gerard's lips parted a fraction at the touch, his warmth breath steadily streaming through the slit between both of his lips to brush up against Frank's fingers. Frank dragged his fingertips along the shape of Gerard's lips, smudging carmine lipstick along the pads of his fingers. Gerard's lashes fluttered as his eyelids fell shut in a gentle downward movement, wandering into the sensation of Frank touching him to lose himself temporarily. Frank sucked in a slightly shaky deep breath and dragged his thumb across Gerard's bottom lip, gently tugging it downwards, and as the pad trailed underneath the curve to his chin, a streak of lipstick stained the ivory skin he discovered there, as though anew, but Frank had seen all of Gerard's skin in their ineffable moments of eroticism no devil could witness, for the intensity of their eyes latched onto each other permanently was a piece of heavenly paradise. Gerard was an angel reincarnated into the host of a human being. His irises and flesh could prove it.

Frank pulled his hand away from Gerard's lips as music streamed into his head. The sound of the tune was so brilliantly prodigious that the weight of its overwhelming composition was audible to his ears without his hands yet touching the piano. The essence of Gerard's lips buried itself between the notes threaded together by strands of his ebony hair. His muse streaked traces of his cherry lipstick onto the walls of his mind and Frank did the same in return; his stained fingers pressed onto the desired keys and smeared the gift Gerard's lips granted him across the pure white of the keys. Gerard was as ethereal as the instrument Frank desired the most, he felt him and saw him in the orderly row of piano keys; white, black, red. Flesh, hair, lips.

Frank shut his eyes, his lips parting, his fingers a flurry of movement over the piano until there came a time for him to slow the movement into the sound of a sweet lullaby encased by the velvet of love's streamers attached. It furrowed itself into the progression of the deeper notes echoing the gentle sound floating into the atmosphere. The tone was romance soaked by rain, much like himself seated beside his lover as the downpour flooded the earth outside of the invisible space of a universe without time wrapping them up.

Gerard's lips caressed his neck, his cheek, mouthing silent words to him that would leave streaks of their passion behind when he moved away. His hands stroked along his sides and the cool sting from the silver of his rings sent a jolt down Frank's spine the moment they came in contact with the strip of flesh revealed when his shirt lifted under the movement of his hand. His abdominal muscles bunched and his fingers came down aggressively onto the keys, the piano cried out from the impact and the sound was nearly deafening, but it was infamously second to being the world's most enrapturing noise stringing together an onslaught of notes, setting them aflame by the sparks of morning glory.

They came second because the most ethereal noise in the universe was everything coming from the chords inside Gerard's throat, the fascinating strum of vocal strings forming a symphony of the song Frank could never capture entirely in music despite his greatest efforts. Frank longed to hear his sounds, his words, to taste the essence of his poetic tongue. Stricken by the incredibly zealous need to breathe everything about Gerard Way in, his overwhelming spell of passion for song broke away like the tightness of a chord being pulled to the limit, snapping under the pressure. Frank exhaled all of the breath in his lungs in a loud, trembling sound, and he dove in for Gerard's lips.

Gerard reeled back, making a noise in his throat that vibrated against Frank's lips seeking out Gerard's with a needy press. Frank moaned at the sound of him, as sweet as the nectar from the heavens dripping into pools of pure water, his hands searching for his hips, his legs, his torso. Gerard melted into him and pressed them together tightly, his fingers twisting into Frank's hair as he angled his body towards him. Frank's tongue grazed the slick of Gerard's bottom lip coated with the lipstick leaving traces of its existence all over himself and his prized piano, spreading between their lips moving at a fervent pace between them. The kiss was the crashing crescendo Frank couldn't articulate with any amount of musical talent, the sound thundering like a pulse on its own inside of him. The collision of symbolic love songs were swirling between the color of lipstick spreading all over Frank's mouth and lips were all that could suffice during a moment of pure desperation.

He found every answer in Gerard, every seemingly trivial moment lost in a time capsule surrendering to modern music unfolding into a grand revelation, each instinct compelling him to compose that twitched in his fingers, going unknown until Gerard's skin was warming his hands. Frank's chest pulled tight and his head remained underneath a turbulent sea of piano, then Gerard became the jagged and oh so relieving breath of fresh oxygen he'd gasp for in a moment where there was a fine line between life and death swirling in technicolored patterns beyond the thin skin of his eyelids.

Frank's hands grasped tightly onto Gerard's waist as he stood, hauling him onto the surface of the grand piano after snapping the lid shut. Gerard's legs quivered and he gasped for air with vivid red smeared all around his swollen lips. He sat still and waited for Frank to collide with him again, his hair a halo of raven feathers falling gently towards his shoulders in tangled waves, but his beauty became so otherworldly that Frank's brain sent signals towards his legs to make them stand rigidly still as his eyes drank in the vision greeting him so kindly. There were many things Frank yearned to say to him, but somehow, he never conjured up the voice to let them be known.

"Rosebud?" Frank asked softly, panting from a sudden desire to kiss Gerard until the lungs in his body wailed in a desperate attempt to be filled with oxygen.

"Yes?" Gerard breathlessly replied, cocking his head to the side yet again. The motion was evermore innocent, but the sight clashed with the duo of his bright red lips and the tendril of black hair slipping down towards his face to hang in front of his eyes glistening in the dim candlelight. Frank realized the sky became completely dark outside now that time passed them by, the heavens hid themselves in the shadow of nighttime.

Frank ran his hands along Gerard's thighs with flattened palms and fingers spread out, gliding along the soft fabric of his black leggings with the tears in the knees. Snippets of pale skin peeked out, snowflakes upon a canvas of pitch. It was impossible for such a marvelous creature to breathe during the same time frame as himself.

"I'm afraid that I'm imagining you." Frank's throat felt tight around the words. He swallowed hard, hoping the feeling would cease, but he only trembled internally while watching his hands freeze at the tops of Gerard's legs. Touching the lace of the trim of the sweater pooling around his hips. Nearby, Gerard's hands rested on the piano, red painted nails appearing black in the shadow of the room.

"Tell me if you can feel this." Gerard whispered. As Frank look up, his cheek was encased by the cradle of a gentle palm curving around his cheekbone, a thumb stroking underneath his eye in a slow back and forth sweep. Gerard's skin wasn't as cold as it once was, but there was a contrast of temperature as always between his cheek and Gerard's palm. Frank looked into warm hazel eyes saturated by orange filters inflicted by dancing slivers of fire in porcelain homes. Frank's lashes fluttered and he leaned into the touch, nuzzling his cheek in a slow back and forth movement in the security of Gerard's palm.

"I feel it." Frank confirmed.

Gerard smiled faintly and his hand slowly fell away from Frank's cheek. Frank swallowed down the desire to follow his hand's movement to never be without his gentleness again with a heady amount of resistance.

"If that feels real to you, then there's no need to be afraid. I'm here." Gerard held his legs out in front of them, gripping the sides of Frank's pair with them, and he locked his ankles together behind Frank's calves to pull him between his thighs. Frank stood in the wake of Gerard's presence and felt the warmth radiating from him, so apparent underneath the path of his hands finding control again to take in the shape of Gerard beneath them. Gerard's hands landed flatly on Frank's chest to caress in upwards strokes towards his shoulders, soon slinging his arms around his neck and tugging him closer, closer, until their noses brushed together. Gerard's breath ghosted across Frank's parted lips, Frank felt the way he shivered as the tips of his fingers draw a path from the base of his spine to his upper back, resting between his shoulder blades widened slightly due to his arms lifting up and forwards to loosely hold onto Frank. These were phenomenal pieces of human life an illusion couldn't mimic.

"'Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory,'" Frank quoted the poetry bubbling from the inner corners of his mind towards his lips without so much as a shard of realization that he recited the words of a poet against Gerard's lips that he paused to tenderly kiss. "'Odours, when sweet violets sicken, live within the sense they quicken—'"

"'Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved's bed; and so thy thoughts, when thou art gone . . . '" Gerard stole the words from Frank's tongue, a silky murmur sinking under Frank's flesh to embrace every nerve with the kindness of care during frigid moments of illness living in his system permanently, taking formation in his brain. It was an unkind imbalance he couldn't explain. All of Frank's questions vanished as Gerard kissed his upper lip, then his bottom one, pulling back to rest their foreheads together.

"'Love itself shall slumber on.'" They recited the final line together. Silence sank into the darkness shrouding their figures, but the glow of candlelight was immortal in their moment where a personalized universe unfurled as their lips connected again.

Their hymn came to a close, the downpour slowing to dewy kisses of rain grazing the chaos of miniature oceans raindrops planted into the crevices of the earth. Eerie shadows of dancing flames flickered and shone through two forms perched atop of the piano, cutting through the filmy apparitions retelling the color of skin, like flesh underneath veils of gossamer.

Music ceased as life once had, but love was eternal.

____

A/N; So...I don't know what to make of this, really, it ended up being something my mind wrote on its own without me being entirely aware of what was coming out. But I do know why certain parts stand. I'm apologetic and relieved at the same time to release this.

It's up to you to decide whether Frank or Gerard or any of this was real. How you interpret it is your decision, and if you'd like to share what you made of this, I'd like to see what you think. Maybe I'll share what this means when I figure it out.

Happy Valentine's Day. A kind reminder that love is everywhere, in everyone, not exclusively in romance. There's no need to feel excluded if you don't have a partner because every form of love is just as precious and should be celebrated as well. Take care, everyone.

-rosexo