Chapter Text
It starts on a cold, wet December day in the middle of the tour.
It is just the band, a bunch of guys gathered together, enjoying being foulmouthed and raunchy without women nearby to roll their eyes and cluck their tongues.
They sit around the bus and joke and tease each other mercilessly, going for the jugular in ways that only people who spend far too much time together can do.
At one point, Frank says something to Gerard that causes Gerard to flip him off, laugh and tell him to shut the fuck up.
And Frank does.
And it begins.
Frank tries to speak, his lips forming his retort, but no sound issues forth. He clears his throat and tries again with the same results. He bends over and places his hand on his throat, still trying to speak, still producing nothing but a wisp of air.
“Frank? You ok?”
He looks up, the fear blazing in his eyes.
“What’s the matter?”
He can’t answer so he shakes his head and slaps his hand against his throat, hoping that the gesture will convey the fact that he has been struck mute.
There are hands on him now; gentle. “Are you choking?”
No. No. He can’t make them understand. Terrified, he stumbles backward, unaware that his hand is clutching his throat so tightly that his nails are leaving indents in his flesh.
“Frank, come on say something.”
He opens his mouth and says, “Something.”
They all stop and move away, mouths opening and closing almost obscenely as they themselves struggle to form words.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“Yeah, asshole, you scared us.”
His legs give out and he falls to the sofa. His heart, which had been thundering within his chest, has already started to slow. “I wasn’t joking,” he says.
But they don’t believe him and their earlier moment, raucous and carefree, is gone.
Two days pass and the incident is forgotten. At least as much as it can be. While everyone else has gone to bed, Frank sits with Bob, watching television in his hotel room. It’s rare that they get the luxury of a room and they are bound and determined to take advantage of it.
After a time, Bob turns to Frank and says, “Hey, get me another beer from the minibar, huh?”
He knows Frank will not do it. He knows that Frank will likely flip him off and that they will both laugh.
Frank too knows that he will not do it.
And yet he finds himself standing, because suddenly it is vitally important that he do what Bob says.
He tries to stop his legs from moving, trying to dig his feet into the carpet, but they will not respond. A prisoner in his own body, he walks to the fridge, pulls out the beer and hands it to Bob before finally sitting back down.
Bob stares at the bottle in his hand as if he’s not really sure it exists. “I didn’t expect you to do it.”
The same clutching fear that Frank experienced two days ago is back. “I didn’t want to. I tried not to, but I couldn’t stop it.”
“Frank, I’m sorry, man, but if this is a joke, I’m not getting it.”
“It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke at all. I had to do what you told me to. Just like the other night when Gerard told me to shut-” His voice cuts off as if someone had sliced through his vocal chords.
“Frank?”
“Bob, tell me to do something,” he says. There is a seed of an idea in his head, germinating wildly. He thinks that he is beginning to understand. “Tell me to do something and I’ll try really hard not to do it.”
Bob shrugs, not entirely certain that his friend is sane, but willing to humor him anyway. He tells Frank to stand on his head.
And Frank, after a valiant but ultimately futile struggle with his own body, does just that. When he falls over only seconds later, he stares up at Bob.
Now he understands.
“Bob, I think I got a real problem here.”
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Nobody else thinks it’s a problem. In fact, they take great pleasure in testing out the boundaries of what they consider a fun, new game.
Frank tolerates it as best he can for as long as he can, but after a few days, he finds the game cruel, his friends cold, and all he wants to do is get home so he can find out why he is compelled to do what people say.
Darkness falls and he avoids everyone as he slips into his bunk on the bus, intent on finding sleep.
Sleep comes, but his dreams are uneasy and he finds no rest in them, so he forces himself back into the waking world. Yet as his eyes flutter open, he finds that the nightmare has followed him.
A nightmare made of shadow. It is straddling him, its hand over his mouth. It is whispering to him.
“Close your eyes. Don’t make a sound. Don’t struggle.”
And although every fiber of his being wants to shout and push this person off of him, he does not. He cannot.
There is only one thing he can do. He obeys.
Shadow Man pulls his hand away from Frank’s mouth before sliding it into the strands of his hair.
Inside, Frank is seething. Whatever the joke is now, it is being taken too far. He tells himself that when this is over, whatever this is, he is going to kill someone. He feels he may kill them all, regardless of who is actually sitting on him, yanking on his hair so hard that his head tilts back until his neck aches.
It doesn’t occur to him to be afraid. Not until the hand moves away from his hair, not until it trails down his throat and slips under the t-shirt he is wearing. Not until it brushes against his nipple before pinching it hard.
“This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this.”
Frank recognizes the quote and he takes a brief moment to wonder which one of them has been watching The 300 before his entire world shatters like fragile glass.
Shadow Man was right. It does not end quickly.
And he does not enjoy it.
It is misery personified, the scraping of his insides, the fingers that seek to dig into his skin, the searing breath under his ear. He allows himself to cry, his tears slipping past his closed eyelids, mostly because it is the only thing that he can do. When everything else has been taken away from him, he weeps his anger and frustration and helplessness.
Shadow Man digs his teeth into Frank’s skin and finally finishes with a long, lazy groan. Then he slides out of Frank’s body, pulling away before rearranging both of their clothing.
“Don’t lie to me,” Shadow Man whispers from somewhere above him. “Do you know who I am? Nod your head for yes. Shake your head for no.”
Frank knows that if he really concentrated, he could probably figure out who Shadow Man is. He has lived with these men for six years. He knows their hands, their touch. He knows every cadence of their voices.
But he’s not sure that he wants to know. He’s not sure that he wants to know who hates him this much. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. And sometimes it’s a life-preserver.
He shakes his head.
“Yes, good,” Shadow Man breathes out before dismounting from his shivering body as if he were an animal. Then he takes a blanket and draws it up to Frank’s chin, taking a moment to rake gentle fingers through his hair. The considerate gestures baffle Frank as much as they anger him.
Because how dare he? How dare Shadow Man be kind now? After what he has just done, any tender gesture is a mockery; a perverted, twisted lie.
Shadow Man disentangles fingers from his hair and Frank has a brief moment to wonder what will happen tomorrow when he has to face them all, when he has to look them all in the eye and try to imagine who did this, try to determine behind whose face hides a monster.
And then Shadow Man whispers one last command, ending it all, at least until the morning.
“Sleep.”