frerard one shots | ✔️

sixty-nine ~ car crash

trigger warning for car crashes

"It's the smell," Frank said.

He had watched it happen right in front of his own eyes and yet he was here, less than two months later at a therapist's, barely able to say the words. In the couple months following the accident leading up to this point, it had been stuck to the insides of his eyelids, replaying almost every time he closed his eyes, the noise completely gone from the visuals. He didn't remember the noise, he didn't remember hearing himself scream, but he remembered feeling his throat vibrating with the extreme overuse of his vocal cords. Frank didn't remember falling to his knees in front of him, but he did remember the feeling of the pavement through the knees of his jeans. He didn't remember what anyone around him said, but he did remember the feeling of their hands on his shoulders, my back. All he remembered was what it all looked like and how it all felt.

Oh, and the smell. The smell of burning rubber.

"Of what?" the therapist asked gently, brushing her thick curls behind her ear, just for them to fall back to the sides of her face. He liked that. He used to have a friend that would get her hair box braided like his therapist. It was familiar, comforting. "I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that."

"Burning rubber," he repeated, forcing the words to fall off his tongue. His vision got blurry, and when he wiped his eyes and looked back up at her, she just nodded, sucking her lips in, and pushing her hair behind her ear once more. This time, it stayed a little bit longer. He played with the silver ring on his ring finger.

"Can you still smell it?" she asked gently.

"I-I," he managed before new tears tumbled down his cheeks. "Sorry, Aria."

"That's alright Frank, take your time," she murmured, putting a tissue box next to him on the beige sofa. The linen of the sofa felt good under his hands but he took his hands out from under his thighs and wiped his eyes and nose.

"I... Yeah," he said, detesting the way his voice was shaking. "I still smell it sometimes. I don't think it's healthy."

"Nothing about what happened is healthy, darling, that's why you're here," she said with a little chuckle, and it made Frank smile a little bit.

"You're right," he said. A little smile peeked out from under the tears that were still coming.

"So," she started with a little ghost of a smile on her face, "tell me about when that happens and how it feels. And take your time."

He nodded, wiping away the tears, and when the tears subsided a little, he answered. "Well, it almost always happens when I get off from work. I take the tube to my flat now, but I drove here today. It just happens when I get into cars or have to be around them for too long."

She nodded, signalling me to go on.

"Um," he said, his voice going flat. "And sometimes when I wake up too. I've dreamt about it an awful lot, and whenever I do, I wake up with the smell of burning rubber."

"What are the dreams like? Are they long, short? Do you think they mean something?"

"Usually, they're pretty short, and they're always at the end of a random dream. It's always on the same street, and Gerard always dies in them, but that's really the only similarities they have. Most of them involve him throwing himself into a car so it doesn't have to be me who dies, but that's not even how it happened in real life."

"Do you think about that kind of thing a lot?"

"What, him saving me by killing himself?"

Dr Aria nodded.