3: Sand

 *A/N: This is the next part to the one shots and I wrote it today so please excuse me if there are mistakes or it isn't very good as I haven't been feeling so great. Thank you for reading and don't forget to comment, vote and share your thoughts! Enjoy!

3: Sand

*Gerard's P.O.V.*

"Gee, baby, wake up." I hear a smooth voice in my ear, feel a soft kiss to my cheek and a gentle hand move my hair back.

"No, I don't wanna." I grumble into my pillow, I try to get comfortable once again from my position on my stomach.

"Wake up master of darkness." He giggle into my ear straddling my body over the covers so I feel his weight almost crush me into the mattress with a wheeze.

"It oh great and handsome master of darkness to you." I try to close my eyes again away from the harshness of the light in the room.

"I have a surprise for you. Get up before I send Mikey in here to get you up." With a jolt I feel my foot being pulled from under the covers as Frank moves off of me. And then the covers move, I feel a draft waft onto my bare skin as I try and tug them back on.

"I'm naked!" I yelp only to be met by a cackle of evil intelligence by my boyfriend.

"I know! How do you think you got that way?" At that moment I let my eyes open and pull Frank onto the bed with me for a real morning kiss- who cares about morning breath or the taste of last night's garlic bread.

"We could stay naked all day..." I wiggle my eyebrows at Frank as I look up into his beautiful green eyes, his hair nicely trimmed short and eyes lightly rimmed with eyeliner. Fuck my boyfriend is hot.

"Please don't." We hear from the doorway making us jump apart, Mikey stands in the open doorway but flinches to put his hand over his eyes when he sees me uncovered. "Dude cover that thing up." He groans with a gagging noise.

"You have 10 minutes to get dressed and get in the car." They leave throwing a bunch of clothes at me. I just love my bed.

~~*~~

"Do you remember that one summer when we were kids, we decided to be ninjas and I convinced you to swing on the jungle gym and ended up swinging upside-down because you got your foot stuck?" I laughed looking out the window, the wind blowing my long now red hair in the breeze as it seemed we were trying to beat the sunrise. Mikey was in the back stretched out along the seats gradually falling asleep with the gentle movement of the car, whilst Frank was driving with a buzz like he had drank a dozen cups of coffee.

"Of course, I had blood rush for days after that, and Mom had to buy me new glasses." He shrugs tapping out a beat with his fingers to the soft music playing the car.

"You said that your super unicorn would be able to help you but instead it just got you more stuck because I lodged it next to your foot... you looked like a piñata!" I laughed remembering the small brown haired ninja hanging by his foot from a jungle gym.

"You and Ray from next door had to finally get me down by tickling me so I wriggled out, mom found the 3 of us in a pile underneath it giggling whilst I celebrated with my stuffed unicorn." He was right; Mikey's unicorn went everywhere with him and every time we got stuck in a situation he would somehow fit the unicorn in and when it was fixed he would praise the unicorn. I would never tell him that sometimes I made little problems for the unicorn to fix and that I still kept it on the shelf in my studio. I loved that unicorn just as much as him, I remembered waking up in the hospital feeling that little unicorn pressed to my side.

"That was the year Nanna died." Mikey whispers from the back and I instantly feel a sadness pull in my belly, I keep my eyes out the window but feel Frank's hand grab onto my own and squeeze it softly.

When Nanna died we lost our mother figure, we lost the person who would fix our clothes and make the most out of everything we had on little money. She was no longer there to teach piano to us, to sing to us and dance with in the living room.

"Your Nanna used to live in a beach house right?" Frank asks with a raised brow, we just mumble a yes, "And her ashes were scattered on the jersey shore?" he hints again.

"We didn't go, we tried to hitch hike our way but we were picked up by the cops half way." Mikey chuckles at the memory, the cops that picked us up told us we were going the wrong way to the beach, that our mom was looking for us and we were 'darn tootin in trouble'. We had spent all day at the station with them until she could pick us up at midnight after her shift.

"Well why don't you say hello?" Frank's voice is deep and passionate as we pull up to a stop. Mikey and I both shoot up to look out the window.

The sunrise was a perfectly beautiful run of colours that bled into each other, yellows melting into oranges melting into almost deep reds and fading into a grey against the night on the horizon stars already beginning to dissipating into the morning sky and the moon casting a faint outline where it would disappear pretty soon.

I've dreamt ever since I was little to go to a beach and just lay back in someone's arms reaching out into the hot sand and feel it in my fingers separate and mould back around it so carefully and delicately encasing them in the small grains.

Just digging my hand deep to feel the dry smooth feeling sitting on the beach being able to do that feeling two heart beats and two body heats, watching as the sun sets and the sand turn from a cold pale white in the light of the moon to a beautiful golden glow... that is where I had always wanted to be. And he had brought me here.

We walk down onto the Jersey Shore, Mikey and I go to the water letting out feet feel the tickle of the waves as they greet us. It was like saying hello to a woman we once lost but also to the dreams we once had. It just reminds me that every so often, we all gaze into the abyss. It's a depressing fact of life that eventually the clock expires; eventually the sand in the hourglass runs out. It's the leaving behind of everything that matters to us that hurts the most.

When we make our way back to where Frank sits I feel a tug in my chest, I know this is love and I didn't know I could feel it any more deeply than I did already, but in seeing him sat there his legs stretched out in front of him and arms back just watching us take in every moment- I know I couldn't fall any deeper.

"I wanted you to experience your dream, all the things you missed I wanted to make sure you got them one by one... I want to sit with you in the glow of morning holding you close and feeling the sand beneath our entwined hands and let the world fade away around us as long as we are together." Franks voice whispered into my ear making my body shiver and my mind melt at his sweet honey coated words, he pulls me down so I can lean against his chest, my eyes closing as I just feel him, his warmth and his hope and light consumes me.

We sit there as we watch the day roll in, Mikey on one side of me and Frank on the other with his head on my shoulder. I never thought I'd be here, I never thought I would make it past 20 but here I am able to see it all in front of me, I have someone to spend the here and the now with because the future is yet to come. I don't want to spend every moment thinking about the past, or the future and if I am going to spend the rest of my life with Frank but I just know I want to be here with him. i just couldn't believe what an asshole I was in the past.We often fall into the trap of believing that we still have time to do what's important. We still have tomorrow to speak of, to live through, to make use of. The hard truth is that we don't. We don't actually know if tomorrow will come – for us or for others. We watch the sun rise through squinted, narrowed eyes, resenting the glare of its light. When the roads are buzzing and growling with angry traffic and the veins of this city are thrumming with life and a pulse that never seems to falter, who would ever think of it? Who would ever stop to think – is this the last time? We are absorbed in the life of this world that we forget that we are what gives the world its soul. Who would ever think that today's sunset would be someone's last light? 

It is the need and drive to take a look at somebody you care about. And imagine them gone tomorrow.

I can't stop but to look down to my shoulder to check he was still there; thankfully my wide and open eyes were met with his warm green ones.

"You okay baby?" he asked stroking my cheek making it tingle with warmth.

"Yeah, I was just thinking don't worry, I'm fine." I sighed and placed my hand over the one that lay cupped on my jaw; I linked our fingers and pulled them down holding them in my lap.

"What were you thinking about?" Frank asked with worried eyes focused on our conjoined hands.

"The old me." I whispered into his ear and grazed my thumb over the back of the cold but smooth hand.

"The old you, the new you and the future you are the same person Gee, and that's who I fell in love with." I could feel Frank's heart beat faster through his chest and onto my shoulder, his hand warmer in mine. I never thought much of hand holding, I thought it was just a show, but now I realised what it truly meant- I need you, I want you, I'm here and I don't want to ever let you go.

"I love you." I stated as I bent my neck down to steal a kiss.

The feeling of cold against warm, coffee against cigarettes, soft against rough lips... I loved every kiss and every touch as they sent pulses and sparks through me and made my heart race like he was an intake of adrenaline.

"I love you too." As he whispered against my lips we hear the snap of a phone camera. We didn't need to wait for hours for the perfect moment to arrive before taking the shot. Outside that bubble, we didn't have that luxury every day. We don't have the "perfect moment." Because the only moment that matters is now, and what you do with it. Spend your whole life postponing it – whatever "it" may be for you – and deceive yourself: tell yourself that there's always another time for it. There will never be "another" time for it. The hour is here. What do you want to do with it? and for me in that moment is the sunrise, the waves and the sand.