Work Text:
“This is my first day without seeing you”
“This is my first day without you”
The thought attacks him and leaves him in a total state of abandonment, it is only the first hours of the morning but he has not been able to erase that feeling of not belonging to himself, that feeling where everything is foreign to him and nothing is located where it should.
It's his first day without him, the first day without being greeted by arms thinner and more comforting than his as soon as he arrives on the recording set, the first day without listening for eternal hours to a voice that in front of the cameras plays at being innocent, but that in the corridors of his mind could not sound more sophisticated and soft, It's the first day he doesn't see him running around doing everybody's work because in his workaholic mind no one will do the job as well as he does. It's his first day without jerry.
He feels an inexplicable emptiness where the hot warmth of his body should be, He knows that if he leans a little to that side he can feel the cold absence and he is afraid of plummeting because he knows that without his presence there is a cliff that drags him more and more to the edge. His face still feels the pressure of his fingers and his mouth still aches from every lip collapse that the audience applauded in crazed laughter. His shoulder still feels wet from the overflowing tears of what sometimes seemed to him to be a lost child, frightened, inconsolable, His body still feels the light weight of another hugging his, always in search of an affection that has eluded him since he was a child.
It's his first day without him, but he didn't need more than 24 hours to realize that he was going to miss him all his life, that his memory would never be blurred, that the love would only grow with the passage of time and that the hatred only lasted the instant of an eternity, but burned so deep that his mark never disappears, on the contrary, it calls terrified the resentment that his words are afraid to pronounce, then he speaks them, unbridled, and knows that he cannot repent because there is no way to prove that he does not feel them in his heart, So he turns a blind eye when his friends tell him about Jerry, when Patti calls him to find out how he's doing- He knows they're crude facades, but the pain makes him talk to that woman who was like his sister, an internal and unknown longing that seeks him to remember better times- When by accident his eyes capture an interview where Jerry appears, sad, dead in life, with a crooked smile that still moves something in his heart.
And he feels like the most selfish man on the planet, but that is inevitable, they were both men, they appeared to be, in reality they were just two immature children who played at chasing and hating each other when in privacy they were the only thing they needed to live. All he can do is yearn for, miss him and sink into his fantasy world while pretending to be fine, while playing at being the unbreakable man Jerry thought he was, with a beautiful wife and wonderful children, with a great job and the right people surrounding him. Deep down he knows he can't go on without him, he knows it but he's afraid to face it, because he knows that if comes to that conclusion and accepts it, he'll just want to run to Jerry and hold him in his arms once again for life, Because everywhere he goes, his company feels recent.
Because he can still smell that sweet cologne he always liked to wear, disguised with hints of his own cologne, stronger and more acidic in comparison, he can still feel the ghost of his breath hitting his face, intoxicating, a tender combination of cigarette and milkshakes, that duality that surrounds him like an eternally childish man. His hands itch, sweat, hurt, they themselves know that he needs to hold his body once again, take him by his little wrist and go chatting anywhere, hold his waist and squeeze the tender flesh that swirls between that point and their hips, touch his neck every time he explodes in all his beautiful madness, because people don't understand it and need to calm it down or it will be too much for those who have not yet discovered his maniacal charm ,though perhaps it does not need to be discovered, in younger times he had that selfish desire where only he could understand that harmonious disaster that was Jerry, a secret privilege that he boasted as his greatest treasure, because only he knew that you don't need to understand it, only enjoy it in all its beautiful glory.
He misses all of that, he misses it so hard that it hurts, but he knows that he is still too young for a heart attack, so he cries, silently, in the forbidden hours when the city falls into a deep sleep and the moon is the only companion in his insomnia, a crude replacement for the chatty presence of Jerry who never slept, remembers all that and cries, because he should have dared a little more, because at some time he himself promised that he would protect him of everything and everyone, it turned out that it did not save him from the worst of misfortunes, a broken heart loaded with hatred and insecurities, then loneliness tears him apart even more and he thinks that he would rather die right there of a heart attack, but he can't because It's only the first day without Jerry, and he can't allow himself to die of love.