111 - a
the house that dripped blood
My Chemical Romance/Panic! At The Disco (mostly gen, slight Frank/Mikey)
11,218 words. R. Third person. Written for the reel_band challenge, with the prompt The Shining. The title is completely stolen from a Mountain Goats song of the same name. I have such love for them. ♥
"“When do we leave?” Mikey asks, and Gerard steps back.
“Two weeks,” he says, and Mikey sees flashes of empty hallways and open doors as Gerard pulls his fingers away."
Mikey knows it’s a bad idea before Gerard even starts talking. He sees the squint in the corners of Gerard’s eyes, the twitch of his white fingers against the tabletop, the point of his tongue in the corner of his mouth like he only does when he’s concentrating on drawing or on thinking up plans he hopes and hopes will work but never do.
Mikey also knows that, whatever it is, he’s already agreed to it. He slumps down in the kitchen chair and waits for Gerard to start talking, but he already knows that he’ll say yes. He knows it like he knew in the fourth grade that Marty Hopkins, the class bully, spent nights covering his ears while his parents screamed at each other in the next room. He got shoved in more than one locker for saying it out loud, too.
He knows it like he always knew their father was drunk before he even slammed the car door shut, and like he knew that when Gerard went away to New York, he’d be back before Christmas. Sometimes, though, it’s better not to say these things out loud.
“So,” Gerard says, “I got this job.” He stops, and Mikey shrugs, sunk so far down that his neck is propped up on the back of the chair. “I mean, I have to go up for the interview, but Ray, the guy I spoke to on the phone, said that he was pretty sure they’d hire me either way, and that the interview was just a formality. Making sure I’m not a total crazy, I guess.” Gerard laughs a little at that, his fingers tap-tapping on the faded enamel of the kitchen table.
“Gee, wait a sec, back up,” Mikey says, sitting up a little. He scrubs a hand through his hair and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Got what job where?”
“It sounds so cool, Mikey,” Gerard says, and Mikey is pretty sure from Gerard’s tone of voice that he knows Mikey isn’t going to like it. “It’s this job in this old hotel in middle of nowhere Colorado. The Overlook, or something like that. Anyway, they close the hotel down during the winter, right? So they’re hiring me to be the fucking caretaker. It’s like, five months of living in this lush hotel for good pay, and plus, you can come and keep me company. Bob, who works in books with me, used to, like, go to school or something with Ray, and he hooked me up. Really fucking cool, right?” The smile that spreads across Gerard’s face is the kind that Mikey still doesn’t know how to say no to, not even after Gerard got wasted in his basement every night for a month after he got back from New York. Not even then.
And now isn’t even close to as bad as that was. Mikey sighs.
“Really fucking cool, Gee,” he says, and smiles. Gerard nudges Mikey’s calf under the table with the toes of his bare foot, and Mikey ignores the dread he felt at the mention of that name. The Overlook.
+
When Mikey startles awake in the middle of the night, he knows he’s been dreaming from the copper and acid taste in the back of his mouth. The only thing he can remember is the image of bloodied fingers leaving red clotted streaks against the green enamel of a bathtub he’s never seen before. That, and the white of snow piled so high he could barely see over it, swirling thick to land on the frozen ground.
+
Gerard comes back from the interview with a grin on his face so wide that Mikey knows he’s been driving for too long, that he’s tired and probably hasn’t slept, that he got the job. He doesn’t need any flash to know it, either. He can tell just from Gerard’s expression, stretched thin against his white teeth - half-crazed and just a bit skeletal. Gerard opens the door and pushes the screen with his elbow and wraps his arms around the backs of Mikey’s shoulders, fingers digging into Mikey’s shoulder blades hard enough to hurt.
“When do we leave?” Mikey asks, and Gerard steps back.
“Two weeks,” he says, and Mikey sees flashes of empty hallways and open doors as Gerard pulls his fingers away.
+
The first thing Mikey thinks about Ray is that he actually looks nice. It’s something about his hair and how natural the smile looks on his face. Ray is sitting behind the desk in his office, the suit clashing with his big ‘fro. Gerard takes a seat, but Mikey would much rather stay standing. They drove for eight hours straight to get here on closing day, and Mikey is left feeling antsy and anxious - Gerard spent the whole time curled up on his seat, talking about how good it was going to be, how good, and Mikey doesn’t think he’ll ever understand how that is actually possible. He shifts from one foot to the other, and Ray smiles when he notices.
“You can wander around if you want. Fair warning, though, it’s pretty easy to get lost, at least at first. If you need to find your way back, just ask anybody in a staff uniform, they’ll be able to help you.”
Gerard turns around and smiles, giving Mikey a half-wave. “Yeah, Mikey, no need to bore you with the details. I’ll catch up with you later.” Mikey looks at Gerard for a moment, trying to gauge how much he’s lying, but if he is, it’s not enough to matter, so Mikey just shrugs.
+
Mikey’s feet find the kitchen like they know the way, down long, winding corridors and twisted hallways, one flight of stairs and through a set of double doors. It’s all bright shiny metal, wiped down and cleaned off, sparkling in the bright florescent lighting, and Mikey can’t help but run his fingers over the cool countertops, the sound of his footsteps loud against the linoleum.
“You’re Mikey Way,” a voice says behind him, deep and amused, and Mikey can see him in a flash before he even starts to look, pale skin and tattoos all up and down his arms, across his chest and stomach, smile like he’s laughing at something Mikey doesn’t quite understand.
“Frankie,” Mikey says, before shaking his head, shaking it off and turning toward the voice. “Frank Iero, I mean. Hi.” Frank smiles and sketches a wave. Mikey looks at the tattoos peeking up from the collar of his white chef uniform, black ink on his wrists when he bends his arms, shirt sleeves rolled up. He knows where each stops and the next starts, a blueprint across his eyelids.
“You’re better than I am,” Frank says, casually leaning back against the counter, elbows on the top. “Much better, I think.” Mikey shrugs fluidly and scuffs his toe against the floor, images in his head of little Frankie Iero talking to his grandmother with his mouth closed, her voice a smile saying shh, it’s our little secret, sweetie, ours.
“You know more about it, though,” is all he says. Too much a habit to keep it quiet. Frank just shrugs.
“Shining?” Frank says, “Well, maybe. Not much to know, really. Some things you see and some you don’t.” He pauses for a moment, and his grin widens, turning wicked and sharp. “So, tell me what you know about me, Mikey Way.”
Mikey frowns, but Frank just motions him on, and Mikey doesn’t really know Frank, but it feels a little like he does, the way he can see right into his head and know things that he might not even know about Gerard.
“You’re the head Chef here,” he starts, closing his eyes to let the words come faster. “They let you cook because you’re really fucking good and you’re ballsy enough to change it up without asking for permission. They let the tattoo thing slide, just avoid sending you out to talk to guests. Your first girlfriend’s name was, um. Susanne. Susan, something like that. You called her Susie. She’s already got two kids - Anthony and Jessica. Um. You don’t like the cold, and you’re - scared of room 237.” Mikey opens his eyes. “What’s in room 237?” Frank is silent for long enough that Mikey thinks he might not talk at all, but then he shrugs his shoulders like he’s saying fuck it, whatever.
“Have you ever been in a place where someone’s died? Like, were murdered, or killed themselves, or whatever?” Mikey has, but only once, and he was only thirteen then, and hadn’t really understood what was happening, not until the cold fingers wrapped around his neck, thumbs pressing against the hollow of his throat. He nods. “Well, this hotel is old, around a hundred years old, and a lot of bad things have happened here, I guess. Room 237 is just one of those places.” Mikey’s not sure what to say to that, so he just nods again.
He wants to ask Frank, is this place bad?, really wants to, but he’s far too fucking cowardly to want the actual answer.
+
“Your brother,” Frank starts, standing over a gallon tub of vanilla ice cream, scoop in one hand, two bowls on the table, “is he okay?”
“What do you mean?” Mikey asks, eyes narrowing defensively behind his glasses. Frank just shrugs.
“Don’t know, really. Just. Is he?” Mikey tries to find something sly in Frank’s face, something underhanded, but he sees nothing but earnest worry and a tinge of confusion.
“Well, what kind of person thinks it’s a good idea to spend five months isolated on a mountain?” Mikey asks. He’s thinking of Gerard passed out on the floor of Mikey’s living room, Gerard holed up in his room for five days working his way through an entire sketchbook, Gerard at their Grandmother’s funeral.
“I see,” Frank says, and Mikey wonders how much of that he saw.
+
Frank turns to Mikey as he’s about to leave, bowls of ice cream empty on the counter, and Mikey pauses, waiting.
“Look,” Frank says, “mostly, nothing much happens here. But being trapped in a place like this for five months and no way out does some weird things to people, so.” He sighs like he doesn’t want to have to say it, and Mikey is pretty sure he knows, anyway, what Frank is going to say, but he wants to hear it out loud. “Just, if you need anything, give me a ring, okay? Even if the phones don’t work.”
Mikey smiles, and waves, leaving Frank alone in his kitchen.
+
The ballroom is all gaudy gold leaf and mirrored walls, immense and frivolously expensive looking. Mikey wanders in from the hallway, following his feet. He hears his footsteps echo, and stops just inside the doorway. The bar across the room is empty, packed and cornered away, and the chairs are stacked against the far wall, neat, and dusted, and lifeless. Mikey breathes out slowly and turns in a careful circle, thinking of ball gowns and tuxedos, twenties flapper fringe and slicked back hair.
Mikey, he almost hears, almost. Mikey, look at us.
Look at us, Mikey. Two voices. Two. Behind him.
Mikey stops spinning. He cocks his head to the side, listening, and feels the shiver of air against the back of his neck, goose pimples on his arms. Fingers trailing over his skin, digging into him, pulling at his shirt.
Look at us!
Mikey catches a glimpse of two faces reflected against in the smooth metallic walls in front of him, hand prints in clotted blood, brownish-red, carefully pressed to glass, but -
“Mikey?”
- when he turns, gasp trapped in his throat, Gerard is in the doorway with Ray, and Mikey feels like an idiot, half-crazy, but he knows he is neither.
“Mikey? You okay?” Gerard’s eyebrows are furrowed, and Mikey wonders just how pale he is, how frightened he looks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice is slightly huskier than usual, and just a tad too loud.
Gerard eyes him skeptically, but Mikey is used to being quiet, and besides, who’d believe him, anyway.
+
“There’s one thing you should probably know, before we finalize things,” Ray says with an apologetic shrug, slumped behind his desk. Mikey is mostly looking out the window, only half listening to the conversation. The chairs in the Ray’s office are over-stuffed and comfortable, and he’s happy just leaving the details to Gerard seated next to him, and think about fingerprints outlined in blood, and grinning faces in the mirror.
“What’s that?” Gerard asks. Mikey can feel Gerard glance at him, still half-overprotective, the way he is.
“Well - hm. It’s gets cold up here - snows enough that the phone lines go out every winter, and normally don’t get fixed until the season starts up again. So, here’s the thing. We’ve had problems in the past with people in your position. The isolation gets to them and - things can get ugly. It’s only gotten really bad once - you may have heard about it? A few years back? A kid named Jon Walker and two of his friends came up here to take care of the place, and. Lets just put it this way - Walker chopped his two friends up with an axe, walked into the Presidential Suite, and shot himself in the head.” Ray’s smile is still apologetic, saying, hey, what can you do? These things happen.
“That’s -” Gerard starts, and Mikey looks up at him, the smile he pastes on his face that Mikey knows is only half fake. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem for us.” Mikey knows where to listen, and there’s something of morbid curiosity in the back of Gerard’s throat, a touch of anticipation. Mikey won’t be surprised if he finds Gerard in the Presidential Suite, drawing what he thinks it should look like - the empty eyes, blood and brain matter and bits of bone splattered against the floral wallpaper. He half-smiles and looks out the window.
“Do you happen to know the names of his friends?” Mikey asks before he can stop himself, thinking of the voices behind him, wondering if naming them will help, maybe. It probably won’t.
“Um,” Ray says, shifting through the files on his desk. Eventually, he comes up with a slip of paper tucked in the back of some enormously huge file, and he glances up with a smile. “It says here their names were Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith.”
Gerard is looking at Mikey again, but Mikey doesn’t try to decode his expression. Too much effort.
“Thanks,” he says.
+
“I can’t believe there’s no alcohol in this whole place,” Gerard says, hauling sweaters and jeans out of his suitcase and stuffing them in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe. Mikey just snorts and continues to fold his t-shirts, knowing this is probably the last time he’ll bother until he has to pack up again. “Okay, so, yeah, it’s probably for the best that they clean this place out, not to mention less expensive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do a little complaining.” There’s a false note in Gerard’s voice, but Mikey isn’t sure why or what it pertains to, a sharpness that could be as much on topic as not.
Mikey glances up to find Gerard looking at him, a hoodie in one hand and a thoughtful expression on his face. He raises his eyebrows, finishes folding the shirt without looking, and waits for Gerard to start talking again. Gerard bites his tongue and looks back down at the black hoodie in his hands, left over from high school, the one year of overlap where Mikey could sit with him at lunch and neither of them were lonely.
“What did you see in the ballroom, Mikey?” Mikey is expecting the change in the tone in Gerard’s voice, but isn’t quite ready for it. He picks up another t-shirt, folding it and thinking about the scrape of fingernails on gold-leafed walls.
“Does it matter?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. Gerard thinks about how he can save people he’s never met - there’s no way that Mikey is at all exempt. Gerard doesn’t even bother responding to the question, just abandons his suitcase and wanders across the room to the half-kitchen to make coffee, glancing over his shoulder as he spoons out grounds. “Dead people,” Mikey says. “Handprints in blood. Words, maybe. Voices whispering to me, my name.” Mikey shrugs, like it’s something he’s seen before, and it sort of is - the voices are new, but the blood is not.
“Hm,” Gerard says, thoughtful, while the coffee machine percolates.
“Grab your sketchpad,” Mikey says, folding his last shirt and putting the stack in the second drawer from the top, “and I’ll tell you about it.”
+
The first few weeks, Mikey sticks close to Gerard, sitting with a book in the bedroom, listening to the scratch of Gerard’s pen on paper. Leaning against the side entrance by the garage while Gerard smokes. The air smells like winter on its way, sharp and edged in Mikey’s lungs as he breathes in, the chafe of wind on his fingers. He stuffs them in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.
“Did you know mob guys used to come up here?” he asks, staring at the driveway that winds down the mountain, one route in, one route out.
“Mm?” Gerard’s noise is half-surprised and half-curious and he glances over, his cheeks hollowed out as he breathes in cigarette smoke.
“Yep,” Mikey says.
“Should I ask how you know?” Gerard asks, smoke escaping his mouth as he talks, swirling in white trails around his head, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair. Mikey shrugs. “C’mon, Mikey, you can’t say something like that without further elaboration.”
“They shot someone in the honeymoon suite,” Mikey says lifting one shoulder out of indifference. Gerard raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, like. An execution thing. Brains on the walls, bits of skull. It made the papers.” There’d been a splatter of blood and flecks of gray when he’d walked in, all across the horribly gaudy wallpaper, a newspaper soaking in a puddle of congealed red, proclaiming the headline in large letters. Dead like a picture in a book, and when Mikey had moved to brush his hands over the stained wall, he’d just felt the smooth of paper.
“And people wonder why I’m so morbid,” Gerard mutters, sucking on the end of his cigarette again.
“You’d be morbid anyway,” Mikey says, “I just help.”
+
There’s a snowmobile out in the garage, and Mikey can’t help but check periodically, making sure that it’s still there with all parts intact. He knows that it’s nothing he can control, really, but something about having a way out goes a long way toward giving him piece of mind.
Standing in the dusty garage with his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, Mikey wonders how long they have until it starts snowing.
+
The third week, Gerard holes up in the first floor study with all of his art supplies.
“You’ll see when I’m done,” he says when Mikey asks, closing the door with more force than strictly necessary. Mikey is used to his moods, the bursts of frenzied inspiration, and so he wanders the hotel by himself for the first time since the staff left. He avoids the ballroom, leaves the second floor altogether, and doesn’t dare go near any of the suites.
The kitchen holds impressions of Frank, whispers of him yelling don’t over-salt the soup, dumbass, to his colleagues, bouncing on his toes as he pours sauce on a steak, standing in the walk in freezer with his hands on his hips, trying to decide what to defrost. Mikey sits at the table with his eyes closed and wonders why the kitchen is the only place in the hotel that doesn’t feel like it’s preparing to attack, peel off his skin with razored claws, slash at his pale belly until his entrails spill through his fingers.
And maybe, maybe even make him like it.
+
There’s an old fashioned radio in the main office, the only form of external communication other than the phone lines, ancient enough that Mikey doesn’t really know how to use it. Gerard probably would, but the thought doesn’t leave Mikey feeling comforted, although he’s not exactly sure why. He twists a knob, listening to the click as the radio turns on, presses down the tab to hear the static that comes out of the speakers.
“Hello?” he says into the mic, but there’s no answer.
+
Mikey dreams -
The door of room 237 opening under his fingers, the barest brush of his fingertips against the wood. The green rug is soft under the soles of his feet, white against the fiber, green upholstered couches, green-shaded lamps, green lights trailing up three steps into the bathroom.
Mikey’s fingers brush against the wall as he walks, as he dreams he walks, and the bathroom is bright, the light reflecting off the mirror and glancing on the drawn shower curtain, pale pale green ceramic tub. The slosh of water is loud in his ears, thick and wet, the sound of movement, and he doesn’t want to pull back the curtain, doesn’t want to see.
Long, white fingers grasp and pull at the fabric, curling with bitten fingernails and - he looks in the mirror, then, and it’s Gerard’s face looking back at him.
+
He wakes with his hands scrubbing over his face, short nails biting into his skin, and Gerard’s breathing from the bed next to his. He can feel his pulse rabbit-quick against the press of his fingertips, his chest a too-fast rise and fall.
“Gerard?” His voice is softer, even, than it usually is, questioning, but Gerard is asleep, and Gerard couldn’t help him anyway.
“I don’t think I like it here very much,” he says out loud, even though there’s no one to hear it. He wonders, vaguely, if he’ll regret it later.
+
Gerard leaves the study with charcoal under his fingernails and watercolor paint staining the sleeve of his shirt, pen marks like wide brush strokes all across his fingers and the backs of his hands, but he refuses to let Mikey in or to see any of what he’s done. He shuts the door firmly behind him, pale fingers scrabbling with the lock, left hand white knuckled on the doorknob, full of frenetic energy, eyes too white around the edges, smile too wide. Mikey doesn’t think much of it, but he gives Gerard his space and wonders what he’s doing, locked up in the tiny room by himself.
+
He’s in the game room the second time he sees them.
The dart board is ancient, antique like everything else in this hotel, and Mikey’s aim is off, hitting the outer rim, if at all. He doesn’t much care, just wishes that he had someone to play pool with, now that Gerard leaves the study for meals and little else. Sometimes not even that, unless Mikey knocks.
The whisper of sound over his shoulder isn’t anything that Mikey can ignore, not in this hotel, but he doesn’t turn fast enough to see anything more than the glimmer of movement in the hallway. Mikey stuffs his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, still clutching three of the six darts, the muscles in his back tightening as he waits.
Mikey, he hears, the voice curling around the back of his neck, trickling down his spine, and he’s moving out into the hallway without a thought, dropping the darts on the floor and stepping with quiet feet.
Come find us, Mikey, it says, a whisper. Come find us.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, his feet bare against the soft carpet, almost completely inaudible. He passes rows of nearly identical doors, all closed and locked tight and holding so many secrets he can’t even being to imagine them all, everything this hotel has seen, reflected in every mirror, soaked into every carpet and bedspread. Moving slow, slow like he’s underwater, pushing through mud and decay. The flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye makes him stop, and he turns, every movement slightly delayed.
Look at us, the boy says, his lips pressed together, motionless. We’re right here. His skin is pale, his dark hair sweeping across one eye and the bridge of his nose, his left hand brushing the palm of the boy next to him, slim and full-lipped. We’re here, look at us.
“Spencer?” Mikey hears himself speak, but doesn’t remember thinking to, only - Spencer nods and steps closer, one hand raised as if to touch Mikey’s cheek.
And you’ll be just like us, he says but doesn’t, cold cold fingers brushing over Mikey’s cheekbone and down to his lips. A buzzing starts in Mikey’s ears at the touch, vibrating through his bones, down to his fingertips and back up. Mikey can see Brendon over Spencer’s shoulder, and he’s holding a finger to his lips with a smile, saying shhhhh, don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, I promise, his voice low and gravelly.
The buzzing turns into a piercing shriek, and Mikey stumbles back, his hands over his ears, but the sound is all in his head, pulsing through him, and there’s nothing he can do but watch Spencer smile and step back, his hand brushing Brendon’s again.
And you’ll never, ever be alone. Not ever again.
The noise gets louder, knives of broken glass in the backs of his eyelids and under his jaw and -
there’s blood, blood everywhere, thick and congealed and soaking into the carpet, but he doesn’t know whose blood it is, and it’s all over his hands and his face, coating his tongue and dripping down the back of his throat -
he piled them on the bed, hands and legs and shoulder blades, severed fingers and tendons, teeth and nails and hunks of hair, exposed bone and chunks of muscle and he knows that he’s done what needed doing, punishment for bad souls and blasphemers and that they asked for it -
gerard’s handwriting across the bottom of the page is smeared in black ink, the drawing fragile as a doll house, all sweeps of watercolor paint and think lines of pen, bold faces stretched in fear and pain, smiles of the half-dead -
the thing beneath the water reaches for him with rotting fingers, skin melting from the bone, and it grabs his ankle, fingernails sinking into his leg as it pulls him down -
mikey, it says to him, mikey mikey mikey, you stupid little boy, you can’t stop us, you can’t, we’ve been here longer than you and we know - once the snow sets in you’re a goner -
he wakes up.
Sprawled on the carpet in the middle of the hallway, Mikey stares at the ceiling and wonders at the warmth on his face, spreading. He presses his fingers to his skin and finds wetness. Blood. Blood on his face - his nose is bleeding.
Mikey sits up slowly, tilts his head back, his mind full of the grotesque - severed fingers black with rot, the slosh of a body moving in the water, the cold whiteness of snow on the back of his neck. He cups his hand under his nose, the copper and salt taste of blood in the back of his throat, and he waits for it to stop.
+
Mikey walks into the bedroom with blood dried in the spaces between his fingers and a tackiness spread across his face. Gerard is, surprisingly, sitting at the round table in their common room, and he looks up when Mikey quietly closes the door. It’s almost like Mikey has interrupted him mid-conversation, but there’s no one else in the room.
“Mikey? What the fuck?” Gerard’s voice trails off; he’s waiting for Mikey to talk. Mikey can tell from his expression that he’s not planning on waiting very long.
“Gee. Chill. I just got a nosebleed, I’m fine.” Mikey leaves out everything else, partially because he doesn’t know where to start, but mostly because he just doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s used to the skeptical looks Gerard sends his way, and he just stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Really?” Gerard asks.
“No, actually, I got into a fistfight with that other guy who’s living here,” Mikey says, voice mostly deadpan. “Seriously Gee, nosebleed. It stopped; I just have to wash my hands and face.”
Mikey doesn’t look over his shoulder as he heads for the bathroom, but he can feel Gerard still looking at him.
+
Mikey dreams -
The ballroom full of people, fringed dresses swirling with movement, ties loosened, jackets left slung on the back of chairs. Waiters in tuxes carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres along with their snooty accents.
“Can I interest you in something to drink?”
He turns and finds himself facing the bar, bartender smiling almost kindly.
“After all,” the man says, “we’re both waiting for the same thing, aren’t we? Your brother, Gerard, if I’m correct? I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced.”
The man smiles, but instead of extending his hand, he brandishes a hatchet, red tipped and worn-handled, bringing it down full force on the wood of the bar. No one even turns to look, and he pulls it out effortlessly, leaving a long gash behind.
“I’m Jon,” the man says, his grin wide and earnest as he raises the hatchet again. “Jon Walker.
+
Mikey wakes with a gasp - again, and he’s not going to get used to it, he knows he’s not.
((Frankie,)) he sends, still half-asleep and half-startled, concentrating on Frank’s face, the curve of his smile. He shifts until he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, covers pooled over his hips, back against the wall. His fingers clench at the quilt, worrying it between his hands, nervous movement. ((Frankie, are you there?))
He’s not sure if it’s going to work, not sure at all, but he can see Jon’s kind smile and the red painted blade of the hatchet. Splintered wood and the clink of breaking glass.
((Mikey?)) Frank’s voice is webbed with sleep, humid heat all around him, caught in his throat and pooled against his tongue. ((What is it?))
Mikey holds the memory of Jon in his dream, Spencer and Brendon touching his face, and he says, ((nothing, nothing. Just. Making sure that I can.))
He can feel Frank thinking, can feel the light weight of the cotton sheet over his body, and Frank’s ((oh)) is more thank slightly skeptical. Mikey doesn’t blame him.
((Sorry I woke you up, Frankie,)) he says, and he means it, but he can’t help the relief that rushes through him so strong that Frank can probably feel it.
((Any time,)) Frank says. Mikey hopes that he means it.
+
It gets colder, and Mikey doesn’t tell Gerard that he’s dreaming. He’s not sure that Gerard would care really, which is - unfair, but not necessarily untrue, and Mikey isn’t one to put a damper on anyone else’s good time, much less his own brother’s.
“I love this place,” Gerard says over breakfast, his mouth full of eggs and defrosted waffles. “Nothing like a big fucking hotel in the middle of fucking nowhere to get the creative juices flowing.” Mikey shrugs and nods and wonders what Gerard is actually painting. “Seriously, what the fuck. I haven’t been this productive since I was still in art school.”
Mikey makes a noise of approval, and Gerard turns back to his breakfast. Mikey sips his coffee, and tried not to think of blood under his fingernails, and how he half thinks Gerard is crazy for wanting to stay even for the rest of the day. Which just proves how far Gerard is willing to go in the name of art.
“Are you ever going to show me?” Mikey asks, mostly unused to secrecy of any kind from Gerard, and uncomfortable with what he’s seen of it in the past.
“You getting nosey on me, Mikes?” Gerard asks, and his voice is lighthearted, but there’s something sharp around the edges that Mikey isn’t used to at all, has never heard from his brother.
“You getting sensitive on me, Gee?” Mikey asks in return, his voice soft, and he can see the flinty sharpness in Gerard fade a little, but he still doesn’t know the origin. Defusing it for now does nothing about later.
“I’ll show you, dipshit, just wait until I’m done. Works in progress are rarely beautiful, let me tell you.”
Mikey knows. He’s seen most of Gerard’s works in progress in the past. He wonders what’s different this time.
+
Mikey stops in front of room 237, stands motionless, hand extended as if to grasp the cold metal of the door handle. He thinks of the dreams of the body in the bathtub, over and over and over, and it’s always Gerard’s face he sees in the mirror, large eyes and too-wide smile. Always long fingers reaching back to pull the curtain, the slosh of water spilling over the rim to spread on the floor, and hard dread in the pit of his stomach when he wakes up.
Gerard’s face, always Gerard’s face, and it’s the thought of his brother in that room with the thing in the tub that makes his hand grasp the doorknob and turn.
Locked.
Mikey lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and feels just a little dumb. Why wouldn’t the door be locked? They all are. They always are.
He lets his hand fall back to his side and moves back down the hall, one glance over his shoulder, just to make sure.
+
Mikey stares at Gerard all through dinner, tapping his fingers on the table in an unconscious and unusual show of tension. Gerard is just finishing his macaroni and cheese when he finally sighs.
“What the hell, Mikey?” he says, not angrily. Somewhat frustrated, but not in any way that Mikey doesn’t recognize - Mikey wonders how long it’s been since Gerard has been this clear to him.
“Nothing,” Mikey says, and shrugs. Gerard rolls his eyes; Mikey can hear the second sigh that he bites back.
“No, seriously, Mikey. What the hell?” More anger this time. Easily sparked, Mikey thinks.
“Just -” he starts, cutting himself off. “Do me a favor okay?”
“Sure, whatever.” Gerard shrugs, and Mikey wonders if he’s agreeing out of curiosity and the desire to get Mikey off his back more than anything else.
“Don’t go into room 237.”
“Why not?” Gerard asks, tilting his head to the side. Mikey fidgets in his seat, shifting until he can feel his hip crack back into place.
“Just don’t,” is all he says.
+
The snow starts during the night.
Mikey has been listening the radio all week, offhand and half-aware, as the newscaster tracks the first storm system that season strong enough to make it over the mountains and build, so he’s not really surprised at the heavy fall of snow outside his window.
It doesn’t mean he has to like it.
There are already more than four or five inches on the ground when he wakes up, scrubbing a hand through his hair, grabbing his glasses off the bedside table, and glancing out the window.
“Shit,” he says, out loud, fragments of his spell in the hallway coming back to him, shards of when the snow falls, mikey, and you think you can stop us?.
Mikey presses his fingers into his temples at the sudden throb behind his eyes, but it eases after a few moments of complete non-thought, and so Mikey gets up to start the coffee. Gerard is still asleep; Mikey’s not actually sure when he came back, anyway. He’d still been locked up in his study when Mikey turned off the bedside lamp.
While the coffee is percolating, Mikey turns back to the window, the clean fall of pure white outside. He’d always liked snow as a kid. It covered everything up, hiding bodies and memories and voices - real, live static. Outside, in that, for a few moments, he didn’t have to think about anything at all. And even if it was fake cleanliness, fake emptiness, it was better than nothing.
Now Mikey’s not so sure.
+
The phones stop working sometime after noon.
“It’s fine,” Gerard says around a sandwich. “It’s not like we were using them much anyway.” Mikey fidgets in his seat and shrugs. He can still feel the goose bumps that ran up his arm when he’d put the receiver to his ears and heard nothing at all.
Gerard is humming a cheerful song under his breath, with charcoal outlining his fingernails and a shiver spreads down Mikey’s spine when Gerard smiles at him, razor sharp.
“Besides, Mikey,” Gerard says, “everything important is already in here with us.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mikey asks. He keeps his voice as expressionless as he can, but the tinge of fear is still there, the cold that tingles down to his fingertips when Gerard turns to look at him.
“You’re the psychic one, Mikes, don’t you know already?” And when Gerard laughs, it sounds exactly like it always does, half-giggle and high-pitched, but Mikey is still thinking of Gerard’s cutting smile and the knowing tone of his voice.
+
Mikey leaves Gerard in the kitchen, and it feels to him like he’s running, even though his steps are slow and measured, even and equally weighted. It’s still running.
He stops in the conservatory on the top floor, a room all glass and tile floor, cold from the chill of the windows.
((Frankie,)) he thinks as hard as he can, projecting it loud, ((I think you were right. I think that - I don’t know.))
He presses his fingers to the glass, the outline of his palm in condensation.
((Mikey?)) Frankie’s voice is tinged with Florida-warmth and the beach outside his window, ever-summer and heat. ((What’re you talking about?)) He crackles in and out like static, sometimes indistinct, but there, actually there.
((The phone lines are down,)) Mikey says, ((I’m giving you a ring.))
+
continued in part two
My Chemical Romance/Panic! At The Disco (mostly gen, slight Frank/Mikey)
11,218 words. R. Third person. Written for the reel_band challenge, with the prompt The Shining. The title is completely stolen from a Mountain Goats song of the same name. I have such love for them. ♥
"“When do we leave?” Mikey asks, and Gerard steps back.
“Two weeks,” he says, and Mikey sees flashes of empty hallways and open doors as Gerard pulls his fingers away."
Mikey knows it’s a bad idea before Gerard even starts talking. He sees the squint in the corners of Gerard’s eyes, the twitch of his white fingers against the tabletop, the point of his tongue in the corner of his mouth like he only does when he’s concentrating on drawing or on thinking up plans he hopes and hopes will work but never do.
Mikey also knows that, whatever it is, he’s already agreed to it. He slumps down in the kitchen chair and waits for Gerard to start talking, but he already knows that he’ll say yes. He knows it like he knew in the fourth grade that Marty Hopkins, the class bully, spent nights covering his ears while his parents screamed at each other in the next room. He got shoved in more than one locker for saying it out loud, too.
He knows it like he always knew their father was drunk before he even slammed the car door shut, and like he knew that when Gerard went away to New York, he’d be back before Christmas. Sometimes, though, it’s better not to say these things out loud.
“So,” Gerard says, “I got this job.” He stops, and Mikey shrugs, sunk so far down that his neck is propped up on the back of the chair. “I mean, I have to go up for the interview, but Ray, the guy I spoke to on the phone, said that he was pretty sure they’d hire me either way, and that the interview was just a formality. Making sure I’m not a total crazy, I guess.” Gerard laughs a little at that, his fingers tap-tapping on the faded enamel of the kitchen table.
“Gee, wait a sec, back up,” Mikey says, sitting up a little. He scrubs a hand through his hair and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Got what job where?”
“It sounds so cool, Mikey,” Gerard says, and Mikey is pretty sure from Gerard’s tone of voice that he knows Mikey isn’t going to like it. “It’s this job in this old hotel in middle of nowhere Colorado. The Overlook, or something like that. Anyway, they close the hotel down during the winter, right? So they’re hiring me to be the fucking caretaker. It’s like, five months of living in this lush hotel for good pay, and plus, you can come and keep me company. Bob, who works in books with me, used to, like, go to school or something with Ray, and he hooked me up. Really fucking cool, right?” The smile that spreads across Gerard’s face is the kind that Mikey still doesn’t know how to say no to, not even after Gerard got wasted in his basement every night for a month after he got back from New York. Not even then.
And now isn’t even close to as bad as that was. Mikey sighs.
“Really fucking cool, Gee,” he says, and smiles. Gerard nudges Mikey’s calf under the table with the toes of his bare foot, and Mikey ignores the dread he felt at the mention of that name. The Overlook.
+
When Mikey startles awake in the middle of the night, he knows he’s been dreaming from the copper and acid taste in the back of his mouth. The only thing he can remember is the image of bloodied fingers leaving red clotted streaks against the green enamel of a bathtub he’s never seen before. That, and the white of snow piled so high he could barely see over it, swirling thick to land on the frozen ground.
+
Gerard comes back from the interview with a grin on his face so wide that Mikey knows he’s been driving for too long, that he’s tired and probably hasn’t slept, that he got the job. He doesn’t need any flash to know it, either. He can tell just from Gerard’s expression, stretched thin against his white teeth - half-crazed and just a bit skeletal. Gerard opens the door and pushes the screen with his elbow and wraps his arms around the backs of Mikey’s shoulders, fingers digging into Mikey’s shoulder blades hard enough to hurt.
“When do we leave?” Mikey asks, and Gerard steps back.
“Two weeks,” he says, and Mikey sees flashes of empty hallways and open doors as Gerard pulls his fingers away.
+
The first thing Mikey thinks about Ray is that he actually looks nice. It’s something about his hair and how natural the smile looks on his face. Ray is sitting behind the desk in his office, the suit clashing with his big ‘fro. Gerard takes a seat, but Mikey would much rather stay standing. They drove for eight hours straight to get here on closing day, and Mikey is left feeling antsy and anxious - Gerard spent the whole time curled up on his seat, talking about how good it was going to be, how good, and Mikey doesn’t think he’ll ever understand how that is actually possible. He shifts from one foot to the other, and Ray smiles when he notices.
“You can wander around if you want. Fair warning, though, it’s pretty easy to get lost, at least at first. If you need to find your way back, just ask anybody in a staff uniform, they’ll be able to help you.”
Gerard turns around and smiles, giving Mikey a half-wave. “Yeah, Mikey, no need to bore you with the details. I’ll catch up with you later.” Mikey looks at Gerard for a moment, trying to gauge how much he’s lying, but if he is, it’s not enough to matter, so Mikey just shrugs.
+
Mikey’s feet find the kitchen like they know the way, down long, winding corridors and twisted hallways, one flight of stairs and through a set of double doors. It’s all bright shiny metal, wiped down and cleaned off, sparkling in the bright florescent lighting, and Mikey can’t help but run his fingers over the cool countertops, the sound of his footsteps loud against the linoleum.
“You’re Mikey Way,” a voice says behind him, deep and amused, and Mikey can see him in a flash before he even starts to look, pale skin and tattoos all up and down his arms, across his chest and stomach, smile like he’s laughing at something Mikey doesn’t quite understand.
“Frankie,” Mikey says, before shaking his head, shaking it off and turning toward the voice. “Frank Iero, I mean. Hi.” Frank smiles and sketches a wave. Mikey looks at the tattoos peeking up from the collar of his white chef uniform, black ink on his wrists when he bends his arms, shirt sleeves rolled up. He knows where each stops and the next starts, a blueprint across his eyelids.
“You’re better than I am,” Frank says, casually leaning back against the counter, elbows on the top. “Much better, I think.” Mikey shrugs fluidly and scuffs his toe against the floor, images in his head of little Frankie Iero talking to his grandmother with his mouth closed, her voice a smile saying shh, it’s our little secret, sweetie, ours.
“You know more about it, though,” is all he says. Too much a habit to keep it quiet. Frank just shrugs.
“Shining?” Frank says, “Well, maybe. Not much to know, really. Some things you see and some you don’t.” He pauses for a moment, and his grin widens, turning wicked and sharp. “So, tell me what you know about me, Mikey Way.”
Mikey frowns, but Frank just motions him on, and Mikey doesn’t really know Frank, but it feels a little like he does, the way he can see right into his head and know things that he might not even know about Gerard.
“You’re the head Chef here,” he starts, closing his eyes to let the words come faster. “They let you cook because you’re really fucking good and you’re ballsy enough to change it up without asking for permission. They let the tattoo thing slide, just avoid sending you out to talk to guests. Your first girlfriend’s name was, um. Susanne. Susan, something like that. You called her Susie. She’s already got two kids - Anthony and Jessica. Um. You don’t like the cold, and you’re - scared of room 237.” Mikey opens his eyes. “What’s in room 237?” Frank is silent for long enough that Mikey thinks he might not talk at all, but then he shrugs his shoulders like he’s saying fuck it, whatever.
“Have you ever been in a place where someone’s died? Like, were murdered, or killed themselves, or whatever?” Mikey has, but only once, and he was only thirteen then, and hadn’t really understood what was happening, not until the cold fingers wrapped around his neck, thumbs pressing against the hollow of his throat. He nods. “Well, this hotel is old, around a hundred years old, and a lot of bad things have happened here, I guess. Room 237 is just one of those places.” Mikey’s not sure what to say to that, so he just nods again.
He wants to ask Frank, is this place bad?, really wants to, but he’s far too fucking cowardly to want the actual answer.
+
“Your brother,” Frank starts, standing over a gallon tub of vanilla ice cream, scoop in one hand, two bowls on the table, “is he okay?”
“What do you mean?” Mikey asks, eyes narrowing defensively behind his glasses. Frank just shrugs.
“Don’t know, really. Just. Is he?” Mikey tries to find something sly in Frank’s face, something underhanded, but he sees nothing but earnest worry and a tinge of confusion.
“Well, what kind of person thinks it’s a good idea to spend five months isolated on a mountain?” Mikey asks. He’s thinking of Gerard passed out on the floor of Mikey’s living room, Gerard holed up in his room for five days working his way through an entire sketchbook, Gerard at their Grandmother’s funeral.
“I see,” Frank says, and Mikey wonders how much of that he saw.
+
Frank turns to Mikey as he’s about to leave, bowls of ice cream empty on the counter, and Mikey pauses, waiting.
“Look,” Frank says, “mostly, nothing much happens here. But being trapped in a place like this for five months and no way out does some weird things to people, so.” He sighs like he doesn’t want to have to say it, and Mikey is pretty sure he knows, anyway, what Frank is going to say, but he wants to hear it out loud. “Just, if you need anything, give me a ring, okay? Even if the phones don’t work.”
Mikey smiles, and waves, leaving Frank alone in his kitchen.
+
The ballroom is all gaudy gold leaf and mirrored walls, immense and frivolously expensive looking. Mikey wanders in from the hallway, following his feet. He hears his footsteps echo, and stops just inside the doorway. The bar across the room is empty, packed and cornered away, and the chairs are stacked against the far wall, neat, and dusted, and lifeless. Mikey breathes out slowly and turns in a careful circle, thinking of ball gowns and tuxedos, twenties flapper fringe and slicked back hair.
Mikey, he almost hears, almost. Mikey, look at us.
Look at us, Mikey. Two voices. Two. Behind him.
Mikey stops spinning. He cocks his head to the side, listening, and feels the shiver of air against the back of his neck, goose pimples on his arms. Fingers trailing over his skin, digging into him, pulling at his shirt.
Look at us!
Mikey catches a glimpse of two faces reflected against in the smooth metallic walls in front of him, hand prints in clotted blood, brownish-red, carefully pressed to glass, but -
“Mikey?”
- when he turns, gasp trapped in his throat, Gerard is in the doorway with Ray, and Mikey feels like an idiot, half-crazy, but he knows he is neither.
“Mikey? You okay?” Gerard’s eyebrows are furrowed, and Mikey wonders just how pale he is, how frightened he looks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice is slightly huskier than usual, and just a tad too loud.
Gerard eyes him skeptically, but Mikey is used to being quiet, and besides, who’d believe him, anyway.
+
“There’s one thing you should probably know, before we finalize things,” Ray says with an apologetic shrug, slumped behind his desk. Mikey is mostly looking out the window, only half listening to the conversation. The chairs in the Ray’s office are over-stuffed and comfortable, and he’s happy just leaving the details to Gerard seated next to him, and think about fingerprints outlined in blood, and grinning faces in the mirror.
“What’s that?” Gerard asks. Mikey can feel Gerard glance at him, still half-overprotective, the way he is.
“Well - hm. It’s gets cold up here - snows enough that the phone lines go out every winter, and normally don’t get fixed until the season starts up again. So, here’s the thing. We’ve had problems in the past with people in your position. The isolation gets to them and - things can get ugly. It’s only gotten really bad once - you may have heard about it? A few years back? A kid named Jon Walker and two of his friends came up here to take care of the place, and. Lets just put it this way - Walker chopped his two friends up with an axe, walked into the Presidential Suite, and shot himself in the head.” Ray’s smile is still apologetic, saying, hey, what can you do? These things happen.
“That’s -” Gerard starts, and Mikey looks up at him, the smile he pastes on his face that Mikey knows is only half fake. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem for us.” Mikey knows where to listen, and there’s something of morbid curiosity in the back of Gerard’s throat, a touch of anticipation. Mikey won’t be surprised if he finds Gerard in the Presidential Suite, drawing what he thinks it should look like - the empty eyes, blood and brain matter and bits of bone splattered against the floral wallpaper. He half-smiles and looks out the window.
“Do you happen to know the names of his friends?” Mikey asks before he can stop himself, thinking of the voices behind him, wondering if naming them will help, maybe. It probably won’t.
“Um,” Ray says, shifting through the files on his desk. Eventually, he comes up with a slip of paper tucked in the back of some enormously huge file, and he glances up with a smile. “It says here their names were Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith.”
Gerard is looking at Mikey again, but Mikey doesn’t try to decode his expression. Too much effort.
“Thanks,” he says.
+
“I can’t believe there’s no alcohol in this whole place,” Gerard says, hauling sweaters and jeans out of his suitcase and stuffing them in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe. Mikey just snorts and continues to fold his t-shirts, knowing this is probably the last time he’ll bother until he has to pack up again. “Okay, so, yeah, it’s probably for the best that they clean this place out, not to mention less expensive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do a little complaining.” There’s a false note in Gerard’s voice, but Mikey isn’t sure why or what it pertains to, a sharpness that could be as much on topic as not.
Mikey glances up to find Gerard looking at him, a hoodie in one hand and a thoughtful expression on his face. He raises his eyebrows, finishes folding the shirt without looking, and waits for Gerard to start talking again. Gerard bites his tongue and looks back down at the black hoodie in his hands, left over from high school, the one year of overlap where Mikey could sit with him at lunch and neither of them were lonely.
“What did you see in the ballroom, Mikey?” Mikey is expecting the change in the tone in Gerard’s voice, but isn’t quite ready for it. He picks up another t-shirt, folding it and thinking about the scrape of fingernails on gold-leafed walls.
“Does it matter?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. Gerard thinks about how he can save people he’s never met - there’s no way that Mikey is at all exempt. Gerard doesn’t even bother responding to the question, just abandons his suitcase and wanders across the room to the half-kitchen to make coffee, glancing over his shoulder as he spoons out grounds. “Dead people,” Mikey says. “Handprints in blood. Words, maybe. Voices whispering to me, my name.” Mikey shrugs, like it’s something he’s seen before, and it sort of is - the voices are new, but the blood is not.
“Hm,” Gerard says, thoughtful, while the coffee machine percolates.
“Grab your sketchpad,” Mikey says, folding his last shirt and putting the stack in the second drawer from the top, “and I’ll tell you about it.”
+
The first few weeks, Mikey sticks close to Gerard, sitting with a book in the bedroom, listening to the scratch of Gerard’s pen on paper. Leaning against the side entrance by the garage while Gerard smokes. The air smells like winter on its way, sharp and edged in Mikey’s lungs as he breathes in, the chafe of wind on his fingers. He stuffs them in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.
“Did you know mob guys used to come up here?” he asks, staring at the driveway that winds down the mountain, one route in, one route out.
“Mm?” Gerard’s noise is half-surprised and half-curious and he glances over, his cheeks hollowed out as he breathes in cigarette smoke.
“Yep,” Mikey says.
“Should I ask how you know?” Gerard asks, smoke escaping his mouth as he talks, swirling in white trails around his head, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair. Mikey shrugs. “C’mon, Mikey, you can’t say something like that without further elaboration.”
“They shot someone in the honeymoon suite,” Mikey says lifting one shoulder out of indifference. Gerard raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, like. An execution thing. Brains on the walls, bits of skull. It made the papers.” There’d been a splatter of blood and flecks of gray when he’d walked in, all across the horribly gaudy wallpaper, a newspaper soaking in a puddle of congealed red, proclaiming the headline in large letters. Dead like a picture in a book, and when Mikey had moved to brush his hands over the stained wall, he’d just felt the smooth of paper.
“And people wonder why I’m so morbid,” Gerard mutters, sucking on the end of his cigarette again.
“You’d be morbid anyway,” Mikey says, “I just help.”
+
There’s a snowmobile out in the garage, and Mikey can’t help but check periodically, making sure that it’s still there with all parts intact. He knows that it’s nothing he can control, really, but something about having a way out goes a long way toward giving him piece of mind.
Standing in the dusty garage with his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, Mikey wonders how long they have until it starts snowing.
+
The third week, Gerard holes up in the first floor study with all of his art supplies.
“You’ll see when I’m done,” he says when Mikey asks, closing the door with more force than strictly necessary. Mikey is used to his moods, the bursts of frenzied inspiration, and so he wanders the hotel by himself for the first time since the staff left. He avoids the ballroom, leaves the second floor altogether, and doesn’t dare go near any of the suites.
The kitchen holds impressions of Frank, whispers of him yelling don’t over-salt the soup, dumbass, to his colleagues, bouncing on his toes as he pours sauce on a steak, standing in the walk in freezer with his hands on his hips, trying to decide what to defrost. Mikey sits at the table with his eyes closed and wonders why the kitchen is the only place in the hotel that doesn’t feel like it’s preparing to attack, peel off his skin with razored claws, slash at his pale belly until his entrails spill through his fingers.
And maybe, maybe even make him like it.
+
There’s an old fashioned radio in the main office, the only form of external communication other than the phone lines, ancient enough that Mikey doesn’t really know how to use it. Gerard probably would, but the thought doesn’t leave Mikey feeling comforted, although he’s not exactly sure why. He twists a knob, listening to the click as the radio turns on, presses down the tab to hear the static that comes out of the speakers.
“Hello?” he says into the mic, but there’s no answer.
+
Mikey dreams -
The door of room 237 opening under his fingers, the barest brush of his fingertips against the wood. The green rug is soft under the soles of his feet, white against the fiber, green upholstered couches, green-shaded lamps, green lights trailing up three steps into the bathroom.
Mikey’s fingers brush against the wall as he walks, as he dreams he walks, and the bathroom is bright, the light reflecting off the mirror and glancing on the drawn shower curtain, pale pale green ceramic tub. The slosh of water is loud in his ears, thick and wet, the sound of movement, and he doesn’t want to pull back the curtain, doesn’t want to see.
Long, white fingers grasp and pull at the fabric, curling with bitten fingernails and - he looks in the mirror, then, and it’s Gerard’s face looking back at him.
+
He wakes with his hands scrubbing over his face, short nails biting into his skin, and Gerard’s breathing from the bed next to his. He can feel his pulse rabbit-quick against the press of his fingertips, his chest a too-fast rise and fall.
“Gerard?” His voice is softer, even, than it usually is, questioning, but Gerard is asleep, and Gerard couldn’t help him anyway.
“I don’t think I like it here very much,” he says out loud, even though there’s no one to hear it. He wonders, vaguely, if he’ll regret it later.
+
Gerard leaves the study with charcoal under his fingernails and watercolor paint staining the sleeve of his shirt, pen marks like wide brush strokes all across his fingers and the backs of his hands, but he refuses to let Mikey in or to see any of what he’s done. He shuts the door firmly behind him, pale fingers scrabbling with the lock, left hand white knuckled on the doorknob, full of frenetic energy, eyes too white around the edges, smile too wide. Mikey doesn’t think much of it, but he gives Gerard his space and wonders what he’s doing, locked up in the tiny room by himself.
+
He’s in the game room the second time he sees them.
The dart board is ancient, antique like everything else in this hotel, and Mikey’s aim is off, hitting the outer rim, if at all. He doesn’t much care, just wishes that he had someone to play pool with, now that Gerard leaves the study for meals and little else. Sometimes not even that, unless Mikey knocks.
The whisper of sound over his shoulder isn’t anything that Mikey can ignore, not in this hotel, but he doesn’t turn fast enough to see anything more than the glimmer of movement in the hallway. Mikey stuffs his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, still clutching three of the six darts, the muscles in his back tightening as he waits.
Mikey, he hears, the voice curling around the back of his neck, trickling down his spine, and he’s moving out into the hallway without a thought, dropping the darts on the floor and stepping with quiet feet.
Come find us, Mikey, it says, a whisper. Come find us.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, his feet bare against the soft carpet, almost completely inaudible. He passes rows of nearly identical doors, all closed and locked tight and holding so many secrets he can’t even being to imagine them all, everything this hotel has seen, reflected in every mirror, soaked into every carpet and bedspread. Moving slow, slow like he’s underwater, pushing through mud and decay. The flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye makes him stop, and he turns, every movement slightly delayed.
Look at us, the boy says, his lips pressed together, motionless. We’re right here. His skin is pale, his dark hair sweeping across one eye and the bridge of his nose, his left hand brushing the palm of the boy next to him, slim and full-lipped. We’re here, look at us.
“Spencer?” Mikey hears himself speak, but doesn’t remember thinking to, only - Spencer nods and steps closer, one hand raised as if to touch Mikey’s cheek.
And you’ll be just like us, he says but doesn’t, cold cold fingers brushing over Mikey’s cheekbone and down to his lips. A buzzing starts in Mikey’s ears at the touch, vibrating through his bones, down to his fingertips and back up. Mikey can see Brendon over Spencer’s shoulder, and he’s holding a finger to his lips with a smile, saying shhhhh, don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, I promise, his voice low and gravelly.
The buzzing turns into a piercing shriek, and Mikey stumbles back, his hands over his ears, but the sound is all in his head, pulsing through him, and there’s nothing he can do but watch Spencer smile and step back, his hand brushing Brendon’s again.
And you’ll never, ever be alone. Not ever again.
The noise gets louder, knives of broken glass in the backs of his eyelids and under his jaw and -
there’s blood, blood everywhere, thick and congealed and soaking into the carpet, but he doesn’t know whose blood it is, and it’s all over his hands and his face, coating his tongue and dripping down the back of his throat -
he piled them on the bed, hands and legs and shoulder blades, severed fingers and tendons, teeth and nails and hunks of hair, exposed bone and chunks of muscle and he knows that he’s done what needed doing, punishment for bad souls and blasphemers and that they asked for it -
gerard’s handwriting across the bottom of the page is smeared in black ink, the drawing fragile as a doll house, all sweeps of watercolor paint and think lines of pen, bold faces stretched in fear and pain, smiles of the half-dead -
the thing beneath the water reaches for him with rotting fingers, skin melting from the bone, and it grabs his ankle, fingernails sinking into his leg as it pulls him down -
mikey, it says to him, mikey mikey mikey, you stupid little boy, you can’t stop us, you can’t, we’ve been here longer than you and we know - once the snow sets in you’re a goner -
he wakes up.
Sprawled on the carpet in the middle of the hallway, Mikey stares at the ceiling and wonders at the warmth on his face, spreading. He presses his fingers to his skin and finds wetness. Blood. Blood on his face - his nose is bleeding.
Mikey sits up slowly, tilts his head back, his mind full of the grotesque - severed fingers black with rot, the slosh of a body moving in the water, the cold whiteness of snow on the back of his neck. He cups his hand under his nose, the copper and salt taste of blood in the back of his throat, and he waits for it to stop.
+
Mikey walks into the bedroom with blood dried in the spaces between his fingers and a tackiness spread across his face. Gerard is, surprisingly, sitting at the round table in their common room, and he looks up when Mikey quietly closes the door. It’s almost like Mikey has interrupted him mid-conversation, but there’s no one else in the room.
“Mikey? What the fuck?” Gerard’s voice trails off; he’s waiting for Mikey to talk. Mikey can tell from his expression that he’s not planning on waiting very long.
“Gee. Chill. I just got a nosebleed, I’m fine.” Mikey leaves out everything else, partially because he doesn’t know where to start, but mostly because he just doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s used to the skeptical looks Gerard sends his way, and he just stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Really?” Gerard asks.
“No, actually, I got into a fistfight with that other guy who’s living here,” Mikey says, voice mostly deadpan. “Seriously Gee, nosebleed. It stopped; I just have to wash my hands and face.”
Mikey doesn’t look over his shoulder as he heads for the bathroom, but he can feel Gerard still looking at him.
+
Mikey dreams -
The ballroom full of people, fringed dresses swirling with movement, ties loosened, jackets left slung on the back of chairs. Waiters in tuxes carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres along with their snooty accents.
“Can I interest you in something to drink?”
He turns and finds himself facing the bar, bartender smiling almost kindly.
“After all,” the man says, “we’re both waiting for the same thing, aren’t we? Your brother, Gerard, if I’m correct? I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced.”
The man smiles, but instead of extending his hand, he brandishes a hatchet, red tipped and worn-handled, bringing it down full force on the wood of the bar. No one even turns to look, and he pulls it out effortlessly, leaving a long gash behind.
“I’m Jon,” the man says, his grin wide and earnest as he raises the hatchet again. “Jon Walker.
+
Mikey wakes with a gasp - again, and he’s not going to get used to it, he knows he’s not.
((Frankie,)) he sends, still half-asleep and half-startled, concentrating on Frank’s face, the curve of his smile. He shifts until he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, covers pooled over his hips, back against the wall. His fingers clench at the quilt, worrying it between his hands, nervous movement. ((Frankie, are you there?))
He’s not sure if it’s going to work, not sure at all, but he can see Jon’s kind smile and the red painted blade of the hatchet. Splintered wood and the clink of breaking glass.
((Mikey?)) Frank’s voice is webbed with sleep, humid heat all around him, caught in his throat and pooled against his tongue. ((What is it?))
Mikey holds the memory of Jon in his dream, Spencer and Brendon touching his face, and he says, ((nothing, nothing. Just. Making sure that I can.))
He can feel Frank thinking, can feel the light weight of the cotton sheet over his body, and Frank’s ((oh)) is more thank slightly skeptical. Mikey doesn’t blame him.
((Sorry I woke you up, Frankie,)) he says, and he means it, but he can’t help the relief that rushes through him so strong that Frank can probably feel it.
((Any time,)) Frank says. Mikey hopes that he means it.
+
It gets colder, and Mikey doesn’t tell Gerard that he’s dreaming. He’s not sure that Gerard would care really, which is - unfair, but not necessarily untrue, and Mikey isn’t one to put a damper on anyone else’s good time, much less his own brother’s.
“I love this place,” Gerard says over breakfast, his mouth full of eggs and defrosted waffles. “Nothing like a big fucking hotel in the middle of fucking nowhere to get the creative juices flowing.” Mikey shrugs and nods and wonders what Gerard is actually painting. “Seriously, what the fuck. I haven’t been this productive since I was still in art school.”
Mikey makes a noise of approval, and Gerard turns back to his breakfast. Mikey sips his coffee, and tried not to think of blood under his fingernails, and how he half thinks Gerard is crazy for wanting to stay even for the rest of the day. Which just proves how far Gerard is willing to go in the name of art.
“Are you ever going to show me?” Mikey asks, mostly unused to secrecy of any kind from Gerard, and uncomfortable with what he’s seen of it in the past.
“You getting nosey on me, Mikes?” Gerard asks, and his voice is lighthearted, but there’s something sharp around the edges that Mikey isn’t used to at all, has never heard from his brother.
“You getting sensitive on me, Gee?” Mikey asks in return, his voice soft, and he can see the flinty sharpness in Gerard fade a little, but he still doesn’t know the origin. Defusing it for now does nothing about later.
“I’ll show you, dipshit, just wait until I’m done. Works in progress are rarely beautiful, let me tell you.”
Mikey knows. He’s seen most of Gerard’s works in progress in the past. He wonders what’s different this time.
+
Mikey stops in front of room 237, stands motionless, hand extended as if to grasp the cold metal of the door handle. He thinks of the dreams of the body in the bathtub, over and over and over, and it’s always Gerard’s face he sees in the mirror, large eyes and too-wide smile. Always long fingers reaching back to pull the curtain, the slosh of water spilling over the rim to spread on the floor, and hard dread in the pit of his stomach when he wakes up.
Gerard’s face, always Gerard’s face, and it’s the thought of his brother in that room with the thing in the tub that makes his hand grasp the doorknob and turn.
Locked.
Mikey lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and feels just a little dumb. Why wouldn’t the door be locked? They all are. They always are.
He lets his hand fall back to his side and moves back down the hall, one glance over his shoulder, just to make sure.
+
Mikey stares at Gerard all through dinner, tapping his fingers on the table in an unconscious and unusual show of tension. Gerard is just finishing his macaroni and cheese when he finally sighs.
“What the hell, Mikey?” he says, not angrily. Somewhat frustrated, but not in any way that Mikey doesn’t recognize - Mikey wonders how long it’s been since Gerard has been this clear to him.
“Nothing,” Mikey says, and shrugs. Gerard rolls his eyes; Mikey can hear the second sigh that he bites back.
“No, seriously, Mikey. What the hell?” More anger this time. Easily sparked, Mikey thinks.
“Just -” he starts, cutting himself off. “Do me a favor okay?”
“Sure, whatever.” Gerard shrugs, and Mikey wonders if he’s agreeing out of curiosity and the desire to get Mikey off his back more than anything else.
“Don’t go into room 237.”
“Why not?” Gerard asks, tilting his head to the side. Mikey fidgets in his seat, shifting until he can feel his hip crack back into place.
“Just don’t,” is all he says.
+
The snow starts during the night.
Mikey has been listening the radio all week, offhand and half-aware, as the newscaster tracks the first storm system that season strong enough to make it over the mountains and build, so he’s not really surprised at the heavy fall of snow outside his window.
It doesn’t mean he has to like it.
There are already more than four or five inches on the ground when he wakes up, scrubbing a hand through his hair, grabbing his glasses off the bedside table, and glancing out the window.
“Shit,” he says, out loud, fragments of his spell in the hallway coming back to him, shards of when the snow falls, mikey, and you think you can stop us?.
Mikey presses his fingers into his temples at the sudden throb behind his eyes, but it eases after a few moments of complete non-thought, and so Mikey gets up to start the coffee. Gerard is still asleep; Mikey’s not actually sure when he came back, anyway. He’d still been locked up in his study when Mikey turned off the bedside lamp.
While the coffee is percolating, Mikey turns back to the window, the clean fall of pure white outside. He’d always liked snow as a kid. It covered everything up, hiding bodies and memories and voices - real, live static. Outside, in that, for a few moments, he didn’t have to think about anything at all. And even if it was fake cleanliness, fake emptiness, it was better than nothing.
Now Mikey’s not so sure.
+
The phones stop working sometime after noon.
“It’s fine,” Gerard says around a sandwich. “It’s not like we were using them much anyway.” Mikey fidgets in his seat and shrugs. He can still feel the goose bumps that ran up his arm when he’d put the receiver to his ears and heard nothing at all.
Gerard is humming a cheerful song under his breath, with charcoal outlining his fingernails and a shiver spreads down Mikey’s spine when Gerard smiles at him, razor sharp.
“Besides, Mikey,” Gerard says, “everything important is already in here with us.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mikey asks. He keeps his voice as expressionless as he can, but the tinge of fear is still there, the cold that tingles down to his fingertips when Gerard turns to look at him.
“You’re the psychic one, Mikes, don’t you know already?” And when Gerard laughs, it sounds exactly like it always does, half-giggle and high-pitched, but Mikey is still thinking of Gerard’s cutting smile and the knowing tone of his voice.
+
Mikey leaves Gerard in the kitchen, and it feels to him like he’s running, even though his steps are slow and measured, even and equally weighted. It’s still running.
He stops in the conservatory on the top floor, a room all glass and tile floor, cold from the chill of the windows.
((Frankie,)) he thinks as hard as he can, projecting it loud, ((I think you were right. I think that - I don’t know.))
He presses his fingers to the glass, the outline of his palm in condensation.
((Mikey?)) Frankie’s voice is tinged with Florida-warmth and the beach outside his window, ever-summer and heat. ((What’re you talking about?)) He crackles in and out like static, sometimes indistinct, but there, actually there.
((The phone lines are down,)) Mikey says, ((I’m giving you a ring.))
+
continued in part two