We Felt So Different Then
Gerard/Mikey
One-shot
AU. Gerard is starting a club in the city, with some help from his friends and brother, but things aren't so okay between him & Mikey lately. Rated PG-13 for language, general adult themes. Written for fanfic100, prompt #3: "ends". SO MUCH LOVE to harmyjo for creating the universe with me - this isn't necessarily a reflection of the universe, but large parts of it wouldn't exist without her help. ilu jo ♥
4,685 words
Written January 19, 2006
"It is research," Mikey says, waving his glass altogether too enthusiastically. Something pink and fruity slops out of the glass and onto his wrist. He giggles, dips his head down to his arm, and begins sucking at the skin. He leaves tiny red marks from his teeth and it makes Gerard's stomach twist.
"Come on," he says, slapping at Mikey's hand. "You're not a teenager anymore, don't act like one."
"I'm drunk," Mikey says cheerfully. "That means I get to pretend." Gerard closes his eyes. Mikey continues, oblivious, "And it is so research, how else will we know what we're up against? This is the important part, Gee!"
Gerard has the tact to not point out that they are, in fact, not in competition with this club. Nor are they with any of the other six clubs Mikey's dragged him to over the past two days. He has the subtlety and grace to not slap Mikey upside the head, take his drink, and drag him back to their apartment to yell himself senseless. Instead, he picks up a napkin and wipes the drink off Mikey's hand.
"You're a sweetheart," Mikey says, but he looks absent. Gerard bites his lip. "I... think I'm gonna go dance, I like this song."
"Yeah," Gerard says, though already Mikey is standing and he is left speaking to Mikey's back. More specifically, to the strip of skin between Mikey's sweat-soaked T-shirt and skintight jeans. This thin band of pale skin that Gerard wants to touch, just once, but Mikey has already vanished into the crowd and Gerard is left alone. He wants the leftover drink, maybe. Not enough to actually try it. What he actually would like is something heavy and strong enough to knock out a lion, but the chances of finding that in a trendy place like this... not so good. He picks at his nails and tries not to be miserable.
If it were anyone else he would have an excuse to be miserable. Friends - well, friends don't ditch you to grind on practically anorexic boys with no sense of rhythm. And it would be grounds for an immediate breakup if Gerard were with any sort of boyfriend. With Mikey, though... well, it's his brother. He shouldn't be upset with his brother for wanting to have a little fun.
Still, the rage overpowers him like tidal currents, and he has to get out before he stabs someone in the low-lit bathroom. He stumbles up and out the door and drives home half-choked with tears. "Fuck you," he hisses under his breath, "take a fucking taxi, walk home, I don't give a shit - " His hands are shaking too hard to get the key in the lock, and when he manages to get inside, he is too drained to even take a shower. He collapses onto his bed (double, too big, too empty) and falls asleep still in his clothes.
-----
The next morning, he wakes to the smell of bacon and waffles and is guilty immediately. Mikey waves lightly when he comes into the kitchen. "You didn't look so good," he says. "You feelin' better?"
Gerard feels a twinge in his head. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry I ditched you."
"No biggie." Mikey presses a hand to his own head, and Gerard is filled with that same rush of guilt. I'm an asshole, he thinks. The bags under Mikey's eyes are the kind of huge that spell out exactly how hungover he must be. Gerard steps forward and wraps his arms around Mikey's shoulders.
"Lot to drink, huh?" He speaks with his chin on Mikey's shoulder, mouth pressed against Mikey's neck. His skin smells warm. The waffle iron goes off, but Mikey makes no move to open it, leaning back into Gerard's embrace instead. He nods silently. "'m sorry," Gerard says. "Come on, let me finish this, you don't need to be up and moving."
"I really don't," Mikey says with a faint chuckle. He sets the spatula down and turns, hugging Gerard fiercely, like he can form a hollow in Gerard's chest and fit there. "I'm okay."
"You sure?"
There's a pause before he admits, "I could use a couple more aspirin."
Gerard plants a kiss on Mikey's forehead and says, "Sit down, you, I'll get that right now." Mikey obliges, sitting on the counter with his legs crossed Indian-style. He smiles weakly and Gerard thinks, not for the first time, how incredibly fragile and beautiful his brother really is.
-----
By the time they get to work, though, Mikey has perked up. He's still quiet - always is, except when he's stone drunk - but Gerard can tell from the way his hands move when he talks. He waves to Bob as they walk in, calling out, "Drop anything today, Bryar?"
"Dropped your mom off from when she stopped by last night," Bob yells back. His wide grin is visible even from a distance. Gerard genuinely likes Bob - he is strong and capable, the kind of guy who never does anything especially outstanding but always does things right. He's a transplant from Chicago, and Gerard always thinks there's something of that left in him. That up-north-freezing thing: his skin is so pale and he always looks cold, even if he's red and sweating from setting shit up all day.
Gerard likes him for another reason: Bob helped them start the whole damn place. This club, their club, the one thing Gerard has ever truly owned. Bob is setting up the lighting now, and once things get started, he's promised to stay on as a bouncer. There's something so thrilling about it, and so surreal at the same time, that Gerard just can't pin down. A real business - everyone he really, truly loves working around him - thinking about it makes his fingertips twitch. It's like falling in love. He can't get it out of his head and when he's asleep, he wants to wake up just so he can squeeze in more of this. More of the nuts and bolts of building a life worth living.
It's not entirely his, technically speaking; half of the club belongs to Pete. They met in art school, at a coffee shop; Gerard spotted Pete and started drawing him, and Pete saw him drawing and started writing about him, and by the end of the night each had worked up the courage to show the other their work. Gerard dropped a folded half-sheet with a rough sketch on Pete's table, and Pete ran after him with a messy poem in his hands. It hasn't been an easy friendship by any means - both of them are "true artists", as Mikey puts it, which roughly translates to "total fucking headcases."
But one night Pete told Gerard he had to visit his mom, and Gerard saw him at this dingy hole-in-the-wall drag club, and the confrontation was pure drama. The other girls thought it was an act, they were that bitchy. There was - Gerard winces to recall this - distinct hair-pulling. Pete made fun of his shabby dress, and Gerard stole Pete's wig, and then the friendship was cemented in mutual bitchiness and flamboyance.
Gerard wouldn't change it for the world.
They joked about it for awhile, him and Pete - what would happen if they really could have an act. Pete leaned towards pink and sequins. Lots of feathers, lots of blue eyeshadow - dancing with his hips, mostly. Gerard was (and still is) far more partial to black. Red red Cupid-bow lips, satin gloves that go up to his elbow and bunch into waterfalls of fabric there. Tulle underskirts. Oh, Gerard has a fetish for underskirts, no joke. For his birthday Pete bought him this crinoline job, all ruffled and hot-iron-red, and Mikey got him this corset to match. Black, but he spent three hours painting the buckles and grommets red, making the edges sharp and clean. And Gerard had this deep unending ache to show someone. To get out there and sing like his grandmother taught him, and walk with his hips like Mikey taught him, and dance a little if he felt daring.
And then Mikey mentioned he knew some guy selling his old club space, and Gerard tossed the idea around with Pete for a bit as a pipe dream, until Pete said, "Shit, my old man's a fucking lawyer, we can get the money no problem." He paused, then added with this wicked little grin, "He'd do anything to keep me out of the family business."
"Yeah, you'd do some damage," Gerard said.
"Fuck you, man, like you'd do any better."
"We'll pay him back. Once we're rich," and then they both collapsed laughing. Pete pulled Gerard into a weak headlock and they wrestled on the floor of Gerard's apartment for awhile, until Mikey stuck his head out of the bedroom and said, "Please keep it the fuck down? Just a little?"
Pete shut up instantly. That was when Gerard started seeing the way Pete looked at Mikey - not anything outright, just a tiny bit... sketchy. A little too friendly. And, shit, it's not like it was Gerard's place to protect Mikey or anything - not like he had any real claim over Mikey. Not like the hundreds of quiet embraces and TV shows ignored for kisses meant anything, really. Mikey's arm looped with Gerard's when they went grocery shopping; both of them wearing each other's shirts with secretive smiles. In the end it was all just for comfort, probably. Unspoken and silently accepted. We were always close, they told themselves.
It just... stung, a little. Watching Pete spend more time smiling at Mikey, and Mikey spend more time getting ready if he knew Pete would be over. That sort of stupid little thing.
But they had this big dream to distract them, and here they are on the verge of being ready and honestly? Gerard doesn't have time for that sort of self-pity right now. Last night was a mishap, a slip-up. He has records to buy and a stage to set up and a bar to stock. Employees to hire - shit, does he need those! Right now their meager staff is Pete and Gerard, owners and drag-queens extraordinaire, and their assorted tag-along friends. Pete, a Chicago kid himself, brought Bob. Gerard's brought Ray - a high school acquaintance with enough muscles to back up Bob as a bouncer, and enough music knowledge to beat even Gerard at trivia.
And he's brought Mikey. Mikey, who is his thin pretty younger brother who can mix drinks with one hand, eyes closed, and look sexy while he does it. Mikey who can drink even better than he can make drinks. Mikey, who sleeps in Gerard's bed when he's scared or cold or hasn't gotten laid recently; whose nose is always cold when he buries it into Gerard's neck, making soft whimpering noises while he kisses Gerard's throat.
Gerard loves him, and he loves this job, and he loves knowing people will be here and happy. He loves the fact that people will want to see him. Fuck, he can blow off curling irons and eyeliner as job expenses on his tax forms - that alone makes this one hundred percent the best.
He does not love watching Mikey pouring drinks from the second he steps behind the bar. Mikey blows Pete a kiss and says, "Watch this - Uncle Mikey's hangover remedy - " He pours a neat splash of whiskey into a glass. "Ta-da!"
"Cute," Gerard says. "Real cute." Mikey gives him this look that's a cross between adorable and wounded, and Gerard sighs. "Ray? You got things taken care of here?"
Ray, who is sketching out plans for fliers, just gives him a brief wave of the hand. "I'll hold down the ship, captain. Let me guess, another shopping expedition?"
Gerard shrugs expansively. "We do need stage decorations. Pete and I have... very different tastes, you know? Our stage sets should be different." This is, in fact, entirely true - Pete went out and came back with rolls of tinsel, bottles of glitter, and entirely too much pink netting to be appropriate. Gerard, on the other hand, is thinking black satin. He's thinking fabric draped everywhere, velvet thrown across the stage so that his heels crush into it and leave prints. He wants a chair to dance with.
From the back room, Pete yells, "If you're shopping, I get to come with, motherfucker! We don't have enough glasses."
"I can order some fucking glasses, Pete, I'm not retarded."
Pete storms out of the back room, already pulling on his hoodie. "Motherfucker, if you think I am trusting you to pick out decent martini glasses, you have got another thing coming."
Gerard slings an arm around Pete's shoulder. "Let's go, then, loser." He waves to Mikey and mouths, not too much to drink. He tries not to notice the flash of anger on Mikey's face before he waves back, then blows a kiss, smiling as wide as he can.
-----
The shopping is surprisingly uneventful. Pete goes through a couple stores before finding the glasses he wants - cheap, "but not bad cheap, not like slutty cheap. Just like... if this glass were a chick, she'd be a girl in a slut costume, you know?"
"You're a fag, Wentz."
"Fuck you! I'm more of a man than you'll ever be, if you know what I mean." Pete grins and sets another carton of tinsel onto their trolley - they've gone far past the stage where a mere shopping cart will do. "And I mean I have a huge dick, and you're a fairy."
"You're in this drag show too, slut."
Pete shrugs. "Yeah, but you know..." Gerard nods quickly, cutting Pete off before he can start into his theory again. This theory, specifically, is that all guys really want is a guy in a girl's body - so if he does manly things while in drag, it'll make him the perfect girl, pretty much. (This is his logic for why it's totally acceptable for him to play electric guitar poorly for the drag show, despite it being totally unfeminine.) Gerard thinks Pete's theories are pretty hit-or-miss, but he believes them, and sometimes that's all that matters.
Still, all Gerard says is, "No more tinsel, you hear me?"
"Sure, fag."
"I'm the prettiest little fag in all the land, though," Gerard says. He makes an exaggerated kissy face, mugging despite Pete's feigned ignorance, and then falls against a shelf laughing. Pete smiles at him affectionately before turning back to the bolts of cloth.
"Sure," he says. "You can be prettiest."
Gerard thinks if things were different, maybe it'd be Pete he'd be in love with. Maybe. But things are the way they are, so he turns back to the fabric as well, and tries not to think about being in love at all.
-----
That night, Mikey is insisting they go out again, saying, "Don't you want to have fun? I thought you liked dancing, Gee - "
Gerard sighs and shakes his head a little. "Mikey," he says. "This research thing. This is bullshit, man, you know we're not competing with them - you know we're getting totally different people."
"Club kids like guys in drag too." Mikey squints at the mirror for a second. He smudges his finger into a case of blue eyeshadow and brushes a bit more across his eyelids, frowning. Gerard thinks he's being obstinate on purpose and tries not to slap the makeup case out of his hand.
Instead, he says, "Here - let me do that, it's all wrong." Mikey pouts at him but sits down on the edge of the bed, eyes closed obligingly. Sitting, waiting like that, lips parted - Gerard tries to remember the last time he could just watch Mikey. It's been too long. Mikey usually gets too irritated with him, or too jumpy, or just wants to be alone. Gerard tries to impress the image on his mind very carefully, because suddenly he's filled with the fear, the knowledge that this is the last time we will ever be this way, and lets himself savor the moment. The air is warm and he can smell a pie baking in the next apartment.
"Come on," Mikey says, amused. "It's not gonna put itself on."
"Yeah," Gerard says, and sits next to Mikey. He remembers a time when he would've straddled Mikey's legs, their faces close, and been so tender with the makeup. This isn't the time for that. He can tell. "You know," he says as he smudges the eyeshadow on, "you're wrong about this, really. Normal club kids won't... You know this isn't just a weird show, right? I mean, we've got the show, but I told you. Most of the time it'll just be dudes in drag hanging out."
"I know," Mikey snaps. "You don't need to remind me."
"Close your eyes, I can't get this on straight."
There's a pause while Gerard finishes one eye. Mikey whispers, "I don't mean to get pissy at you, Gee." And Gerard knows, but it is so hard, and he kisses Mikey's forehead but it feels far more brotherly than it ever used to. Mikey leans his head into Gerard's chest and sighs. "I think I like Pete," he says.
Gerard should not be surprised, but it is easier than being angry. "Really?" he says. "You? No way, I don't fuckin' believe it." And it is a lie, but it is a far easier one than anything else he could say (for he could never say the truth.) Mikey looks up at him and shrugs, and smiles, and Gerard kisses his forehead again. This is the end of it, he can tell.
-----
Mikey is hung over the next morning, too, but this time Gerard has gotten enough sleep so he's the one making breakfast. He feels some sort of... residual guilt. Leaving Mikey alone at the club was shitty, and that's all there is to it. Mikey's constant drinking, the way he danced with his hips flush against every boy there - that has nothing to do with it. Gerard has done something fundamentally wrong to the man (brother) he loves.
He makes eggs - scrambled, fluffy, because Mikey's stomach probably isn't up for anything more. Gerard stares at the pan, feeling irrationally angry and miserable. Of course it isn't like Mikey does this on purpose - everyone they know goes out and drinks like that, anyway, except Pete and he's got some fetish for being straight-edge -
Still, Gerard thinks, it's not like everyone has to lose the one they love so fast. I've pretty much earned the fucking right to be a little upset.
Mikey stumbles into the kitchen then, smiling agreeably, despite the hand clutched to his head. "Oh, Gee, you really didn't have to... You're an angel, you know that?" He pours himself a glass of water and swallows what looks like two aspirin, but Gerard can tell from the angle of his palm that he's hiding another two. He sighs and turns his back, pretending to be interested in the toast, and ignores the two swallowing sounds that follow.
This is the last breakfast we'll ever eat as mikeyandgerard, he thinks. There was a long period where he honestly believed bruises to his own knees would appear on Mikey's. They were that close - a one-word sort of relationship, their names blurred together. Scratches down his back somehow found parallels to scratches down Mikey's. That's how they were, one hundred percent.
But he watches Mikey eat carefully, head kept level to avoid any blood moving around - any excessive throbs in his pounding skull - and Gerard realizes they have not been that way for so long, so terribly long.
He gets dressed and showers in a numb fog, trying to count back the days to when Mikey slept curled in his bed. Too many to count, on all his fingers and toes, and all the nerve endings in his heart. He stands by the doorway and considers leaving. Finally, he calls back to the bedroom, "C'mon, Mikey - we'll be late for work."
"You know we don't really have a set time, or anything," Mikey says, buttoning a shirt. Gerard sighs. He knows, yes, but... there's so much work. So much he's already done, just to find this dream and wrestle it to the ground and make it real. And there is still so much to go.
-----
It rains while they are on their way over, and they are soaked in the short walk from the parking garage to the club. Mikey's shirt is white and cheap and sticks to him like in a bad music video, and when they walk in the door, Pete wolf-whistles from the counter and yells, "Take it off!"
Gerard flips him off, but manages to restrain his first impulse (namely, punch Pete and break his pretty angular nose.) Something about the rain falling like tinsel has cheered him up immensely. This is the beginning of a new life, a new time: this is Gerard without Mikey attached onto him and he needs to start it off right. "Pete," he says, "can I talk to you a bit? Ten seconds, I swear."
"Sugar," Pete says, "I was talking to the kid with the decent ass." He hops off the counter anyway, leaving his laptop behind. Gerard can see what looks like final mock-ups for the fliers - they're good and eye-catching. Really nice, to the point he's surprised by it.
"Good work," he says, nodding at the computer as he passes it. Pete relaxes a little, shoulders slumping back down into his normal bad posture. He follows Gerard into the hall with the bathrooms - still unfinished, lacking carpet and a decent wallpaper, but it's private and that's enough. Gerard stands so he can see Mikey over Pete's shoulder. "Look," he says, "I'm not going to say there's any chance, but - if there is. Don't fucking hurt him."
Pete's eyes just fucking light up at this.
"I mean it!" Gerard shakes his head, laughing. He can see Mikey beaming in the next room. "I'll punch you so hard your teeth come out your asshole."
"Such a crude little boy," Pete says, bopping the top of Gerard's head. "Don't kiss your momma with that mouth." He turns to head back out, then stop and says fast, under his breath, "He's really lucky to have a brother like you."
"Yeah?"
Pete is already back out there, throwing a roll of paper towels at Mikey and yelling, "Get yourself dry, we got work to do, lazy-ass!" Gerard leans against the wall and sighs. He watches them go about the business of making Mikey's hair a total mess - Bob yelling at them to stop slacking the whole time. Ray pops his head out of the DJ booth and announces that they've got everything set up, pretty much, except the records still need to be organized.
At this, Pete slaps Mikey's ass and yells, "Way, we've got a job to do!"
Mikey jumps at the slap, then laughs, slinging an arm around Pete's shoulders. Gerard busies himself with stacking the glasses behind the bar - something tedious and useful to do - but he still catches the kiss Mikey blows at him when Pete's back is turned. The smile on Mikey's face is real and sure for once and Gerard can't begrudge him that, not in the slightest.
Still, he tries not to watch them flirt mercilessly while they sort the records. He makes some tweaks to the mock-up fliers, sends them to the printer - a friend of Ray's - tries to put together a drinks menu and fails terribly. He keeps getting distracted by bursts of laughter from the DJ booth. Mikey is full of glee, constantly putting on records to fill them with nostalgia, then swapping them out as soon as he finds another. Gerard can't concentrate. The list of drinks with complicated, sexy names, and thinking about Mikey every night drinking these and dancing, and the music tugging on his heartstrings...
Something tugs at the back of his head. An idea. "Mikey!" He waves one hand enthusiastically, and Mikey cuts the music, sticking his head out of the booth. "You remember that guy you used to stay with? Gabe?"
"Yeah, he had a really good setup - not like this, but pretty nice - " Mikey waves at the DJ booth with one hand, nodding.
"He let you use it sometimes, right?" Gerard climbs onto the counter, swinging his legs as he talks.
"Yeah, but I wasn't that good - " Mikey pauses, squinting at Gerard. "No. No, Gee, I'm not really club material at all - we could hire someone who knows what the fuck they're doing."
"You loved doing it!"
"Fuck, man," Bob yells from the back room. "Do you have any good reason to not to do it?"
As it turns out, Mikey doesn't. Relief floods Gerard when he says yes, when he looks away from the bar and starts reordering the records to his own taste. (Mikey's system is inexplicable - a combination of chronological, and by what he calls "order of awesomeness", though Gerard thinks it is more likely "size of awful hairstyles".) He swings his legs against the bar some more, and watches the lights flicker on and off as Bob switches things around.
"You know," Pete says, climbing up next to him, "we'll need a new bartender."
"Mm."
"And I know this kid who's new in town, used to know him back home..." Pete's smile is hesitant, and it makes Gerard feel awkward and bulky. "He's never done it before, but he learns easy. You'd... uh, you'd like him. His name's Patrick." Pete shifts uncomfortably, then pinches Gerard's side and says in his usual diva-queen voice, "He's got tits just like you do, sweetheart!"
"Oh, fuck you!"
In response, Pete flashes him a real, overly huge grin and takes out his cell. He dials a number and says into the phone, "Trick? Lazy-ass? You up yet, motherfucker?" A pause, and then rapid-fire, "Trick! I got you a job, you bastard! Here, talk to this dude, get the details straight."
Gerard almost feels bad for the boy on the phone. He gives him a moment to compose himself before saying, "Hi, sorry about Pete - isn't he a creep?" Pete flips him off, but Gerard bats at his hand, ignoring it.
"Yeah," the guy on the other end says. His voice is... shit, Gerard is bad with descriptive words like this. It's just nice. "I'm Patrick, sorry about that, um... I, um. What's this about - a job?"
Gerard thinks he could definitely fall in love with this kid, just from the stuttery, shy way he talks. "Yeah," he says. "Patrick, I'm Gerard - I bet Pete's mentioned this to you a couple times, but we're starting up a club. And we need someone to do some bartending work... It's easy enough to learn, we've got someone here who could train you, no problem. We'd pay pretty well, too. Flexible hours - you get to sleep late in the mornings, even."
The kid - Patrick - laughs. He has a nice laugh too. Gerard tries not to blush and does so anyway. "Yeah," Patrick says, "I can definitely come in and see what you guys have going on... I really appreciate the offer, um, Gerard. I mean. Really."
Another blast of music issues from the DJ booth, echoing off the walls. Gerard looks out at the space around them: so empty now, with nobody left, but with the lights dim and beautiful androgynous girl-things dancing everywhere... Gerard on that stage, singing his fucking heart out. Everyone he loves around him. He clutches the phone tighter in his hand.
"No problem", he says. "I have a really good feeling about you."