Intimacy
Gerard/Mikey
One-shot
Gerard loves the comfort of being close to Mikey, but he isn't sure if that's what Mikey wants, too. Rated PG-13 for language. Written for fanfic100, prompt #94: "independence". For Saire, just because.
1,227 words
Written February 12, 2006
He's lying on his stomach on the bed, and Gerard almost can't bring himself to open the door - to disrupt the ferocity of his concentration. He can tell Mikey's concentrating because of the way his legs are kicked up at the knee, ankles crossing back and forth like a teenage girl writing in her diary. Gerard shifts his weight and tightens the towel around his hips and watches Mikey's legs flutter back and forth. He knows if Mikey were aware of anything outside the book he's reading, he wouldn't let his legs do that. He gets so damn self-conscious. Feels stupid about the way he acts, sometimes. Gerard wishes there were a way to express how much he loves Mikey's stupid little habits. Instead, he re-ties the knot at his hip, hair falling into his eyes.
The more he tries not to breathe too loudly, the more he feels his chest tightening with panic - the more sure he becomes that Mikey will hear him and look up and be startled and creeped out and unhappy. And it feels creepy. Just watching Mikey, innocent as his sentiments are. Just standing at the door and leaning his head against the impartial white of the doorjamb - hotel doors have something so forbidding about them. He closes his eyes a bit, then opens them again. Mikey is still kicking his feet.
With one ear pressed to the wood, Gerard imagines he can hear something echoing. He lets the sound bounce in his head for a bit before he realizes it's a real sound - Mikey is singing, very low, under his breath.
He closes his eyes for real now and strains to hear.
When he manages to catch a phrase, it's the most poignant thing he can imagine - Mikey practically whispering, "to die by your side..." and the fierceness in his voice. Gerard pulls a sob back into his throat, strangling it down. He wants to rush out and kneel by Mikey's side and tell him. Tell him that when he wrote "Demolition Lovers" he really meant "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", he really meant the Smiths and Mikey's crush on Morrissey. He means the way Mikey's eyes went sad and flat after he read "Perks of Being a Wallflower", and how he put "Asleep" on every mix he made for a month.
Gerard wants to say, I wrote it about you and me and thinking about you and you being happy and me wanting us to be happy, or else dead - I can't imagine life if we are not happy together. Instead he presses his lips flat to the doorjamb. It tastes like dust and he makes a face. He is such a dramatic romantic pathetic little boy.
He turns away and goes to get dressed.
His hair is damp and stringy, but he can't bother to blowdry it - something about the casualness of Mikey has just drained him of all his energy. You'd think he'd be used to it by now and yet. Twentysomething years living with the boy, all totaled, and Gerard is still knocked over by his smallest gestures. He looks at his own face in the mirror and resists the urge to make ugly mean monster faces. Instead, he smiles. The reflection in the mirror is generic and pretty and strangely... unfamiliar.
Gerard has trouble reconstructing his own face in his head. He still can't put it together properly - only snippets he's seen recently. Only certain angles or lights or colors. Mikey, on the other hand. If asked to draw a self-portrait he would draw Mikey because Mikey is what comes clearest in his head: he can picture him in anything. Mikey is his constant.
It's startling to think that, outside the bathroom, Mikey is still reading on and singing, entirely unaware of what he is doing to Gerard. It's almost entirely possible to believe, but somehow true: Mikey has a life independent of Gerard and it is going on without him, all the time. Mikey is living completely within himself right now and there is nothing Gerard can do to change it.
He has to make sure Mikey's still there. Hasn't gotten up and left. Mikey has to be there and it is only this fear that drives Gerard out of the bathroom, disrupting Mikey's concentration.
He looks up with this soft little "oh!" and kicks his feet back down, blushing. "Gerard," he says, smiling. "You took long enough in there, Jesus."
Gerard laughs very quietly and sits on the edge of the bed. "What're you reading?"
"Trainspotting." Mikey shrugs and rolls onto his back, propping the book up on his own chest. He squints at the page - it's an awkward angle. Gerard lifts Mikey's head onto his lap, so he doesn't have to crane his neck, and Mikey sighs and says "thank you". Gerard twists his fingers through Mikey's hair. He wants to kiss Mikey. He wants to say he's sorry for being such a creep, sorry Mikey has to have such a goddamn fucked-up brother who is in his life all the time and never went away and never grew up like everyone else's family did.
Instead he says, "You really like that book, huh."
"One of the best." Mikey smiles again. "But you wouldn't know good literature if it punched you in the face, huh?" Gerard laughs and flushes red and Mikey says, with more than a trace of glee, "Fuckin' Star Wars novels - "
"Shut up, you're such a little bastard!" Gerard collapses onto his back, laughing. "Jesus! I was like thirteen!"
"You still have one in your suitcase," Mikey says placidly. "I saw it."
Gerard makes indistinct grumbling noises but knows when to give up. He rolls his eyes, but does not move Mikey's head from his legs. He stares at the ceiling awhile, and Mikey reads, and Gerard does his best not to read over Mikey's shoulder. To distract himself from that, he says, "Do you ever miss having a life of your own?"
"Hm?"
"I mean." Gerard bites one thumbnail absently. The skin under it tastes clean, which is a nice change. The blanket under his head is cold and damp from his wet hair but he doesn't feel like getting up. "I mean. Being around me all the time. Do you ever wish you could have a life... I don't know, y'know. Without me in it?"
Mikey lifts his head, turning, balancing on one elbow. His mouth is this tiny little line, lips sucked in between his teeth, and he's raising his eyebrows at Gerard. "What," he says, in this surprised voice. "What? No. Dude, what the fuck."
Gerard shrugs and sits up as well. He smiles weakly. He wants to say, I mean freedom - being cut loose from me - independence. Don't you want it?
But Mikey is already crushing himself into Gerard's chest, arms tight about Gerard's shoulders. His face pressed so hard into Gerard's collarbones that it feels like a kiss, hard and unrelenting and Gerard is taken aback by it. "Never," Mikey hisses. "Don't ever say that. I'm staying with you."
Gerard does not have to ask how long, because he already knows the answer. He spreads out one palm flat against Mikey's back. He holds Mikey close against him.