I Will Save You
Gerard/Mikey
One-shot
Psychology & power & all it comes down to, in the end, is Mikey's shoulders in Gerard's hands. Rated R for some language. Written for fanfic100, prompt #29: "birth".
1,397 words
Written May 24, 2006
So, okay, it's a little messed up maybe, but Gerard's read way weirder things in psychology textbooks. This one theory, Freud's maybe, or someone - Gerard always attributes everything to Freud - this one theory he read talked about how guys love sex because they really just want to get back to the womb. The idea of being in something tight and warm and wet, that is the big deal for guys because basically they never got over their first sensations. (Which is one of those theories that may or may not have been proven bullshit two years later; Gerard can never remember.)
Anyway the point is, being a gay guy and all, Gerard's not sure what this means about him. He's pretty sure his mom carried him the normal way and all. Like, she didn't carry him around up her ass or anything. And for all that about music making fetuses develop, he's pretty sure she didn't play excessive amounts of Elton John at him in utero. So.
Also, there's some other theory (again, maybe proven bullshit, maybe not) about how guys are attracted to women that remind them of their mothers, because guys want to let go, be totally pampered and adored by someone. And for them, the one person that can always do that - that first did so - is Mommy.
Gerard has yet to come across the guy that looks like an Italian mom from Jersey. And oh, man, is he so fucking grateful for that.
So what it comes down to is, there is way weirder stuff in the average dude, and since Gerard doesn't have that kind of hang-up or anything he thinks he's earned the right to have his own little oddities. (Which is a pretty blasé way of putting it. Let's be honest, when Gerard's in bed at night thinking about morality and where he's going when he dies… he takes this sort of thing a lot more seriously.)
If he feels like it, he can even amuse himself and connect it back to that idea of first sensations. The first moment he saw Mikey, tiny and thin-skinned with his veins deep blue in the hospital blanket; his eyelids wrinkled like raisin skins. He held Mikey so gently even then.
Up until then Gerard was living in a world of adult commands, same as every child - a world of don't do that and leave that alone and come here. Sit down eat this go to bed play nice.
Then Mikey was in his arms, burbling and squeaking, totally alien and totally fragile. Gerard prodded at his cheek cautiously. It squished beneath his finger. It was very smooth and faintly fuzzy. He felt damp, like he'd just gotten out of a bath. Gerard looked at this tiny thing, felt its soft shoulderblades through the blanket, and realized in a tumult that this - this person - was tiny and very desperately needed protection, and Gerard could do that.
It was power, raw and simple, and it made Gerard's fingertips buzz. (In that sense, he likes to think he's very lucky. That feeling… When they talked about dictators in history classes, he'd remember holding Mikey, that awareness of absolute control. In that sense, Gerard thinks how easily he could've been hardwired to be addicted to that instead of booze. Maybe it's for the best that he loved that power in a tiny way, a delicate flower-petal way.)
Even when they were children playing: Mikey would skin his knee, shred his palm open on the gravel, and Gerard would feel something in him flip at the sight of the blood. Not in a bad way. Just this fierce total knowledge that inside Mikey was made of something, something delicate and holy to be protected. Mikey would go around stumbling because he couldn't see, and didn't want to ask their parents for glasses, and Gerard would lead him by the hand and feel pride like bubbles in his stomach.
The wine their parents drank looked, in the light of the kitchen, like thin wavering cupfuls of Mikey's blood. His mother's sheer pantyhose looked like Mikey's skin had been peeled off and hung on the bedpost. It was deeply physical: the need to protect. To play the stereotypical big brother and hold Mikey close in the shaking of the thunderstorm, the epicenter of the nightmares.
If those are his earliest memories (Gerard gets a little defensive here, when he thinks it) then shouldn't he have the right to get attached to them? To turn that into his metaphorical womb? The only safety he knows is that of Mikey's safety. Haven means their shared bedroom after a long day, Mikey exhausted, Gerard promising to keep the monsters beneath the bed away.
That's what it is. It has to be.
That's why Mikey's shoulderblades are still so close to the surface like shark fins. Gerard cups his hands around them, feels their strain and weight and heave. There is something heavy in Mikey's shoulderblades. Gerard holds Mikey's shoulders in his palms, delicate, when they kiss. Sometimes Mikey holds onto the sleeves of Gerard's jacket in a way that is tremblingly careful, his lower lip caught between Gerard's, clinging. He feels like willow branches and Gerard holds him steady. Keeps him from swaying.
In the motel beds, Gerard kisses the bumps of Mikey's spine, lets one hand slip beneath Mikey's ribcage. He can feel the up-and-down of Mikey's breath. His fingers fit into the notches between ribs, sliding together like a matching puzzle, making Gerard think in both sexual euphemisms and lovestruck clichés at the same time.
No matter how many times they come together in the silence of sleazy half-made beds, Gerard feels something sacred about it. Mikey balancing beneath him, tense, eyes shut; the dimness of the lights. There is purity in the shadows curving like eyeliner along Mikey's eyelids (the faint wrinkles still there, that make Gerard's heart flash back to memory.)
If he had his way, there would be an end to motels, an end to secret names and paying with cash to avoid scandals breaking like glass against concrete. But even in this there is a certain mystery: a charm that comes from staying in bed too long with no one to bother them. Kicking the blankets about without reason, without any of the nagging, aching sensation that comes with, but we will have to fix them again so no one can tell.
When they don't have to worry about the bedsheets, Gerard can strip off the pillowcases and use them as makeshift ropes. He can wind them in sideways figure eights around Mikey's wrists - tiny infinities looped around Mikey and the bed, holding him down, letting Gerard see the splay of his bones and thin tissues.
"You are so beautiful," Gerard says, and they can both tell it means oh you are spread thin like dissections and cadavers, you are pinned like a butterfly, I want to keep you this clean forever and let you know that I will always care for you, trapped here, thin and translucent.
It means you reduce me to incoherent streams of speech.
"You're more beautiful," Mikey says.
Gerard blushes and closes his eyes. He dips his head down to Mikey's clavicle. The bones feel hollow and tender beneath the skin, and Gerard feels the power radiating out of his teeth when he bites gently.
He's thinking of this time when he and Patrick were talking about something - most likely Anna - and Patrick said, "She waited the exact right amount of time before we slept together, you know?"
"Yeah," Gerard said. He knew. "Like, if it's too soon it feels cheap, but… it shouldn't wait forever."
Patrick nodded slightly. "Right. When you love someone… you should trust them, you know? You should let them see you naked even if you think you're ugly, and all that."
Gerard knows what he means. He feels naked (in both senses), he feels commanded by Mikey's body. For all the physical power in his broad palms, there will always be this: he will always be doomed to fall on Mikey's stomach with his mouth biting so carefully. He will always hold the cradle of Mikey's hipbones between his hands like it is a child.
"I trust you," he says, and with his eyes turned to the ceiling, Mikey does not even have to nod.