You Are Not My Savior (part 2/3)
“Mikey, keep walking.”
“I can’t leave, I told you, and I don’t want-“
“Is it the collar? Shit, Frank, can you get rid of it?”
“On it.”
“Just leave me there, seriously, I’m fine-“
“God, what did he do to you?”
“Might be pills. Do we have enough water to help him get through a pill withdrawal?”
“Barely. Call Show Pony once we get out-Frank, you doing all right there?”
“Yeah, just-hold still, Mikes, this might hurt.”
“But I don’t-agh!”
“Almost got it, one more-“
“Agh!”
“There, all gone. You feeling any better?”
“I didn’t need it off!”
“You’ll thank me later, once you’re not all medded up. Gee, is the car still out there?”
“Surrounded by Dracs, but yeah. Still there.”
“All right. Ray, you take care of him, we’ll take out the armed guard.”
“Got it.”
“Let me go, I was fine where I-“
“Shh, Mikey, it’ll be okay. You’re just confused right now. We’ll take you back to the desert, get you off the pills, and you’ll be fine.”
“But-“
“Shh.”
~
He wakes up to soft light, and the first thing he thinks is Did a bulb go out? There’s never any variation in the brightness of the room-it’s either flooded with bright white light, or completely dark when he’s going to sleep.
Then something stirs behind him and mumbles, “Mikey?” and oh. Oh. He’s not in the room anymore.
He rolls over and sees a sleeping bag-like the one he’s in, which he’s only noticing now-with a mop of red hair at one end. The mop is parted by a hand, and Gerard’s looking at him through his bangs, smiling uncertainly. “How are you feeling?”
“All right.” It’s coming back to him now, bits and pieces. The escape. The fight. Yesterday-fuck, yesterday, pain and need and concerned faces and glares and struggle and-
“Just all right?”
“Yeah.” He sits up, looking around at the scene. It’s early morning, judging by the pale sunlight just starting to creep up on his right, and there are two other sleeping bags curled up a few feet away. There’s a dead fire at his feet.
“Better than yesterday?” Gerard wriggles his sleeping bag towards his. “I mean, you’re not still…right?”
“Still what?” He looks around a bit more until his eyes fall on-
Steam and smoke billowing from factories, the wide spread of the Residential Complex, the white towers looming over the whole city-the fifteenth floor of Main Tower Block B, a room at the end of the west hall, white sheets, a smiling figure-
“Mikey?”
He looks back at Gerard, who’s staring at him with wide eyes. “You don’t…that was just the pills, that’s why you wanted to stay. They should be out of your system by now. You never have to go back again.”
He stares for a few moments. “But-“
“Never. I don’t know what he did to you, and you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but it’s over now.”
“Oh.” He lets his gaze drift back to the city. “Never?”
“Never. Now-Mikey, seriously, stop that. You’re scaring me.”
He looks away, but he doesn’t look back at Gerard. It doesn’t feel right, following his orders.
~
“Mikey.”
It’s a silly name, anyway. He could have gone with just “Mike.”
Or he could have stayed with “Michael.”
“Mikey” just sounds like a child’s version of his name. Diminutive. And no one else really goes by it. Why be the exception?
“Mikey?”
It always takes him a few seconds to respond to it, to remember it’s what people call him.
“Yes?”
“We’re going to be at the diner soon, maybe another day or two. You can rest there for a while, but we can’t stay long. The Dracs found it a little while ago, and we fought them off just fine, but…we’ll be needing a new hideout.”
“Right.”
He misses the pills. The inside of BL/ind was dull and white, but it was familiar. Comfortable. The desert’s just bleak, a wide expanse of sand and dirt and, but he can’t go back, not now.
“We can talk when we get there.” Gerard turns around from the driver’s seat, staring at him nervously.
“Right.” Mikey looks out the window.
~
Mikey’s always stared off into the desert a lot, waiting for Frank to finish fixing something or Gerard to do the finishing touches on a repainted gun. He doesn’t see why it has to be such a big deal when his gaze happens to fall in the direction of the city more often than not.
Frank and Ray just call his name to get his attention, a nervous look on their faces, but Gerard confronts him about it.
“You’re really worrying me, Mikey,” he says to him one night, wriggling until their sleeping bags are closer together.
Mikey doesn’t look at him, still fixed on the white towers in the distance. “Stop worrying, then. I’m fine.”
“You’re always looking back there. You don’t…you can’t actually miss that, right?”
Mikey watches as the lights at the top of Main Tower Block B start to shut off. It must be 2300.
“Of course not, Gee,” he says, because it’s the easiest answer.
~
The diner’s the same as ever, but with a few extra scorch marks on the walls. Frank and Ray go out to work on the Trans Am, leaving Mikey and Gerard to sit across from each other in one of the booths, Mikey picking at a can of kibble while Gerard stares at him with concern.
Eventually, Mikey can’t take it anymore, and he sets down the fork without looking up. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s-with me? I was going to ask you that. You haven’t said anything about what happened, and you know you can talk to me about anything.”
Nobody really talks about what happened to them after they’ve been rescued. Mikey remembers Frank being pissed for a while, Ray not really talking for a few weeks, and Gerard being more determined than ever in their cause, but no one ever told stories. So Mikey’s been keeping the tradition, staying quiet about the whole affair, even when one of them looks at him warily and asks, “You want to talk?”
Mikey’s not sure what he’d say, if he let himself.
“It’s nothing,” he finally says, but Gerard’s frown deepens.
“Mikey, you’re fucking traumatized, it’s all right to admit it.” Gerard looks hesitant but he’s leaning in a little, like he wants to give him a hug but he’s not sure how he’d react.
Mikey just shrugs and sinks into the aging cushion of the booth. “It…really wasn’t that bad, Gee.”
“Not that bad?” Gerard gapes at him. “Mikey, he-he fucking kidnapped you, probably tortured you, you won’t even talk about any of the shit he did.”
Mikey still won’t make eye contact. “It’s his job. You know when he’s not working they just lock him up in stasis? How shitty is that?”
“You’re-“ Gerard can’t seem to find words for a moment. “You can’t actually sympathize with him. He’s an exterminator. He’s the bad guy.”
“What if he’s not?” Mikey asks quietly, and he knows this is only going to cause trouble, only going to make everyone worry about him more, but he can’t just let it go. “What if we’re just not thinking everything through?”
“Mikey,” Gerard says firmly, reaching across the table to put a hand on his shoulder. Mikey flinches away, but Gerard continues. “I know he…I know he can get in your head. But if it’s us and them, you have to be able to shoot him, no questions asked. Okay?”
“Gee, he-he’s seriously not as bad as we think.” He wasn’t going to try and convince Gerard like this, but maybe, maybe, he’ll get it, more than the others would. He knows his brother’s been taken by Korse, knows the way Korse talked about him, those weird almost-fond expressions that would spread across his face when he mentioned him, maybe he’d understand. “And maybe BLI isn’t all bad, they have some good ideas, if they just changed how they did things a little-“
“Mikey.” Gerard sounds betrayed. “How can you even-we’re right, they’re wrong, that’s just how it works. There’s no compromise here.”
Mikey starts to inch out of the seat, eyes wide. “You-he was right about you.”
“I-What did he say about me?”
Mikey starts to curl in on himself, flinching when Gerard tries to put a hand on him again. “That you’re just a crazy radical. You aren’t really thinking all this through. If you’d just be reasonable and consider both sides then we could probably-“
“Don’t do this to me, Mikey.” Gerard’s voice is cracking. “Don’t become like them, you’re my baby brother, I need you here.”
He probably exploited that bond, Mikey hears, like he’s back there again, tied down and trying to ignore the words that he should have known were true all along. He manipulated you.
Mikey stands up and walks back outside.
~
He avoids Gerard for a while. He can’t leave-there’s nowhere to go, not even back to the city-but at least he can keep away from Gerard.
Frank always takes Gerard’s side, he knows, so he gets in the habit of staying near Ray. Ray doesn’t ask too many questions. Ray doesn’t stop him from looking at the city in the distance.
Ray kisses him a few nights after they’ve started looking for a new hideout.
It’s nothing special, a peck on the lips after a quiet conversation about what their new hideout should be like, their sleeping bags pressed up against each other, and it’s not surprising. Ray doesn’t even say a word when Mikey starts to crawl out of his own sleeping bag and join Ray in his, just lets Mikey lie on top of him and kiss him again and again, their hips starting to grind against each other.
They’ve done this before. They’ve all done this before, especially after one of them gets taken-easing stress and high emotion through sex is as natural to them as running from a Drac. Maybe it’s from coming out of a lifetime of sex-suppressors, maybe it’s the way they all need to reacquaint themselves with the team after being separated, but it always works.
They rub off against each other until they’re both sticky and disgusting, and Mikey feels a little better. Definitely more like a Killjoy.
He’s not sure, but the two feelings seem like they’re in opposition to each other.
~
Kissing Ray becomes a regular occurrence. They’ll park for the night, Frank and Gerard will start setting up camp, and Mikey will look over at Ray, eyebrow cocked.
So they’re kissing again, now, somewhere between the desperate just-escaped sucking or biting and the gentle way Ray slides his lips over Mikey’s the way he always does, the way he did before Mikey was taken. It’s cramped, they’re holding each other up so neither of them fall off the back seat, but the touch is so, so worth it.
“You don’t have to be so careful,” Mikey breathes, taking his hands out of Ray’s hair to cross them above his head, rested against the window of the Trans Am. “Come on, you’re strong enough, hold me down.”
“Mikey-“ he sits up, and Mikey frowns at the loss of contact. Ray looks scared.
“Ray?” Mikey sits up to chase after him, but Ray only backs up further.
“Don’t…don’t do that.” Ray’s looking at him like he just found a dead animal on the side of the road, horrified and sympathetic and nothing he should be feeling right now, what the hell.
“Do what?”
“That…I shouldn’t have done this, it’s not going to help you.” Ray starts to climb out of the car, and Mikey can’t bring himself to stop him.
~
It’s only a few days before Ray comes back, apologizes, lets Mikey tell him he really doesn’t need to apologize, and they make out in the back of the car again.
Mikey tries not to do whatever it is that made Ray freak out. Maybe he doesn’t like holding people down. Maybe he thinks Mikey’s traumatized, like Gerard said.
Maybe Ray’s the one who’s traumatized.
“Is it true?” Mikey asks one night, curled up against Ray in his sleeping bag, “What they did to you? He told me, he said he took you-“
“Mikey,” Ray interrupts, putting his face in Mikey’s shoulder, “Can we just…sleep? Please?”
No one really talks about what happened to them, after all.
They come across an abandoned building a few days later, torn up by the wind and sand just enough that the Dracs probably won’t come looking for them there, but sturdy enough to hold them for a while. It’s a nice change from the road.
(Even if the walls aren’t white, the lights aren’t artificial, and there aren’t any dispensers in the walls.)
The building looks like it might have been a shop at one time, with a wide open area on the first floor and living quarters on the second. Frank and Gerard agree to set up camp downstairs and let Mikey and Ray sleep upstairs. Ray starts to argue that they could probably fit four in the bed, they all know how rare it is to find real sheets and pillows, but Frank and Gerard just look at each other before declining.
Mikey’s fine with that.
~
It’s dark, been dark for days, but this is new, not hearing anything. He snaps his fingers and feels the noise rather than hears it, but when he hums and clicks his tongue he hears that just fine. He can get through this. He’ll be-
Suddenly, noise, noise everywhere, and it’s worse than the vague ringing that never leaves his ears, there’s this steady stream of static that’s more cloying than any amount of silence. He clicks his tongue again, hums again, but nothing. It’s a void.
He can take this. It’s just silence. Silence and darkness-he could sleep like this.
Except he can’t, because the silence is too fucking loud.
He’s been focusing on silence through the whole ordeal, using it as a wall, but now? Now the wall’s stopped keeping things out and started holding him in, and he’s trapped, alone, completely alone in the void, and he’s going to suffocate from this, he can’t stay like this another second longer, he-
Light again, bright white light that hurts like hell and feels better than anything he’s felt in weeks.
A hand in his hair, pushing it out of his eyes, and a face smiling down at him.
“I was there the whole time, Michael.”
Michael smiles.
~
“Mikey?”
Mikey wakes up to find that he can see and hear again, and the body wrapped around him is dusty and brightly-colored.
“Oh…morning, Ray.”
Ray tightens his hold on Mikey, putting as little air between them as possible. “You…were you having nightmares? You were saying…”
Mikey knows what he was saying. “Yeah, it’s…I’m fine, Ray, go back to sleep.”
It’d be harder to explain that dreaming about being back there is never really a nightmare.
~
Ray loses himself sometimes, grabs his hips and holds him against the wall, and Mikey’s always trying to find the right spots to lick and suck to make it happen again. But Ray always has to ruin it when it’s over, jumping back like Mikey’s diseased and sputtering out apologies, and it’s just not the same-
He tries not to tell Ray that, at least not in those words. He’d only be worried again.
It’s easy to bait him sometimes, though.
They’ve all been working on the car most of the day, giving it a regular sand-scrubbing, but Mikey’s the first one back to his room. He’s still getting used to the desert sun again.
He sits at the end of the bed and waits until he hears footsteps on the stairs, then stands up, waits by the door, and pulls Ray into the room as soon as it starts to open. Ray lets out a noise of surprise as Mikey pushes him against the door, but Mikey muffles it with his mouth.
“Wanna suck you off,” he whispers between kisses, working Ray’s too-tight pants open. Ray exhales sharply when Mikey bites down on his earlobe before sinking to his knees.
(Ray gets on his knees for Mikey sometimes, but it feels wrong, somehow. Mikey would rather be the one on the ground, the one being good to Ray, but whenever he tries to explain this, Ray frowns and holds him close, and then neither of them are getting off.
“You don’t have to be like this, Mikey,” Ray says, holding him by the small of his back, which he supposes is soothing in its own way.
“Are you judging my sexual preferences?” Mikey asks with a smirk. “My brother might have something to say about that.”
Ray doesn’t laugh.)
He’s got his lips around the head of Ray’s cock the second he hits the ground, and Ray moans, a high and needy sound that prompts Mikey to swallow him down further.
Mikey can see Ray’s hands flexing, seeking out contact, and Mikey rolls his eyes and takes his hand off Ray’s cock to relocate his hands to the back of his head.
Ray’s eyes widen, and he takes in a shaky breath to say something, but Mikey pulls his mouth off of Ray’s cock to interrupt-“Just…fucking fuck my mouth already, come on,” and Ray’s hips twitch in that way they do when Mikey does something just right.
“Ray,” he breathes against the inside of his thigh, clasping his hands behind his back, staring up at him from under his lashes, trying to make himself as presentable as possible.
“Mikey, I-“ But Mikey doesn’t let him say anything else, just takes him all the way down until he’s nearly choking on Ray’s dick, and Ray’s fingers tighten in his hair. Mikey hums his approval, making Ray groan and thrust his hips-just a little, but enough to know that Mikey’s winning.
He bobs his head once, twice, presses his tongue against the shaft and flicks at the head, and Ray’s moaning now, fucking into Mikey’s mouth at a slow pace, and it’s good, but it’s not great.
He goes a little faster, meeting Ray’s shallow thrusts with the back of his throat until Ray gasps and jerks his hips harder, Mikey’s name tumbling off his lips over and over again like a record that’s got too much sand in it.
Mikey stops moving at one point and just waits, and-yes, Ray’s gripping the back of his head and thrusting his hips forward to keep the rhythm going. Mikey shuts his eyes and lets it happen, lets the wave of feeling good and useful to Ray fall over him, and he hardly notices when Ray starts to say his name with a different tone, a warning.
Mikey sucks hard, and Ray makes a choked noise and comes down his throat.
After he’s swallowed everything and cleaned Ray up, he pulls off to sit back on his heels, grinning up at him hazily.
Ray blinks a few times, staring down at Mikey, and then his face contorts into what definitely doesn’t look like a content post-blowjob face.
“Mikey, holy fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry.” He kneels down next to him, holding Mikey around the neck and murmuring apologies into his ear.
What?
“What?” Mikey wriggles out of Ray’s grip enough to look him in the eye. This is ruining that blissed-out state he’d gotten himself into only seconds ago. “What’s wrong?” His voice comes out as a rasp.
“I-I shouldn’t have, that was wrong, I’m so sorry, Mikey…”
“Ray,” Mikey says, and he can see Ray wince at every hoarse word. “It’s fine, seriously, what the hell?”
“I fucking used you, I’m not treating you like I should-“
“I asked for it.”
“You didn’t want to!”
Mikey stares at him. “I asked for it. How is that not-“
“You only asked for it because of…whatever he did to you, it messed you up, and I’m sorry.”
Mikey breaks free of Ray’s grip and stands up. “Not everything has to be about him, you know.”
Ray doesn’t follow him as he goes to the door.
~
Ray still sleeps in the same bed as him, but he doesn’t respond to Mikey’s touches, rolls over if Mikey tries to kiss him, and Mikey’s about two nights away from blowing him in his sleep when Gerard announces that they have to start moving again.
It’s another blur of days and nights, of driving and camping out, of staring at the vague rectangular shapes of the city on the horizon. He doesn’t feel like he did before, like he needed to stay there, like he was so happy there-that was the pills. It’s just hard to readjust to the freedom he’d been wanting for most (most) of his time locked up. To accept that he’s a Killjoy again.
To believe in what that actually means.
~
“You miss him,” Frank says to him out of the corner of his mouth, the other corner occupied with a wrench.
Mikey looks up from the new issue of Murder he’s only been vaguely glancing at. “What?”
“Korse. The city. Everyone’s trying not to believe it, but you miss it.” He takes the wrench out of his mouth and replaces it with a screwdriver, twisting at a bolt on whatever new gadget he’s working on.
“I don’t miss him,” Mikey says, but it sounds hollow in his mouth.
Frank just sighs and starts packing up his toolbox. “You do. You’re always looking over there, you never act angry for what he did-Ray told me you say his name in your sleep, fuck. I don’t know if this is your way of coping or whatever, but if he comes after us again…I just don’t want you running back to him, okay?”
Mikey starts to protest, but when he considers the idea-Korse chasing them down again, smiling at him, the spot next to him empty and waiting-Mikey turns away.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe, if he had the chance, he’d go back to the way it was, but that chance isn’t coming. He’s stuck here again.
He might as well try to start believing again.
~
It doesn’t last long.
The first (and only) time Mikey kills a Drac after being taken back to the desert, he almost throws up.
Gerard kneels down to put an arm around his shoulders when he collapses next to the body, but Mikey shoves him away, snarling, “What if that was you? Drafted into a war you don’t believe in, shoved into a body you don’t want, and then shot by people who could have been your friends? How would you feel?”
“Dead,” Gerard says, and Mikey really does throw up, now.
~
“Mikey.” Gerard sidles into the back seat next to Mikey, and Mikey cringes away, but he doesn’t leave. It’s been a while since they’ve talked, maybe Gerard will listen to him this time. “I know you’re just trying to be reasonable, but…we can’t reason with them. They want us dead. They probably want you dead, too-you’re kind of a liability. So who do you really want to trust, the ones who want you dead or the ones who will keep you safe from them?”
Mikey picks at the half-eaten can of kibble they’ve been sharing all day, not looking at Gerard. “I want to trust you, you know I do. I’m just…having trouble doing that.”
Gerard sighs that hurt little sigh he seems to be doing a lot lately. “Mikey…”
“I’m sorry. Just give me some more time.”
“We don't have any time. You need to pick a side, and you need to pick it now. Are you going to fight the fuckers who fucked you up, or fight your best friends?”
“You don’t underst-“
“I do understand!” Gerard’s gripping the seats tight enough that Mikey starts to worry about the upholstery. “I understand that the guy we’re fighting to the death tortured and manipulated you to get back at me. Do you have any idea how much that’s fucking with my head?”
“Get back at you? The fuck did you do to him that the rest of us haven’t?”
Gerard doesn’t look at him. “We-“ he stops himself, taking a deep breath. “I-“
Mikey waits.
“I just…tricked him into letting me go, that’s all,” Gerard finally stammers out, but there’s obviously a lot going unsaid.
Mikey keeps staring at him. He knows Gerard; if nobody stops him he’ll keep talking until someone does. And he never keeps secrets from Mikey.
“…What?” Gerard still won’t look at him.
“…Go on, tell me more.”
“There’s nothing left to tell,” Gerard snaps, and Mikey recoils at the tone. Gerard doesn’t trust him.
His brother doesn’t trust him.
“You’re sure?” he asks, hoping, wishing for it not to be true, but Gerard just shakes his head and starts to climb out the door.
Mikey slumps in his seat. Gerard, his big brother, the one he’s saved and been saved by so many times, the one who’s been trying to get Mikey to listen to him for the past few weeks, doesn’t even trust him.
He’s seen the way the other guys look at him, too. Ray’s scared of him, especially ever since they stopped sleeping together, and Frank always gives him these obnoxious knowing looks, like Yeah, you’re screwed up, but I won’t say anything. He feels diseased, like everyone wants to watch him and take care of him without getting anywhere near him.
Fine, then. If they’re not going to trust him, he’ll just return the favor.
~
He’s on his knees, there are hands in his hair, his mouth is full of Korse’s cock and it’s the greatest feeling in the world. His brain is flooded with sensation and endorphins and whatever they put in those pills, and he’s barely lucid, unable to think.
So he doesn’t. He just lets Korse move him wherever he likes, fast or slow, deep or shallow, like a tool, like a thing, and his mind goes completely blank. He doesn’t need to think. He just needs to sink into this feeling and hope it never goes away, hope he can stay this open and empty forever.
But then the monotony of Korse’s rhythmic thrusting is interrupted by sudden sharp pains where his fingers are tightening in his hair, and he can hear Korse’s breathing stutter, and then he’s swallowing as fast as he can as Korse comes in his mouth and down his throat.
He comes back to himself all at once, suddenly aware of his own swollen lips and raw throat, and he groans, but then Korse’s hands are back in his hair again, stroking lightly around his ears.
“You’ll never leave, will you, Michael?” Korse tugs on the back of Michael’s collar until he starts to choke again.
He can’t say a word.
~
Mikey wakes up in the back of the car, having given up on sleeping so close to the others. He’s almost surprised to see he’s still wearing the cheap leather jacket and oddly-colored pants that the others forced him into the day he left the building, once they’d managed to get him out of the white prisoner’s uniform.
Waking up is always disorienting. He still dreams in black and white, and when he wakes up and sees the blue sky, the brown dust, he just wants to go back to sleep.
What had he ever seen in the desert?
~
Mikey had thought Gerard would start avoiding him after that point, but instead, he can’t get rid of him.
“Mikey, sit up front today, would you?” he asks as they’re clearing up their camp.
“No,” Mikey says simply, but Gerard just keeps pressing.
“Come on, it won’t be that bad. Frank’s getting tired of shotgun, and Ray had it for a long time before him, so. Just work with me for a little while longer, okay?”
“No.”
“Well, in the time it took you to argue about this, the other guys have already taken the back seats.”
Mikey turns around, and sure enough, Frank’s climbing in to the car to scoot next to Ray. Fuck.
They’re all against him.
He stares out the window for most of the journey, ignoring Gerard’s attempts at conversation until the whole car is silent for a while. Even Ray and Frank don’t say anything.
They’re still silent as they pull up to Doctor D’s lair, the first time they’ve been back there since Mikey’s return. Show Pony’s hanging outside, draped over a bench and looking like the most boneless sentry, but he snaps to attention as the Trans Am pulls up.
Show knocks on the door to the lair four times once they all start to climb out of the car, and Grace comes rushing out, arms wide and ready to wrap themselves around the first person she runs into, which happens to be Ray. It’s usually Ray.
Doctor D’s just finishing up a broadcast as they head inside, so they have to stay quiet for a few minutes while he plays through the last song of the hour. It’s an old one, and Mikey doesn’t recognize it, something loud and surreal about the future, the twenty-first century. The lyrics don’t sound too hopeful for it, and Mikey doesn’t blame whoever wrote them.
Doctor D hits a button to stop the broadcast and spins around in his chair to see them. “Got your broken squad back together again?”
“Yeah, all good now.” Gerard answers, but he doesn’t look as confident as he sounds.
Doctor D eyes Mikey from over his sunglasses. Mikey stares back, trying not to fidget. It’s been so long since he’s seen him, seen that fierce fuck-you look in his eyes that the other Killjoys can never quite copy. Mikey feels exposed, like Doctor D’s glare is peeling away all the color the others put on him and showing everyone just how pale and white he is on the inside.
He keeps his eyes on Mikey for a few more moments before turning to Gerard. “Poison, let’s get some peace here, yeah?” He glances at the others, gaze lingering on Mikey only slightly, and it’s a clear signal. They head back outside, leaving the two alone.
Mikey sulks near the door, trying not to look like he’s straining to hear any word he can pick up.
“Hey,” Ray says carefully, breaking his concentration as he walks over towards Mikey. “How are you doing?”
Mikey shrugs, not looking at him.
“Any better?” Ray won’t get near him. It’s not like Mikey’s contagious or anything, fuck.
“Gee doesn’t trust me,” he finally says, crossing his arms close to his chest.
Ray frowns, and he opens his stance a bit, but he still doesn’t get any closer. “What? Of course he does.”
“He doesn’t. He won’t tell me anything anymore, he thinks I’m messed up as fuck, and now he’s shoving me outside so he can talk about his plans without me knowing. He thinks I’m going to go back to Korse.”
There’s a pause as Ray sighs and kicks at a rock on the ground in front of him.
“Well…are you?”
Mikey slams a fist on the thin metal wall of the shelter, and the voices inside go silent for a moment, but Mikey isn’t paying attention, he’s busy starting to storm off in any direction that will take him away from everyone.
“Mikey!” Ray grabs him by the arm before he can get anywhere. “Mikey, listen, I didn’t mean-“
“You don’t trust me, either!”
“We’re just scared, all right? We don’t know what he did to you or how it affected-“
“You’re just following whatever Gerard tells you, is that it? That’s how he always is, he thinks he’s so fucking right all the time.”
“He’s our leader, he’s the least likely to screw up, we need to put some amount of trust in-“
“Oh, yeah, Gerard’s just fucking perfect, what with the constantly getting all of us kidnapped or nearly killed.”
“We knew there was going to be a risk from the start!”
“Is it really worth it?” Mikey’s shaking now, and it’s not just from trying to get out of Ray’s grip. “Running through the desert, trying to bring back color and music, getting in gunfights, fighting a war we’re pretty much set to lose anyway? Is it worth it?”
“We’re not going to lose,” Ray says, and it almost sounds sincere. “We’re going to fight until we take down BLI. That’s just how it’s going to go.”
“You just sound like him.” Mikey scowls. “He make you memorize that?”
“Mikey.” Ray’s holding him by his shoulders by now, staring him down, but then he looks up when Frank calls, “You two all right?” and walks over until he’s behind Ray.
Great. Someone else who’s going to just agree with whatever Gerard says.
“Frank, help me out. We trust Mikey, right?” Ray’s gaze keeps shifting between Mikey, the door of the shelter, and the corner of his eye, where he probably can’t even see Frank.
Frank opens his mouth to answer, but he hesitates, and that’s enough to make Mikey snarl and spit, “You don’t. You think I’m a BLI drone, don’t you? You think I’m insane for looking at both sides, but you two are the ones following some crazy guy who thinks he can change the world with paint!”
Frank circles around Ray to get a better look at Mikey, staring at him just as intently. “That crazy guy is your brother!”
“I fucking know that!” Mikey struggles, but Ray’s got big hands and a lot more strength than he usually lets on. He can’t get free, but he can keep shouting. “And that’s the only reason I’ve been given to put any trust in him! So we have the same parents and got stuck in the same house together, great, that must mean I have to believe every word he says.”
“You trust him because you’ve known him long enough to know he’s right.” Frank has one of his hands on Mikey’s upper arm now, squeezing almost painfully. “He’s going to fix things. It might take a while, it might end in one of us hurt or dead, but shit, if me dying means we’ll win in the end, I’m fine with that.”
Mikey stares at both of them with a kind of horrified calm. “You’re fucking brainwashed.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Frank spits. Ray starts looking nervously over Mikey’s shoulder.
“I’m actually considering my options. You just listen to whatever he tells you and take it as fact.”
“And you’re just ignoring everything he says because of whatever fucking Korse did to you!”
Ray’s still silently looking behind Mikey, and Mikey wants to ask just what’s so fucking interesting that’s going on behind him, and-
There’s a hand.
On the back of his neck.
Mikey’s next bitter reply to Frank falls out of his head, and he can’t move or breathe or think.
“Mikey.”
He knows that voice, knows it’s Gerard, knows he should start struggling and shouting and telling everyone to fuck off until he’s free to run as far away as he can, but-
The hand moves up into his hair.
“Listen to me.”
Frank and Ray are still there, but they’re silent, practically ghosts, just there to hold Mikey still as the hand keeps moving, fingertips running along his scalp.
“You were taken by Korse. He had you for a long time, long enough that you started to see him as the one keeping you safe. The only one you could trust.” The hand smoothes back his bangs, and his brain can’t handle all the messages of no no no and yes yes yes that are running back and forth in his head, occasionally colliding and just making too much noise. Mikey shuts his eyes.
The darkness only makes the voice sound louder. “You can’t trust him. He still captured and tortured you. He hurt you. I won’t hurt you.” It’s not just the darkness, the voice is closer now-Mikey can feel hot breath near his ear, can feel another arm wrapping around and holding him close as the others’ hands let go.
“I won’t hurt you,” the voice keeps repeating, and Mikey believes it. It’s easy to just listen to the voice, feel the hand in his hair, so much like before but better. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and sinks into the touch, almost at ease for the first time in weeks.
“I’m going to let go now,” the voice says, and Mikey nods, paying more attention to the voice than the words it’s saying. “Are you going to stay calm?”
Mikey nods again, and the hand is gone. Then the other arm is gone, and Mikey’s alone. He blinks his eyes open, slowly, unsure.
Frank and Ray have stepped back a few feet, and Gerard’s standing in front of him now, watching him carefully. Mikey’s still dazed, vaguely aware that he should run, or yell at Gerard, but he needs to remember how to move, first.
“Well?”
Mikey doesn’t know what Gerard’s asking. He tries to convey this with a blank stare.
“Are you going to stay with us?”
And then it hits him all over again, what he was yelling about before, why there’s a part of him that wants to punch Gerard right now, why Frank and Ray are giving each other nervous glances. He wants to start screaming again.
But he doesn’t.
“I’ll…I’ll stay,” Mikey says, blinking and trying to shake off the haze that hit him from the second Gerard’s hand touched his neck. “Just…I still need some time to figure things out, okay? Don’t bug me about it.”
Gerard nods. “I just want you to get better, that’s all.”
Mikey wants to argue, to say he’s been fine all along, but he can’t say that’s really the truth, not anymore.
“We can calm down for a little while. Fewer raids, fewer fights. It means more running, but more time for you to get your head back on straight. Just until you’re ready to fight again. Sound all right?”
“…Yeah. Yeah, that sounds perfect, Gee.”
Gerard puts his hand on Mikey’s shoulder-not on his neck, but close enough the Mikey has to suppress a twitch. “I should have done this earlier. Everyone else usually recovers pretty quickly, I didn’t even think…I’m sorry.” And he looks so fucking genuine and regretful that all Mikey wants is to believe him, to give him a hug and say that they’re okay, that he’s on his side, but Gerard’s thumb is resting near his collarbone, maybe two inches below where the collar Korse put on him used to rest.
How could your dear brother ever be wrong?
“Are we taking Grace?” Mikey finally asks after a minute of silence, unable to come up with any other response.
“Probably. She’s been stuck here for a while, she should come along if we’re going to try and stay out of trouble anyway.”
“Great. Awesome. Ray will be happy.”
“Yeah.” Gerard’s thumb presses above his collarbone, just for a second, and then lets go, leaving Mikey frozen, just trying to breathe through the haze creeping back into his head.
They’re back on the road after another few hours of talking to Doctor D and stocking up on supplies, Grace sitting in the back between Frank and Ray and talking about something she wants to draw. It’s hard to come by pens or pencils in the desert, and paint is something they conserve for use on the car and the guns, so she always describes everything she wishes she could draw in enough detail that it’s almost real to all of them.
“You’ll be all right,” Gerard whispers that night, his sleeping bag close to Mikey’s, but not touching. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Mikey doesn’t answer, already half-asleep and unwilling to carry on another conversation with Gerard right now. Gerard sighs behind him, the material of the sleeping bag shifting.
Just as he’s drifting off to sleep, he thinks he hears Gerard whispering to himself.
“Fucking Korse, you didn’t have to do this.”
~
He’s going to fall apart.
Everything’s tense, stretched tight tight tight and just on the edge of breaking, flying apart everywhere, and there’s so much pain he can barely gasp out “Fuck you! Fuck you!” after every shock.
“Who are you protecting here?” Korse asks, his voice muffled under the blood pounding in his ears. “Your friends, your companions, your brother?”
He bites his tongue, the way he did those first few days, hard enough to reopen cuts that might not ever heal if he keeps this up, his mouth filling with the sharp taste of blood. Maybe if he does this, tries to go back to how he was before, silent and motionless, he can erase everything he’s given to Korse already, maybe-
“It’s sad, really, that someone could put his own brother through these trials,” Korse says, and his mouth moves on its own, screams out, “You shut the fuck up about my brother!” and his body starts to shake, maybe convulsing from pain and fear, maybe trying to escape, he can’t really say. The restraints still hold, no matter how hard he struggles, but he still wrenches hard until another shock goes through him. He’s stopped hearing his own screams at this point, they all blend together with the noise of the machine, the pounding of his heart, the words Korse says.
“That’s the first time you’ve acknowledged that Gerard is your brother, you know.”
He goes limp. His skin is still tense and ready to fly into a million pieces, but he can’t move. He fucked up. He’d already betrayed himself just by moving, reacting, speaking, but now he’s really fucked up.
Korse keeps talking, keeps spewing lies and filth and nothing he wants to hear, nothing he should be listening to. He trusts Gerard. He needs Gerard. Just because he didn’t come up with the idea, just because he wasn’t as much of a hero as Gerard, just because he followed him because he didn’t know where else to go, it doesn’t mean-
“He manipulated you, Michael.”
He snaps something back, some quip that probably suits Gerard better than him, and gets another wave of pain in return.
Korse leaves, and he’s left in silence, too much time to think.
Michael just wishes he knew what to think about.
~
Mikey wakes up in the middle of the night, eyes wide, gasping for breath. His skin is still tingling, and his throat feels a little hoarse, but it’s hard to tell if it’s phantom pain or not.
A nightmare. He had a nightmare, a real one, for the first time since the rescue.
Mikey curls up and takes deep breaths, trying to calm himself down enough to go back to sleep.
Gerard would probably say that it’s good, his brain knows that everything that happened before was bad, that it belongs in his nightmares.
Mikey shuts his eyes and wishes for dreamless sleep.
part 3