Life is overrated
Title: Life is overrated
Author: creepylicious/alles_luege
Pairing: Gerard/Tate, Mikey/Tate (of some sorts)
Rating: R
Summary: Gerard writes horror-graphic novels, Mikey always follows him and Tate just takes what he wants.
Tate sits back and the light coming from somewhere makes the mask, makes his whole body shine. A big, black, bad insect here to eat him alive. Every movement deadly precise, here to hurt. “I can have whoever I want as long as they're in the house, Mikey.”
Warning(s): creepy as hell, mentions of violence, rape (none graphic), all kinds of things are implied, ghosts, spoilers up to American Horror Story episode 10.
Author’s Notes: Bandom/American Horror Story crossover. For dear_monday. This is not the story I thought I would be writing for my first AHS crossover. /o\. Hope you'll like it. Quotes and title: Three Doors Down.
Word Count: 2.229
Beta: asm_z
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real
~1~
Love me when I'm gone
~+~
Gerard had an invisible friend when he was a kid and Mikey, Mikey had nightmares.
~+~
Gerard is touching the gate with cautious fingers running them down the metal and looking at the house. Mikey wishes they were a million miles away from here.
“Do you remember?” he asks, looking over his shoulder, throwing Mikey a smile.
Do you?, Mikey wants to ask, but he nods instead. “Yeah.” He does remember; maybe other things than Gerard, definitely other things than Gerard. He shudders in the autumn breeze.
“And it's ours now.”
“Yours,” Mikey hears himself say. He realizes he doesn't even want a brick of this thing to be his. He doesn't want to be bound by it.
Gerard turns to look at him. “Listen, it's just a house. Don't believe all the crap people are saying about it.”
Mikey exhales smoke and raises an eyebrow, because really? “Gee,” he says, stern.
“Okay. Okay. I admit it, I wanted it partly because people died a gruesome death in it, but it's also cheap and we used to live just a few houses down.”
Mikey sighs. Gerard holds his hand out for his smoke and Mikey sighs again, but hands the cigarette over. “I really don't know why I'm doing this. The Paramour was bad enough,” he says.
Gerard steps closer, cigarette far away enough to hug Mikey. “Because you love me.”
“Yeah,” Mikey answers. He does.
~+~
The house isn't hostile. It is a nice house and cheap and really fucking huge. Mikey takes a breath. Okay, he can do this. He can spend a few months with Gerard here, while Gerard hides out to write the next masterpiece. As soon as he thought it the house seems to shudder and he feels embraced. It's super weird.
“So, which one is yours?” Gerard asks.
“Didn't you choose guest rooms?”
“Nah, I just choose my own. The last one.”
“Not the master bedroom?” Mikey asks, but he isn't really surprised. If Gerard had his way he would camp out in the basement or something. Mikey found it really creepy as a kid. Good thing the basement is too far away from the good coffee.
“I don't need a master-bedroom, Mikes. I just need to be here again.”
“Whatever. Just go and unpack your stuff and then I'm ordering in.”
“The movies are in the box with “movies” scrawled on it.”
Mikey rolls his eyes. Gerard is such a dork. “I thought that. I can read, you know?”
“That wasn't always the case,” Gerard counters.
“I was four!”
“Still counts.”
~+~
“I miss him,” Gerard says out of the blue.
Mikey looks at him. “Who?”
“The boy that used to live here? He was way older than me, but he still played with me.”
“He wasn't real, Gee.”
“He was real to me.”
“You don't need him anymore. You have real friends now. Ray, Frank, Patrick. Lindsey.”
“I can't remember his name,” Gerard says.
Mikey does remember his name, but he keeps it to himself.
~+~
”So what's so special about him?” Violet asks, exhaling smoke.
“Shhh! For fuck's sake. He might hear you.”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Didn't bother you when it was me.”
“He used to play with me when he was like seven or something.”
“He isn't seven anymore, Tate.”
“No, he isn't,” Tate answers. She gives him a look. He ignores it.
“They aren't like the super weird gay couple you killed.”
“I didn't want to. I had to,” he answers. They've been over this before.
“That's not the point.”
He glares at her. She always knew him better than his mother or his shrink. Hell, than anyone alive or dead. “He came back.”
“They always do, sugar,” a voice says softly, kind of sad.
~2~
There's another world inside of me
~+~
Gerard is camping out in his room and not even coffee gets him out. That isn't something that hasn't happened before. Mikey knows how to work with what he has.
He leans against the kitchen counter and exhales. This house creeps him the fuck out. More than he likes to admit even to himself. It's not even about all the people who died here. Not about how people change who live here. Like the previous owners. Gone batshit crazy over the death of their daughter. No, it's about the people who live here. The things that can't let go. Like Tate.
~+~
Tate is watching Mikey through the window. He is sure he's the one he'll have to deal with, but it would make Gerard so freaking sad and Tate never liked to see Gerard sad. Not when he was seven, not when he was 13 and moved away and Tate thought they'll never see each other again. But he came back, because they always do, Tate just doesn't know why. Gerard never lived in the house. He only remembers Mikey as a crying and pleading five year old who wanted to go home. He's grown into his skin now. He's beautiful in a way Tate can't really describe. Like listening to Jeff Buckley. Yeah, Tate thinks, it's like that. It makes you sad and want things and be a better person. Tate only ever wanted to be a better person for Violet, maybe for the wrong reasons, but still.
“Stop being a creep,” she says, handing him a cigarette.
“I'm dead. I'm a creep by definition, Violet.”
She huffs. She doesn't take his bullshit. She never did, even when she was alive. “You know,” she says leaning into him, “I bet Gerard wouldn't even bat an eyelash if you said something along the lines of: Hi, I'm Tate, I'm dead, wanna hook up?”
He smiles and hugs her. Maybe Gerard wouldn't.
~+~
“So, he took you with,” Tate says.
Mikey looks in his direction, but can't see his face. He always thought someone who killed people because he couldn't deal with his life or because he hated his mom (both possible reasons for Tate doing what he's done) would look like a monster. “He always does.”
“You follow him,” Tate answers.
Maybe, that's even true. It never occurred to Mikey to not go along with whatever crazy plan Gerard had. “He's going to write about you,” he says. He knows it, he just realized it, but it was a long way coming. His brother is writing about Tate. He's been writing about Tate all his life and now that he's back he can maybe finish it.
“I've read them all.”
Mikey can feel Tate coming closer. A black shiny thing like an insect and Mikey is paralyzed. He knows this is only a dream, he knows he should be able to wake up, snap out of it, but he can't. He's seen this thing before. In the basement with the two men. He's seen this before on Halloween. And he was terrified like he is terrified now.
“You're shivering,” Tate says and the first touch of his rubber covered fingers to his cheek makes Mikey scream.
He wakes up to darkness; an all-consuming darkness that isn't only the night. He can feel Tate hovering in it. He closes his eyes and breathes. He wishes he could lie to himself that this was only a dream and that Tate is dead, shot by the police in his freaking bedroom. The same bedroom Gerard is sleeping in right now. He can't because no one in this house gets away unscathed.
“Go away,” he whispers.
“I can't,” Tate whispers back.
~+~
“You look like shit,” Gerard says, handing him a mug of coffee.
Mikey thinks Gerard has no room to talk. He looks like he hasn’t even slept for a second in the last few days. “I'm fine.”
“You're not,” Gerard states, but doesn't offer anything else. This house changes you.
“You have a title for your book?”
“The Black Parade,” Gerard says softly, even tenderly. It creeps Mikey out a bit.
“So, how far are you?”
“Not done yet,” Gerard snaps and Mikey realizes that Gerard doesn't want to leave. Like ever.
“You want to stay here.”
“Tate,” Gerard says and Mikey looks around, but there is no one in the kitchen beside them. His heart is a freaking hummingbird in his chest.
“What?”
“Tate, that was the name of the boy I was playing with.”
“Gerard,” Mikey says softly and Gerard looks at him.
“You knew, of course you did.”
Mikey shakes his head, not denying it, but the whole situation. He doesn't want Gerard to remember. Memories give them power, give them a reason. Not that Tate needs a reason. What Mikey could gather, Tate never needed a reason.
“He's dead,” Mikey says and Gerard nods absentmindedly. It's like Mikey doesn't know Gerard anymore.
~3~
Part of me is fighting this, but part of me is gone
~+~
“I have one now, I had some before,” Tate says, leaning in closer. Mikey can't feel anything except the rubber-suit. No breath, no human, warm touch. He's pinned to the bed and he's helpless and Tate is hovering over him, sitting on his thighs. His fingers digging into Mikey's shoulders.
“What?”
“Isn't that obvious? I want to keep him. He came back for me. He writes about me. He l-”
Mikey struggles and Tate digs his fingers in harder. “Fuck, don't do that. It's pointless. I can't feel any pain anymore. Don't you want that for him too?”
“Fuck you!” Mikey spits out, because seriously. What the fuck?
“I liked you better when you were afraid of me,” Tate says.
The thing is that Mikey is freaking afraid, he is scared shitless. He knows what Tate is capable of doing. He's seen it. “You can't have my brother.”
Tate sits back and the light coming from somewhere makes the mask, makes his whole body shine. A big, black, bad insect here to eat him alive. Every movement deadly precise, here to hurt. “I can have whoever I want as long as they're in the house, Mikey.”
And that isn't even a threat, it's the simple truth.
~+~
”This wasn't the smartest of your moves ever,” Violet says.
He knows that. “I know. He just makes me so mad. Can't he see this is where they belong?”
“They?” Violet asks one eyebrow raised.
Tate goes over that statement mentally and then nods, shrugs, he doesn't know. “Yeah.”
“Mikey's going to plead with Gerard to leave the house. I hope you know that.”
“It's too late. The house has already a hold on Gerard.”
“And you on Mikey?”
Tate looks away. He isn't ashamed of or even regrets what he did to Mikey. That's not the person he is. Death doesn't change you. The opposite is the case. It makes you stay the same for ever and ever and ever. Until the world explodes.
“I tried to be a better person, Violet. You know that and what good did it do?”
She sighs. “I killed myself.”
“Yeah, because I loved you.”
“No, because I loved you,” she answers.
This doesn't make it any less harder, Tate thinks.
~+~
The pictures are too much. Mikey can see it, can see it all like a dream, like a nightmare he can't wake up from. Tate's face looks beautiful with the make-up, but it does look pretty without it too. The wall is full of sketches and finished drawings. Close-ups of his eyes, his lips, his fingers, the gun, the buttons of his jacket. Not one is of the rubber-suit. It makes Mikey want to scream. Gerard can't see it. Has never seen it. And what he sees doesn't scare him. What he knows doesn't scare him.
“It's going to be a series, Mikey,” Gerard says breathlessly. He sounds like he's in love. It scares Mikey so much, there aren't even words for it.
“We need to leave this house,” he answers.
Gerard whips around and Mikey doesn't know that face, doesn't know that look in his brother's eyes. “We need to stay. I can feel it.”
“What?”
“The house. It's ours.”
“It's not,” Mikey answers. “We're his.”
“It's the same thing,” Gerard says, nodding and he is happy about it.
“What about Tate?” he makes himself ask. He can still feel Tate's rubber-suit against his skin, can still feel Tate inside him, can still feel- he stops that train of thought right there.
“He's ours too,” Gerard answers. He's stroking the bow of Tate's upper lip, so perfectly drawn it seems like it'll come to life any second. Gerard's in love with Tate. This isn't only an obsession, it's the obsession. The most dangerous.
“You're never going to leave,” Mikey whispers.
“We,” Gerard answers softly and Tate's pencil lips curl into a smile.
~end~
Author: creepylicious/alles_luege
Pairing: Gerard/Tate, Mikey/Tate (of some sorts)
Rating: R
Summary: Gerard writes horror-graphic novels, Mikey always follows him and Tate just takes what he wants.
Tate sits back and the light coming from somewhere makes the mask, makes his whole body shine. A big, black, bad insect here to eat him alive. Every movement deadly precise, here to hurt. “I can have whoever I want as long as they're in the house, Mikey.”
Warning(s): creepy as hell, mentions of violence, rape (none graphic), all kinds of things are implied, ghosts, spoilers up to American Horror Story episode 10.
Author’s Notes: Bandom/American Horror Story crossover. For dear_monday. This is not the story I thought I would be writing for my first AHS crossover. /o\. Hope you'll like it. Quotes and title: Three Doors Down.
Word Count: 2.229
Beta: asm_z
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real
~1~
Love me when I'm gone
~+~
Gerard had an invisible friend when he was a kid and Mikey, Mikey had nightmares.
~+~
Gerard is touching the gate with cautious fingers running them down the metal and looking at the house. Mikey wishes they were a million miles away from here.
“Do you remember?” he asks, looking over his shoulder, throwing Mikey a smile.
Do you?, Mikey wants to ask, but he nods instead. “Yeah.” He does remember; maybe other things than Gerard, definitely other things than Gerard. He shudders in the autumn breeze.
“And it's ours now.”
“Yours,” Mikey hears himself say. He realizes he doesn't even want a brick of this thing to be his. He doesn't want to be bound by it.
Gerard turns to look at him. “Listen, it's just a house. Don't believe all the crap people are saying about it.”
Mikey exhales smoke and raises an eyebrow, because really? “Gee,” he says, stern.
“Okay. Okay. I admit it, I wanted it partly because people died a gruesome death in it, but it's also cheap and we used to live just a few houses down.”
Mikey sighs. Gerard holds his hand out for his smoke and Mikey sighs again, but hands the cigarette over. “I really don't know why I'm doing this. The Paramour was bad enough,” he says.
Gerard steps closer, cigarette far away enough to hug Mikey. “Because you love me.”
“Yeah,” Mikey answers. He does.
~+~
The house isn't hostile. It is a nice house and cheap and really fucking huge. Mikey takes a breath. Okay, he can do this. He can spend a few months with Gerard here, while Gerard hides out to write the next masterpiece. As soon as he thought it the house seems to shudder and he feels embraced. It's super weird.
“So, which one is yours?” Gerard asks.
“Didn't you choose guest rooms?”
“Nah, I just choose my own. The last one.”
“Not the master bedroom?” Mikey asks, but he isn't really surprised. If Gerard had his way he would camp out in the basement or something. Mikey found it really creepy as a kid. Good thing the basement is too far away from the good coffee.
“I don't need a master-bedroom, Mikes. I just need to be here again.”
“Whatever. Just go and unpack your stuff and then I'm ordering in.”
“The movies are in the box with “movies” scrawled on it.”
Mikey rolls his eyes. Gerard is such a dork. “I thought that. I can read, you know?”
“That wasn't always the case,” Gerard counters.
“I was four!”
“Still counts.”
~+~
“I miss him,” Gerard says out of the blue.
Mikey looks at him. “Who?”
“The boy that used to live here? He was way older than me, but he still played with me.”
“He wasn't real, Gee.”
“He was real to me.”
“You don't need him anymore. You have real friends now. Ray, Frank, Patrick. Lindsey.”
“I can't remember his name,” Gerard says.
Mikey does remember his name, but he keeps it to himself.
~+~
”So what's so special about him?” Violet asks, exhaling smoke.
“Shhh! For fuck's sake. He might hear you.”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Didn't bother you when it was me.”
“He used to play with me when he was like seven or something.”
“He isn't seven anymore, Tate.”
“No, he isn't,” Tate answers. She gives him a look. He ignores it.
“They aren't like the super weird gay couple you killed.”
“I didn't want to. I had to,” he answers. They've been over this before.
“That's not the point.”
He glares at her. She always knew him better than his mother or his shrink. Hell, than anyone alive or dead. “He came back.”
“They always do, sugar,” a voice says softly, kind of sad.
~2~
There's another world inside of me
~+~
Gerard is camping out in his room and not even coffee gets him out. That isn't something that hasn't happened before. Mikey knows how to work with what he has.
He leans against the kitchen counter and exhales. This house creeps him the fuck out. More than he likes to admit even to himself. It's not even about all the people who died here. Not about how people change who live here. Like the previous owners. Gone batshit crazy over the death of their daughter. No, it's about the people who live here. The things that can't let go. Like Tate.
~+~
Tate is watching Mikey through the window. He is sure he's the one he'll have to deal with, but it would make Gerard so freaking sad and Tate never liked to see Gerard sad. Not when he was seven, not when he was 13 and moved away and Tate thought they'll never see each other again. But he came back, because they always do, Tate just doesn't know why. Gerard never lived in the house. He only remembers Mikey as a crying and pleading five year old who wanted to go home. He's grown into his skin now. He's beautiful in a way Tate can't really describe. Like listening to Jeff Buckley. Yeah, Tate thinks, it's like that. It makes you sad and want things and be a better person. Tate only ever wanted to be a better person for Violet, maybe for the wrong reasons, but still.
“Stop being a creep,” she says, handing him a cigarette.
“I'm dead. I'm a creep by definition, Violet.”
She huffs. She doesn't take his bullshit. She never did, even when she was alive. “You know,” she says leaning into him, “I bet Gerard wouldn't even bat an eyelash if you said something along the lines of: Hi, I'm Tate, I'm dead, wanna hook up?”
He smiles and hugs her. Maybe Gerard wouldn't.
~+~
“So, he took you with,” Tate says.
Mikey looks in his direction, but can't see his face. He always thought someone who killed people because he couldn't deal with his life or because he hated his mom (both possible reasons for Tate doing what he's done) would look like a monster. “He always does.”
“You follow him,” Tate answers.
Maybe, that's even true. It never occurred to Mikey to not go along with whatever crazy plan Gerard had. “He's going to write about you,” he says. He knows it, he just realized it, but it was a long way coming. His brother is writing about Tate. He's been writing about Tate all his life and now that he's back he can maybe finish it.
“I've read them all.”
Mikey can feel Tate coming closer. A black shiny thing like an insect and Mikey is paralyzed. He knows this is only a dream, he knows he should be able to wake up, snap out of it, but he can't. He's seen this thing before. In the basement with the two men. He's seen this before on Halloween. And he was terrified like he is terrified now.
“You're shivering,” Tate says and the first touch of his rubber covered fingers to his cheek makes Mikey scream.
He wakes up to darkness; an all-consuming darkness that isn't only the night. He can feel Tate hovering in it. He closes his eyes and breathes. He wishes he could lie to himself that this was only a dream and that Tate is dead, shot by the police in his freaking bedroom. The same bedroom Gerard is sleeping in right now. He can't because no one in this house gets away unscathed.
“Go away,” he whispers.
“I can't,” Tate whispers back.
~+~
“You look like shit,” Gerard says, handing him a mug of coffee.
Mikey thinks Gerard has no room to talk. He looks like he hasn’t even slept for a second in the last few days. “I'm fine.”
“You're not,” Gerard states, but doesn't offer anything else. This house changes you.
“You have a title for your book?”
“The Black Parade,” Gerard says softly, even tenderly. It creeps Mikey out a bit.
“So, how far are you?”
“Not done yet,” Gerard snaps and Mikey realizes that Gerard doesn't want to leave. Like ever.
“You want to stay here.”
“Tate,” Gerard says and Mikey looks around, but there is no one in the kitchen beside them. His heart is a freaking hummingbird in his chest.
“What?”
“Tate, that was the name of the boy I was playing with.”
“Gerard,” Mikey says softly and Gerard looks at him.
“You knew, of course you did.”
Mikey shakes his head, not denying it, but the whole situation. He doesn't want Gerard to remember. Memories give them power, give them a reason. Not that Tate needs a reason. What Mikey could gather, Tate never needed a reason.
“He's dead,” Mikey says and Gerard nods absentmindedly. It's like Mikey doesn't know Gerard anymore.
~3~
Part of me is fighting this, but part of me is gone
~+~
“I have one now, I had some before,” Tate says, leaning in closer. Mikey can't feel anything except the rubber-suit. No breath, no human, warm touch. He's pinned to the bed and he's helpless and Tate is hovering over him, sitting on his thighs. His fingers digging into Mikey's shoulders.
“What?”
“Isn't that obvious? I want to keep him. He came back for me. He writes about me. He l-”
Mikey struggles and Tate digs his fingers in harder. “Fuck, don't do that. It's pointless. I can't feel any pain anymore. Don't you want that for him too?”
“Fuck you!” Mikey spits out, because seriously. What the fuck?
“I liked you better when you were afraid of me,” Tate says.
The thing is that Mikey is freaking afraid, he is scared shitless. He knows what Tate is capable of doing. He's seen it. “You can't have my brother.”
Tate sits back and the light coming from somewhere makes the mask, makes his whole body shine. A big, black, bad insect here to eat him alive. Every movement deadly precise, here to hurt. “I can have whoever I want as long as they're in the house, Mikey.”
And that isn't even a threat, it's the simple truth.
~+~
”This wasn't the smartest of your moves ever,” Violet says.
He knows that. “I know. He just makes me so mad. Can't he see this is where they belong?”
“They?” Violet asks one eyebrow raised.
Tate goes over that statement mentally and then nods, shrugs, he doesn't know. “Yeah.”
“Mikey's going to plead with Gerard to leave the house. I hope you know that.”
“It's too late. The house has already a hold on Gerard.”
“And you on Mikey?”
Tate looks away. He isn't ashamed of or even regrets what he did to Mikey. That's not the person he is. Death doesn't change you. The opposite is the case. It makes you stay the same for ever and ever and ever. Until the world explodes.
“I tried to be a better person, Violet. You know that and what good did it do?”
She sighs. “I killed myself.”
“Yeah, because I loved you.”
“No, because I loved you,” she answers.
This doesn't make it any less harder, Tate thinks.
~+~
The pictures are too much. Mikey can see it, can see it all like a dream, like a nightmare he can't wake up from. Tate's face looks beautiful with the make-up, but it does look pretty without it too. The wall is full of sketches and finished drawings. Close-ups of his eyes, his lips, his fingers, the gun, the buttons of his jacket. Not one is of the rubber-suit. It makes Mikey want to scream. Gerard can't see it. Has never seen it. And what he sees doesn't scare him. What he knows doesn't scare him.
“It's going to be a series, Mikey,” Gerard says breathlessly. He sounds like he's in love. It scares Mikey so much, there aren't even words for it.
“We need to leave this house,” he answers.
Gerard whips around and Mikey doesn't know that face, doesn't know that look in his brother's eyes. “We need to stay. I can feel it.”
“What?”
“The house. It's ours.”
“It's not,” Mikey answers. “We're his.”
“It's the same thing,” Gerard says, nodding and he is happy about it.
“What about Tate?” he makes himself ask. He can still feel Tate's rubber-suit against his skin, can still feel Tate inside him, can still feel- he stops that train of thought right there.
“He's ours too,” Gerard answers. He's stroking the bow of Tate's upper lip, so perfectly drawn it seems like it'll come to life any second. Gerard's in love with Tate. This isn't only an obsession, it's the obsession. The most dangerous.
“You're never going to leave,” Mikey whispers.
“We,” Gerard answers softly and Tate's pencil lips curl into a smile.
~end~