Firsts
Gerard/Mikey
One-shot
Gerard & Mikey have a semi-coherent conversation about alcohol. Rated R for language like mad. Written for fanfic100, prompt #60: "drink".
1,222 words
Written April 27, 2006
"In some ways," Gerard says, burying his face in the musty cushions of the couch, "you know. You know. I always wanted to believe I'd give you your first drink."
"Oh," Mikey says, "but that's not fair." His smile is teasing and edging on drunkenly flirtatious. "But you know I've been drinking since I was ten."
"Eleven," Gerard says. "Let me pretend it was eleven."
"Someone missed the joke." Mikey rolls over, snuggles deep into the warmth of Gerard's jacket, his body heat. "Besides, also, you know we had those sips of champagne every year, for New Year's - so no matter what you couldn't, just how it goes, huh?"
"So I wanted to be there the first time you were drunk. Is that such a bad thing, for a big brother to want? To - to fucking, y'know, take care of his little brother?" Gerard wants to believe that he gets more poetic when he's drunk facedown in a stranger's couch, in a basement somewhere, at a shitty party - he wants to believe he can be poetic at all. He felt so artsy and special at NYU but it turns out maybe Mikey's hipster friends have outdone him. There's a girl here who paints in her own fucking menstrual blood. Gerard's just a regular artsy fag. He wants to believe he gets more poetic but he can tell, from the laughs hiccupping out of Mikey, that's a total fucking lie.
The smell of juniper is heavy on Mikey's tongue and Gerard can taste the same gin on the back of his throat. It's… Gerard's brain feels foggy so he can't find the right word for it, but it's heavy in a way regular air isn't. It's weighing down and condensed with something. There's a word somewhere, he knows it.
The band thumping away upstairs is a little generic, but not bad. Good enough to draw most of the crowd from the basement and into the smoky living room. Gerard feels grateful that only a small handful of wasted kids is around to see them fight like this, under their breath, elbows jabbing into each other's sides. "Please," Mikey says. "You couldn't protect me from shit."
"Yeah. Well."
"Well that's what I love about you, mmhm?" Mikey's arms are long and endlessly skinny, wrapped around Gerard's shoulders and waist. "You're a sweetheart. You're… you're a big fucking cupcake is what you are." His giggles are high and ridiculous.
"I am not a fucking cupcake," Gerard says, laughing despite himself. Mikey sounds so… innocent when he laughs. Gerard can't help smiling.
"You are! You're all…" Mikey tugs at Gerard's hair. "You are, man, just fuckin' trust me on this one."
"Mmhm. Right. Frosting for hair, is that how it goes?"
"And sprinkles for eyes," Mikey counters, and for a split second they are so perfectly balanced that Gerard can believe they're not drunk. There's no too-hot buzz in the pit of Gerard's stomach, no sloppiness of Mikey's hand sliding across Gerard's back. Just two brothers on a couch smiling and joking (oh how sweet if only.)
But then Mikey laughs again, breath hot and faintly damp in Gerard's ear, and the illusion dissolves like spirals unwinding. Gerard sighs. "I just," he says. "You know. I just wanted to believe I could... I dunno, make sure you'd be okay, you know? Not get too addicted or fucked up or anything. The first time should be really nice."
Mikey stays small and silent, chin pressed down against his neck. "Well," he says, whispering. Gerard strains to hear under the drums from upstairs. "I threw up a couple times."
"I would've taken care of you."
"I wish you had," Mikey says, and sighs, and Gerard feels the tension and size of him: the way Mikey keeps trying to curl in tighter, like he can shrink-wrap himself to fit Gerard's contours, like he can compact himself down to a tight ball of emotion. He's overcome with a wave of emotion and turns to press his mouth to Mikey's ear. He wants to push everyone out of the room - the moment feels intensely personal and he wants to keep it private, just the two of them, hearts thumping erratic against each other's chest.
He wants to believe that maybe if he had been there, smoothing down the tiny hairs on Mikey's neck, rubbing the valley of his shoulderblades gently - maybe Mikey would've eased back up and looked at Gerard with wide eyes. Maybe he would've breathed in and out, throat thick with the sharpness of alcohol, and he might've said, Gerard? I... I do love you, y'know that?
He wants to believe that Mikey would have admitted something. Maybe in the heat of first dizziness, maybe with his limbs sloppy and his mouth wobbling open, maybe Mikey would've said something dark and wrong -
by now it's too late. By now Mikey can drink half his body weight in alcohol without blinking. Any secrets he carries will be locked away, kept beyond the reach of three gin and tonics, beyond the point where Gerard can find them. If they're there (oh he hopes), if they're locked up and hidden, Gerard could release them maybe with his own words - his confessions and kneeling whispers, his mouth soft and sad against the spiral of Mikey's ear, but oh. Gerard doesn't have that strength. All he can do (all he has always done) is comfort and contain and ease wounds.
"You know," Mikey says, "we don't look much alike, do we?"
"Mm, I guess not." Gerard pushes at his own hair self-consciously. It feels unwashed, all of a sudden. Drinking makes him feel so filthy all the time. Not emotionally, or anything, just - his skin feels broken-out and his mouth feels dry and his fingertips feel slick with oil.
"I feel sorta like I'm gonna pass out..." Mikey yawns. "Didn't sleep much last night, and then all this to drink."
"You didn't let on you had so much."
"I'm good like that." Mikey's smile is tiny, his eyes narrowing with sleep behind his glasses. Gerard lifts them off gently and sets them on a small end table. "Take care of me now?" Gerard nods, breathless, wordless, fingertips running back and forth over the plastic frame of Mikey's glasses. "Really," Mikey continues, "seeing how we look totally different... I bet we don't look like brothers at all."
"Oh?"
"I bet," Mikey says, voice slowing down. His breath catches for a moment (Gerard can feel the split second of it against his neck.) His fingertips shift restlessly over Gerard's back, and Gerard thinks his heart will race out of his chest, clawing at the cage of his ribs. He wants to ask Mikey, you bet what? but Mikey has already fallen into sleep. Gerard thinks about Mikey asleep like this, fourteen, drunk, thinks about the tenderness he would've had - lifting Mikey into bed, peeling his threadbare cotton shirt away. Leveling the sheet around him so it would cut a thin clean white line across his shoulders. He wants to do that, more than anything.
The music plays on upstairs, and in the increasingly hot air of the basement, Gerard feels himself filthy and sweating. He holds Mikey asleep and close and prays for some kind of release.