Chapter Text
Nights like these, Mikey always wears skintight black jeans. The t-shirts change, usually between movie references and band shirts, but it’s always the same pair of skintight black jeans. He’s got a dozen pairs of converse in the hall closet, buys them clearance and gets Gee to doodle on them when he’s bored. Gerard likes his skate shoes better but that’s because he’s a lazy bastard and once you tie a pair of skate shoes you never have to untie them again. High tops don’t allow for the same.
He always grabs a few bracelets and snaps them on before he leaves the bedroom for the last time. Worse comes to worst and they look like they’re going to snag someone’s hair he can stuff them in his pocket. Another check to make sure his hair looks good and another douse of hairspray and he’s done in the bathroom. Everything is firmly in place, no possibility of shedding.
Gerard is sitting in the living room, reading something. There’s a bowl of half eaten cereal on the middle cushion, but on further examination the milk looks kind of chunky so it’s probably not Gee’s dinner. When he pushes his lips against his brother’s and sweeps his tongue in briefly he doesn’t taste like milk either. “You want me to call for pizza before I leave?”
“If you’ll have some when you get back it might be a good idea.” Which is Gerard speak for if it’s here I will eat it and if it’s not I will probably forget to eat altogether. Mikey would say it’s the comic Gee’s reading that will keep him from remembering, but Gerard’s always been like that. Either he’ll forget to eat, or he’ll end up with three bags of chips vanquished, the crumpled remains laying around him, after only a few hours of sitting down to read or watch a movie.
Mikey thinks about it. It’s possible that he might be ok with pizza later, but there’s also a chance that he'll forget it’s even on the couch next to the old bowl of cereal when he gets in. He's not usually hungry when he gets home from a night like tonight. He walks into the kitchen anyways, pulling the phone from it’s home bolted into the wall. The local joint knows them by voice; Mikey doesn’t have to give them his name or address. All of the local take out places know them by sight and sound, they’re not exactly big fans of cooking.
He hangs up the phone. Gerard’s still reading on the couch. The cereal bowl however is listing on it’s side, lumpy milk dripping onto the floor. Gerard’s not paying attention to it. It’s not violating the comic’s glossy pages so it doesn’t exist. Mikey looks at it for a second and kicks a discarded pair of boxers from near the front door in the general direction of the spill. It’ll fix itself.
His shoes tumble out of the closet near the door when he opens it, like always. Mikey doesn’t really care what pair he wears, he just wants a matching set so he doesn’t look like a complete retard. You can’t wear one shoe with Legolas and Merry and Pippin, and another shoe with Darth, that’s fucking lame. The first pair he finds are the ones with System Of A Down lyrics, he ties the laces while automatically grabbing for a jacket that’s not hanging. Three years and he’s still not used to not getting a second layer in January.
“Who do you want me to pick up?” Mikey asks from the front door. It’s the way it’s always worked. He likes working within prompts, likes having to get creative sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy, Gerard says blond hair and he can pick from half the club. But if he says white jeans, Mikey might have to pick someone with jeans torn to ratshit where it’s half denim and half white thread.
“Don’t,” is Gerard’s answer.
The fuck? Mikey crosses to stand in front of Gerard. “The fuck?” This is not the way they work. This is not the way they fucking work, Gerard can’t just do this to him.
“Just don’t. Not tonight, okay?”
Fuck. That. Mikey’s waited weeks for this, tonight is the fucking night. If Gerard doesn’t want to participate he’ll ask the gas station attendant or something. The hunk of shit car gas gauge is broken, it always hovers just over empty, but Mikey usually fills it before he gets into the car because he knows Gee never remembers, and he always fills it before nights like tonight.
“See you later,” he mutters, grabbing his keys. The first attempt at trying to open the door fails, they get caught on the pile of shoes. Mikey kicks them a few inches towards the closet until he can suck in his stomach and squeeze out the door. He’s not going to let Gerard fucking up the routine ruin his night.
***
It doesn’t take long to pay the delivery woman and Gerard sets the pizza on the coffee table after opening the box and snagging a piece. Tomato sauce drips onto his somewhat stiff shirt, but it doesn’t really show so he doesn’t need to change.
Gerard starts sifting through the spilled pile of shoes Mikey left near the door. His one pair is at the bottom and Gerard shoves them on, tugging on the double knotted strings to make sure they won’t come undone. If he leaves now he can make it to a meeting a couple of blocks away. Gerard doesn’t know that he actually needs to go to the AA meetings anymore. But they make him feel important, like he’s there to help someone at that crucial point when they really have to have someone there to catch them so they don’t fall.
The words come off his tongue almost by rote. He doesn’t have a calendar to count days or anything, he’s not even sure if they have a calendar anywhere in the house. Probably, Mikey somehow always knows what shifts they’re working, what days he has to go to university. That doesn’t mean he knows where it is, exactly. Mikey’s better at that stuff than he is. Still, he knows the general length he’s been sober. His meetings have been going on for five months, and it was a year before that that he stopped drinking and started going to the AA meetings.
Gina, who’s sitting to his right, is nervously fiddling with her token and Gerard worries about her. Her father was a mean drunk and her mother was a maudlin one. Stuck at the bottom of a bottle is her only default setting. The last time he cycled around to this particular meeting spot she hadn’t been sober a day before she fell off the wagon and her sponsor Miles had to pull her from bingeing.
The chair to his left is empty. Cole is probably at home with his uncle. Gerard wonders if Cole still has to talk about his nightmares so he doesn’t go for the whiskey to calm his swirling thoughts. The meeting isn’t any different. Nothing drastic happens. Someone cries and someone else details all the people they wrote apology letters to and Gerard spaces out for a minute, thinking about the past a little but not in a depressed way. Sasha is just calling for break when Gerard’s front jean pocket vibrates. He automatically drifts to the corner of the room as he presses the green accept button. The screen is cracked and he can’t read who it is, but his contract isn’t up for a year and he and Mikey cannot afford the sort of fee that breaking a plan comes with.
“Hey bitch!”
Gerard’s first reaction is to check behind him. Kesha’s not the sort of person you want to let sneak up behind you. The room is safe, of course, she wouldn’t drop her bottle of Jack if someone paid her a million dollars. Environment scanned he answers. “Hey Kesha, what’s going on?”
“Oh, you know. Wanna get laid. Wanna have a good meal. Wanna have world peace. All that lovely shit.”
He gestures then remembers she can’t actually see that. “Don’t have any world peace in my pocket, wanna take a raincheck?”
“Bet you know where I could get a good lay though. Could come over, give you and Mikes a whirl. He’s got some niiiiiice hips.”
Gerard doesn’t get pissed at Gina, and he’s not gonna get pissed at Kesha. Everyone’s got their ways of dealing with their desires. “Mikey’s busy, he’s at the bar. How do you know what his hips are like anyway?”
“Stole your phone that time I grabbed your ass, looked through your pictures. Photo albums are like fuckin’ menus, ya know?”
Gerard really doesn’t remember her stealing his phone, but then when Kesha cops a feel potential theft isn’t really the first concern that comes to mind. “Andy not around to cook you a meal?” Technically they don’t live together, but Kesha’s sort of high maintenance and Andy takes his buddy duties seriously.
“Nah, he’s out fucking protesting some paper company that uses too much bleach in their products. And before you get all high and fuckin’ mighty, yeah I went with him, his fellow protesters are harmless. Old hippie types, not angry college kids. He said it would be fine to take off, so I did. But then some guy on the bus said I had a nice ass and-”
“And you got hungry,” Gerard finishes for her.
“Maybe just a nibble,” she giggles.
“If I get you off will you order a pizza or some Chinese?”
“Depends on how good you are, doesn’t it?” Gerard sighs, and moves quickly to the bathroom at the back of the building. If the meeting is running on normal schedule -and of all the different groups Gerard’s been to, Sasha’s the best with keeping things on time- he’s got about fifteen minutes to get this done.
***
He’s listening to The Little Mermaid Soundtrack on his iPod, one ear bud in his right ear and the other tucked under the collar of his favourite faded red tee shirt. Ryan calls him odd for being a guy who would rather listen to Disney musicals about magic and love instead of pretentious loud songs about death and heartbreak, but Brendon just likes happy songs. Once he has all the trash collected he ties up the cinch sack and lugs it out Jon’s front door. The garbage chute isn’t far so he just leaves the door cracked a hair and hefts the heavy bag down the hallway.
When he gets back to Jon’s apartment the door’s somehow found a way to slip closed. Sometimes Brendon wonders if the door hates him because it never seems to stop doing this to him. He could leave the door wide freaking open and it would still find a way to silently swing shut. Jon always smiles at him and laughs a little when Brendon swears up and down that it loathes him.
Luckily, Brendon has a key so he lets himself back in. He drains the lukewarm murky water out of the sink and cuts the faucet on hot to start up a new sink full of sudsy water. Part of him is wondering if he should pilfer through Jon’s pantry for something easy to cook, but Jon seems to have a thing about Brendon cooking and would rather have take out than something cooked ninety percent of the time. So instead, he cuts off the faucet and sets about sliding slightly crusty cereal bowls into the sink.
He’s dancing in front of the sink, soap suds crawling up and down his arms, to “Under the Sea” when he hears Jon’s key slide into the front door lock. It’s mostly the soap that prevents him from flouncing to the front door for a kiss, maybe a light bit of the Ryan that sits on top of his brain mocking him for being the perfect housewife. He doesn’t need to hear mental-Ryan ask are you going to raise your leg so it just brushes the bottom of your poodle skirt too?.
It only takes Jon a second to come into the kitchen anyway. His hand is a bit sweaty on Brendon’s shoulder, but if Brendon touched him Jon’s would be soaking wet, so whatever. “We need to talk.”
Brendon grins, not that Jon can see it. Jon and Tom hang out for a few hours after work almost every day. It’s not a lot compared to the eight hour shifts Brendon works with Ryan, but Brendon definitely understands the need to have that best friend time. About six days a week Jon comes home stoned, which maybe fifteen year old Brendon wouldn’t have understood, but adult him knows the fun in it. And whenever Jon is stoned he gets fascinated with life in general. He might smoke a bowl and come out of the bathroom saying ‘we need to talk. Did you know peeing sitting down is actually relaxing, not emasculating at all’, or smoke a bowl and wash the dishes while informing him that ‘we need to talk. Did you know glass is actually make from sand, isn’t that awesome’, or rip from a bong and tell him ‘we need to talk about why popcorn ceilings are called popcorn, cause they don’t really look like bits of popcorn’. All of it is entertaining, and about half the time Brendon will light up so he can join Jon’s level of conversation.
He waits for Jon to continue telling him about some basic fact that’s completely amazing. Instead Jon says quietly, “Tom broke off his engagement with Anastasia.”
Brendon is not one for swearing, not normally. Fifteen years of Mormon upbringing does that to a boy. But this is a time where can envision himself saying oh, fuck. He won’t, because Jon will hear the wrong message in the words. Even now, knowing what’s coming, Brendon doesn’t want that. But he could, he wants to.
From what Brendon’s been able to weasel out of Jon, Jon’s pretty much been in love with Tom for years. He just never thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell so he pushed the feelings down and took what Tom was willing to give him. Brendon’s never considered himself second fiddle, because Jon really is a good boyfriend, leagues above all of Brendon’s exes. But he’s worried off and on about the day Tom finally realized that he was just as caught up in Jon as Jon was in him for awhile now. The day’s finally shown up and Brendon’s not sure what he should do. Jon hasn’t exactly come out and said why Tom broke off the engagement. He doesn’t have to. Brendon could put up a fight and hold on tight, because that’s what you’re supposed to do right? But he knows he can’t do that.
“Can I get a hug before I start gathering my socks?” he manages to ask.
“Brendon Urie, you better know you never have to ask if you can have a hug,” Jon answers fiercely. Brendon turns and soapy arms be damned, he curls into Jon for what he hopes isn’t the last time. Friends can hug, right?
***
He would never say I don’t know much about art but I know what I like hur hur hur to Gerard. If his brother didn’t actually hit him he’d have to hit himself for being so lame. It is essentially true though. Gerard’s working on his third year at art school, it should have been his fourth but the alcohol thing fucked him up for a bit. Mikey knows nothing about art compared to him, and wouldn’t claim to understand anything in the theory books he’s got stacked in the art room. But he knows when thinner lines work better over thicker in a comic book, or how a certain colour or combinations of colours can make him feel shit. He might get ten words into a book about typography before tossing it for Chuck Palahniuk but he can at least sense contrast.
That’s part of what makes fingering Gerard so awesome. They’ve got navy sheets, and their skin almost glows against the fitted sheet. It’s a visual contrast Gerard’s got sketched a few dozen times, although it’s usually his fingers in Mikey that he draws out. There’s a scent contrast, strawberry-kiwi lube overpowering the way the room normally smells like spilled chocolate milk and sweat and socks. Gerard’s whimpers are like an orgasmic melody against the silence of the room. And of course there’s the feel of it, moving from Gerard’s sparsely haired thighs and sweet curve of his ass to the confined heat of being inside him.
Mostly though he loves working his index and middle finger into his brother because Gee loves it too. Here in their house it’s okay for them to be like this. If they’d have stayed in Jersey things would be a hell of a lot different. Mikey doesn’t care to think about it. Jersey is all the way on the opposite coast and besides weekly calls from their mom that part of their lives is in the past.
He’s going slow as payback for earlier and Gerard’s not complaining. Eventually he does have to speed his pace up because if he wants to go out tonight then he needs to be leaving soon or he’ll miss the window of time he usually likes to be out. Gee makes this one sweet sound and shudders under him and Mikey doesn’t say anything. He could be a smart ass younger brother right now but he’s far too pleased with himself to harsh the glow.
Mikey thinks about showering for a second. There’s really no point in it though, he’s just going to get sweaty again at the club. It’s not like he’s still covered in his own come; Gerard wiped it off with edge of the pillowcase. Mikey’s running a bit short on time, it’ll be better if he just get dressed. It doesn’t take long to find the right pair of jeans, they’re exactly where he put them after last time. By the time he’s changing into them, Gerard’s slowly propping himself up against the headboard of their bed just watching as Mikey switches clothing.
“The choker you bought yesterday’s on the dresser. You should wear it.”
“You think?” He was thinking of wearing his Nightmare on Elm Street shirt, but the neck of it is stretched and won’t look good against the thin line of black lace.
“Your choker brings all the boys to the yard.”
Mikey cackles for a minute, then turns to look at him. “Seriously?”
“It’s not my fault Borders plays top forties. That shit worms it’s way into your brain.”
He snorts. “That song was out in like two thousand three. You so can’t blame Borders for that.”
“Wear the choker and get some hot girl or guy to tap that ass,” Gerard responds calmly.
“Okay, like you know how much you can’t pull off gangster slang, right? I mean, you don’t think you pulled that shit off, right?” He calls out loudly as he walks into the bathroom to check his hair. It’s not too bad. Sex hair isn’t his usual look, but he likes it. He clamps his eyes shut and sprays it into place from all directions.
Once back in the room he crawls back onto the bed for a second to grab Gee’s still sensitive dick. He eats his gasp from his parted lips, then pulls away and says “theirs for a night, yours forever. See you later.”
“Love you too. Might be sleeping when you get back, you said I have an early shift, right?”
“Yeah. Night then.” Mikey smiles one last time and leaves.
***
It’s a few steps down the hall to his art room, and grabs the nearest sketch book as he starts to draw talking shoes being trapped in the closet of a woman half composed of plastic. Her soon to be ex-husband is burning the house down rather than pay the divorce settlement, and while the plan backfires for him as she escapes, the shoes are trapped as the bedroom slowly starts filling with smoke. It’s sort of the anti-Cars. He’s not exactly planning on being hired by Pixar when he’s done school. To be perfectly honest, he’s not sure he wants to be hired by any animation company. He loves the shit out of drawing and painting, could spend forever doing it. If he lived alone he’d probably spend eighteen hours a day drawing.
He lives with Mikey though. Gerard sleeps beside him and eats with him and downloads music with him, and he works with him in a supposedly temporary job stocking books almost every day of the week. And he’s not sure if that’s something he wants to give up. He doesn’t like Borders, but he likes the conditions that Borders comes with.
The charcoal smudges to the left and blurs his lines some when he uses his index finger to soften the outline of the right shoe. It’s trapped under a stack of closed boxes. The left shoe can’t get to it and smoke slips through the door. In a last ditch effort, in the next panel, the left shoe shakes most of its laces out of its eyelets and tosses the grey, white make shift rescue rope towards its partner.
Gerard finishes the panel and flips the page. The panel he draws first is of the partially plastic woman leaning against a tree in her yard watching her house burn, one arm sagging some from the heat that’s made her left side squishy and runny. Once he’s done making the scene as dark and morbid as possible he draws a partitioning line. The left shoe is still trying to help the right shoe out from under the boxes, but the smoke is making it hard for the right shoe to breathe. Eventually in the last panel, the left shoe curls its laces around the right shoe and closes it’s little personified eyes. The flames are closer and it could leave but it’s not going to because the right shoe can’t and there’s no way the left shoe is going abandon its partner.
Once he’s finished, Gerard places his sketch book down and heads in the direction of the kitchen. There should still be a half empty bottle of flat root beer in the back of the first shelf. He’s pretty sure it’s even the kind without caffeine in it.
The bottle isn’t on the top shelf. Gerard doesn’t give up though and he finds it on the bottom shelf behind a murky jug of old milk. He fishes the root beer out and unscrews the cap. Despite the name it’s nowhere close to alcohol, but that’s a good thing. Somewhere out in the distant reaches of LA Mikey is chugging down a cooler. Probably a Bacardi Breezer, at least when Mikey used to drink with him rum was always his favourite. He doesn’t begrudge his brother the opportunity. Mikey hasn’t drunk inside the house since the first day Gerard stopped drinking seventeen months ago, and he’s never so much as tipsy by the time he gets back home.
Nor does Gerard begrudge him the chance to get fucked by other guys. How can he, when he knows the stranger won’t even have to prep him, Mikey still stretched from what they did in the bedroom? It’s fucking hot, imagining him not being able to keep his groans in on the backseat of some car in the parking lot of a club. Even if the image didn’t make Gerard want to jerk off, it’s still better knowing it’s a ‘Mikey gets fucked’ night than one of the others.
Gerard might not be picking out people for Mikey anymore, but that doesn’t mean Mikey’s stopped. Gerard’s been an addict, he knows removing one source just means finding another. It just makes him feel better that it’s not him. He won’t enable Kesha, he won’t enable Ryland, and he’s not going to enable Mikey. Even if he is everything to him.
***
He’s been working more than he should to keep his mind off of Jon. They’ve talked over the phone twice since last week. And while both conversations had been short Brendon’s not angry. Extremely sad, yeah, but he’s not angry and that has to count for something? So when he finds himself stuck in his apartment he cleans until he’s able to fall asleep, which isn’t easy because he’s not used to sleeping alone anymore.
It’s Thursday though and Thursdays used to be animated movie cuddle night for them. Brendon’s not sure he’ll be able to watch Aladdin for a few more months without having to switch the tv off and just curl into himself. He’s okay. This hurts, but he’s okay. Or at least he keeps telling himself that. Jon’s happy with Tom and they’re probably leaning against each other and smoking up together.
One lone dust bunny is hiding from him when there’s the sound of rapid fire knocking on his front door. Brendon ignores the door and tries to reach his broom under the corner of the dvd stand near his tv. He can’t have that dust bunny staying where it is. Like all bunnies if left to its own devices it will multiply and Brendon doesn’t want that to happen. The knocking happens again, loud and annoying, and Brendon concedes defeat for the moment. The dust bunny can live for another couple of minutes because if he doesn’t answer the door his neighbours might call the super about him.
Brendon can just barely peer through the safety eyehole if he stands on his tiptoes. The knocker is Ryan. There’s not a chance that Brendon is dealing with Ryan trying to deal with him right now. He didn’t say anything at work, but Brendon knows Ryan knows about Thursday night, considering he’s mocked them about it for the last ten months. If he lets Ryan in he’s going to go with the Ryan Ross patented Supportive Best Friend move of ‘bitch out the ex as hard as possible, and hold extreme grudges’. That might work for Spencer in San Diego, and it even worked for Brendon when it was Shawn, who cheated on him with a woman and told Brendon he wasn’t actually gay, but it’s not okay for Jon.
Ryan can somehow sense that Brendon’s looking at him through the eyehole. His voice is lower than it would be if Ryan thought he had to yell through the apartment to be heard. “I’m going to kick down the door if you don’t open it!”
Brendon wants to laugh, because seriously? Ryan Ross, kicking down a door? Candles will begin to actually sing before Ryan Ross has the capacity to kick open anything. Instead he moves away from the door a few feet for reputation’s sake and calls back “you have a key!”
“I don’t know where I put it. I looked through the shop before I left, but it wasn’t anywhere there, so I knew it had to be at home, but it wasn’t there either. Maybe Spencer has it.”
“Spencer lives two and a half hours away, why does he have my spare key?” He doesn’t even know why he’s asking, Spencer has it because it’s Ryan.
“You gonna let me in, or do I have to kick it down?”
“I say this will every bit of love I can, Ross. If you’re going to try to kick down a door you need to let me set up a tripod in the hallway first so I can have the video of it forever. Your grandchildren would weep if I didn’t record it.”
“Shut your stupid face,” Ryan says pleasantly. Brendon unlocks the door, because either he has a conversation through the door the whole night or he lets Ryan in and they have conversation sitting down. Ryan was in the back all day designing which meant Brendon was on the floor standing for eight hours, he’d like to appreciate his couch instead of the varnish on the door.
Ryan shuffles in with a plastic bag hanging loosely from his left hand. Brendon’s not sure what to think because there’s no telling what Ryan brought. He could have a box full of scrap construction paper in there. It’s possible. One night he woke Brendon up at three a.m. with a travel case shoved full of fabric samples and thread color swatches. Brendon gave up trying to figure out how Ryan thinks years ago.
The bag ends up having a square carton of strawberry ice cream -the carton’s squishy and there’s pink melted ice cream seeping from the corners of the carton- and a box of small children sized wafer cones. Brendon laughs, because while Ryan can’t be serious Brendon knows he is. Only Ryan Ross would think misery food would consist of Jon’s favourite flavour of ice cream and wafer cones. There’s not even a spoon in the bag.
Brendon just stares when Ryan sets the sticky and leaking carton on his freshly polished coffee table. He’s not fast enough to stop him. Ryan flips open the carton. The opaque plastic flutters when he pulls it back. Fat drops of pink ice cream plop down on the coffee table top and Brendon doesn’t want to watch this disaster in the making, but at the same time he needs video proof that this is happening. It’s always good to have Youtube available blackmail material laying around.
Simply put, it’s the most poorly constructed ice cream cone Brendon has ever seen in his life. Ryan stares at the carton for a moment then actually tries to use the corner of the carton lid to scoop the first bit of ice cream. Brendon wants to cackle, but he also wants to not have ice cream on the ceiling so he makes a tactical retreat into the kitchen for a spoon. Things don’t get much better after that. Ryan can’t seem to manage getting a scoop off his spoon and into the cone, he has to pry the first scoop off with his index and middle finger, then push them into the depths of the cone. The second scoop he takes he presses the spoon in far too deep and removes about half the carton heaving it back up. Brendon can’t hold in his laughter as Ryan stares at the toast sized square of ice cream on the end of his spoon, but he tries to hold his iPhone steady.
The piece de resistance is when Ryan can’t get the massive cube to stick to the top of the cone, and presses hard enough with his spoon holding right hand that somehow the thumb of his left hand goes through the middle of the cone. Ryan looks at his thumb as though he has no idea how this is possible, while Brendon occupies himself with falling off the couch and crying with laughter on the floor. He does however manage to hold his right arm up for a zoom in on Ryan’s embedded thumb.
“Here,” Ryan says, holding it out as he pries his thumb out. Brendon takes the ice cream cone in one hand, and sends Spencer a copy of the video with the other. He labels it best shit evar! because seriously, it’s going to be a while before Ryan tops this.
The night progresses and Brendon can’t help but notice that he doesn’t actually mention Jon, never mind blacken his character utterly and completely. Failcone or not, Ryan’s maybe growing up a little.
***
It doesn’t take long for him to unlock the front door and shuffle inside. He almost trips over the pile of shoes mingling in front of the door. Flip flops and socks are not conducive to walking through a mire of converse so he steps over them the best he can. The itch under his skin is calm. He had a good night. It’s been awhile since he got to play and while he wasn’t happy about having to ask the gas station clerk to pick a color for him not even that blackened his mood. Now he’s home, and he can shower and crawl into bed with Gee. Maybe he can get a couple of hours of sleep before their banshee of an alarm clock starts to screech.
It’s nothing horrible that Gerard is sitting in the living room, awake. In the three and a half years since he started playing it’s happened a few times. Gerard isn’t exactly known for having a good concept of time, and he doesn’t have class until noon today anyway. Maybe the first time it scared the ever-loving shit out of him, but Mikey’s grown up since then. He knows how to keep his voice the same pitch and tone as always, knows how to not show off that fine extra edge of happy and relaxed. Even Gerard pulling him in for a kiss is fine. If his clothes are a bit stiff his brother will put it off to spilled beer and sweat. It’s only getting naked with Gee that would ruin things. It’s hard to explain away legs coated in slowly browning blood.
“Hey, Gee. The girl, shit, she must have been new to California. She said her name was Sheena but she was changing it to Selena for her stage name, I wanted to get laid so I didn’t tell her no director would give a shit. I’m later than normal, I know, but it was already four and she worked opening shift at a grocery store and asked me to drive her to work. She blew me a second time in the parking lot, it was great.” Not only is it an entirely believable explanation, it’ll also stop Gerard from wanting to have sex before he gets out of the shower.
“No she didn’t.”
Mikey frowns, still standing at the doorway. Normally if Gerard’s in a snit Mikey deals with it physically, if not fucking it out of him than by a snuggle, but his jeans are flakey and Gerard might notice. “What?”
“Why do you do this?”
Mikey frowns further. They both mess around with other people, a practice since Jersey and having to appear to have girlfriends or boyfriends. Jealousy is pretty much conditioned out of them. And they talked about this when they moved, about if they were going to be exclusive since they didn’t have to pretend anymore. Neither of them wanted to. Part of Mikey wants to protest this is not the time for this argument, he has to get up for work in four hours. But it isn’t the kind of thing you can just leave, drama like this will fester and turn everything to shit. And Mikey’s not willing to let things with Gerard turn to shit, even if he has to pull an all-nighter and intravenously inject caffeine at work. “I thought you were cool with it, I thought you agreed that-”
“Not the fucking. We both know you weren’t fucking some girl named Shelly, Mikes.”
Mikey stutters a laugh, and immediately winces at himself. That is not any reaction he’d normally have, and it’s absolutely crucial he appear normal. “Yeah, I wasn’t. Sheena, I said.”
“You saying it doesn’t make it true. You were out relieving stress.”
“Yessss?” Mikey draws out.
Gerard stands as he shakes his head. It’s only a few steps until he’s against Mikey. Mikey’s nostrils have been full of blood for the last five hours, he has no idea if the scent truly lingers on him or if he's just smelling things. Gerard’s hand is on Mikey's face as he looks at him and says “No. You were out relieving stress like I used to. You were taking people out. Killing them.”
Mikey has no idea how Gerard knows, can’t even begin to think about what he’s saying about doing what he used to. He doesn’t want this revelation and how it’ll make everything change. He tries one last effort to make it go away. “I think you’ve gone loopy from watching Scream channel, Gee.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way. You can stop.”
He snorts. Might as well be honest until the cops come. “Why would I stop?”
“Well, death row means we can’t see each other anymore. Not that I’m telling shit-all to anyone. But chances are you’ll get caught at some point, and that would be super shitty for the both of us.”
Mikey pauses because oddly enough, that’s actually a really good reason. At least Gerard didn’t go with some argument along the lines of ‘it’s wrong’. Mikey hasn’t been doing anything wrong so he doesn’t feel guilty about what he does. He’s an adult and he can do what he wants. Gerard does have a good point though. It would suck if he got put behind bars.
“I’ll think about it. For now I need to shower. You have class, but I have a ten to six shift. Lucky me.” He awkwardly starts stripping as he walks down the hallway. He’s not going to wash his hair, it’ll take too long to soap and condition and blow it straight. He’s pretty sure they still have a shower cap in the cabinet below the sink.
***
Luckily Mikey is the best brother ever, and has essentially prepared everything else he can for Gerard. There’s a route planned out for him duct-taped to the coffee maker telling him what stop to get on, where to transfer, and where to get off. His iPod is beside his house keys, his backpack is at the door beside his art room. And there are actually slices of bread in the toaster waiting for him. Gerard’s pretty happy the toaster isn’t on, Mikey did that one time before leaving the house and Gerard woke up coughing, smoke alarm shrilling. The bottom of the cabinet is still black, neither of them have felt like repainting it.
Gerard’s the kind of guy who needs easy listening in the morning until his ears wake up. Mikey would laugh at him, but Gerard presses his face against the warm glass of the bus and lets The Fray filter in. By the time he gets to class he’ll want to replace it with the Distillers, but for now it keeps the creepy guy beside him from trying to start up a conversation without making him hate mornings and their inherent too-loud-too-brightness more.
By the time he’s finally stepping off of the last transfer bus, his iPod has cycled through to “Wasted Years”. The building his class is being held in isn’t far from the stop, which is good because Gerard isn’t exactly the biggest fan of exercising unless he has to. He adjusts the strap of his backpack and heads in the direction of his class. The sooner he gets it over with the better his day will be.
No doubt it’ll be another day of watching student made shorts. Another day where their professor wants them to be brutal without even a curving scale to grade the shorts by. Gerard hates that he’s expected to be a dick and completely trash talk someone’s work. Art is art, even if some people are better at certain aspects of it than others. What’s even more great and perfect is that the professor will want everyone in class to vocally pick a short and tell everyone else in the room how they’d fix the film up and make it work, implying that the films are in need of repair before they can hold any truths or beauty. He can’t afford to skip the class though, not after the disaster that was second year. He’s just going to have to suffer through it.
After two hours of lying through his teeth and wanting to point out the praise worthy parts of each film out loud and in extreme detail, the professor dismisses class and Gerard gathers his stuff so he can leave. Thank everything good in the world that he doesn’t have this class every day. It’s three minutes after two and he doesn’t have another class until three. There’s only one thing that can mean; Gerard can take a break and get a cup of coffee. It’s not morning anymore, but coffee doesn’t have a ‘only drink when the hours are between five am and nine am’ label for him or Mikey. So he sets off for one of the local coffee places near campus, because there’s no way he’s going to the tiny cramped one in the student center. It’s always way too busy and their black brewed coffee could probably put a vibrating hyperactive child to sleep.
The Brew staff know him by sight. They probably know a lot of the students, and it’s not like they talk to him, so he doesn’t consider himself all that special, but it’s cool that he can walk in and they’re prepare his mix without having to officially order. It’s always ready by the time he’s first in line, as is his cinnamon bun. He’s not really a breakfast foods at breakfast time sort of guy, but there’s something wrong with you as a human if you can’t enjoy a cinnamon bun.
He’s paging through a textbook, careful to only turn it with the hand that’s not covered in gooey icing -normally he wouldn’t care, but he’s pretty much banking on being able to resell these books at the end of the year, and some people are overly picky when it comes to page folds and highlighters and stains- when someone jostles his chair. Gerard curls his leg around one of the chair legs and wriggles himself closer to the table without looking up. Then a hand darts into his line of vision and rips a chunk off his cinnamon bun.
“The fuck?” he mutters, looking up. Unless it’s a five year old, someone’s about to get a bitchfest. It’s a coping mechanism. He can’t relieve his tension when it builds into something greater than himself, so he needs to take care of things before they escalate.
It’s not a five year old, but it’s close. It’s Cash. “Put the chunk down and no one gets hurt.”
Cash raises his eyebrows. “No one would get hurt anyway. We don’t do that shit, remember buddy? Not no more.” He pops the chunk into his mouth.
Gerard calmly suppresses the urge to wrap the hood strings of Cash’s hoodie around his neck and start pulling. He’s not that person anymore. It’s just frustrating because he doesn’t have enough money for a second bun, all his change went into the metal fundraising for cancer -or whatever cause it is this week- box. He considers it penance for Mr Berg’s class; he’s a complete douchenozzle to strangers, and then he helps strangers.
“So whatcha doin’ here, Waydog?”
Times like these, Gerard would really like to have a buddy to call to remind him why he can’t let his urges win. He’s the only one in S K Anon that doesn’t have one. He used to, but then Kevin went and murdered his brothers and now he’s serving two life sentences. “I have class down the street. Why are you here? Don’t you live in the opposite direction of here?”
“Yeah.”
“So you bussed here just for a doughnut, and then decided to eat mine instead of getting your own?”
“Cash Money does not bus. I drove.”
Fuck. Fuck. This has the potential to be really fucking bad. “Did you call Ryland first?”
“Oh fuck off, Waydog. I didn’t rack up any points. I told you, we don’t do that shit no more.” Cash scowls, and Gerard wishes for a moment that he had Mikey’s naturally inexpressive face. Instead he looks down and both his arms are up, and he doesn’t even remember starting to wave them around. “I’m lookin for a fuckin’ job, man. Can’t freeload off my friends forever, right?”
Which okay, Gerard can understand that, but the bus routes aren’t sparse. Public transportation is cheaper than gas and upkeep on a car anyways. “I thought the bus fare was cheaper than gas?”
“Chill out, seriously. It’s not like I burned a whole cd of that one Kelly Clarkson song and cruised around the area for an hour scoping things out. Gotta be reminded of the temptation sometimes. Wouldn’t wanna forget.”
Cash’s reasoning is sound, but still Gerard worries because Cash can be a little bit energetic during group. He would hate to see someone else fall off the wagon. If he’s a bit of a nagging mother about it sometimes well then he can’t help it. “So give them your resume, and I’ll see you-”
“Got it circled with exclamation marks in my day planner,” Cash smirks and saunters off. Gerard tears what’s left of his bun into smaller bits to savour it better.
***
Getting his own camera is a first step -or okay, second or third step if he’s really being honest with himself- for getting on with his life. He’ll probably always be a little bit in love with Jon, but that’s okay because that’s natural. Brendon’s not delusional enough to want to get back together or anything like that. So he can deal.
That doesn’t mean he’s used to waking up in his own bed every freaking morning. He’s not used to not being in some form of a relationship and even after two months it’s still a kick in the gut that he’s alone again. He can do this though. Being single isn’t that hard right? He’s still the same person he was three months ago. That hasn’t changed. He also has the urge to throttle Ryan, which isn’t new.
“Turning yourself into some twisted product of what you think he wants from you isn’t the way to go about this. You don’t want to be what that drug addicted son of a bitch wants you to be! Just because his straight except for Jon’s dick in his mouth jerkoff friend is a photographer too doesn’t mean you need to be.”
Brendon considers attempting to explain for about the seventeenth time that Tom and Jon having a shared interest in photography has nothing to do with it, then goes for the explanation that Ryan might actually comprehend. “All the clothes you’ve been doing for the last six months have been inspired by pictures I’ve taken. You package the original with the article when you mail it off. If I stop taking pictures you’d have to stop doing that. It’s like your signature now.”
Ryan flings his arms into the air and the yellow tape measure whips and hits him in the face. It’s a momentary respite as Ryan winces and blinks hard. But only momentary, because Brendon’s not lucky enough for Ryan to have given himself brain damage. “I’d burn my store to the ground if I thought it would get you away from Jon for good! What happens when you run out of toner? Are you going to go over to his apartment and convince Jon to share with a blowjob?”
Jesus Christ. Where is he even supposed to start? “If you burn down the store I’ll tell Spencer. Also, Jon is living with Tom in his house, so I wouldn’t even know where to find him. Not to mention that I wouldn’t prostitute myself for photography supplies. But while we’re on the subject? I don’t have a darkroom in my apartment and I have no idea how to develop my own anyway. And toner is something you put on your skin when you tan.”
“You know where Jon and Tom are living!” Of course that’s what Ryan has decided to focus on. “Why do you know- have you talked to him? Please for the love of velour tell me you haven’t started to talk to that cretin!”
He knows it’s futile even as he opens his mouth, but he still says “you didn’t think he was a cretin when I was dating him for eight months.”
“I wasn’t aware of how much of a ass eating son of a whore scumcunt he was,” Ryan answers evenly.
“Okay, I’m going to make a display in the front. You keep working on this vest, it needs to be out by Friday. Friday, Ryan. I’m serious.”
“I can hardly be expected to produce when-”
Brendon notices the sharp pain of his fingernails cutting moons into his palms, and actively focuses on loosening his fists. “No, Ryan. The client requested a upper body garment based on that photo three weeks ago. If it’s not done by Friday I have to refund him. Fucking finish it.”
Apparently the swear punctuates his words well enough, Ryan walks to the shelf and pulls down a few bolts of denim. Brendon nods once and heads to the tiny space at the front of the store. The Weather Today is two thirds workroom for Ryan and a few racks and tables for walk-ins. Normally he only goes out front when he hears the chimes at the door, but the less time he has to spend with Ryan the better.
After three hours Brendon is about ready to impale himself with a hanger. Once you turn Ryan on you can’t turn him off, and normally Brendon would be laughing about the implied dirtiness of that sentence, but nothing in the world is funny right now. Nothing can be funny when Ryan Ross is vengeful and has been non-stop ranting from the back of the store. Brendon can only guess the fringe he’s attaching is falling apart -he told him to not get it when he saw it at the flea market, but Ryan had insisted it was vintage and needed to be appreciated- because he’s frustrated, and has vented his frustration through Jon Walker being the worst human being ever.
He’s got half an hour to close when he snaps. He tells Ryan he’s going to get his camera now and leaves. If he’s working he always closes, Brendon doesn’t trust Ryan to do it. He walks to the mall half expecting a call from the alarm company, that it’s blaring and Ryan can’t turn it off because he’s stuck in the metal bars that pull out or something else ridiculous. But screw it. If Ryan can bitch at him for over three hours about an ex than Ryan can suffer in a cage for the twenty minutes it’ll take firefighters to get there.