Masterpost | Part I | Part II
Shut Down and Pose as Positive // Part III - M.O.N.E.Y.
Drink slow, to feed the nose, you know he likes to get blown.
Frank’s first impression of Gerard isn’t one he’s proud of.
Gerard was sprawled out on the couch with a bottle of beer spilled on his chest, and though he was conscious, he wasn’t there enough to do more than wave his hand weakly and turn his head.
Mikey was sick in the toilet bowl and they left as soon as they could.
Whenever Mikey gets sick from seeing Gerard, they just lean against each other and watch the blurry beams of yellow-white light and the occasional stripes of brake light red through the fogged up windscreen and Frank wishes Gerard wasn’t destroying Mikey the way Gerard is destroying himself.
Frank pulls Mikey into his side when Mikey slides into the van and doesn’t talk to him, and Mikey folds into his chest like it doesn’t feel uncomfortable to twist his spine over the hand break and the built-in ashtray between the two front seats. Frank knows Mikey still remembers the older brother who used to steal his cereal just to be an annoying brother, not because he even liked cereal. The person who used to debate comics and accuracy in movies until the early morning hours.
“He’s started on meth,” Mikey says, breath catching in his throat halfway through, and he chokes out the final words in a sob.
Frank breathes, because it’s worse than he thought, pulls Mikey half onto his lap, and doesn’t protest when his shirt gets damp.
They get drunk after that, and it’s a feel-better method that takes Mikey’s mind off his brother’s addictions and onto whatever else catches his eye.
He’s not sure when it happens, but suddenly they stop talking about Gerard, because it’s like he’s toxic, like he’s a broken nuclear plant, his radiation killing off everything within a hundred miles of him; that’s what he does, what he’s doing to Mikey.
Frank has only met Gerard twice since the first time; the first he was incoherent, trying to say something about the fridge with a frown on his face, and the second he was passed out on the couch with a syringe on the floor and vomit in his hair.
The van is more a home than their own homes now, and Frank realises he hasn’t actually been to his mum’s for tea in weeks. The car lights they watch through the windows and the smells of alcohol and weed that cling to their clothes and surround the van like a shield are more familiar than their own bedrooms.
Frank didn’t notice until he’d curled up on the back seat next to Mikey and saw Pansy sticking out slightly from under a couple of spare blankets in the boot, her case propped up on the back door and held there by a small pile of clothes, his and Mikey’s. While he can’t remember putting them in there; he can’t remember them not being there either.
He looks at them again before slipping a couple of fingers through one of the bands on Mikey’s wrist, a black paper day pass to some theme park he hasn’t cut off yet, and curls up so his knees fit up against Mikey’s stomach. Mikey’s leg shifts and his foot hits the door lightly just as Frank falls asleep.
Gerard ends up passing out on an elderly neighbour’s porch, and ends up hospitalised. Mikey’s mum stops Mikey from going, even going as far as to call Linda to prevent letting Mikey even think about entering the hospital. Frank has to agree though; once Mikey got in, no one would be able to get him out.
So Mikey and Frank live at Linda’s for the following weeks, sleeping curled up together in Frank’s old double bed and eating side by side on the lumpy couch that is usually Mikey’s sleeping quarters when they stay the night.
When Gerard finally gets released, he moves back in with Donna, and Mikey and Gerard’s apartment is put up for sale.
Frank puts Mikey’s guitar in the boot of the van and his bass in Frank’s wardrobe, along with Frank’s other two guitars. They end up jamming together in the van without plugging in their guitars, and though the sound is quiet and Mikey is pretty shit, it’s nice.
“I auditioned for Pencey,” Mikey says and Frank’s fingers stutter on the strings, stumbling over chords he knows off by heart.
Frank doesn’t actually remember Mikey auditioning. In fact he didn’t even know Mikey had auditioned.
“What for?” Frank says finally, and Mikey looks at him with large eyes from behind his glasses.
Mikey plays the shittiest riff ever known to man and says, “Rhythm,” with a slight grin.
Frank and Mikey smoke up and visit Gerard in the same day, but Gerard doesn’t say anything. He just grins and says, “I’m re-reading these comics, right, and I actually had forgotten some of the dialog. Mikey can you believe—” and Frank knows Gerard can smell it in their clothes, wafting through the air inside Gerard's basement, but he still doesn’t say anything, so maybe he’s not going to stop them.
Frank’s opinion of Gerard just skyrocketed from ‘yeah, okay,’ to ‘best person ever, seriously’. Mikey grins at him like Frank finally understands.
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Mikey's got green on his elbows and jeans, grass stains from falling over on Linda's front lawn, and he's idly scratching at them. He's successful in only getting a layer of green under his fingernails and there’s a smudge just above his eyebrow from readjusting his hair.
Frank's skin feels tighter than usual now that he's had a shower. He’s only wrapped in a towel, but the air is still so hot and sticky that he doesn’t even bother putting clothes on.
Gerard has a deck of cards and is shuffling them slowly, stumbling and dropping cards onto the table every few seconds. Neither Frank nor Mikey are particularly emotionally invested in card games, but Gerard’s just so fucking ernest that neither of them could refuse when he’d held up the deck with a hopeful smile.
He starts dealing, cards messily thrown on the table in the general direction of Frank and Mikey and neatly piled in front of himself, until there's two abstract piles of seven spread halfway across the table and a perfectly stacked pile on the opposite side.
“What are we playing for?” Frank asks. Maybe he’ll play seriously if there’s a cool reward. Mikey’s separating their cards awkwardly, with his knees up against his chest and his arm stretched over the top of them.
Gerard pulls up a stack of CD’s and says, “Mikey’s Smiths albums,” and Mikey stops splitting the piles, looks up at Gerard for a second, and then literally jumps over the table in a practiced move that Frank didn’t even know he could do. Gerard’s chair goes backwards, hitting the floor with a distinct thud. They’re wrestling awkwardly, but Frank knows Mikey’s going to win.
The cards are sprawled all over the table, discarded, and Frank rounds them up and puts them back in their box. They aren’t going to be used tonight.
Part IV