It's Like I'm Sleepwalking [Frerard/Jalex] [on hold, major editing]

4: I Don't Care If You're Contagious.

~Alex's POV~
It wasn't some kind of baby shocking device made to scare cattle, it was practically a prison fence, minus the barbed wire at the top so little looting trips into the city were more bearable. Still, the Jurassic park fence didn't have shit on this fence.

His body littered itself in burns and shifted into positions that bodies should never be forced into, his greased back hair that he probably spend hours on was flying everywhere, every electron in his tiny frame turning against him. I could feel the electricity radiating off him from 10 feet away.

With in seconds, the currents of voltage shot through him, from the fence into the ground.
Stopping his heart.
Leaving his lifeless body to simmer on the hot tar. I guess it was fate that decided to take the bait.

And at the worst possible second, I hear a mutter behind me.
"A shovel is a hell of a lot cheaper than a doctor, dont'cha think?"
Gerard turns away from the scene just long enough to shove me aside and pounce on him. The literal death grip on my wrists transferred directly to Frank's neck. Tears welling up in both their eyes, only Frank's were about to bug out of his head. I knew there was some fight left in him, but I was just hopeless at this point. Even when they were both literally putting their blood, sweat and tears into this. I figured we'd go down one way or another. Death had obviously gotten an innocent kid confused for trespassing, stealing, manslaughtering, smartass dumbfucks like us.

I wondered what kind of person Mikey was before all this happened. I wondered what kind of images flashed in front of his eyes like the electricity pulsating through his veins. He didn't seem like such a bad kid after all. But he had a hunger inside him that could never be satisfied. A hunger, I could've guessed was his brother, had put it there.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Gerard had moved his hands up higher on his neck, so Frank's neck scorpion was also in plain view. I thought we were royally fucked for sure, but he seemed...distraught. Absolutely furious. Like his whole plan had just crumbled to the ground. I can't believe we had sunk to his level. He loosens his grip in defeat just enough for me to pry them apart, all 3 of us collided with the ground. I was already seeing stars and it was only mid-afternoon. I was scraped up, dehydrated, sunburned, probably malnourished, along with a mild case of hear stroke, but that all felt like nothing.
Because there was a corpse lying in front of me and it was MY fault.

~Frank's POV~
We finally had a place to sleep tonight, for the first time. And it was the first time in years I couldn't sleep. I slept through thunderstorms better than this. Because this...this was too silent. It was DEAD silent, and it was deafening. I still could hear the soft hum off the fence, it was permanently drilled into my head. Mikey's threats, his cries, my face hitting the gravel just hardly more times than I deserved, Gerard tackling me, the smell of alcohol on his breath, something I hadn't drank in centuries, the sliver of vulnerability I saw in him, every memory I could never repress. I roll up the tattered blinds, seeing that the brothers maintained their positions, since the minute we left, for hours, days possibly. I can't know for sure, the clock on my nightstand stopped working years ago. It didn't seem like any of us had any perception of time because Gerard never left his baby brother's side. Not once. Not even to take a piss.

I think he had finally joined the rest of us, I think he was finally broken. He was an empty vessel, a walking travesty, and I could see that every time I looked in his eyes. They resembled Mikey's so much now. They weren't these harsh hazel orbs I had learned to fear anymore. Obviously Mikey's had rolled to the back of his head by now, but that was unimportant.

The hours passed slowly and miserably, sinking farther and farther into my mattress. I gave up sleep by sunrise and decided to visit the brothers.

I carefully detangle myself from Alex's still trembling body and slip out of bed, even more reluctant than usual to wake him. It had been a painfully long night for him. He refused to discuss it with me when we got back last night, throwing himself underneath the sheets of the opposite bed, kicking me off even when I had sat on the edge of it to try and comfort him. We were both mostly at loss for words the rest of the night, but hey, can't blame me for trying.

Watching him toss and turn in his bed across the room just justified how bad he felt about the whole thing. Until he got the grand idea a few hours ago to push our beds together. He then lunged on top of me once we had made the master bed, clinging to me like his life depended on it before finally settling down and then he was out like a light.

I slipped back on my sneakers at the edge of the bed, cracking a window and climbing out, dragging my quilt with me and carefully pulling it over the fence.

Gerard had passed out right next to Mikey, curling up in a ball to gather as much body heat as he could muster, as Mikey's must've been ice cold at this point, but they still never separated. They should've been so much harder to take pity on. I lay my blanket across the both of them before wandering back into the abandoned parking lot, crawling into the back of a rusted pickup, gazing upon the soft amber horizon. It seemed to be the only sense of closure to the day that anyone got anymore. They were overrated, they were over-romanticized, but we could all agree that they were one of the cheapest forms of beauty. They say that every time an artists dies, God lets them paint the sky. Mikey was doing a great job up there and my god did I sound cliche. I felt like I need to apologize to the guy that tried to kill me, and I was never sorry for anything. I could never do it in words. I wasn't weak. Instead I'll just lay back and marvel at the failing sun with a morning after.
~
I had eventually passed out from exhaustion, the all night adrenaline finally got to me and I woke with a jolt. Peeling my eyelids open to see they Mikey's masterpiece had washed away. And I had no interest in staring at a blank canvas so I jump out of the truck at any possible chance that Alex had fetched us breakfast. Gerard was up earlier than expected, my blanket had been tossed carelessly over Mikey, covering every inch of him except his right forearm, where Gerard was running his fingers across a spider tattoo on his wrist. I knew from my weeks of stalking they were both aspiring artists, but it almost seemed like death was some type of art form to them. Again, so poetic and SO cliche. Murder was overrated.

"What does that spider on his wrist mean?"

"I don't know, what does that scorpion on your neck mean?"

"A tattoo doesn't have to mean anything."
Because they don't. I have entire limbs covered in ink to prove it. But out of the dozens of tattoos on my body, what on earth was so important about this one?

"You're so naive, Frank."
He laughed at me, rolling his eyes. It was the first time I had seen him smile. A genuine smile. Not some manic serial killer smile from the movies that he somehow pulled off, not like Alex's shithead smirk that he did when he knew he was getting on my nerves, but a toothy grin that told me he genuinely enjoyed my company.

Gerard rolled up his sleeve to reveal he had the same spider on his wrist.
"It's not a tattoo, it's a brand."
"You are so deprived of everything right now, Gerard. Don't even try thi-"
"You and your faction were forced to them on your 17th birthday, weren't you?"
"My faction...?"
"You've got a lot to learn."