Brother (Petekey)

Walking Shadow

   Since it happened, the door to Gerard's room had remained closed. When he lived in the room – because he couldn't get his own place due to his refusal to get a proper job, 'so that he could spend more time on his art' (on Frank) – he kept it like that most of the time, and as Mikey made his routine way from his room, along the corridor, down the stairs, into the kitchen, and back, he sometimes liked to pretend, as he passed his brother's room, that he was still in there, brooding about life, or drawing some creepy picture filled with blood and horror. Mikey knew far too well that doing that kind of thing – trying to avoid reality whenever it hurt him – was horrifically bad for him, but sometimes it was all he could do to stop himself from breaking down on a daily basis.

Or that was what he told himself. He also told himself that the countless hours he spent curled on his bedroom floor soaked in his own tears and silently screaming were not breakdowns. He was fine. He just had to let it out sometimes, and, it seemed, some days, he was 'letting it out' more often than not, spending only a couple of precious hours in each 24 feeling like he wasn't about to crumble. But that was fine. He was totally fine.

But now, it was Tuesday afternoon, and Mikey hadn't been to school, because his brother was dead, and it had been three days, and now, his parents were going to start forcing the world to move on. Gerard's funeral was tomorrow, and all Mikey wished was that it wouldn't happen. He had never thought that a funeral would happen so soon after a death, and when he questioned his parents, they told him that they just wanted it over with so that they could stop thinking about it.

And, of course, by 'it', they meant 'Gerard', and by 'stop thinking', they meant 'forget'. They wanted to remove every trace of their son, because, as it seemed to Mikey, they wanted to pretend he had never existed so that they could pretend they hadn't lost him. Of course, he knew that it was more likely that they just didn't want constant reminders of him, and they wanted to at least try to survive without him, but in his state, he couldn't believe that of them, and he wanted to find every reason to hate them that he could, because he just didn't want them to be a family without Gerard.

And he still fully knew that his family didn't have to fall apart. Gerard was gone, and of course things would never be even remotely 'normal' again, but the only thing stopping him and his parents from trying to get through it together was his own anger. And however much he saw that it was not only irrational, but just plain stupid, he couldn't bring himself to get over it. He knew that he was a fuck up. Yeah, Gerard hadn't ever been the most normal person, and the excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol really didn't help, but he'd never really tried to do anything like this. Purposely aiming to tear the already fragile bonds left in the family was just... well, it was fucked up, and Mikey knew it. And, just then, he hadn't wanted to have to keep on thinking about it. He had been in enough fucking pain already.

He just wanted to not have to think, and he wanted to get out of his head, and return to wherever the fuck he'd been before this hideous train of thought had started. And, a few hours ago, he had done the only thing that he knew would just keep his head fucking clear for a while.

And, right now, he realised, he had no idea where he was. His eyes were closed, he couldn't hear anything, and his sense of touch appeared disconnected from his brain. And he really hoped it would stay that way. In his head, he was running a Schrodinger's cat-like situation, in that if he had no information from the outside world regarding his brother, there was equal chance of him being alive and dead. He could be standing over Mikey right now, for all he knew.

And, of course, for this kind of thing to make sense in Mikey's head, he had to be high off the face of the earth. And so he was. Morphine was great for this weird, floaty, detached feeling. He had a considerable supply of it that he'd managed to collect over time from Pete. He had no idea how Pete had access to this much of the stuff, but when he was this far off his face on it, that was the least of his concerns.