Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12421191.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      My_Chemical_Romance
  Relationship:
      Frank_Iero/Gerard_Way
  Character:
      Frank_Iero, Gerard_Way, Mikey_Way, Pete_Wentz, Lindsey_Ballato
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_High_School, Secret_Relationship, Love/Hate, Other
      Additional_Tags_to_Be_Added
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-10-19 Chapters: 1/? Words: 2509
****** blue jeans ******
by poisonmilkshake
Summary
     A boy with too many secrets and a boy who has nothing to hide meet in
     an unconventional way. Chaos ensues.
"So, how long has he been missing?" Pete's voice asks through the phone's
speaker. He sounds tiny and far away. Mikey frowns.
"Five days," he sighs, standing up from the bed to start pacing around the room
again, using the hand that isn't holding the phone to his ear to push his
glasses up and then take his beanie off.
"Wasn't that the day of the funeral?" Pete asks then, as Mikey throws his
beanie on the desk and tries to smooth down his hair by brushing through the
locks with his fingers.
He sighs again, walking to stand in front of the mirror. "No, it was the day
after grandma died. He missed the funeral, we don't know where he is. Or if
something happened to him." His hair is sticking up in all directions, he gives
up on taming it.
"But I saw him at the cemetery, the day of the funeral," Pete says, a hint of
confusion in his voice. Mikey's frown deepens as he turns around and starts
pacing again.
"Really?"
"Yeah, when we were leaving, he was standing in front of her grave. I mean, I'm
pretty sure it was him."
"Motherfucker," Mikey almost growls, sitting back down on the bed. He leans
with his elbows on his knees and starts pushing his fingers under his glasses
to rub angrily at his eyes. "He's hiding, I can't believe this."
"Aw, come on Mikey, weren't they- weren't they really close?" Pete says,
obviously trying to calm Mikey down by putting the whole situation into a more
objective perspective.
"Yeah, they were," Mikey says, and he's started to fuss with his hair again,
his eyes closed.
"See, maybe that's just his way of coping with the loss?"
"He could fuckin' cope without leaving me alone!" Mikey retorts, opening his
eyes as he starts gesticulating with his free hand, "My family's, like, falling
apart, and I'm the one who has to make sure mom doesn't lose her shit, 'cause
dad spends all his time out getting drunk and- and he's always in a bad mood.
They aren't even speaking to each other. I'm fucking fourteen! I'm not supposed
to be dealing with this kinda stuff! I don't know how to deal with this kinda
stuff!"
"Well, Gerard's fifteen, why do you think he knows how to deal with it?" Pete
shoots back.
"That's not what I said!" Mikey shouts, forgetting for a second that he and
Pete are not fighting, that he's the one who called Pete to rant about his
problems and Pete's just trying to help him. He closes his eyes, takes a deep
breath, letting the darkness clear his head. When he speaks again, he's calm.
"I just want him to be home, so I can make sure he's okay and mom stops
convincing herself that he's dead and she has to go looking for his corpse out
there in the fuckin' snow. I mean, come on, it's the middle of December, where
the fuck is he even staying?"
"Okay but don't- don't take my word for granted, alright? Maybe it wasn't even
him at the cemetery, it was far away, it could have easily been someone else-
" Pete is saying, but he's interrupted by Mikey's mum calling him downstairs to
have dinner. Mikey excuses himself, says goodbye, and with one last exasperated
sigh he's out if his room, walking towards the stairs.
After dinner, Mikey is trying not to look at his mother's face, distracting
himself by making coffee, because she looks devastated and he can't handle it.
He's been comforting her every night until she cries herself to sleep, if she
even sleeps at all, but there's only so much stress he can take, and he thinks
his mother is probably having an emotional breakdown. He has to talk her down
from going to look for her oldest son in the craziest places all the time.
Mikey lets his mother's paranoia get to him for a second, and an image flashes
through his mind, his brother's corpse, pale and blue, red with blood, rigid
and frozen, half-hidden under the layers of snow that have fallen down in the
few previous weeks. Old memories of going fishing at a lake, a few towns away,
with his father and a family friend, owner of a boat, come to his mind; how the
fish fought against death when they were pulled out of the water, laid down on
ice so they wouldn't start rotting. How they looked once they died, with glassy
eyes and dried scales that used to sparkle under the water. Going at Helena's
old house, by the town's park, afterwards, and eating cookies that she'd baked,
the house where she lived up until she was too sick to live on her own. She had
to stay in the hospital for the last few months of her life. And now the house
is Gerard's, because that's what was written on her will, and she left for
Mikey a sum of money that he's supposed to use for college. Mikey doesn't
really know how those things work, but he supposes that their parents actually
own the house until Gerard turns 18.
Mikey looks down at his cup, still empty as the coffee keeps brewing. The
fishing trips were back when their father was sober, when he still had friends
that didn't spend all their time sitting at a bar. Gerard used to hate fishing,
he didn't want the fish to die, and the fishhooks, they scared him because they
reminded him of needles. But he has admitted to Mikey that he'd rather go
fishing every day than seeing dad drunk again. It's odd to think that Gerard
might be like one of those fish now, dead eyes and dry skin. Mikey closes his
eyes, takes a deep breath, letting the darkness clear his head.
It's not something that could have happened, he knows, Gerard isn't dead,
because unlike his mother, he's using logic: their town is small and quiet, and
no one has been murdered there in decades. And no one, as far as he knows, has
any reason to kill his brother.
But even Mikey's poker-faced facade of logic and positive thinking is starting
to wear thin.
He wonders if Gerard would fight against death.
He pours the coffee in his cup with slightly trembling hands, relishing in the
smell of the only thing that's keeping him together. Of course he's worried for
his brother, and after all, he's he's worried about his mother too, because he
has never seen her cry before. The first time was after the phone call from the
hospital that informed them of Helena's death. It shook the ground under his
feet. The two big tears that rolled down her cheeks, the pain on her face,
broke his firm belief that grown-ups are indestructible.
After pouring the rest of the coffee in another cup for his mother, he breaks
the promise he'd made to himself, and lets his eyes wander over his mother's
face. She's smoking, sitting at the kitchen table, and she's been looking at
him while he made the coffee. She has deep, dark circles under her eyes, and
her lips are pale and chapped. She usually wears bold make-up and her blonde
hair is always big and fluffy, "like a beauty queen's," she loves to point out,
but in this moment her hair is flat on her head, kind of messy, and the lack of
make-up mixed with her sickly look makes her seem so much older and more tired
than she actually is, like she's lived a thousand lives.
Mikey gently places the cup between her waiting hands, kisses her forehead, and
makes his promise again: don't look at mum's face.
She crushes the cigarette on the ashtray, stands up, and they move to the
living room, where Mikey sits beside her on the couch, staring at his cup of
coffee for a second before bringing it to his lips. They don't talk, but it's a
comfortable silence, if a sad one. His mother puts her arm around his
shoulders, pulling him closer and wrapping them both in the big, fluffy blanket
that was resting, folded messily, on the side of the couch before they sat
down. They move carefully, mindful of not letting the coffee spill. Mikey
cuddles into her side, tucking his socked feet under himself. He sips his
coffee, listening to the fire crackling softly in the fireplace and staring at
the people moving on the muted tv's screen. He tries to reassure himself,
repeating in his head what Pete said about seeing Gerard at the funeral, but
still, Pete wasn't even sure of it himself. So, instead of giving into paranoia
again, he goes back to staring at the tv and tries to make out what kind of
movie it is without the sound. When a blonde girl gets stabbed, he figures it's
a horror movie.
Obligatory Blonde Chick Death: check.
Sooner than he knows, the end credits are rolling on the screen, and he blinks
himself out of his stupor. His coffee has gone cold, some of it spilled on the
blanket. He stares at the little drops, now dry, that probably won't get out of
the fabric anytime soon, and then he looks at his mum.
Her cup is empty, she's asleep, but at least this time there are no dry tears
on her face. He quietly moves away, taking the empty cup from her hands, and
setting it beside his on the coffee table. He lays her down, gently placing her
head on a pillow, and tucks her under the blanket. She's a heavy sleeper, when
worry is not keeping her up, so she doesn't even stir.
Mikey then crouches down in front of the fire, adding some wood and moving it
around to bring it back to life. He takes his cup and moves it to the edge of
the fireplace, to make it warm up again. He leaves it there while he takes
mum's cup to the kitchen, walking around the house without turning the lights
on, leaving it in the sink so that someone will wash it in the morning.
Coming back in the living room, his eyes find once again the figure of his
mother, and suddenly, all the times that he found Gerard curled up on the
couch, in the morning, with a blanket wrapped around him come back to his mind.
He briefly wonders how many times his mum and his brother have spent nights
like that, and a small pang of jealousy hits him. He quickly suppresses it
though, because he knows Gerard has always been a huge insomniac, but he would
never wake Mikey up in the middle of the night so they could pull an all-
nighter together. Mikey feels that insomnia has made Gerard value sleep a lot
more than he does. Especially since, unlike his big brother, he somehow manages
to fall asleep anywhere.
He walks over to the fireplace, picks up his cup. It's warm, but the coffee
inside is still kind of cold. Then, he hears the sound of keys coming from
outside. The keys are pushed in the lock, the lock turns, the door opens. 'Dad
is back,' Mikey thinks.
He sets the cup down on the fireplace again. He expected the sound of the door
slamming closed, footsteps dragging and stomping in the hallway, towards the
stairs, heavy with alcohol, but instead, the door closes quietly, and soon it'
s locked again. Mikey hears someone shuffling around in the kitchen. He listens
for a few seconds, and then stands up, quietly walks towards the kitchen, and,
standing in the doorway, turns the light on.
There's Gerard, standing in front of the counter, wearing different clothes
from the ones Mikey last saw him wearing. He looks like a deer caught in
headlights, a piece of toast with Nutella, that he somehow found in the dark,
and that Mikey had made for himself to eat the next morning, shoved halfway in
his mouth, the plastic bag that used to contain the toast empty in his other
hand, his eyes wide, staring at Mikey. There are a lot of things Mikey wants to
say, which is why he's the first to speak.
"You look like a burglar in your own house," he says. A hint of disappointment
is the only thing he lets through his otherwise carefully flat tone and face.
Gerard tears a piece of toast off with his teeth, his expression shifts from
scared to curious, and he doesn't even bother swallowing before replying with
"Why are you still awake?"
Mikey doesn't answer, instead, he replies with another question: "Where the
hell have you been?" he asks with urgency in his voice, but speaks quietly this
time, because he remembers their mother sleeping in the living room. "Nowhere"
Gerard answers after swallowing his food, looking away and mimicking Mikey's
tone, probably understanding that they can't speak loudly.
Mikey glares at him. "Listen, Helena dies and you disappear for five days in
the middle of December, when there's snow up everyone's asses and it's so cold
you could easily die of hypothermia, mom was going crazy, dad is drinking his
ass off and being a dick, and I had to make sure they didn't kill each other
every night. Don't 'nowhere' me. Where the fuck have you been?"
Mikey almost forgot to keep his voice down this time. Because, as relieved as
he is that Gerard is back, he's also angry, since clearly, nothing bad has
happened to him. Of course, he didn't want anything to happen to his brother,
but the fact that he's okay means he had no reason to disappear for so long.
"I don't wanna talk about it," Gerard answers, and for a second, Mikey thought
he saw something flashing across his face, but it was gone before he could make
sure he wasn't imagining it, because Gerard is leaving, walking towards the
stairs that go down to his room.
"Go to sleep Mikes," he hears Gerard say from the top of the stairs, and then
the door to his room closes, and Mikey is left standing at the entrance to the
kitchen with a sense of dissatisfaction and even more questions, listening to
his brother's steps going down the stairs and his mother's quiet snoring
accompanied by the crackling of the fire from the living room. He sighs,
realising that he didn't mention the toast before Gerard left the kitchen, and
by now it's too late to have it back. He thinks about waking his mom up to tell
her Gerard's back, but then decides he can't deal with drama right now, and she
probably wouldn't be able to fall back asleep afterwards. He goes to retrieve
his cup of coffee from the fireplace, puts it in the sink, turns the light off,
and then goes up to his room, dialing Pete's number for the second time that
day.
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