A Little Death
Mikey/Gerard
One-shot
A couple isolated events from childhood and adolescence, and how they demonstrate Mikey & Gerard's relationship. Rated PG-13.
1,597 words
Written March 5, 2005
Once, when you were very young, Gerard came home with a school assignment that you didn't get. The assignment itself was simple - come up with something that describes friendship - but the idea behind it was needlessly, explosively cruel to you. Your brother didn't have friends. How would he describe it? He sat on the carpet with you and stared at the page, occasionally pushing his hair away with the back of his hand. Both were grimy, and he was chewing on the end of a pen clutched in his hand.
You sat, and picked at the carpet, and watched him. Eventually he wrote in a slow, blocky hand, "Friendship is like a dead bird." And you giggled.
"What's so funny?" He turned to you, eyes narrowed. "'s true."
"Yeah, well, how come?"
"Well, see..." He picked his words carefully. "When you find it, you think it's real cool, right? And you just wanna look at it. But then it starts to stink. And then you have to bury it, but you gotta be nice, or Mom will get angry. You can't just throw it into traffic or something. And it never lasts real long."
For a long time you sat, head cocked, looking at him. His hair was all messy even then, ragged from a home haircut, a few days of not washing. You looked at him and finally said, "Okay."
His face split into a grin, and you found yourself laughing from somewhere deep in your chest. Laughing in relief. His hand found yours and you didn't mind that his was sweaty, dirty. You smiled back at him.
You'd never seen a dead bird, and to the best of your knowledge neither of you ever did - at least not up close and personal - but the following summer, you did both find a dog's corpse. It was in the trees behind the park, lying in a heap of rotted leaves that never wore away from the previous autumn. The entire area made you sick with its damp brown smell, but he loved it back there. He'd drag you in by the hand, chattering about pirates and ninjas and the wild west and all that great stuff, things kids played in movies and all.
When you found the dog, you had been playing some game that involved Star Wars; he was chasing you around making laser noises, and you tripped on a log, scraping your hands against the ground. When you tried to push yourself back up you saw its dull eye staring at you and you screamed, so hard your throat got raw like your stinging palms, and he jerked you up by the back of your shirt. There was a line on your neck but you were thrilled to be away from it.
"What is it?" he asked, half-comforting, half-angry. You breathed in deep.
"There's something in there, Gee."
He stepped forward, kicked at the leaves with his foot. You bit your lip hard and tried not to cringe in fear. What if it was a zombie, what if it got up and chased them, what if it was a crazy man with a hatchet like in that movie you saw with him? Your mother said how you were too young to see it but no, you had to, and now you knew and it might jump up and hang your bodies from the tree like pale, lumpy fruit. You wanted to throw up.
The leaves rustled up into the air and fell, revealing the dog.
"See, that's all it is, you baby."
"It's... oh." You swallowed up the last word in fear, tried again. "Dead." He nodded. "I thought..."
"Crazy man, huh." He knelt beside it and ran his hand over the head, smoothing down the fur. Something in your throat heaved.
"Don't do that, it's probably got germs and all on it."
"It's fine." He looked up at you. "Have some freaking respect, yeah?" The two of you were so young that even the word "freaking" made you think he was being bad, but maybe it drilled into your head a little the gravity of the situation. You inched forward, sat on the log. He mumbled, "You owe it that."
"Wha?"
"Respect. If some guy grabbed you, killed you, left you here..." He shrugged expansively. "You know they do that. This dog, maybe it'd find you, and it wouldn't care how nice a guy you were. You're a nice guy, right, Mikey? But this dog would eat your body."
"Gee, that's so sick." You crossed your arms but only to dig your fingernails into your upper arms, convince yourself this was real.
"It would. Dogs do that." At least in his strange fantasy world, they did, even house pets, and you were too young to know better. He said, "But we're people and people are supposed to be better. So that's why you gotta have respect for it."
It didn't make sense, but nothing much about him did, and you tipped your head forward to look at it better. Its nails were long and ragged and the fur was dull, and that's all you can dredge up of it, just that it was like an old penny in the weak light. He passed his hand over its head again, as if this would work some magic. The fur lay in a flat line and you stared down at it.
Eventually he heaped the leaves over it again and dragged you off to fight with fallen sticks. You didn't touch his hand again for a week.
To be honest, none of this really ever came up again - no talks about the "good old days", no mention of that fallen corpse or how it got there. The only time you ever mentioned either event was years later, when you were both in your late teens, and he was staying in your room for some reason or another. He was very, very stoned, and he was sleeping in your bed. You were kicked out onto the floor.
He was talking for a long time, nonsense. You tried to sleep. The babble soothed you. He said, "It's like that old thing, yeah, are you beautiful 'cause I love you, or am I in love with you 'cause you're really fucking hot..." He coughed from deep in his chest and you hoped he wasn't sick. "But it's like, yeah, love and beauty, they're the same bullshit concept, it's all just.. yeah, one thing, so all it is is, are you? Am I? And it's like... who fucking knows, man, it's just all bullshit. No love, nah, no beauty, just... you and me, man. Are we?"
You huddled tighter into the worn material of your favorite shirt, looked up at his profile. He was staring straight at the ceiling like your face was up there, and he was panting, his chest looking like a bird's wing with its pace. For some reason, that set off that memory in your head, and you mumbled, "Like a dead bird, right?" You didn't expect him to remember.
Sure enough, he didn't, just took it as the ramblings of a partner in chemicals, and said, "Yeah, exactly, a dead fuckin' bird, that's not about love or beauty or any of that. Like, there isn't no asshole bird telling it what to be or do, it just is. And it's like, it's dead, so... yeah, it's the purest, cleanest thing you can get. Just a dead bird. Nothing but that."
You stared up at where his eyes were fixed, hoping you'd catch some glimpse of what he saw. Nothing.
He kept talking, unaware. "So, you know, it's like... I don't even believe in love anymore, 'cause you know, love is just being and I'm not. I'm just not, it's bullshit, I can't be, so fuck that, and I really wanna be but I can't, 'cause it's just... I can't do it. No dead bird, no dead Gee, nothing, not alive or dead, it's bullshit. I mean it's like there's someone who's supposed to make you feel like you are but there isn't."
His hands moved rapidly when he talked but now they were like two small collapsed lungs at his side and you stared at them. There was a sudden, vitally crushing recognition in your chest of what it meant to be, what he meant, and you stared at the limpness of his hands.
"Hey, Gerard?"
"Yeah...?"
"What if you had something you couldn't ever tell anyone?" And you hoped to god he didn't get it.
He turned his head, finally, looked at you straight in the eyes. Didn't move his hands when he spoke, very deliberately. "I'd keep it locked up real tight inside where no one could ever find it, not even if they went looking. And I'd fake it as hard as I could that there wasn't even anything buried. And then - " on this note, he swung himself up, legs falling next to your face. "I'd go get drunk off my ass." And he stood and walked out of the room.
Something inside you collapsed further, and you lay on your back for a long time. When he returned he was talking again, coming through the door mid-sentence, talking about some CD he'd bought, some song lyrics. You smiled as hard as you could. Nothing buried. When he lay down, you didn't extend your hand out to his, didn't try to pump life back into him. Eventually, you both slept hard, fierce like a grave.