rhymes with birds' nest
Gerard had been in love with Mikey forever. Granted, it had changed shape so many times over the years that he'd lost count, but there was no doubt in his mind that ever since the first time he'd seen his baby brother- sickly looking and innocent and vulnerable and so small, so impossibly tiny that Gerard could barely comprehend- he'd been in love with him.
~
Mikey Way walks through his front door. He dumps his backpack, tosses his keys onto the hall dresser, and freezes. Something is not right. He doesn't know what, doesn't even know how he knows. He just knows: something's off. Call it a fourth sense (because his eyesight is shot to shit and most things taste like paste to him since the crayon incident in kindergarten).
And then a small, uncertain voice echoes through the empty house, cracking and stuttering. The voice of somebody set to crumble.
"Mikes? Mikey?"
And it's Gerard, of course it is. Gerard, drunk or high or stoned off his face again, and speeding toward comedown.
Mikey contemplates walking right back out the door and going to one of his friends' (because Mikey? Mikey actually has friends. He makes the effort. He and Angie Walters, prettiest girl in ninth, are working together in lab, for fuck's sake. Unlike his brother, Mikey's actually worked at shrugging the Creepy Way Kid label, Goddammit). But he doesn't. Because he'd know that voice anywhere and he knows: he needs to stay.
Gerard's slumped over the kitchen table. His shoulders are shaking and his hands are shaking and the tiny pastel-pink and blue and white and red pills in his hand won't go back in the bottle so he throws them in pathetic frustration. They ping off the fridge; the wall; the doorframe. One hits Mikey's shoe.
"Hi," he says.
Gerard sighs. His eyes are hazy. He scrubs a hand over his face and looks with clear eyes up at his brother.
"I'm okay, Mikes," he mutters, "sorry, I- I'm fine."
Then he closes his eyes, opens them wide again and smiles. It's the most disconcerting thing Mikey's ever seen.
He sniffs, and suddenly, the lucidity-- it's gone. Gerard's eyes are glazed and staring and the adoration that sometimes shines in them is there, Mikey can see it, but it's misted by something...
"Baby brother," he whispers shakily. "I am going to take such good care of you, baby brother. Come here."