shades. [1/1]
NAME: Shades
FANDOM: My Chemical Romance
PAIRING: n/a
RATING: PG-13 for mild swearing and character death.
SUMMARY: There are many shades to a person's life.
NOTES: Written over Skype for a prompt. Reformatted, edited, and uploaded to LJ.
---
There are many shades to a person's life.
There are shadowy greys, like the darkest corners of your room: the ones you never go to, because they hold nothing you want and nothing you care about. The ones that are dirty and you have to visit them sometimes if only to clean them out, or fill them with new things that'll be forgotten and dirtied too.
And there are the blinding whites, like the sun on the brightest spring day. Where it warms you to your very bones, until your entire body is thrumming with heat and your eyes burn from squinting gleefully into the light and the brightness it casts upon the world around you.
There are neutrals, too, pale ones, bright ones, happy and sad ones, but the neutrals don't make the story, do they? No one reads a story to hear the boring aspects, the ones that make the shadows bearable and the sunlight a little brighter.
So I won't tell you the neutrals. The neutrals aren't important to you, but they were important to him. Maybe the reason he fell the way he did is because there weren't enough neutrals in his life. Too much black and white, and you balance on a double edged blade; you can fall into the black, suffocated by the agony and the numb and the pain of the world, or into the white, and never know its true joy because joy is all you know.
You might be raising your eyebrows now. "Who is he?" you might think, or whisper to someone reading over your shoulder. It's a big question in a story: "who is he? Who is this important person that the unnamed narrator feels so strongly about? Who? Who?"
Who is he?
He was a normal boy, you see. He might catch your eye, briefly, if his looks are your thing or if they really, really aren't. We gawk at the best and the worst, don't we?
You may have seen him, in retrospect. Standing in a coffee shop, paper cup clasped delicately in long fingers, or in the bookstore where he worked, plucking change from the register and dropping it into your hands. "Have a nice day," in a shy, light voice.
But to me, he was everything.
His name was Michael, but if you knew him you called him Mikey. No one called him Michael but our mother when he upset her, or the teachers during roll call. It was as though the name was unknown to him, a foreign body, referencing another person altogether.
Mikey. Mikey with his sweet face and his forever-young smile and his eyes that were a little too wise, a little too afraid of everything.
It begins with a smile, and ends with a line drawn in crimson natural ink on white tile and linoleum.
His name was Antoine. I know this because it's a name I swore I'd never forget, while holding my baby brother to my shoulder and feeling him sob his agonies into my neck.
Antoine. I see him across the room as I'm writing this, arm slung carefree around a blonde girl's shoulders and a smile splitting his handsome face. The sight of the black waves that lay slicked to his scalp makes bile well up in my throat.
If you were in my position, you'd know why.
But even though you aren't, I hope you will understand, regardless.
It was tenth grade. Antoine was a grinner, a laugher, one of those that never, ever stops smiling. Charismatic, you might say, but I call it filth. Filth and lies and hidden things. Shadows under the whites of his teeth.
Mikey watched him, all the time. Shyly. I noticed, of course, but perhaps I didn't understand the depth at the time. Maybe I did, and I simply ignored it. I'm good at ignoring.
And then one day, he told me, with resolve in his voice: "I'm going to tell him how I feel today."
Mikey was never uncomfortable with who he was. You'd think it'd be me: sassy, self-confident, ladyboy Gerard Way, known for a passion for feather boas and scarves, that would have been content in my sexuality. But no, it was always Mikey. He had a way of knowing things in the purest form: he knew it as he saw it, not as how everyone else would.
I sputtered. His face fell. "What? Why, do you think I shouldn't?"
And he didn't wait for an answer. I wish I could step back, erase these words and the events that followed them and stop him before he walked into what I knew would take him from me. But I can't now, and didn't then. Instead, I watched him walk away.
He didn't meet me to walk home; I was forced to leave without him and found him instead sitting on the porch of our house.
I know what you're thinking. I scaled the steps, and he was crying, suffering a rejection that tore him apart. And I held him and never forgot Antoine's name and that's how we got here, right?
I'm sorry for setting it up that way.
He was fine. He told me, in that quiet way of his, that Antoine had rejected him. And then he said, "Batman is on in five minutes. '60s, The Thirteenth Hat. Fucking, Mad Hatter, with the eyes in his top hat. Wanna watch with me?"
And I did, and we did, and we forgot Antoine and his slicked back hair and his ever smiling face and his white-white teeth.
No, the remembering came later.
Hit the fast-forward button, hit play two days later. Walking to school with Mikey, talking about comics and the new Jaws movie. Normal things for normal kids on normal days.
And then someone sitting on the school steps yelled, "FAG!"
I didn't blink. I was used to this, of course; long black hair and a feminine face does little for one's masculinity. But his eyes were not on me, no. They were on Mikey.
And there was Antoine, behind the shouting boy and in front of the door. And he flashed his smile and for the first time I saw the shadows. And I knew.
I knew he'd told. He'd not only turned him away, but he'd told everyone like it was some sort of sick accomplishment. And then everyone was looking at Mikey and Mikey's white as a sheet and I felt so, so sick.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him past them. I couldn't bear their faces, the scowls of disgust, herded around the steps like wolves cornering a fawn. One of them shoved Mikey's shoulder as we went past. I felt him stumble.
That was the only confrontation that day, but the staring and the whispers continued. Even Mikey's closest friends abandoned him to sit alone with me at lunch. I felt ill thinking about how weak their faith was. I still do.
I had detention that day, for being caught with my iPod in study hall. A ridiculous punishment: it's not as though anyone did anything else in study hall but what they weren't allowed to do. It just figures that it was me that got caught with such a lesser evil.
Mikey told me he'd walk home early. I wasn't thinking, didn't insist on him staying there. I should have. But should-haves don't save lives, do they?
After detention I trudged home. Mikey wasn't on the porch. He wasn't in the living room where the TV blared unattended, and he wasn't in the kitchen where the coffeemaker dripped. He was in the bathroom, and left a line drawn in crimson ink on the linoleum and the tile.
You understand now, don't you? This story doesn't end with a kiss and a ride into the sunset. This story ends the way many stories do.
With a line on the tile and a name that you won't ever, ever forget.
I rushed in, then, when I saw the red. He lay curled against the wall of the tub, blood streaking down his face and wetting his hair and staining his clothes. His favourite Batman shirt.
He looked at me then, and I could see what happened in the dim of his eyes. They couldn't leave it at insults and stares, profanity and whispers. They couldn't just break his spirit, they had to break his body too.
And I held him close and he cried into my neck and I swore I'd never, ever forget. I felt it when he fell limp and heard it when my mother came in and screamed. I saw it when the paramedics came and wrenched me away from him.
I knew it, when the machines stopped and the doctor gave us that sympathetic look that only means bad news.
A smile, a mistake, a line on the tile. We all have shades in our lives, don't we?
FANDOM: My Chemical Romance
PAIRING: n/a
RATING: PG-13 for mild swearing and character death.
SUMMARY: There are many shades to a person's life.
NOTES: Written over Skype for a prompt. Reformatted, edited, and uploaded to LJ.
---
There are many shades to a person's life.
There are shadowy greys, like the darkest corners of your room: the ones you never go to, because they hold nothing you want and nothing you care about. The ones that are dirty and you have to visit them sometimes if only to clean them out, or fill them with new things that'll be forgotten and dirtied too.
And there are the blinding whites, like the sun on the brightest spring day. Where it warms you to your very bones, until your entire body is thrumming with heat and your eyes burn from squinting gleefully into the light and the brightness it casts upon the world around you.
There are neutrals, too, pale ones, bright ones, happy and sad ones, but the neutrals don't make the story, do they? No one reads a story to hear the boring aspects, the ones that make the shadows bearable and the sunlight a little brighter.
So I won't tell you the neutrals. The neutrals aren't important to you, but they were important to him. Maybe the reason he fell the way he did is because there weren't enough neutrals in his life. Too much black and white, and you balance on a double edged blade; you can fall into the black, suffocated by the agony and the numb and the pain of the world, or into the white, and never know its true joy because joy is all you know.
You might be raising your eyebrows now. "Who is he?" you might think, or whisper to someone reading over your shoulder. It's a big question in a story: "who is he? Who is this important person that the unnamed narrator feels so strongly about? Who? Who?"
Who is he?
He was a normal boy, you see. He might catch your eye, briefly, if his looks are your thing or if they really, really aren't. We gawk at the best and the worst, don't we?
You may have seen him, in retrospect. Standing in a coffee shop, paper cup clasped delicately in long fingers, or in the bookstore where he worked, plucking change from the register and dropping it into your hands. "Have a nice day," in a shy, light voice.
But to me, he was everything.
His name was Michael, but if you knew him you called him Mikey. No one called him Michael but our mother when he upset her, or the teachers during roll call. It was as though the name was unknown to him, a foreign body, referencing another person altogether.
Mikey. Mikey with his sweet face and his forever-young smile and his eyes that were a little too wise, a little too afraid of everything.
It begins with a smile, and ends with a line drawn in crimson natural ink on white tile and linoleum.
His name was Antoine. I know this because it's a name I swore I'd never forget, while holding my baby brother to my shoulder and feeling him sob his agonies into my neck.
Antoine. I see him across the room as I'm writing this, arm slung carefree around a blonde girl's shoulders and a smile splitting his handsome face. The sight of the black waves that lay slicked to his scalp makes bile well up in my throat.
If you were in my position, you'd know why.
But even though you aren't, I hope you will understand, regardless.
It was tenth grade. Antoine was a grinner, a laugher, one of those that never, ever stops smiling. Charismatic, you might say, but I call it filth. Filth and lies and hidden things. Shadows under the whites of his teeth.
Mikey watched him, all the time. Shyly. I noticed, of course, but perhaps I didn't understand the depth at the time. Maybe I did, and I simply ignored it. I'm good at ignoring.
And then one day, he told me, with resolve in his voice: "I'm going to tell him how I feel today."
Mikey was never uncomfortable with who he was. You'd think it'd be me: sassy, self-confident, ladyboy Gerard Way, known for a passion for feather boas and scarves, that would have been content in my sexuality. But no, it was always Mikey. He had a way of knowing things in the purest form: he knew it as he saw it, not as how everyone else would.
I sputtered. His face fell. "What? Why, do you think I shouldn't?"
And he didn't wait for an answer. I wish I could step back, erase these words and the events that followed them and stop him before he walked into what I knew would take him from me. But I can't now, and didn't then. Instead, I watched him walk away.
He didn't meet me to walk home; I was forced to leave without him and found him instead sitting on the porch of our house.
I know what you're thinking. I scaled the steps, and he was crying, suffering a rejection that tore him apart. And I held him and never forgot Antoine's name and that's how we got here, right?
I'm sorry for setting it up that way.
He was fine. He told me, in that quiet way of his, that Antoine had rejected him. And then he said, "Batman is on in five minutes. '60s, The Thirteenth Hat. Fucking, Mad Hatter, with the eyes in his top hat. Wanna watch with me?"
And I did, and we did, and we forgot Antoine and his slicked back hair and his ever smiling face and his white-white teeth.
No, the remembering came later.
Hit the fast-forward button, hit play two days later. Walking to school with Mikey, talking about comics and the new Jaws movie. Normal things for normal kids on normal days.
And then someone sitting on the school steps yelled, "FAG!"
I didn't blink. I was used to this, of course; long black hair and a feminine face does little for one's masculinity. But his eyes were not on me, no. They were on Mikey.
And there was Antoine, behind the shouting boy and in front of the door. And he flashed his smile and for the first time I saw the shadows. And I knew.
I knew he'd told. He'd not only turned him away, but he'd told everyone like it was some sort of sick accomplishment. And then everyone was looking at Mikey and Mikey's white as a sheet and I felt so, so sick.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him past them. I couldn't bear their faces, the scowls of disgust, herded around the steps like wolves cornering a fawn. One of them shoved Mikey's shoulder as we went past. I felt him stumble.
That was the only confrontation that day, but the staring and the whispers continued. Even Mikey's closest friends abandoned him to sit alone with me at lunch. I felt ill thinking about how weak their faith was. I still do.
I had detention that day, for being caught with my iPod in study hall. A ridiculous punishment: it's not as though anyone did anything else in study hall but what they weren't allowed to do. It just figures that it was me that got caught with such a lesser evil.
Mikey told me he'd walk home early. I wasn't thinking, didn't insist on him staying there. I should have. But should-haves don't save lives, do they?
After detention I trudged home. Mikey wasn't on the porch. He wasn't in the living room where the TV blared unattended, and he wasn't in the kitchen where the coffeemaker dripped. He was in the bathroom, and left a line drawn in crimson ink on the linoleum and the tile.
You understand now, don't you? This story doesn't end with a kiss and a ride into the sunset. This story ends the way many stories do.
With a line on the tile and a name that you won't ever, ever forget.
I rushed in, then, when I saw the red. He lay curled against the wall of the tub, blood streaking down his face and wetting his hair and staining his clothes. His favourite Batman shirt.
He looked at me then, and I could see what happened in the dim of his eyes. They couldn't leave it at insults and stares, profanity and whispers. They couldn't just break his spirit, they had to break his body too.
And I held him close and he cried into my neck and I swore I'd never, ever forget. I felt it when he fell limp and heard it when my mother came in and screamed. I saw it when the paramedics came and wrenched me away from him.
I knew it, when the machines stopped and the doctor gave us that sympathetic look that only means bad news.
A smile, a mistake, a line on the tile. We all have shades in our lives, don't we?