Yours Truly (Petekey)

V.

Written by HellaBrendon

Michael James Way

My father does not enjoy Gerard and I drinking and, afraid of the repercussions of doing anything he dislikes, we do not. I have never had a taste of alcohol in the entirety of my life, and I cannot speak for my brother but I know that he, too, drinks as little as possible. Father, while scolding my brother and I for mindless behaviour such as drinking, does not adhere to his own rules. It is for this reason that I recognise the bottle of amber liquid placed on my desk.

I am nervous - it has been thirty two minutes since the guests have started arriving and my suit, in all its turquoise glory, is hanging over the back of my chair and making me feel like a man on his way to war and perhaps it's because I am. But the bottle, it's mere presence, makes everything worse.

Alcohol is connected to bad memories - bad smells, bad tastes and bad behaviour you cannot control. A man who does enjoy losing control is surely a fool in his ways. But I trust my brother. I trust Gerard, the familiar scent of him, introduced to me in the first days after our mother's untimely departure when we began sharing beds and nightmares, with a hint of the smell I do not like. That touch of bad behaviour I try my best to avoid.

Gerard looks at me until I manage to look back up at him, the butterflies in my stomach suddenly growing nails and attempting to claw their way out of my body. I suppose I cannot blame them. If I had the chance to escape from myself, I might have escaped, and followed my mother to whichever place it is she calls home now. "Get dressed, young man," he says with a grin, "Its bad manners to keep your audience waiting." Then disappears.

The suit and bottle stare at me harshly until I decide to put one of them on and then they stare at each other. I use my pocket watch - the only gift from my eighth birthday still in my possession, it's gold chain pinned to my coat - to count down the seconds after I am dressed that Gerard arrives. It is a total of one hundred and seventy-four.

It feels longer than it sounds, I assure you. When Gerard does finally return, he sets two glasses on my desk and pours into each glass just a sip of the bottled bad behaviour and hands one to me. I stare at it and it stares at me and we stare at each other until Gerard cuts through the silence with a chuckle - apparently I am amusing when I am terrified. "It's one gulp, Michael. Just to settle your nerves, young man."

"I am afraid." I whisper quietly. At my pocket watch and the suit and Gerard and the alcohol and myself. I whisper to everything in the room a quiet confession of deepest darkest fear.

"I know." Gerard says, the humour in his voice replaced with the big brother tone I've never heard in anyone else's voice. He crouches down to my eye level, puts his hand on my knee and says, "It'll all be alright, Michael. Drink it. It'll help." It doesn't take much more to convince me, it seems, because I'm tossing it back and swallowing fast in an attempt to keep the taste off my tongue. It burns like I've swallowed liquid fire.

It feels as though my butterflies have drowned in it and for just a moment, everything feels like it might be okay. I remove the hot packs from my chest, trusting my lungs to breathe by themselves, and give Gerard a nervous smile. "It's bad manners to keep your audience waiting," I say.

"Especially when your audience contains Mr. Wentz." Gerard teases and, again, I feel the liquid fire but this time it is beneath my skin, spreading through my cheeks. The blush is hot and wild and untamed and I am convinced that it is some form of punishment. "Let's go. He's waiting." I do not know whether he speaks of Peter of my father. But suddenly they both seem like large and terrifying beasts in need of slaying.