It was way too early, Mikey reckoned he'd woken up by accident. In fact, he couldn't even remember just what had him awake, but he did know that he'd found himself lying in bed unable to get back to sleep for long enough to render himself tired of the process, and with that, he'd gotten out of bed and made his way downstairs, and still it was little more than ten minutes past six on a Saturday, and with that he'd made himself a cup of coffee and grabbed his cigarettes and made his way out onto the back porch.
He honestly didn't know why he'd gone outside, considering that it was Winter and cold as fuck, but somehow he wasn't actually freezing his tits off out on the porch and actually found some comfort in the cool morning air and the silence of the world, because yes, absolutely fucking no one was and would be awake for a good few hours.
Mikey was certain of that.
Right up until the very moment he remembered that Gerard didn't sleep anymore.
And that moment was the very one in which Gerard seemed to materialise out of nowhere and sit down beside him, because Mikey was honestly struggling to keep up, but then again, it wasn't like it was the easiest thing to follow in the world.
"Morning," Gerard uttered, glancing across at Mikey's coffee and hating being dead and not able to have it.
"Morning," Mikey replied: a little taken aback, "could you maybe just walk through the door like a normal person instead of popping out of nowhere?"
Gerard shrugged, "I could, but it's more fun, isn't it?"
Mikey rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his coffee. "Suppose."
"Don't get all pissy, you should be happy because you're the one who can drink coffee. You know I've gone ten years without coffee or anything like that! It's insane. I mean, I don't crave it anymore like that's impossible, but I'm still jealous of you and your fucking coffee." He rolled his eyes a little.
"What happens if you try to drink it?" Mikey asked, suddenly feeling very self-conscious as he sipped his coffee: the way Gerard was staring at him like a vulture circling its prey wasn't helping at all.
"It goes through me." Gerard laughed a little. "That's what happened last time... I made contact with a liquid..."
"And what liquid was that?" Mikey asked, all too naive.
"Frank's come." Gerard said, all too nonchalantly, just before common sense could kick in and remind him that he was indeed a fucking idiot.
"Oh..." Mikey trailed off, his eyes widening, "lovely." He took another sip of his coffee, "nice to know the whole you being dead thing isn't stopping you two from fucking."
"Yeah. it is." Gerard smiled, leaving Mikey was a disgusted expression upon his face. "It's not that bad being dead, really, like sure I can't drink coffee but that's like the worst of it-"
"It is bad." Mikey snapped, meeting his brother's gaze, "it was hell." He put the mug of coffee down. "I don't think you quite get it, still, even though you definitely seem to have a better grasp of things and emotions now compared to as you did when you were alive, which really doesn't make sense, but... I don't think you understand what it's like to have your brother die - your big brother, the person you've seen everyday for the entirety of your life and then never again. You were like my best friend and my worst enemy all at once, and now you're just... just... you're back but it's not the same anymore."
"I know it can't be the same, Mikey, but it can be okay again-"
"No, Gerard, you don't get it, you don't fucking get that you were the one person I was close to, that we knew everything about one another, and we had this weird kind of relationship, in that we hated each other, but we'd die for each other and protect one another at any cost, and that was all I had been doing to get you to hate me - protecting you. And then suddenly, I don't have a brother anymore because he's killed himself, and you know what I do have? A grieving mother who won't stop crying but has to pull herself together because she's got another son who doesn't know what the fuck to do and keeps going on long walks and considering never coming back home, who considers killing himself because nothing seems to ever quite fit without his brother-"
"You-"
"And then he doesn't know what the fuck to think when this guy suddenly comes home and his mum has to introduce him to his father because he can't remember who the fuck this guy is, because he means nothing in his life and in all of this, but he pretends to and he spends too much time with mum and then I had to deal with the rest of the mess, because mum had dad. And I had to worry about Frank who clearly was never going to get better and stayed at our house for weeks and wouldn't stop crying at night and barely left the house and nearly dropped out of high school because he lost the boy he was in love with. I had to go to my brother's funeral, at age eighteen and I had to watch my mother cry, I had to watch my brother being put into the ground, and worst of all I had to watch my father pull some bullshit and act like he'd ever given a single shit. I had to watch him stick around, I had to learn to hate him in such a short space of time, and then I had to watch as Frank got worse and worse to the point where we had to do something about it, and then I had to watch my best friend go to live in a mental hospital. I had to listen to my father lying to me and telling me that it was all okay, and I had to listen to my mother believing him. And on top of all of that, I'd lost my brother, my brother, you, fucking dead, dead, and you'd barely written a paragraph of a suicide note, fuck, it was like you hadn't even cared, and I had to deal with people at school, people you'd known, people like Bert and that girl you'd dated once when you were like sixteen, coming up to me and asking me why you'd done it, and I had to tell them that not even I had the slightest fucking clue in the world. And I'd tell them I was sorry, and you fucking know why I did that? Because it all felt like my fault? Because maybe I'd pushed you too far, because we hadn't been on great terms, but you know what? You wrote a paragraph. And I believed I'd never know. I believed that this would be my life forever, and then you fucking popped up out of nowhere, and fucking laughed at me for fainting."
"I'm so sorry, I-"
"So fucking tell me that 'it wasn't that bad', I dare you, Gerard."
Gerard paused for a moment, looking down, deep in an odd kind of thought of a matter he'd thought about regularly, but never quite so directly. There was something undeniably odd about this whole ordeal, about having the aftermath of your death described to you in such detail. It was perhaps something that never should happen, and Gerard could certainly say he was feeling the effects of it.
"So people cared?" He asked after a moment, and ended up sounding more than a little ridiculous as he did so.
"Fuck, Gerard, of course people cared, are you being fucking serious right now?" Mikey exclaimed, looking at his brother in disbelief: forever unable to unravel his trains of thought, and really even get a vague idea as to how his head worked.
"I just..." He trailed off, picking at the material of his jeans, "I know, I mean, you and Frank like.... and mum... and like... you were upset and I... I mean like... other people like people I barely even knew or like vague friends or like... Bert... people like Bert cared?"
"Yes." Mikey looked at his brother in disbelief. "Of course people cared."
Gerard sat there for a moment, just in silence, just in thought, direct thought and the pure gravity of it all. "People cared." He repeated, more to himself than to Mikey.
"Yeah..." Mikey trailed off, pulling his gaze away from his brother and taking a moment to wonder just what the hell went on inside Gerard's head on a regular basis.
"Fucking funny how people only care when you're dead, isn't it?" Gerard's tone suddenly grew rather snappy.
"That's not strictly true-"
"What about Van Gogh? Because no one gave a shit about him when he was alive. Killed himself as well. Now he's dead, now people care." Gerard bit his lip, pausing, "and statues of people, only made after their death, the thing is, you have to die to be relevant, to matter, to be frozen in time in the image of yourself people want you to be, because alive, alive you're volatile, you're subject to yourself, to your own head, your own opinions, and no one wants that of you. They'll care when they can forget, when they can make a statue and erase all they don't want to hear. Because that's what you do, even if subconsciously, you never think about how you hated your dead grandma's whiny voice or how she could never fully cook meals or how she made fun of your hair, you forget that all, and paint this perfect picture of her in death and mourning. Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's just pathetic sorrow, but lying's never going to bring anyone back."
"Gerard... I don't-"
"I wonder if I am a reflection of just that? Not so much myself, but a manifestation of who people want me to be. Now, especially, drained of emotion, and a reflection of Frank's. Because I was a psychotic mess, and I'm not anymore, am I? And that never quite made sense. Sure, I grew the fuck up. But... you don't remember me as the brother you hated, because who would cry over the brother they hated? Who do you even remember me as?"
"Someone with a lot of shit going on in his head, a million things to say, a million questions to ask and no one there ready to listen until people wanted to, and then he pushed them away." Mikey said after a moment, meeting Gerard's gaze. "People cared when you were alive, of course they did, you just didn't let them for the most part. Mum always worried, always over worried about you, but you didn't let her because you didn't want that."
"That wasn't how I wanted people to care." Gerard let out a sigh.
"You can't dictate how people care and how people feel, how people think, how people react. You think you can, you sure as hell think you can. But look, mum never stopped worrying, she never stopped talking about you. That pissed dad off. He never said so, because he was clinging to this facade of care and love for us, fuck, I don't even know why he stuck around. But, mum always brought you up - it upset her, but she still did. It was always like, if something cool had happened, or something important, like at my graduation or my wedding, or when the new series of that shitty drama with that posh woman she liked started, it was all, 'I wish Gerard was here', and she'd get sad after that, not directly sad, but quiet, and dad would hate it. And he'd ask me to agree with him, that she needed to move on, and I never fucking would because you know what, I wish you were here too. And she'd look at old photos of you, and she'd get sad, but she didn't care, she just wanted to see you, even at your worst, even when you were like living hell, because she wanted even that version of you back."
"Why did she let dad stay? Why did she let him try to stop her?" Gerard asked, unable to directly face the weight of it all.
"Because I think she loved him, or at least she thought he did. You look like dad. She loved you, and you left a hole, he filled it." Mikey looked out across the sunrise, the sky and the horizon, the world. "You never should have killed yourself. You're back, but it's not the same, is it?"
"You want that version of me back?" Gerard looked at his brother in disbelief, "you want the me you hated back?"
"Yes." Mikey's voice cracked a little, "I do."
Gerard let out a sigh, turning away, "circumstances or not, I had always planned to kill myself by twenty five. Would have been dead anyway."
"Why?" Mikey snapped, meeting Gerard's gaze with a certain anger that Gerard hadn't found himself expecting.
"Because I didn't want to grow old. Didn't want to grow old and boring, and get a job and get married and have fucking kids. Life gets boring after a while. I wanted to die young and pretty, frozen like that forever."
"You're so fucking vain." Mikey snapped, "so fucking stupid as well."
Gerard laughed a little, "I know." He paused for a moment, "it sounds weird, but I honestly just couldn't ever seriously imagine myself growing old and just... being an adult, a proper adult, being thirty two. And if I did ever end up as such I'd be fucked up, maybe homeless or an alcoholic or a heroin addict or something."
"You wouldn't." Mikey insisted. "I wouldn't let you be. Mum wouldn't let you be. Frank wouldn't let you be."
Gerard shrugged, "I can't see myself at thirty two, complacent, bored, 'happy', married, whatever, doesn't add up."
"No one says you have to get married. No one says you have to have a boring life." Mikey pressed, "you could have-"
"Done what? With my bullshit life. I finished high school, that's it."
"You could have gone to art school." Mikey bit his lip, "mum was gonna suggest it, you know? Once you'd gotten a bit better. You're talented, you are."
"And then I could have been the fucking starving artist type. Then I could have been Van Gogh, unappreciated in life, and killed himself at thirty seven, hey, at least I'd have five more years left. Hey, then you'd have me dead at thirty seven instead of twenty two."
"Thirty seven is better than twenty two." Mikey snapped, "then mum wouldn't have to be at her son's funeral."
"I would have to be at hers though. Do you think I would have been able to handle that?"
"What if it hadn't turned to shit?" Mikey asked, "what if you'd done good for yourself, hey what if there's a version of you in a parallel universe: you at thirty two. As an artist, living happily with Frank, not married if you don't want to be, not with kids if you don't want them, but happy to some degree, and alive. My kids would have had an uncle."
"They do- I'm still here I-"
"Not really." Mikey shrugged. "I know this isn't permanent. You're gonna fuck off elsewhere at some point, you're not going to stay in your little brother's house for ever. And I shouldn't want you to, but I miss you, and I love you, Gerard. And it fucking hurts."
"I'm sorry..." Gerard trailed off. "I could still do all that shit now, all that nice life bullshit, if you wanted me to-"
"It's not about me wanting you to, it's about you. It's about you, what do you want?"
Gerard paused at that: unsure. "I don't know..." He trailed off. "I just want everything to be okay and for you and Pete and Frank to be happy."
"Where are you and Frank going to go? What's going to happen? Are you going to go back to New York?" Mikey asked.
"I don't know." Gerard shrugged, "I'd have to ask him, I mean, I don't think we will go back to New York. It's harder there. Maybe we'll stay in Jersey, maybe not in your house, maybe in your house."
"And do what?" Mikey exclaimed, "and do what with your life?"
"I don't have a life anymore, do I?" Gerard laughed a little, "Frank can do whatever he wants, I'm not going to stop him."
"It's like all you care about is him, like there's no sense of you left."
"Maybe I do. Maybe there isn't." Gerard sighed, meeting his brother's eyes, "coming back fully always seems to be too good for to be true, don't you think?"
"I guess..." Mikey trailed off, "but you still are you, to some degree, just like washed out version."
Gerard shrugged, "I could try to be more of myself, but I can't remember what that feels like anymore. Maybe it's with time, maybe the longer I am like this, the more I'm going to fade out, until I'm nothing like who I was before, but a reflection of the world around me."
"Why is everything so fucking poetic with you?" Mikey let out a sigh.
"Why is that a problem to you?" Gerard asked, flashing his brother a smile. "I love you, Mikey."
"Love you too, Gee." Mikey met his brother's gaze. "So this... this shouldn't be permanent. I think... I think you can't stay with Frank for the rest of his life, I think you'd fuck him up again, fading away and all that."
Gee nodded, "I know. Just let me be selfish, just let me have him now, just let me... I don't know, just, I don't want to handle losing him again, not ever, but at least not yet."
"Maybe you should have thought about that before killing yourself."
"Yeah," Gerard nodded, "I just didn't think. Now I'm all thoughts. Regret. More than regret than I've ever had before."
"So if this version of you went back to being twenty two and alive, do you think you'd still kill yourself by twenty five?"
Gerard shook his head, "no, I don't think so. I think I'd stick around a while longer."
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