Return To Sender

With Frank's parting words still ringing in his ears, Mikey reluctantly trudges back up the hill separating his world from Frank's. The hole in the hedge is just as prominent as it was the previous night; with no Juan to fix it, the imperfection stays in place, showing that even the richest and most powerful can have cracks in their facades. An unexpected gust of wind chills his exposed arms and he shivers before gingerly stepping through the hole, trying to avoid the numerous branches and twigs that yearn for his skin.

For once, he actually uses the front entrance of his home, trying to not make his presence known as he pokes his head into the living room and kitchen, looking for his parents.

The first sign that something... strange is up is that the television isn't on. Yes, it'd been off the previous day but that was different, you don't usually blare Rachael Ray when the cops are snooping around your property looking for a murder weapon. However, other than situations like that, it's always on, even at three AM in the morning when there's nothing on but porn and infomercials.

Stepping into the kitchen, it's like a concrete block hits him in the chest. His brother is sitting at the island, in the exact same spot he himself had been in the previous day, but Gerard isn't munching cereal. He's sitting perfectly still, just like a statue, and in front of him there are two plates of eggs.

Scrambled eggs. Mikey's favorite kind.

"I made you breakfast," Gerard says, pushing the plate across the island towards where Mikey stands completely motionless, his eyes huge like a chipmunk. He thought the only thing his brother knew how to cook, or even heat up for that matter, was heroin.

"You never make me breakfast," he says, taking three cautious steps forward and gingerly sitting down on the plush stool with the plain black seat. The eggs are even on the yellow plastic plates the brothers used to be in love with, when they were young and stupid and talked to each other under blanket tents. Mikey used to love yellow.

"Mikes," Gerard sighs, reaching out and laying one hand on top of Mikey's, who automatically freezes again. His brother never touches him, unless he's strung out on something, which is basically every moment of his present life. And he never calls Mikey by that pet name anymore. No one does.

"I'm not gonna hurt you or anything," he says. "Why can't you just accept that sometimes, I do want to be your brother."

Mikey doesn't know whether that was a compliment or an insult.

"If you don't take this now, when I'm actually fucking sober, do you think I'm honestly going to make you eggs again?" Gerard's grip on his hand tightens a little more, to the point where Mikey can feel the bones in his piano fingers grinding together. With his brother's nails still digging into his hand, he raises the fork on his plate with his left hand and picks up a scoop of eggs, discreetly sniffing them before shoveling them into his mouth. His stomach grumbles greedily and he does it again, switching the fork to his other hand once Gerard releases him.

"These are the best eggs I've ever had," he mumbles through a mouthful of them, watching as his plate is swiftly revealed. "Even better than Mom's." He's too distracted to notice that, even as he's setting his fork down with a noisy clatter, Gerard hasn't touched his plate. He doesn't even have a fork.

"You not eating?" he asks, eying Gerard's plate like a starved animal. Gerard merely shrugs and pushes the plate towards his brother, a small smirk settling on his mouth as he chews on his bottom lip.

The next time Mikey looks up, Gerard's right eye is twitching in it's socket, one of the first signs his brother gets during withdrawal. He's not tripped out but from the look on his face, it looks like he's just won the lottery or captured something elusive...

Then everything goes blurry. His stomach is churning, from both nerves and that awful feeling you get right before you puke all over everything. Sweat is pouring down his forehead, having seemingly appeared out of nowhere and when he stands up, his knees give away, leaving him a blob on the floor.

"What the fuck is happening?" he whispers, trying to sit up and only falling back down on his chest. His hair is plastered to his damp forehead, restricting his already limited field of vision. He tries to roll over and see where Gerard went but his body is refusing to obey him.

"I didn't lie when I said I was sober." Right in his ear, so close that Gerard's touching him again with those awful, diseased lips.

"Now you're the one on drugs."

***

The next twelve hours of Mikey's life feel more like a lifetime, dragged out by his blurred sense of time. He's watching everything through both his eyes and above himself, like a mild out of body experience. He wavers in and out of consciousness, waking up to a different atrocity each time. Gerard is definitely no longer sober, that's one of the only things he knows for sure.

"Where's Frank?" he mumbles, turning his head and coughing out phlegm onto his bedroom floor. He doesn't even remember moving from the kitchen floor to his bed but his mind isn't exactly a reliable source right now.

"Who's Frank?" Gerard's a disease and he's making Mikey a disease, touching him all over and infecting him, making him contagious. Mikey wants to scratch his skin off, claw until his arms are red and raw and his fingers are bleeding, the nails ripped out. But his mind and body are now two separate entities, cut off from the other by drugs, drugs and more drugs. At any moment, he'll have a heart attack, he's sure of it.

Grubby fingers and lips and hands erasing Frank's tracks, erasing all the work he'd put into making Mikey perfect again. He feels the small pin prick in his arm but isn't aware that Gerard's dosed him again until he falls into unconsciousness. Waking up, there's something warm dripping down his legs but the pain that should be setting his nerves on fire seems miles away at the end of a tunnel.

Frank. It's like a chant, pouring from his lips as his heart races and his eyes dart back in forth, trying to connect all the dots. It's all he can say, like the syllables will summon the man himself.

Frank Frank Frank from one brother, Mikey Mikey Mikey from the other.

Mikey's system can only take so much and he's only vaguely aware of losing his senses, since he barely had any to begin with. For hours, he lies in an almost comatose state, chest rising only a hairbreadths. He should have been in a hospital room, hooked up to life support, but there's no one around that knows of his predicament. Father and mother are out relieving their pain in the forms of prostitutes and Botox respectively and Gerard?

When you've just suffered the biggest heroin overdose in the history of New Jersey, chances are you're not going to move too far.

When Mikey wakes up, his brother is lying on the floor with vomit oozing out his mouth and blood oozing out of his ear. He's dead and Frank is sitting at the edge of his bed holding a needle in his hand, the inside of which is covered in brown residue.

Mikey always knew Gerard would die of an overdose.