Die My Darling.

He didn't mean anything by it. It had only been a quick kiss, a quick drunken kiss. Frank had drank a bit too much rum, Mikey had gone outside to take a piss and Gerard had just been sitting there, with his pouty lips parted, leaning back in his armchair with words spilling out about something or another. The idea had just popped into Frank's head, swimming through the alcohol.

"Gerard, you have pretty lips," he said, making Gerard stop in the middle of his rant and slowly smile, red puffy eyes crinkling at the corners. The words thank you were on his lips but Frank swallowed them instead, pressing his chapped lips against Gerard's perfectly smooth ones. Frank thought he could taste mint on his lips, which must have been from lip balm because they were both drinking strawberry rum. Frank planned on asking Gerard where he'd bought the balm because it obviously worked wonders but then Mikey walked back in and dropped his beer, sending a shower of glass and liquid upwards. Frank, being only marginally intelligent at the best of times, had pulled away from a stunned Gerard and was grinning, not seeing anything wrong with his actions.

"Mikey, have you ever kissed your brother?" he asked, licking his lips. "He tastes wonderful." While Frank continued to grin, he remained oblivious to the differences in Mikey's body language. His eyes were heavily lidded and had darkened from hazel to dark green. A sliver of glass was embedded in his foot but he wasn't aware of it, wasn't aware of the sting from beer flowing into his wound. The longer he stayed silent, the paler Gerard got, the blood rushing away from his skin. After another few moments, Mikey forced his lips into a tight smile, not showing his teeth. The inside of his mouth was coated with his blood, from where he'd bitten his cheek.

(Soon, it would be coated with Frank's.)

And Frank just continued to grin, licking the taste of mint once more.

"No," Mikey finally said. That one word seemed to reverberate throughout the room, making Gerard wince as if he'd been slapped. He pointedly turned his gaze to Frank but the imbecile's grin didn't even waver.

"No, I've never kissed my brother," he finished. "But it seems that you have." For twenty minutes afterwards, the room fell into a deceptive peacefulness. Mikey fetched another beer and finished it, rinsing the taste of iron out of his mouth. The color slowly came back to Gerard's skin, although he was quiet, deliberately not looking at Frank, who remained completely and utterly oblivious to the undercurrent of tension in the room. Mikey let Frank loll on him, sloppily kiss him in between apologies. Mikey simply nodded with each one, swallowing his beer so that he wouldn't have to actually speak.

When Frank finally stumbled off to the spare bedroom to pass out, that tension came to the surface just as quickly as Gerard's blood retreated again. He brought his knees up to his chest in his chair, nervously sucking on a cigarette.

"I swear to God Mikey, he just-"

"I know," Mikey said, cutting his brother off with a flick of his hand. "I know you didn't do anything." Reaching across the gap between them, he took the cigarette out of Gerard's mouth and stuck it in his own, taking a deep drag and glancing sideways at the same time. Gerard did so as well, both of them looking at the closed bedroom door where Frank had fallen asleep blasting Queen.

"Go get it." Mikey stubbed the cigarette out with his bare foot, glaring at Gerard, who, if possible, got even paler.

"Mikey, do we have to? He didn't mean it!"

"That's what they all say." He glanced at the door again, fingernails digging into his palms. "Remember Gerard? That's what Brad said to you, he said that it was only a kiss and do you remember what happened there?"

"Mikey, please-"

"Remember when you walked in on him fucking that stupid skank? Do you remember that?"

"Yes!" Gerard screamed, tears leaking from his red eyes. "I remember it!"

"And how did that start?" Gerard was too hysterical to answer; whenever Mikey brought up Brad and what had happened to him, he broke down. Yes, Brad had slept with some girl but he'd been willing to forgive that, he'd just said something stupid that Mikey had taken out of context to the extreme.

"Gerard." Mikey was now crouched in front of him, staring up at him with more compassion than Gerard had seen in years. "I'm sorry for bringing up Brad again. But Frank is just like him, don't you see? I have to stop him before he hurts me like Brad hurt you. Okay?" Gerard managed to nod through his sobs and Mikey smiled, laying a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"I won't make you watch this time if you go get it." Gerard couldn't help but return his brother's smile this time out of sheer relief. Watching his brother systematically destroy Brad had practically destroyed him. It wasn't even the fact that Mikey murdered his boyfriend in front of him; it was the fact that he had glimpsed the evil inside every man as he'd done so. Wiping away his tears, he pulled Mikey into a quick hug. He could feel his younger brother trembling and he told himself that it was from him being upset. He didn't want to believe that Mikey had lost his humanity and was trembling because he was actually excited.

"I'll go get it now," Gerard said, wiping away the rest of his tears. Mikey merely smiled and patted him on the shoulder before grabbing another beer and downing it, foam running from the corners of his mouth. He was, indeed, shaking but he was neither upset or excited about what he was about to do. He was just angry. He felt humiliated in every way possible. Even though Gerard was older than him, Mikey considered him to be the weaker one, the one who let people use him as a door mat. Take the whole Brad situation; Gerard would have easily taken the scumbag back, he would have turned a blind eye to any more whores he slept with. Mikey always knew that, if he'd been in Gerard's situation, he would have done one of two things.

He would have slept with someone else in retaliation. Or he would have killed his boyfriend. He'd had to make that choice for Gerard when he proved too weak to make the right one. Now he was making the choice for himself.

When Frank woke up an hour later, his Queen CD was skipping and Mikey was standing over him holding an ax.