A Kiss Before She Goes

Gerard takes a deep breath as his hand hovers somewhere near the middle of the door. With his other hand flat against the painted wooden surface, he finally grasps the doorknob and with a twist, pushes open the only barrier between him and what he now realizes he has to do.

The house is dark when he enters, as he had figured it would be. It is after all, close to three in the morning. Gerard moves closer to the wall as he walks into the room. He feels his way through the downstairs level of the house, hugging the perimeter. Gerard walks up the stairs slowly, he finds himself smiling, thinking back to his earlier conversation with Mikey, and the comment he made about the younger man’s growing passion for slinking around and surprising him at every turn. This, Gerard thinks, is the very definition of sneaking around and being creepy, as he quietly moves through the darkness.

At the top of the stairs Gerard can see a thin beam of light coming from inside his own bedroom. Gerard thinks for a moment, pausing in the hallway. He knows that he didn’t leave this light on. He very rarely keeps the lights on in his room at all. With a quick look in the open door of his brother’s dark room, he knows that he will find Mikey in the illuminated room.

The trip across the hallway is short, and in no time at all Gerard finds himself standing at the foot of his bed. He takes a minute to appreciate his mental victory over a closed door for the second time in the same night.

Mikey is asleep on Gerard’s bed. His dark hair looks soft against the white sheets of the bed and the pillow, and his face is pressed deep into the fabric of the pillowcase and the feathery expanse it holds. Gerard’s gaze lowers to the t-shirt, his own of course, that is clutched in his brother’s hands, held close to his chest. Mikey’s cheeks are tear stained. There are dark tracks leading from his eyes, and the rest of his face is red, puffy.

Gerard closes his eyes. He is the one who did this to his brother. His baby brother. He is the one who caused all this pain tonight. And even though he knew for a fact that he was justified when he left the house earlier, he doesn’t think he can convince himself of it now.

Under normal circumstances, Gerard knows he would feel different about coming home and finding his brother passed out in his bed. He would never have been angry. He couldn’t be angry at Mikey, not for being upset. But Gerard knows that if he saw Mikey crying on his bed any other time, the pain would destroy him. He hated seeing Mikey so upset. Especially if he was the one to cause it, like he was in this case. But this time, Gerard sees a small glimmer of hope.

If Mikey passed out in his bed, then obviously he still wanted to talk about this. Why would he wait in this room if his plan was to ignore the very existence of his older brother? Gerard feels that this is his second chance, although truthfully, he never really entertained the thought that Mikey might reject him, now that he has come to his senses.

Gerard runs a hand through his hair.

It’s now or never.

“Mikey.” The breath that he lets out can hardly even be qualified a whisper. Mikey doesn’t move a muscle, then again, he couldn’t possibly have even hoped to have heard his brother’s voice.

“Mikey.” A bit louder now.

Nothing. Mikey continues to sleep. His face doesn’t even twitch in reaction to his brother’s voice.

“Mikey?” Gerard punctuates this try with a light rubbing of his brother’s shoulder.

A groan. The sound of someone waking up from a deep sleep before they had intended to. A low rumble that is somewhat intensified by the fact that Mikey now has a raging headache from all the tears he has shed in the past few hours.

“Gerard?” Gerard nods slowly and then realizes that he will have to vocalize this sentiment in some form or another as he sees Mikey’s eyes are fairly swollen.

“Oh, Mikey. I’m so sorry.”

Gerard presses his fingertips lightly to his brother’s cheek. He feels the flushed surface, the heat practically radiating from the raw, irritated skin. Mikey hisses as he inhales sharply.

“Don’t, Gerard. That hurts. I can’t… I don’t want you to touch me right now.” Mikey looks down at his hands as he says this, not that it matters, Gerard couldn’t really see his eyes anyway. Mikey tangles the corner of the sheet in his hands. “And before you say it, I realize that I’m in your bed. Just, please, don’t touch me right now.”

Gerard pulls his hand back, sits silently next to Mikey, who is apparently trying to stop himself from crying again, taking deep, body expanding breaths. Gerard feels his hand move towards his own face, wiping tears away from his eyes that he hadn’t been aware of in the least.

“Where did you go?” The heavy feeling in Mikey’s chest, not to mention the long period of very vocal sobbing, takes a toll on his voice. It comes out quietly, but it is heard.

“I had to get out, Mikey. I had to leave for a few minutes. Just get out of here, you know? You can’t have thought it would be easy for me to hear.”

“Gerard, it wasn’t easy for me to say.”

“I know. I understand that, but doesn’t that make you understand how I feel?”

Mikey shifts his weight, uses his arms to pull himself up until he is in a sitting, yet still reclining position, propping his body up on the pillows. He clears his throat a little and then winces.

“I get that you had to leave. That I understand. I’m not asking about that. I know how you felt because I felt it, too. But that’s not what I said, Gerard. Where did you go?”

“Why do you want to-“

“Just answer the question. Please. I just want you to say it.”

Gerard sighs, chews his bottom lip slightly before answering.

“I went to talk to Frank.”

Mikey nods.

“I knew you were going to. I knew you would.”

There are tears rolling down Mikey’s face again. Every tear pulls at Gerard’s heart and yet…

“Why does that matter Mikey? What did you want me to do? Who else was I supposed to talk to? I have you and I have Frank, and suddenly you just want me to give that up? Why Mikey? For what?”

Mikey wraps his arms around himself, his body starts to shake.

“Gerard, please. Please just leave. If you’re just going to sit there and keep doing this-“

“Keep doing what?” Gerard has leapt forward. He is standing by the side of the bed, glaring down at his brother. His eyes are wide and very dark, his emotions having gone from sympathetic and regretful to angry and defensive in no time at all.

Mikey could have yelled. He really could have, he could feel it, somewhere deep in his core. He had all the makings of a good yell inside of him. But it was the whisper that instantly made Gerard stop in his tracks and sit back down on the bed.

“Please don’t keep making me cry.”

Gerard covers his face with both of his hands. Takes a deep breath, and then another.

“Mikey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, and that’s why I left. If I had stayed here, I don’t
know what I would have done. I would have said things to you, and I know now that I wouldn’t have meant them. I’m sorry.”

Mikey sniffles a bit. Almost wipes his nose on the t-shirt he is still holding in his hand, but he catches himself in time to grab another tissue. Gerard notices the close call but he doesn’t say anything.

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t do anything with Frank.”

Mikey almost smiles.

“You know, I used to have these dreams. In my dreams, you and Frank still had this weird little, casual thing going on.” Gerard watches his brother as he speaks. The volume of his voice is still low, and there are pauses every now and then when he stops to clear his throat. “Frank would hurt you in my dreams. Not like, physically or anything. Not like that. But he just, I don’t know, wasn’t as into it as you were I guess.”

“Is that why you don’t want me with him? Because of your dreams?”

“No, Gerard. I thought I said that. I don’t want you with him, because I want you with me.”

Somehow Gerard had gotten side tracked, but all of a sudden, he remembers why he returned home from his visit with Frank in the first place.

“What else happened in your dreams?”

“You would come home, and you would be so sad. And I felt it even when I was asleep, I would wake up and remember how sad you were, and look at you and know that deep inside that was how you really felt. Whether it was true or not, I thought it was.”

“Maybe it was Mikey. Sometimes I try so hard not to think about things so I won’t feel them. You could be right.”

“Yeah. Like I said, that’s what I thought. But in these dreams, you would come home to me, Gerard. You would come home to me, and you would cry, and that’s when I started to understand how I felt about you. You would cry, and I would take care of you. I loved you. I love you. And you needed me.”

“Mikey, I do need you. I do.”

The gap between the two men has been closed. Mikey's arms are wrapped around his brother’s waist and his head is cradled against his chest. Gerard’s arms encircle Mikey’s shoulders, one of his hands is slowly running fingers through his soft hair.

“I know that now Mikey. And I always knew that I needed you. But tonight I thought of something else. I saw how much you loved me, Mikey. I know that maybe it’s not necessarily a great thing that I saw how much you love me because I saw how much Frank doesn’t. But I saw it. I see it. Frank and I, we’re friends. And that love is always going to be there. But that’s it. That’s all it is. He’s my friend and he loves me. But you? You love me more, don’t you.”

“I guess that line of reasoning is ok. And I do love you. You know I do.”

“I know, it just never occurred to me that it was anything else.”

Mikey leans up and back, effectively pulling his body from Gerard’s.

“So what does this mean? What are you saying?”

Gerard takes his younger brother’s hand into his.

“I’m saying, I love you. And you love me. And I just, even though I think it may be a little hard at first, well, I know it will be a little hard at first but-“

“Gerard.”

“I just, I want to try this. Us I mean.”

Mikey smiles, his whole body visibly relaxes.

“I was hoping that’s what you were saying.” He leans forward slightly, places a small, chaste kiss to the corner of Gerard’s mouth.

“This happened in a dream I had once.”

The end.