Épousez-moi, Restez la Même Chose

Okay, so it wasn't like Gerard was freaking out. He wasn't. He wasn't praying that the heavens would open up and gobble him into oblivion where at least he wouldn't have to deal with the M-word he has now forbidden Mikey to say around him.

"You know I hate you, Michael. I hope you get an ass rash." Gerard's tone was teasing, but secretly he might have been urging his words to be carried to the ears of Fate, or whoever decided these things. The Way bros were cowering down in the basement (Gerard was cowering at least, Mikey seemed to have reagained his grip on reality after the first few times Alicia had been around their mom), Gerard staring bullets and arrows and many other violent weapons that he didn't condone in the reality outside of his thoughts. While they were in his head, he could demean and violate and hurt anyone he wanted to with minimal guilt. It was still there, yes, he just couldn't have thoughts of mutilating his brother without feeling like a shit-face, but that didn't stop him. He would never REALLY kill Mikey, everyone in the world knew that. He'd sooner do in himself.

Mikey blinked at him. He fucking blinked. Gerard really wished that sometimes Mikey had emotions other than insane and unnatural love for cats and Alicia and, if he wanted to be a cliche little fangirl who wiki'd Mikey all the time, coffee and sushi. Gerard would really fucking appreciate his little brother more if, when he had an emotional crisis and wanted to talk, that Mikey would talk back and make the sympathetic faces and coos that Frank did.

"Really, and I also hope that it's so nasty that Alicia won't help you put medicine on it," was met with Mikey's 'I'm amused but I'm biting down on my smile because we cool people do not smile' expression. Bitch.

"Mom's going to love wiL. Didn't you see her and Alicia making goo-goo eyes at him right before we left."

Okay, Gerard might love his brother.

"I might love you, Mikes. Let's run away and start an eskimo escort-service together. We never bond, you know?" Except over nerding out. Everyone can bond over that, and they did, and when it's three or ten other people in the room, it's not considered bonding. Just hanging out. Gerard stands firm on the fact that bonding's totally not a girl-thing. First off, that was completely sexist, and second, Frank agrees with him. That made it completely un-true.

"You know no one's going to be shocked that you married a boy." Mikey had a smirk. Eyes lidded, hand thrown over the back of his chair, completely comfortable smirk.

"Yes they will. Fuck, I'm surprised. I'm not even gay." That last part had slowly morphed into a well-known hymn. Not gay. Kissed a boy? Not gay. Had Frank lick his thigh? Not gay. Yank down his brother's shirt and lick his nipple? NOT GAY. It was really the hip thing to do nowadays, after all. Everyone was just a little gay, whether they wanted to admitt it, and Gerard just wanted to put it out there that, while he was completely into ladies, being gay was perfectly pc and whoever didn't like it could watch him make out with his band members, family members, drinking buddies and so forth.

"You know that I was just making a statement!" Gerard wailed.

"Yes, I know, that homophobia is sick and unjustly out-of-date and the cause of many pointless deaths, but--geez, you'd think with all the preaching you do about it that you wouldn't hide in the closet, Gerard. That's just as bad as gay-bashing. It's just your hypocritical mind playing tricks with you that eventually you'll find the perfect girl and fall madly in love while it's right in everyone else's face that you're way into cock."

Gerard winced at Mikey's choice of words. He hated that word. It was such a fucking turn off. He hoped that he'd never get into one of those situations where he was telling someone to suck his cock, because--yeah, after that word floated out of his mouth, he'd not get it up for a while.

Downer.

"Am not."

"WiL."

"That was all your fault. Mikey! You're the one--"

Gerard shut up when Mikey flew out of his seat and got in his face. He didn't look pissed per se--unhappy and frustrated and very masculine, perhaps.

"Shut the fuck up about that, Gerard, geez! You really do know how to go on about things! I don't pity you anymore, because you're happy. You were sad and moping around my house, and I fixed it and made you happy. What else do you want? Can't you stop shitting youself for one minute and think about wiL--about how, fuck, he looks at you? How he attaches himself to you without a moment's hesitation?"

"That's his job." Gerard hated that part of the equation. WiL wasn't doing all of this because he liked Gerard. Gerard knew that some of it was that, he wasn't blind, but wiL wasn't riding off of pure emotion when he would listen to every word Gerard said like he was afraid of being kicked out if he did something wrong. He nearly had a breakdown in the kitchen the other day when he attempted to make cookies and burned them. Gerard had eaten a few anyway, hiding his face behind his hair when the taste got too much for him.

"You are retarded."

"Your face is retarded. And ugly," Gerard shot back. But--yeah, that insult didn't work anymore since Mikey had found out that girls hung all over him without the glasses and stupid spiked up hair.

"You're ugly. And fat."

Gerard watched as Mikey's face slowly formed into the 'oh fuck, I didn't just say that' face.

Because Gerard fucking knew that he was fat, and Mikey wasn't supposed to say something that was true. This was make-believe insult time.

"Shit. Gerard, you know I was just kidding. Don't. Don't you fucking dare start moping again. Gerard! Argh!" Mikey looked like he was about to rip his hair out. Gerard kinda wanted to see that. It really wasn't fair that Mikey got to be skinny and straight and have pretty hair. He watched his brother ascend the basement stairs three at a time on his stupid spindly, girly legs and the door slammed shut moments later.

Because yes, leaving the ex-junkie, exestential crisis-having, overdramatic, depressed fat guy in a damp dark basement alone with only the memories of Ambien and Xanax floating off the walls was an excellent idea. Almost as good as Frank's idea to tackle him in the middle of a dirty lot with a burning Bob in the background.

Apparently, Mikey's not as iniquitous as Gerard pegged him, because within the time Gerard had pushed his fat self up off the creaky mattress, scuffed the floor all the way to one of the walls where his drawings used to be taped and reached out to stroke the wall like he'd heard some people do with missing limbs--albeit this one was a big, big appendage that caused nothing but grief and some dust on his fingertips--the door was swinging open again.

He didn't turn around to greet his brother, because he was still really mad and not willing to give Mikey the satisfaction of knowing that Gerard hasn't clawed off his own face yet, but he did swing around when he heard his name in that cute little accent.

"Gerard?" WiL stood in the middle of his basement biting his lip. The kid had almost as many nervous ticks as Gerard, but his were endearing while Gerard's just advertised that he didn't have acceptable-by-human-terms hygiene. "Are you good? Mikey leaved you."

Gerard tried not to smile, but it tugged at his lips unmercifully until his eyes squinted at the naive little boy that wiL always came off as. Sweet and constantly worried about Gerard, and it was uplifting to know that not all of that was fueled by his obligation. WiL generally worried about Gerard's well-being--but these days, almost everyone did.

"Yeah. He did." Gerard slumped back down onto the soiled sheets of his mattress, yelping and tugging a dust-covered remote out from under his ass moments later. But, he decided wiL's badly-hidden giggle was worth the pain. "Hey, c'mere," Gerard said, trying to sound at least a little indignant, just a little bit like wiL didn't have all the answers to making Gerard's mood swing from pissed to happy and cuddly. He patted his lap and made grabby hands that made wiL laugh again and settle himself down on Gerard's knees slowly.

"What happened?" WiL had the soothing caretaker schick down. He let his fingers curry through Gerard's hair and his lips rest against his ear, the whole shitty deal. Sympathetic look, check. Nosing into Gerard's jaw, check.

"Mikey called me fat..."

WiL's face was a blank for a moment, and Gerard had desparingly decided that the Mikey Syndrome had rubbed off on his husband, dammit, and he was going to have to kill his little brother.

When wiL's fingers found purchase on Gerard's fleshy hip and squeezed, Gerard winced. If even wiL wasn't going to take pity on him--he needed to call Frank and bitch about how everyone in his family hated him.

"Tu n'êtes pas gros. Tu êtes parfait."

Gerard didn't know what that meant, so, "Ce qui?" He could French right back at wiL.

"You are not fat." WiL poked again at Gerard's side, low on his hips where he carried all his fat. "Perfect. Cuddly," and to demonstrate he looped his arms right around the belt of fat Gerard was now wishing away and snuggled his face into Gerard's shirt. It didn't really help to make Gerard feel any better--now it was just so much easier for wiL to feel his fat rolls, and he was so sure that wiL was secretly disgusted but had to be sweet to Gerard because he's afraid of being kicked out.

Alicia flitted down the stairs, probably at a bad moment, but it was pretty transparent that she didn't care.

"Okay, cuties, time for dinner!" she announced, clapping her hands together and looking like she was torn between being starry-eyed at the cute, adorable, awkward couple and killing Gerard for being so close to her wiL.

*

Gerard decided after he had another agony of inner turmoil at dinner when he realized he knew which foods wiL didn't like without asking, that he was doomed.

He reached across the table to grab the bowl of guacamole (he hated guacamole with a passion however, so both Mikey and his mom looked flabberghasted when he picked up the dip) and set it in front of wiL's plate. He skipped on the olives and shredded cheese because wiL didn't like those, and went to work fixing up all the things he did like before going to fix his own plate. The stares fixed on him didn't slow him down either. He already knew he was doomed, duh, and he didn't need Mikey giving him the 'You are doomed' eyes from across the table.

"Stop staring," Gerard said to Mikey without looking over at him. He was really too busy crushing his nachos with his fork to avert his attention elsewhere.

"I never knew you could be so domestic."

"Shut up with your cat terms, Michael."

"...no, it can be applied to humans too."

"Nuh-uh, humans come domesticated at birth. Stupid," Gerard muttered around a mouthfull of taco salad. When he finally did look up at his brother, he wasn't met with the doomed, Apocalyptic look he was expecting. Mikey was smiling. He was smiling through the insults with warm eyes and one hand in his wife's.

So. The world wasn't ending?

He looked over at his mom as well, just in case they were all in on something he just wasn't getting. It seemed like his family did that alot. When one of their cousins spilled hot chocolate all over Gerard's sketchbook and RUINED it, his mom and his brother just glanced at each other over the table covertly while Gerard sat and stewed in his confusion until his brother finally broke the bad news to him after looking for his book for hours.

"What?" Gerard frowned and turned to wiL. "Is there something I don't know? Like...oh no, did Bunny die?"

Alicia sucked in her breath and looked like a stress-relief toy, eyes bugging out of her skull. Her answer was a squeaky 'no'. No, no, we do not even talk about such things.

"Then what?"

WiL shrugged. "Je ne sais pas."

"Vous n'êtes aucune aide," Gerard sighed. The French thing was definitely...different. He never thought of himself as the type to actually learn a language, but he was steadily doing it, picking up on things when he sat in on wiL's tutoring sessions and from just wiL himself. It felt like he was bettering himself, doing more than he ever thought possible, and it caused a little swelling and popping in his chest when he could look at wiL's pleased smile when they could talk in French.

"What the hell? Gerard!" Mikey threw a nacho chip aimed at Gerard's direction, but no matter how pretty Mikey had become, he was still a fucking nerd who couldn't throw worth a shit. "You know French? When did this happen?"

Gerard leaned his head on his hands and sighed overdramatically. What? He liked to be dramatic. "Oh, I don't know, since I married someone from France?" He flung a diced tomato at his brother's face and it stuck to his cheek. With a cry of anguish--aka, brotherly competition and retaliation--Mikey flung a spoonful of onion pieces in Gerard's general direction--and got hit by Alicia when one of the tiny white pieces fell on wiL.

*

Gerard chuckled and threw the towel at wiL, shaking out his own hair freely. His mom had taken everyone outside and hosed them off after the food fight (and after ten whole minutes of her yelling at Gerard and Mikey), and now wiL and Gerard were downstairs in his bedroom toweling themselves dry and sharing laughs.

"My mom's kind of crazy," he explained with a little smile as he leaned forward to let his hair drip on the floor.

WiL gigged as he cleaned out his ears. "I like her."

Gerard, accompanied by a wistful sigh, clapped his hand down on wiL's shoulder. "Welcome to the family, wiL. "