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People always think that Mikey Way doesn’t really have much going on in his head. They look at him and his passive face and constantly narrowed eyes and think that he’s a shell, an empty vessel waiting for someone (his mom, his brother, his friends) to pour some personality into him. This is true, for the most part. He learned very early on that people didn’t really like his personality. They liked Gerard, his geeky yet outgoing older brother, who was always drawing and telling stories no one else had ever heard. No one liked Mikey, who found a dead rabbit and kept it in his room until it rotted, dug through it until he found its heart, was fascinated by the membrane of its intestines. No one ever liked Mikey, who only ever smiled when he and Gerard were sitting too close to each other and talking about something strange. No one ever liked Mikey, who knew the word dissect before he knew the word multiply. No one ever liked Mikey, who brought a dead garden snake to show and tell in third grade.
So by the time Mikey was ten, he’d learned pretty well to not act like himself, and when adolescence rolls around he’s already become an amalgamation of the traits of every person he’s ever met. He gets more friends that way, and at freshly seventeen, when Sam Piper ends up gruesomely dead under a bridge, he has friends (and Gerard) to sit with and talk about how scary it is that that sort of thing could happen so close to home. He has friends who think he’s a nerd who plays DnD. He has friends who have never entered his room when it smelled of death, never seen him absently pick blood from under his fingernails or watch surgical documentaries in rapt attention.
“Do you think we should leave it in the bag?” Mikey asks, looking down at the murky river. It’s cold. His whole body is shaking from the icy wind coming off the river and the spike of adrenaline in his veins, or maybe it's the lingering alcohol. There's still blood drying on his hands. Getting rid of the body is his first priority. He’ll have to wash this coat when they get back home.
“I don’t know. No?” Gerard says. He’s agitated, yes, but much calmer than a first time accessory to murder rightly should be. Maybe he's numb. His dark, greasy hair is hanging in fron of his eyes, he swipes it back with one hand. “Won’t it be easier to identify if it’s all together?” Mikey doesn't know. He's never killed anyone before. But Gerard is the big brother, and he thinks it'll be safer if they separate the parts. They open the bag right there on the sidewalk. It’s late in a bad part of Jersey. No one is around, and if they are they don’t care. “Jesus,” Gerard says, looking at his brother’s handiwork, “I knew you didn’t like the guy, but--” He whistles low, words failing him.
Mikey looks down at Sam’s body. He remembers every moment of the older boy's death in terrifying clarity. The crack of the wine bottle hitting Sam in the head, the way the kitchen knife sank in to his skin, the sound of his cries getting weaker and weaker as Mikey thrust it into him again and again, the knife handle becoming so slippery that he couldn't hold onto it anymore. He learned how hard it actually is to cut through tendon and bone. He turns the memories over and over in his head like a Rubik's cube, examining every angle, memorizing every minutia and lining up each strike of the knife with a hole in Sam's torso. Mikey pressed his fingers inside of some of them, ripped them open wider and thought about all the possibilities making new holes provided. The front of Sam's shirt is barely held together at this point, the green fabric stained almost black from blood. His dick is trying to get hard in his skinny jeans just thinking about it.
It's Friday night. With luck, nobody will notice that Sam is missing until Monday. Mikey loaded the dishwasher at Sam's house, put the knife in it. He ran the washing machine three times to clean the comforter and towels and sheets. He called Gerard from a payphone. Nobody knew he was going there. Sam would rather die than tell anybody that he spent his free time with Mikey Way in his bed, and look where that attitude got him. Mikey doesn’t want to focus on it right now. Instead, he squats down and hooks his hands under Sam’s shoulders. “Get his legs,” he says up to Gerard, and Gerard, good, perfect, beautiful Gerard, listens. He looks a little green, but he dutifully picks up first one and then the other of Sam's legs and drops them into the water below. Mikey heaves the upper half over the railing, wincing at how loud the splash is.
“How long do you think it’ll be before they find him?” Mikey asks, watching the dark shapes of what was Sam drift downstream. He leans his shoulder against Gerard’s and balls the trash bag up.
“Dunno,” Gerard says. He wants a cigarette; Mikey can tell. He starts picking at his nail polish when he's feeling anxious, and when he's feeling anxious he wants a cigarette. Gerard had all ten fingernails covered in black polish when Mikey left the house, nine when he picked Mikey up. A quick glance tells him that Gerard has one black thumbnail left. “Let’s go home, Mikes.”
The ride back home is quiet. Gerard smokes with one hand and drives with the other, the one with the polish. Mikey is glad that smoking is one habit he’d never picked up. Of course, in light of the current predicament, he really can’t be one to judge a body’s impulses. Gerard snubs the butt of his cigarette out in the car’s ashtray. His hand is still shaking.
Mikey looks from the road to the brown blood crusted around his own nails. He stares at it for long enough that Gerard notices. “We’ll wash it off when we get home,” Gerard says, glancing over. Mikey slowly wraps his lips around his own thumb, tongue pushing into the grooves and tasting blood. Gerard nearly crashes the car. By the time they make it home, Mikey has meticulously licked clean all the fingers of one hand, and Gerard has watched him do it whenever he could. They enter the house quietly, not wanting to wake their sleeping mother, who, in all honesty, deserves better sons.
“C’mon,” Gerard grabs Mikey’s hand, the one he had been licking, and pulls Mikey into their bathroom. He turns the lights on, and they seem particularly harsh tonight, making Mikey’s head pound. “Strip,” Gerard says, matter-of-fact.
Mikey looks at him, startled. Surely Gerard has to be aware of how Mikey’s dick is still doing its best to say hello to him, keyed up by all the excitement, not to mention the reason he went to Sam's in the first place. The silence of a million unspoken words hangs between them, a million times they’ve both backed down from whatever this conversation is. “You need a shower, and our clothes need washed,” Gerard finally says, making it a million and one.
Mikey takes the shower. He doesn’t jerk off, but he thinks about it. He thinks about a lot of things. When he gets out, he rubs his hair dry, but doesn’t bother wrapping the towel around himself. He puts his glasses on, looks at himself in the mirror, and he doesn't look any different. He feels like he should.
The world feels like a dream. He can barely hear the clank, clunk, thunk of the washing machine running as he walks down the steps over the sound of his own thoughts. When he opens the door to their shared room, Gerard is lying back on his bed, flipping through this month’s issue of Fangoria. He has changed his clothes and put Revenge of the Sith in the VCR. Mikey is struck by how normal everything still looks. The room has not turned dark. “Murderer,” is not written across the walls in red paint. All of his dark secrets are still secret.
“I killed a man,” Mikey says to the room at large. Gerard’s eyes snap to look at him. ”I killed a man tonight, and you’re reading a magazine.” Gerard sighs like Mikey’s being unreasonable.
“Yeah?” he says, still looking at Mikey over the top of the magazine.
“You’re really calm about this.”
“I didn’t really like the guy.” Gerard shrugs. Mikey steps closer to him. "Anyway, " Gerard continues," can you really call a rapist a man?" Mikey smiles at the joke, licks his lips and peers at the cover of the magazine. There's a blond vampire on the cover, blood covering her chin and dripping down onto her tits. The subtitle proudly proclaims "This issue bites!"
“Do you wanna hear about it?” Mikey asks.
Gerard raises his eyebrows above the top of the magazine. “Sure,” he says, trying and failing to sound disinterested. Mikey crawls onto the bed with him, sitting close. The room is chilly, and goosebumps are rising on Mikey’s bare skin. Gerard hasn’t acknowledged that Mikey is naked, so Mikey doesn’t either.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he starts,” about--about killing him. I’ve been thinking about it for months.”
Sam just had that face. He was beautiful, full lips, blond hair, track star body. Everyone knew Mikey had a problem with him, and no one ever asked why. Sam’s sense of humor was juvenile at best and plain offensive at worst. He’d called Mikey a fag since freshman year. Everyone just assumed it was your typical antagonism, but that really wasn’t it. Mikey could’ve lived with that. Sam could’ve lived with that. But no, Sam had been sneaking Mikey into his bed for years, and Mikey went along with it because Same was gorgeous. He couldn't ever stop wondering if Sam's insides were as pretty as his outsides. Mikey had never seen a scar on him, and every time he looked at Sam fucking Piper, Mikey just wanted to cut him down the middle, watch his perfect skin split and his sharp edges curl around the hurt. Mikey wanted to see those big brown eyes cry.
“Been thinking about it, Gee,” he says again. He licks his lips and swallows, buries his face in Gerard's shoulder. “ ‘Bout cutting him open.”
“Where’d you do it?” Gerard asks. The magazine is set aside, and Gerard folds his legs under himself, sits in rapt attention. He'd showed up at Sam's house after Mikey cleaned up, the washer already on its second cycle and the comforter doing its round in the dryer. He brought the biggest trash bags he could find at the hardware store and the hacksaw from the shed in their backyard. Mikey wanted to kiss him.
"In the bed, " Mikey says, licking his lips. "After I got him off me I-I hit him in the head with the bottle, hard as I could. Grabbed the knife off the side table and--"
"Why did he have a kitchen knife in his bedroom?" Gerard asks.
"Apparently they don't own a pizza cutter," Mikey answers. Frozen pizza and some wine Sam stole from his parents. What a last meal. "I wish I'd never fucking let him touch me. Wish I'd never gone to his house." But does he, really? Isn't there some deep, hollow pit inside himself that feels full and content for the first time in his life.
"How many times have you been there?" Gerard’s hand tightens on Mikey’s arm. “Mikey,” he says, worry tinting his voice,” was it light out when you got there? If someone saw--”
“No one saw,” Mikey says. He doesn’t know that. Sam always had him sneak in through the back door after dark, but there could’ve been dozens of people watching and snapping polaroids for all he was paying attention. He trusted Sam's paranoia, though. Trusted that he wouldn't have let anyone see. “I wish we had a better way to get rid of him. Wish we could burn him.” Gerard makes a noise like he agrees, a little humming sigh. Nobody in this part of Jersey has enough land for body burning, though. It’s really a shame. “I wanted to--” He pauses, hesitant to share. He’s weird, and Gerard is weird, and together they’re “those weird Way brothers,” but Mikey thinks this might be too fucked up for even Gerard to understand, despite them tiptoeing past normal siblings ages ago.
“Wanted to what, Mikes?” Gerard asks. His voice has gone soft, breathless. Mikey wants to hear it like that forever. There’s something there. Has been for years. He doesn’t think he can actually tell him the truth, yet.
“Made me horny,” he says instead, a half-truth. Gerard lets out this little whine when Mikey says that. Mikey licks his lips. “Wanted to jerk off. Wanna fuck something.”
“Fuck me,” Gerard says, quiet.
“Gee,” Mikey says back, equally quiet.
He turns his head toward Gerard, and Gerard turns his head toward Mikey. Neither of them is sure who kisses who, but they end up with their lips pressed against each others’. That’s all that matters, years of dancing around each other finally culminating in one shockingly average kiss. Gerard’s lips are dry and cracked in places. Mikey runs his tongue along his bottom lip and he can taste the copper of raw skin where Gerard’s lip has split slightly. Gerard moans at the feeling, and Mikey bites at his lip, chews on the sore part. Gerard whines and presses closer, trying to climb into Mikey’s lap without breaking the kiss. He succeeds, and drapes his arms around Mikey’s neck, letting his little brother lazily chew on his bottom lip. They stop kissing long enough for Gerard to get naked, and then they’re kissing again, naked skin against naked skin. Mikey can palm Gerard’s bare ass, feel their cocks slide against each other. Mikey bites at Gerard’s neck and says,” Let me fuck you, Gee. Please, please.” Gerard whines and nods, lets Mikey push him back onto the bed. He lets Mikey finger him, lets his baby brother fuck him slow and rough, scrapes his nails down Mikey’s back when he bites at his neck. "Wanted this for so long," Mikey murmurs as he jacks Gerard's cock between them. Emperor Palpatine is staring at Mikey from the TV when he comes. It might be the best sex he’s ever had.
Mikey sucks Gerard’s dick in the morning, and, when Gerard doesn’t protest at all, Mikey figures that this is a thing now. He had, of course, considered the likelihood of the possibility that Gerard would be disgusted with himself come morning, and decided it was pretty high. He’s pleasantly surprised when Gerard reaches down and jacks him off. Mikey spends the weekend in a haze of comic books, video games, sex with Gerard that neither of them talks about after, and the waring feelings of satisfaction and anxiety in his guts. He goes to school on Monday. He considered skipping, but thought his absence the first school day after Sam’s murder would draw too much suspicion. All day he is hyper aware of every mention of Sam’s name, every one of his friends casually wondering why he ditched today. He doodles a monster in his math work margins (not as detailed or as skillful as something Gerard would have done), and smiles when Jake from lit nudges him and says at least he doesn’t have to deal with Sam’s shit today.
When he gets home from school no one is home. Gerard will be on the train back by now, and his mom is still at work. He jacks off on the couch, ‘cause that’s the best place to do it, then goes downstairs and ignores his homework for comics on Gerard’s bed. He’s still there when Gerard comes down the stairs forty five minutes later, but he’s switched to texting, lying on his stomach with his feet on Gerard’s pillows. “Your bed is five feet away,” Gerard says, frowning. He drops his bag by the stairs and toes off his shoes. “I’m gonna smell your feet for a week.” Mikey rolls his eyes. He bounces when Gerard sits heavily on the bed. He’s warm against Mikey’s side, soft and pleasant. Mikey’s been thinking about him almost all day, thought about him when he jacked off earlier. He thought about those big, soft, pale thighs wrapped around his waist, about what Gerard would look like bouncing himself on Mikey’s cock, about slapping Gerard’s ass till it’s red. These are not new thoughts, but the fact that he could quite easily act upon them--that is new.
He closes his phone and sets it on the floor, ignoring whatever Jamie from math was going to say. She’s pretty in a weird way, small tits and thin hips but really clear skin and a cute voice. Mikey’s been trying to get in her Catholic chastity belt since freshman year, but with Gerard so close and, assumedly, willing he’s not going to bother with her for right now. Gerard moves one hand and starts petting the skin on the back of Mikey’s neck. Mikey arches into it like a cat.
“I was worried about you today,” he says before Mikey can formulate a plan of attack,” about, y’know.” He waves his free hand vaguely, but yes, Mikey does know. His hand stills. “I actually, like, paid attention to the news for once.” That is unusual for Gerard. He tends to ignore everything going on in the world outside of his immediate life; he’s more stable that way. “How’re you holding up?”
Mikey turns his head to look at him, confused. Should he be shaken? Now that he thinks about it, the answer to that is probably a resounding yes, but Mikey’s never felt the way people say he should in these types of situations. “I’m fine,” he says, after a moment of thinking about what would put Gerard at ease, anything to get him to start moving his fingers again.
“You’re sure?” Mikey nods. “Okay.” Gerard starts scratching his neck again, and Mikey rolls over so he’s on his side facing him. He twists, curls his long body around Gerard, and ends up with his head in his brother’s lap. “You need a haircut,” Gerard says, ruffling Mikey’s shaggy hair.
“I need to suck your dick,” is Mikey’s response. Gerard’s whole body tenses; his fingers stall once more. Mikey waits with near palpable anticipation for his answer.
“So we’re doing this, then?” he says, so casual, like Mikey decided that he wanted Mexican food instead of pizza for dinner. “Properly?” Mikey nuzzles into the space where Gerard’s thigh meets his hip. The way Gerard grips his hair after that tells him that he’s been understood. Gerard lets Mikey get his pants open, lets his little brother swallow his cock down in just the latest in a long line of questionable decisions. This was their inevitable end, really.
“I wanted to put my dick in him,” Mikey says, three days later. Gerard is sitting in between Mikey’s splayed legs, and Mikey has his chin resting on Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard is playing Ocarina of Time, and Mikey is ignoring homework. “Like, in his guts,” he specifies
“Yeah?” Gerard asks, pausing the game. He was losing the battle against the redeads, anyway, screeching bastards.
“Yeah,” Mikey answers. He has his arms wrapped around Gerard’s waist, and he digs his fingers into the soft flesh of his abdomen ever so slightly as he speaks. “It looked so,” he pauses,” so warm and wet--and I bet if I closed my eyes it’d feel just like a pussy, maybe better. ”He’s getting hard against the small of Gerard’s back, and he can’t help twitching his thighs, pressing against the warm weight of his brother. “Gee, the things I would’ve done to him,” he trails off, bites at the juncture of Gerard’s neck and shoulder and then kisses up behind his ear. His hand snakes under Gerard’s shirt.
Gerard says nothing, but he’s working on a hardon when Mikey slips a hand into his pajama pants. “I’ll show you, someday,” Mikey breathes against his ear. He already knows he'll be doing it again, doesn't know when, but that bone-deep satisfaction have already become addictive to him. Gerard gasps. Mikey can’t tell if it’s from his words or the rub of his thumb on the underside of Gerard’s cock. He uses his other hand to turn Gerard’s head so he can kiss him. Gerard opens up to it easily, lets Mikey tongue his mouth and suck on his bottom lip.
“Show me?” Gerard asks when he pulls away.
Mikey doesn't know if he's asking for clarification or for confirmation. So he just cups Gerard's face, runs a thumb along his cheekbone, and says,” Yes.”
Mikey is elbow deep in a chest cavity. He doesn't know whose it is. When he looks up at the face it's blurry--did he lose his glasses? There are tits though, he can see those. He wonders if it was a girl trying to hook up with him, if he lured her back here--wherever here is, this colorless, sterile room broken up only by the halo of meat and blood around Mikey and his corpse--with the promise of a good time. If he did, it wasn't a complete lie; he's having the time of his life.
His cock is hard against the girl's thigh. He left her clothes on, cut her shirt in half to get at what he needed. He's naked. He doesn't remember being naked. He presses down against the flesh under him. She's still warm inside. Even when Mikey ends up with blood all over his chest it's still warm warm warm he grabs on to her ribs and presses down harder against her thigh. It feels so good; he could probably get off like this. He looks up at her face again, and this time it's clear and looking down at him, unblinking. Her mouth opens and she speaks his name, but it's not her voice. It's familiar, achingly so. He presses down against her thigh again, shuts his eyes.
When he opens them again, he’s in the dark, pressed up against his brother. “Mikey,” Gerard says again. His hand is in Mikey's hair, his face close enough for their noses to touch. “Fuck.”
Mikey whines and presses his hips forward, grinds into Gerard. Gerard responds in kind and soon they're just grinding against each other's cock through two thin layers of cotton. “Dreamin’ about me?” Gerard asks lazily, mouthing at Mikey’s neck.
“Better,” Mikey says, without thinking. He catches the way Gerard's hand stills its movements on his back, the way his mouth freezes at Mikey's pulse point. He thinks he feels bad. “There was this girl,” Gerard's fingers curl into claws on Mikey's back,” I had her on the ground, completely split open.” It should be strange that Gerard relaxes at that. “Inside her felt so good.” Even just with his arms . He can't imagine what it'll be like to actually get his cock in there. He presses forward, fully awake again, and rolls Gerard over, climbs on top of him.
“Had her just like this,” he says. “Shirt ripped open. She had cute little tits.” He raises Gerard's shirt up, pinches his nipples. “Perfect ribcage.” He runs his fingers down Gerard's sides, digs his nails in. Gerard tilts his hips up, looking for more friction on his cock. “She was perfect and still ,” Mikey continues. Gerard's hips fall to the bed. “I wanted to bathe in her.”
“Mikey--” Gerard starts, but Mikey cuts him off with a harsh kiss. Gerard allows it to happen easily, like maybe he didn't actually know what he was going to say.
“Shh,” Mikey says against his ear. “Let me take care of you, Gee.” He kisses down Gerard's chest until he gets to the edge of Gerard's pajama pants. He lays one hand flat against the curve of Gerard's stomach and tugs his pants down with the other. “She had extra guts,” Mikey says, pressing down on Gerard's stomach just above his cock. Gerard twitches into the touch.
Mikey's great at sucking dick. He was alright at sucking dick before all this, but now that he's got someone to practice on every night he's exceptional. Or Maybe he's just great at sucking Gerard's dick, but it doesn't matter much. Anyone else he fucks from now on will be a means to an end, and it won't matter what they think of his performance. They won't have enough time to tell anyone else.
“Fuck, Mikes.” Gerard grabs Mikey's hair in both his hands, pulls him down til Mikey's nose is pressed against Gerard's pubic hair. It blocks Mikey's airway, makes him gag and convulse. Gerard lets go immediately and starts fumbling apologies, but all Mikey can think about is doing that to someone else, sinking his cock or a toy or his fucking fingers so far in their throat they can't breathe, internal choking.
“Do it again, and I'll bite it off,” is what he finally manages to say, after a few moments of fantasizing. “But you just gave me a great idea, so I won't punish you for it this time.”
“What idea?” Geard asks. Mikey sucks Gerard's cock back in his mouth to avoid answering. He'll see. Mikey will show him.
He knew, after that first time, maybe even during, maybe before, that once he got a taste for it he'd do it again. This wasn't a one time deal. It satisfied something in him that he'd been trying to name for years.
They go back to her place. She lives alone, a beautiful woman of twenty three. Mikey's too young for her, but she doesn't know that. It's not a very long walk. Mikey has his hand on her ass the whole time, and he's already hard in his jeans. When she kisses him against her closed front door he's tempted to let things continue, let this night play out how she thinks it's going to.
He knows it won't satisfy him, though, knows he's hard from the thought of splitting her ribs not the thought of fucking her cunt. Gerard's at home, waiting for him. He didn't say what he was going out to do, but he thinks Gerard knows. He can fuck something warm and tight after this if he wants.
There's a knife in his coat pocket. It's not big or impressive, but it's sharp, cuts through flesh like butter. “Bedroom,” she says, pulling him to follow her. She turns around, tugs him behind her, and Mikey can't resist. He moves, wraps one arm around her waist and kisses the side of her neck. She giggles and tilts her head to the side. Mikey gets his knife out, flips it open. When he moves the hand around her waist up to tug her head back by her hair, forces her to bare her throat, she moans. When he slides the knife across her throat, easy as you please, she gasps.
He drops her, lets her stumble forward and clutch at her throat with one hand. He knows there's nothing she can do, knows he went deep enough that she’ll pass out soon. She drops to her knees, blood dripping through her fingers onto the floor. She’s trying to scream. Mikey gets tired of the spectacle and presses his foot down against her back. She falls flat to the floor, hands splayed to either side. By the time Mikey gets her flipped over she’s already dead.
Indulging his curiosity, he presses his fingers into the hole he made in her throat, feels the tissue part easily and unnaturally for him. For a split second he wonders if his cock would fit there before he dismisses the idea. He has bigger plans for this one. He uses his knife to cut the front of her shirt open and then does the same to her bra. Her tits are nicer than the ones he dreamed of, and when he looks up he can clearly see her face framed by light hair that’s slowly soaking up blood. This is real. This is happening. He’s sure of it.
He uses the broad side of his knife to count down her rips, finds where bone turns to soft tissue. The point of his blade sinks in easily, and he makes a long slit from the bottom of her ribs to the waistband of her pants. His hands sink easily into the soft tissue he finds inside. They’re so shaking and so slippery when he pulls them out that he has to struggle to get the fly of his pants down. This is real. This is happening.
“Where have you been?” Gerard asks him when he slips into bed. Mikey presses his fingers against Gerard’s lips instead of answering, and Gerard obediently opens his mouth. Mikey knows there’s no blood left on them; he scrubbed them clean twice before he left her apartment. Gerard lets Mikey play with his tongue without protest, doesn’t question it when Mikey reaches his other hand down to open his jeans.
He didn't wash his cock, though. When he pulls down his underwear there's a layer of dried blood that peels and flakes away from his skin. Gerard has obediently left his mouth hanging open, and he wraps his lips around the head of Mikey's cock when it's offered to him. If he tastes her blood he doesn't mention it, but he uses his tongue more than usual, licks at Mikey's skin and balls and mouths at his hipbones in a way that makes Mikey sure he can't have missed it. He doesn't speak, though, not until after he's swallowed down Mikey's cum.
Gerard is breathing in great, wet gasps of air against Mikey’s thigh. “What did you do?” he asks, quiet and breathless. “Tell me about it.”
Mikey tucks his cock away and crawls on the bed with Gerard. “She was beautiful,” he says against Gerard's shoulder. Gerard’s hand tightens on Mikey’s thigh. “She was almost as good on the outside as the inside.” Gerard shudders as Mikey speaks against his skin. “She was so warm still, slick.” Mikey licks at the skin of Gerard's neck and reaches his hand down to grab Gerard's cock over his pants. “Even better than you.”
Gerard twitches against his hand, and Mikey makes a mental note. “I bet your insides are gorgeous, Gee.” He bites Gerard's shoulder softly. “Wish I could see them. You'd let me?” He reaches into Gerard's pajamas, gets skin against his hand. Gerard whines and nods, bucks against Mikey's hand.
“Yeah,” Gerard gasps. “Yeah, Mikes. 'Course.” He drops his head back against the pillow, arches his back. “Whatever you need.” Mikey makes him come twice, whispering in his ear about how pretty and pink his insides surely are. Gerard passes out afterwards.
“How strong do you think a human mouth is?” Mikey asks of Ray. It's a question he's been pondering for a while, but he's been too lazy to go to a library and look it up. Ray looks up from the guitar he's been jamming on, and Gerard's head stirs in Mikey's lap. “Do you think it could bite through bone if you didn't hesitate? Surely skin, at least?”
“I mean, definitely skin and, like, muscles and skin,” Ray says, after a moment's pause,” cause how'd we eat meat before we had knives, y’know? Not sure about bones and shit though.”
“Hm,” is Mikey's response.
Raw meat doesn't taste great, in Mikey's opinion. He spits out the bit he'd managed to rip off and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Maybe he should cook it, but how would he get it home? He wasn't ready for this, acted on impulse again. He needs to start planning better. There's blood in his mouth, and he can't decide if he likes the taste. The panic he feels is outweighing all of his usual excitement. He's not even hard.
He looks around frantically. There's a CVS bag on the kitchen table. It has deodorant and Advil in it. He dumps them out and starts shoving other things into it, the piece that had been in his mouth, the two chunks he'd sliced off purely out of curiosity. He glances down at the open chest cavity he's left behind again, and, on impulse, like all the dumb shit he's ever done, he slices out the heart and tosses it in with the rest.
Nobody looks twice at him. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and he knows you must be able to see the red of his spoils through the thin fabric of the bag. He walks fast, doesn't know if there's blood on his shirt. He didn't check. He needs to go home.
Gerard is awake when he gets home, sitting on the couch and pretending to read a book when Mikey can tell from looking at him that he's just been nervously bouncing his leg without thinking for at least twenty minutes. He stands when he sees Mikey, letting the book fall to the floor. “Mikes,” he says. He reaches out like maybe he wants to hug Mikey, then he seems to notice Mikey's appearance and thinks better of it. His eyes catch on the bag. “What?”
“I thought I might need to cook it,” Mikey tells him. “Didn't wanna do it there. Fingerprints.”
Gerard sucks in a breath through his nose and then exhales, slowly, through his mouth. “Mikes,” he says, careful, quiet,” is that--did you?” He's got his hands on Mikey's arms, looking at Mikey's face, at where there's probably still blood smeared across his chin.
“Yeah,” Mikey admits, voice small and cracking. “I needed to know.”
“We have to get rid of that.”
“Is mom home?”
“Mikey we can't--” He cuts himself off, takes that steadying breath again. “We have to get rid of it. Soon. Give me it.”
A sudden panic fills Mikey. Is Gerard going to throw it out, after he worked so hard to get it? Then he'll just have to go get more or he'll never know, his need will never be sated. “No!” He jerks away from Gerard, knocking his arms loose.
“Mikes,” Gerard says. “I'm not gonna toss it, okay? I need to put it in a better container and hide it in the fridge.”
“Oh.”
Gerard gently takes the bag off Mikey's wrist. Mikey lets him this time. “Go take a shower. I'll put your clothes in the wash.”
Neither one of them really knows how to cook. (“Should I, like, season it?”) The meat ends up shoved in the bottom of the trash can by noon the next day.
“Are you okay?” Mikey looks up. It's a girl from his math class, Jenny, maybe. He must look confused, because she nods her head down, gesturing to the bandage wrapped around the upper part of his forearm. “You just seemed… out of it over here by yourself.” Mikey stares. “Sorry if I'm bothering you.”
Maybe-Jenny tucks a piece of hair behind her ear and shifts her posture. Mikey's been around long enough to recognize badly hidden romantic interest. “I'm fine,” he says flatly.
She halfway nods at his words. “If you ever wanna talk about it,” she trails off. She scratches idly at her left arm, and Mikey suddenly notes that she's wearing a hoodie even though it's mid-afternoon in late spring and everyone in their right mind is wearing as little clothing as possible. “Just let me know.”
“A dog bit me,” he says. The guy he'd gone home with had failed to mention that he had a goddamn German Shepherd before Mikey stabbed him in the eye. The thing caught him on his way out through the backyard. He'd managed to get over the fence before it could do anything else.
Her eyes widen. “O-oh,” she says, voice wavering. “That's--that sucks.”
“Yeah,” Mikey says. He hadn't killed the dog. The dog did nothing wrong. He wonders if anyone's found its owner yet. If it's gotten back in the house through the doggie door and gnawed on the corpse yet. His handiwork would be ruined, but that's okay. He'd seen it with his own eyes, and that's what matters.
“I'll, uh, see you around, Mikey,” Maybe-Jenny says. Mikey nods. She walks away. Mikey watches her go with blank eyes. He wonders if she'd let him, if he asked. If she'd say please and thank you and get wet from a knife at her throat. He wonders if Gerard would.
Mikey finishes junior year with solid C+’s and B’s across the board, thanks only to Gerard withholding sex from him if he didn't do his homework. The summer makes him restless, ratchets his anxiety up to eleven. He walks past a police station on his way to and from the convenience store where he buys lube and steals Gerard's cigarettes, and he's suddenly aware of what will happen to him if he gets caught, what will happen to Gerard. He has a sudden, nauseating urge to walk into the station and turn himself in.
Gerard is in the kitchen when Mikey gets home. He's doing terrible, terrible things to an egg in a frying pan, possibly several eggs. “Hey, Mikes,” he calls, then starts trying to scrape the remains of his breakfast (it's 2PM) onto a nearby plate. The burner is still on, glowing brightly. Briefly, Mikey flashes to a thought--a memory? He can't tell sometimes--of him holding someone's face down on a red-hot heating element, the swirl branding itself into the skin of their cheek, rendering one of their eyes useless. He thinks about Gerard right there, so close to one, and, for the first time, he's scared of himself.
Mikey's never had full control of his temper. He'll swing from perfectly calm to screaming at the drop of a single annoyance, but he's never been uncontrollably physical, never caused anyone pain he didn't mean to. Right now, standing with one hand braced against the rough brick wall and one hand fisted in “You can call me Alex”'s hair, Mikey doesn't feel in control. He feels like if Alex stops kissing him he's going to do something bad. His hand is twitching, aching to take the head in his hand and bash it against the wall, until this pretty face under him is unrecognizable.
He didn't come out to kill tonight. Hadn't gone out to kill in months. Gerard said he'd done too many too fast, that he'd get sloppy, that he should pace himself. Gerard also let Mikey bite him 'til he bled and fuck him 'til neither one of them could move. Gerard is perfect, and if it didn't mean losing him forever Mikey would gut him just to see how glorious he must be.
But Mikey hasn't been out with purpose since the beginning of summer, and there's a chill in the air now. Alex is moving, kissing against Mikey's neck. The crowd from the show that just let out is passing by the side street that Mikey had ducked into. Gerard will be here to pick him up soon. Mikey called him when the show was over, like he promised, before Alex found him outside the pit and asked him for his number. Alex’s lips would look so good sucking Mikey's cock. Alex’s head would look so good busted open on the wall.
“You could at least pretend that you're enjoying this.” Alex's voice is cold, and it's only the sound of it that breaks Mikey out of his thoughts, catapults him to the present where he's been staring at the bricks of the wall for an indeterminate amount of time, oblivious to whatever Alex has been doing to him.
“Sorry,” Mikey says, snapping back into action. His hands settle on Alex's hips instead of the wall. “I was thinking about--it doesn't really matter. Sorry.” He kisses Alex again, keeping his hands safely below the belt. Alex seems placated and starts kissing back almost immediately, settles a hand in Mikey's back pocket. Alex survives the night with nothing but a hickey and Mikey's number. Mikey plans to ignore any texts or calls from unknown numbers. Alex survives.
“Have you thought about college?” Mikey's mom asks him out of the blue. He's only a few weeks into senior year. He'd kind of planned to be dead by age twenty. No, he hasn't thought about college. Donna pours him a cup of coffee while he eats an apple. It's standard breakfast. The apple is kind of mushy.
“Not really. That's more Gee’s thing.” They're both graduating this year, and they're both mutually withholding sex until after homework. Mikey hasn't been getting laid a lot. He's got a lot of pent up energy. He wonders if it's been long enough.
“Just something to consider.” Mikey considers it, and he comes to the conclusion, right there, in the kitchen, that college is a terrible idea for him, that he doesn't handle stress well, and that if he had to deal with anyone remotely like some of the people Gerard complains about then he would not be able to keep up the rule of not killing anyone else connected to him.
He doesn't tell his mom this, obviously. He just nods and says,” Yeah,” and thinks about how he's gonna fuck Gerard over this very countertop as soon as they're both back from school tonight. Homework be damned, Mikey is either getting laid tonight or someone's going to die.
“A band?” Mikey asks, incredulously. “You're starting a band?” Gerard nods. “And you want me to join?” Gerard nods more enthusiastically.
“Ray’s gonna be in it, and Otter, but we need a bassist.”
“Gee, I haven’t seriously played bass in years,” Mikey says, leaving aside the fact that he’s a raving homicidal maniac, probably with multiple undiagnosed mental disorders. Gee hasn’t forgotten that. He might’ve forgotten about the bass thing.
“Yeah, but you didn’t forget,” Gerard says, rubbing his thumb over the still callused skin of Mikey’s fingers. “C’mon, Mikes.” Gerard is giving him those big doe eyes, the ones he makes when he’s looking up from sucking Mikey’s dick, and Mikey has never once in his life been able to say no to those eyes. “It’ll be fun.”
Mikey is two weeks away from being home, two weeks away from his own bed and Gee naked and warm against him at night, two weeks away from being out of this goddamn van, but he’s only about three days and one empty liquor bottle away from ripping Frank’s head off his neck. They nearly got into a fist fight at the last gas stop. It’s partially the massive and obvious crush that Frank has on Gerard that has Mikey so pissy and partially the fact that he never shuts up. Mikey does not have the endless well of social energy that Frank does, and he cannot handle a constant stream of consciousness coming from the backseat.
He tells all of this to Gerard in the single person bathroom of the bar they’re opening at tonight. Gerard is pressed up against the back of the door, the lock of which is firmly in place.
“I want to strangle him,” he says. Gerard frantically pulls him back into another kiss. “It's been so long, Gee,” he breathes into the skin of Gerard's neck. One hand is gripping Gerard's hip, the other possessively on the back of Gerard's neck.
“Sometimes I want that, too,” Gerard admits, breathlessly. Mikey moves the hand on Gerard's hip, cups the bulge in his pants.
“Yeah?” he asks, barely audible against the background noise of the club. Gerard nods with his eyes squeezed shut, arches up into Mikey's hand. “You wanna wrap your pretty hands around Frankie's throat?” Mikey's cock twitches at the idea.
“No,” Gerard says, like talking is using all his brain power. Between the bottle they split earlier and what Mikey's hands are doing to him now, it probably is. “Wanna watch you.” He opens his eyes finally, looks Mikey in the eye. “I want to watch you do it, Mikes. At least once.”
Mikey's mouth hangs open against Gerard's neck. All this time he'd thought Gerard merely tolerated him, was disgusted by his interests, turned a blind eye. The thought that Gerard, Mikey's favorite person, could actually be interested in Mikey's favorite thing was intoxicating.
“It...changed something,” Gerard admits after a few seconds, and Mikey knows immediately what he's talking about. The thing that set this entire band in motion. The thing that's repercussions were only really beginning to be felt. “I want to watch someone die. Up close. I want to see if it's the same.”
“It's not.” Mikey raises his head to look Gerard in the eye. “It's better,” he promises.
Mikey hasn't had time to plan. He needs to find out what Gerard really wants, what he wants to see, who he wants to see. He wants it to be perfect, wants full control over the scene, but he can't bring them home. Should they get a hotel room, the two of them? No. No, hotel rooms have ways of being tracked, and there are too many people in too small an area.
Their place, then. It’s a plan that’s worked for Mikey in the past. Don’t touch anything, get right down to business. Wipe down the place before they leave. If it’s a house, then he can let them scream. If it’s an apartment, he has to slit their throat before he can have his fun. He doesn’t know which one he prefers.
“Do you ever think it’ll be enough?” Gerard asks. He’s looking for eye contact, Mikey can tell. Mikey is staring at the ceiling. They’re cuddling. Gerard likes to cuddle after Mikey fucks him, and Mikey is usually too tired to object. It’s… grounding, also, to have the weight of another human on top of him.
He knows what Gerard is talking about, of course. It’s not like they talk about much else these days. Band practice, what to eat, and when’s the next time that Mikey is going to murder someone just to watch them die, these are their only real conversation topics. Gerard hasn’t brought up the fact that he asked to watch, but Mikey hasn’t forgotten. He’s still planning.
“I don’t know.”
The man doesn't look like he belongs where he is. Nobody wears dress shoes to see a local band perform at a bar. The button down shirt tucked neatly into belted, dark wash jeans really cements the image of a low level office lacky who's been plucked straight from his desk and deposited into the corner of this bar.
His name is Liam. Mikey can't get a straight answer out of him about what someone who looks like him is doing in a place that looks like this. It's no matter, though, because Mikey manages to get him into the alley out back anyway.
His perfectly styled hair looks so good once Mikey has fisted his hand in it. It looks even better once he's bashed Liam's face against the bricks. He keeps going until there's nothing left but unidentifiable red mush where his face used to be. It drips down onto the concrete, leaving an ever growing puddle behind.
A small group walks by the mouth of Mikey's hiding place. They must mistake the positioning of bodies--what remains of Liam's head pressed against the brick, Mikey's hands holding Liam's hips flush against his own--for something much tamer in the dim lighting. They catcall down the alley. Mikey hides his face against his victim's neck until they pass by.
They’re becoming rather well known, at least locally. Mikey knows that something’s got to give eventually. He can’t keep doing this. Gerard wants to watch. It has to be perfect for him. Maybe that’s the note to end on. Maybe if once, just once, it lives up to his fantasies, he can finally stop.
Gerard is smoking when Mikey finds him outside of the bar. "Pick one," he says, watching the cherry of Gerard's cigarette light up. Gerard glances up at Mikey, raises his eyebrows in question. Mikey makes a sweeping gesture to the people inside the bar, milling around, waiting for the next act to start. "Pick one. I wanna know what you like." He flashes a smile. A handful of people have had that smile as the last thing they ever saw. Mikey doesn't bring it out on many occasions. It's all teeth. Gerard exhails his smoke with what might be a smile, but it's hard to tell.
"Do you believe in god?"
"Shut the fuck up, Frank," Ray calls from the back. "We get it, you went to Catholic school. Jesus."
"Excuse me for trying to have an intelligent conversation!" Frank slumps down in the passenger seat. "What do you think, Mikey?"
Mikey doesn't look away from the road stretched out in front of him. "I don't think god would let me get away with the things I've done." He hears Gerard coughing in the back seat. Must be the smoker's lungs.
Gerard likes girls. He points one out to Mikey. She's pretty in that effortless way that women blessed with good skin and blond hair often are. She's the third in as many cities. Mikey's been keeping track, but he's been good. He's waiting for it to be perfect.
"You have a type," he says. Gerard quirks his eyebrows. Mikey sips at his straw while nodding at the woman in question. "Third time's the charm, Gee. You have a type."
Gerard crosses his arms defensively. "I guess so, sure." He takes a gulp of his drink. Ever the alcoholic, he still winces at the taste of undiluted liquor. "Doesn't matter, really." Mikey knows Gerard better than anyone else. Probably even better than he knows himself, considering how much of his personality he borrowed from his older brother.
"Sometimes I pick people because I just think they're attractive," he says. "Nothing complicated, I just think they'll look good when I'm done with them, but sometimes," he pauses, watches the mystery woman as she adjusts her clothing, talks to her friend, exists," sometimes I pick them because they have something I want." Gerard takes another long drink. After, he sucks an ice cube into his mouth and starts crunching it between his teeth. "Something you wanna tell me, Gee?"
Mikey fucks Gerard bent over the sink in the bathroom. He drags Gerard's head up by the hair and makes him watch himself get fucked. "You're so pretty," he murmurs against Gerard's neck. "Look at you." He laces his fingers with Gerard's against the mirror. "Some lipstick and a skirt and you'd make a perfect little cunt to fuck."
Three people in the bar know that they're brothers. Mikey's got his fingers crossed that none of them heard the noise Gerard just made. They're actually hooked in Gerard's mouth, giving him something to keep him quiet, but he's crossing them in spirit.
"You'd like that wouldn't you?" He bites the skin of Gerard's neck. "Like to get all dressed up for me. I know you have everything you'd need." He slides his other hand up Gerard's thigh. "I could push up your skirt and fuck you whenever I wanted, my perfect sister." Gerard's head falls forward, hitting the mirror with every one of Mikey's thrusts, and he moans low and long.
Mikey tightens his grip and pulls Gerard's head up by his hair again. "Answer me." He tugs on Gerard's cock, just once.
"Yes!" Gerard cries. "Yes, Mikey. I'd like it. I'd love it!" He closes his eyes and tears start leaking out. They mix with his eyeliner and mascara, dripping wet little black spots down into the sink.
"Slut," Mikey says. He bites down into Gerard's shoulder and starts pumping his cock again. He presses his hips hard against Gerard's ass, filling him up as much as he can. "Perfect fucking slut, best I've ever had. Fuck," he breathes against Gerard's shoulder.
When Gerard's cum drips from the bottom of the sink onto the bathroom floor, they leave it there. It's barely noticeable in the grand scheme of bathroom floor dirt, anyway. Gerard wasn't wearing underwear to begin with, so it's not like Mikey is dirtying a pair when he pulls out and lets the lube and cum drip down his brother's thigh. The jeans haven't been washed yet this tour, probably won't be til the next one. Gerard doesn't complain.
She's perfect. Mikey's seen her a few times. She comes alone and leaves with company every time. Mikey's never stalked a target before, but he learns quickly. She's there on Thursdays, never Fridays, never the weekend. This makes things a bit harder. The crowd's smaller on a weeknight, harder to get lost in.
"I found someone," Mikey tells Gerard. His brother is eating a bowl of cereal at the tiny kitchen table in their apartment. It's 2:30AM. "I think you'll like her."
"At the club?" Gerard asks around his spoon. Mikey nods. Gerard knows why Mikey goes to the club.
"Next week," he says. There's milk sliding down the side of Gerard's chin. He licks it away, and Mikey watches his tongue. Just as well, Mikey doesn't think they actually own napkins.
Gerard rides Mikey on the living room couch. It’s still novel, even after having been moved out for months. He adds to the mottled patchwork of bruises along Gerard's neck and shoulders while he bounces on Mikey's cock. He likes the way Frank looks at them, like he's dying to ask. It's Wednesday.
"You're going to look so pretty," Mikey says, looking up at Gerard," covered in blood." Gerard gasps, and Mikey runs his thumb over Gerard's bottom lip, presses it in to rest on his tongue. He thinks about that first time, cleaning blood from under his own fingernails, thinks about Gerard taking out every little bit of frustration that Mikey's watched him swallow down over the years. "You're going to love her."
Mikey points her out as soon as they walk into the bar. Her bright, red-dyed hair is pulled up into pigtails that frame her face. The tanktop she's wearing shows off the floral sleeve of tattoos on her left arm. Frayed denim shorts cling to her hips. Her boots are black, old but well taken care of, with a platform of at least a few inches. She really is perfect.
Mikey can barely contain himself. All he can think about is cutting her open, Gerard's hands holding down her wrists, pulling her hair, his thumbs pressing in her eyeballs til they pop, his cock leaking and his face wet from sweat and blood and tears. Mikey almost ruins the whole thing by being too eager, almost scares her off.
Gerard dispells the awkwardness in the only way he can, by talking about comic books. She has a Deadpool tattoo, a fact that Gerard somehow uses to get the three of them back to her house--well, her townhouse. They'll have to be quiet.
Mikey's got a knife in his pocket, like always. They make it up the stairs, to the bedroom, to the bed. Gerard kisses her; she gets him on the bed, grey sheets. He leans against the headboard. She straddles him. Mikey runs a hand up his brother's thigh. Gerard moans.
Mikey kneels behind her on the bed, knees bracketing Gerard's legs, and kisses her neck. He can feel the heat of her, where Gerard's hand is one her hip, the weight of the knife in his right hand. "Ready, Gee?"
Gerard squeezes Mikey's thigh, and Mikey grins down at him. A hand in her hair, she moves willingly, tilts her head back so Mikey can kiss her. He's done this enough times that he doesn't have to look to get it right the first time.
Gerard looks beautiful. She tries to claw at his face, but Mikey grabs her arms. Blood is soaking her tanktop, dripping down onto Gerard's face and chest. His mouth is hanging open in awe. Mikey loves him.
He brings both hands up to her neck. They're shaking. Mikey thinks about his first time. Did his hands shake? Was it from fear or excitement? Gerard's fingers touch the open flesh of her neck. She's weak now. Mikey lets go of her arms, cups Gerard's face with one hand, and with the other he tears the wound bigger. She's either already dead or too far gone to cry out.
"Does it feel the same?" Mikey asks. "Is it like you thought?" He watches the blood running down Gerard's wrist as he waits for an answer, thinks about licking it off.
"It's not," Gerard whispers. He licks his lips; his fingers slide in next to Mikey's. "It's better."