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When the band escapes the Black Parade tours for good they all get espressos at LAX, just enough to sustain them through the last eye-aching travel day. They clink celebratory Styrofoam cups with hands that don’t even shake. There’s hugs all around before Frank, Bob, and Ray leave in different directions through the airport, heading down escalators into light, to cars or taxis waiting outside. Mikey spends some minutes with Alicia by the luggage carousel, cooing over photos of all their animals together, and then they nuzzle and coo at each other before pulling apart. Gerard kisses Lindsey (talented, beautiful, amazing Lindsey) goodbye at the inside gate.
Lindsey’s band has been on the same long, long tour as the guys. She’s as exhausted as they are. Alicia’s been working a separate circuit with no less demanding hours. Both women drive to their separate homes in Los Angeles, using friends’ generosity or rented cars.
Gerard and Mikey take their suitcases and get in a discreet cab upstream to one of LA’s more reputable hotels. The suite they rent is basically an apartment, complete with fridge and dinette, and it’s theirs alone for two weeks. They use a local organic goods-delivery service to get groceries to their room. It’s about as expensive as consistent room service would’ve been, but worth it for the additional privacy.
The brothers tell their respective wives that they just need some time to adjust to all that’s happened. Decompression.
That isn't untrue. The first night they sleep, just sleep, for almost ten hours, sharing a bed in the suite’s largest room. It’s more rest than they’ve had consecutively in months. Being on solid ground for so long is almost strange. Being the only ones in the room is definitely strange, but fine. That’s what they came here for. It’s why Gerard suggested this as the tour was winding to a close.
When they get up they each take showers for as long as they want. They call in for pancakes and eggs and complicated plates of fruit, ending up storing most of it in the fridge. Mikey piles all of the caffeine supplies artfully in one section of the kitchenette’s counter, making a kind of altar around the fancy-as-shit coffee pot while he waits for it to boil.
Gerard watches him, resting his chin on his hand. After the coffee finally gives up its precious lifeforce he moves in, and they kiss in the quiet. Mikey’s practiced fingers run through Gerard’s newly re-blackened hair.
You need to understand: Lindsey is the most amazing person to Gerard, and he’s indescribably happy that they found each other. Alicia and Mikey have been together for years and will be for years more, for forever. Both brothers wear gold bands on their fingers in connection to and recognition of these wonderful, loved women. They leave the rings on the table by the suite’s front door.
Any other situation, any other time or place than this, Gerard would never break Lindsey’s trust in him.
But now, here-- here, Mikey takes his medication cocktail in the mornings. He washes them down with orange juice and a slice or two of toast, usually, because one of the side-effects is he’s too nauseous for actual food immediately after a dose. Then they drink coffee together. For a while they watch TV on the couch, sides pressed together from shoulder to hip. They try to reach the remote with their feet and nudge each other’s ankles. They talk about nothing, or important things. They analyze a movie into sand.
And then Gerard makes sure the door is locked, and he gets out some condoms or rope or one of his ancient Revenge ties he’d tossed into his tour case as a half-baked throwback concept, and they fall into each other.
Gerard takes Mikey on the floor and in the shower and over the sturdy table in the suite’s main space and while tied to the knobs on the headboards in each and every one of the suite’s three bedrooms. (The smallest room is Mikey’s favourite, because of the mattress.) Sometimes G edges him for hours. Sometimes he just blows him. Gerard peppers him with bites from lower jaw to collarbone, leaves ombre prints of his mouth beside the finger marks on Mikey’s hips. He sucks on Mikey’s nipples until they’re swollen red and then brushes a floaty boa over them to tease him.
Once, at night with the suite dark behind them, Gerard lays Mikey down lengthwise on the small attached balcony. He instructs him to grab the iron railing’s posts and be very, very quiet. Gerard holds a dental dam in place with two fingers and keeps a solid grip on his brother’s thigh with his right hand, and he eats him out slowly while the warm air curves around them. Mikey arches and shudders and shakes, but he doesn’t make a single audible sound.
There’s hard limits. If either of them safewords then everything stops immediately, of course. No blades. Mikey doesn’t ever have anything constrictive near his throat. Gerard never says something that’ll put Mikey down.
Mikey didn’t used to need a lot of aftercare. Something changed after the Paramore, or maybe something just changed between them.
When a round is over Gerard lets him up and then immediately backs off, either pulling his brother close or waiting for Mikey to climb up by himself until they’re chest to chest. Gerard keeps him in his arms and plants small kisses on Mikey’s shoulder or even-gentler ones to his bruised neck. He murmurs praise and reassurances over and over.
Once they can move again he helps Mikey stand and walk into the suite’s front room, laying him gently down on the couch and covering him with a warm blanket. He brings him water and acetaminophen for any pain before laying back down beside him. He’ll run Mikey a warm bath later if Mikey wants. First he stays as close as he possibly can.
Sometimes Mikey tucks his head into the joint of Gerard’s neck. Gerard can feel Mikey’s tears sliding down his shoulder onto the pillow (couch, carpet), but he knows from talking to Mikey that it’s not because of anything they’d done. It’s old tears. They just waited a long time to seep out. Gerard doesn’t acknowledge them at all anymore; it’d make Mikey feel worse when he’s temporarily low, and Gerard doesn’t want that.
Mikey eventually doses off. Gerard stays awake, listening to Mikey’s breathing and memorizing the lines on his face. He only, only wants his brother to be happy in his arms.
Gerard doesn’t quantify how much he loves someone anymore. Giving numbers to human beings’ emotions is terrible and it just breaks hearts anyway. Instead, he assigns kinds of love to his feelings. Mikey’s kind is unique. Mikey is unique. Gerard doesn’t love anyone else like he loves his brother, and he never will again if Mikey’s gone. It’s why he holds onto him so tightly.
If he could, Gerard would never let go at all. That’s what he brought Mikey here for.
You need to understand: Mikey is an adult who makes his own choices. Gerard knows that. He would never try to do anything to circumvent that.
But Mikey was very, very nearly gone from him forever. It was the most terrifying thing. The raw desperation of being alone ate through the meat and blood of Gerard’s throat right into the marrow of his spine; it sits there even now. The Paramore was a year and a half ago, but tour makes Mobius strips out of everything. Relapses are inevitable. Gerard, of all people, knows that very well. At any time Mikey could drift away from him again, fall past where Gerard can reach him. Any time.
Except this.
Because here, now—with the red silk rope Gerard buys online and has delivered anonymously to their room, with souvenir boas doubling as feather teasers and old neckties as gags for Mikey’s beautiful mouth when Mikey mentions faux-casually during their coffee that that’s what he wants that day—with Gerard’s hands and mouth and intent on Mikey, inside him, with him laughing and moaning and whining, breath eager and nervous in the afternoon—now, with all of this, Mikey stays still under Gerard. He stays close. He is always where Gerard can see him, touch him, where it’s safe. Mikey is safe.
Gerard will do his god-damndest to keep him that way.
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