Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

My Brother's Blood Machine	By : NHB Category: My Chemical Romance > General Views: 1567 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of My Chemical Romance. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Title: My Brother’s Blood Machine (2/3)
Author: Normal Human Being
Rating: PG 13
Summary: The whole world is fucking sliding.
Disclaimer: I do not know or own any members of My Chemical Romance. None of the events depicted ever took place, and I mean no offence to anyone. Amen.
Notes: This chapter might not make much sense, but it’ll all become clear in part three. Promise. Oh, and enormous amounts of love to everyone who commented.

Part Two: Blood

I first met Mikey…early ‘96. No, no, late ‘95, cos it was right at the start of the semester and he’d, I dunno, come up to see Gerard for the weekend or something. Yeah, that must have been it because I remember him going on about the whole New York, art school, cosmopolitan thing as if it was a big deal, only to him it was because he was stuck in some shitty high school in Jersey so he came up to visit and it was like, wow, culture shock. Basically ‘cos we had culture and he didn’t. Ha. Anyway, he was all awed and Gerard was really playing up to it, like really playing up to it, like he was trying to impress some nubile heiress or something. Totally getting into the Independent Older Brother Role Model thing but at the same time it was really awkward because he just reeked of desperation, I mean it was coming off him in waves, enough to make you sick from the stench. I kinda ruined the whole set-up because I bounded in (high as a kite, as per), leapt onto the couch next to them and was all, “Hey, hey, who the fuck are you?”

“This is Mikey,” Gerard said, in that voice he does sometimes – you know the one where he tries to sound like he’s saying something that matters? That one. So he said “This is Mikey” like that, and then added “He’s my brother” in a similar one, but sadder, like it was, I dunno, a state funeral or something. I didn’t think anything of that then, it was just like, ‘Oh, Gerard’s pissed ‘cos his kid brother’s stalking him.’ Course, this was before I knew he was in love with the guy in that total Shakespeare-Casablanca-How-Do-I-Live way he has. At that point, Mikey was just there on the couch being all spiky and bony like some electrocuted insect and I sat down and started drawing him. I mean, I grabbed my shit and slid onto the couch and fucking drew his, like, collarbones and shit, because we’d been doing all this life drawing stuff and I could do all the facial stuff and muscle tone and things, but I kept fucking up all the joints and bone structure parts utterly and have you seen Mikey? He’s like, ideal bone structure model. Kid looks he’d had three quarters of the flesh vacuumed off his body and moulded onto someone else. Possibly his brother. Sorry – cruel. And recently inaccurate.

“This is Lyn,” I heard Gerard say. “She’s very, very stoned. You should be safe as long as you don’t make any sudden movements.”

Mikey laughed. It was this real nervous laugh, brittle, almost bloodless, and for ages afterwards that was what made me wonder, ‘what’s the attraction?’ The kid seemed such dead wood that I totally had no clue why Gerard was into him. Okay, so there probably isn’t a rational explanation for any kind of weird gay incest, but I just never thought Gerard would go for someone so cold. Maybe that’s just because I don’t like cold people and in my head everyone’s kind of like me but with a different haircut, y’know? But I mean, I always saw Gerard with some girl or guy or horse or whatever with a bit of life about them, a bit of blood close to the surface. That’s how people should be. That’s half the fun of getting wired – more than half – because it’s like all your atoms are on ecstasy (you might not be, but they are) and the blood, it’s like buzzing through your veins, it’s not pulsing, its dancing in there and it’s just like yeahyeahyeah, this is life, you can feel it, all is good and now and here. All that tingling in your blood. Mikey had none of it.

Well, I thought he didn’t but then there was this huge argument one night, about some band or other, and little My, you could see he felt real strong about it, like he would maybe have died in defence of this band, they were his heroes or some shit and he’d have followed their tour on foot for the chance of meeting them. Anyway, he’s obviously real pissed off but he didn’t say anything, just went totally stiff, like the blood was going through his veins so fast that the pressure was too great for them to bend so he had to stand perfectly still to keep from breaking. I was watching him, trying to figure out ‘what’s the attraction?’ and I saw him all pissed off, those skinny limbs all rigid and kind of vibrating, and it sort of all clicked in my head.

Gerard, he doesn’t just want to fuck this guy, he wants to give him words. It’s like… there’s this film I saw where they went on about how in Ancient Greece all the older guys, they’d go off with the young ones and “draw them out”. That’s the phrase they used, being drawn out, because I guess you can’t say “fucked them up the ass” on prime time TV, but that’s what Gerard wanted to do in the actual sense. I mean, he had this weird notion of fucking the kid, but what he really wanted to do was draw him out - make him fight and beg and scream and just get noticed, you know? Draw some attention and vent some of that fucking rage before he shook himself to pieces. That’s what Mikes did the entire argument, just stood in the corner stretched taught and fucking trembling without saying a word. Gerard, he just kind of wanted to help him get still. Quiet him a little by making him scream. And okay, maybe anal sex was a slightly freaky way of doing that, but he had good intentions.

Which is why I’m kind of sad to see Mikey siting here now, what must be ten years later, and he’s just as bloodless as he was on that first night. All pale skin and sunken eyes and “Jesus, My,” I say, “when did you get so tired?”

“When I started touring ten months out of twelve.”

“Oh. How long you got off?”

“Not sure. About a month, I think. Then we’re supposed to be recording.”

“Oh.” I’m not really sure how to continue this conversation because I never really got the hang of being banal around My. I always feel the need to bring up his brother’s Big Dark Sexual Secret. Except of course I can’t, because Gerard never told. Fuck, he only told me by accident.

We went out to this field one time, me and Gerard, because there was this comet coming over that you only see once every ten years and my dad had taken me to see it before so I kind of wanted to catch it again, for, like, the nostalgia or whatever. (Also, we’d been at some dorm party where this band had played fucking Screaming Trees covers and I was like, “I’m from fucking Portland. I came here to escape this shit,” and we ran). Anyway, we were smoking on the drive out because Pete had rolled me a whole bunch of Mellows, they’re like joints with a bit of everything in and they just slow you right down so you’re heart beats real soft and your blood’s like this great, slow river rolling through you. I thought they’d fit in with the whole ‘nostalgia’ headspace I was in, so I brought a load with me and they must have got on top of Gerard totally because I was asking all these stupid questions like “Who do you think of during sex?” expecting him to name some model, but he said “My brother,” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I told him to tell.

He went home for spring break, got totally wasted and had this huge fight with My but told him nothing. Kinda pissed me off.

“I can’t,” he’d whine. “He’s my brother. I don’t want to run the risk of having him hate me forever.”

“I’m not saying you turn up in his room at midnight wearing vinyl hotpants and twirling handcuffs,” I told him. “You can do it in bits, over time. Like, you can say, “I love you”, and that’s totally fine because he’s your brother. Then next time you tell him why. After that, it’s all about why you hang around him so much. Just, slowly. Little declarations of undying love. And anyone who spends as much time primping as you do is expected to tell people they look good. Seriously, you’re like one of those fucking monkeys off the Discovery Channel.”

“What the fuck? Look, I’m not asking him to pick my lice; I’m asking him to love me in the most foul, unnatural, illegal way, unquestioningly and eternally. It’s not the sort of thing you can drop hints about.”

“Sure it is. Then he puts the hints together himself and comes up with whatever answer he likes. If it freaks him out, he can just pretend he misread you. You’re totally safe.”

But he never did. Sometimes he’d get wasted and call the kid up, and I could see his mouth going to form the words as he gripped the phone. I could practically hear him rehearsing them in his head, but then My would pick up and Gerard would start babbling about some band he’d seen or some painting he’d done or how Mikey had just missed the most fucking awesome of parties.

So I’m stuck here, fucking waiting for Gerard, trying to think of something to say that isn’t “So – anal sex. How’re you with that?”, a task which isn’t made any easier by the fact that I haven’t slept for time, I mean fucking time, and my brain’s just totally shut off. Except it can’t have, because I’ve just thought of the perfect thing.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

*

So, I’m rinsing everything off with water, I’m swilling it all down really fucking thorough ‘cos Mikey would actually kill me for doing this, for vacuuming lines of speed up in his bathroom while I wait for his sober brother, but I feel like death and I look like Gerard and so clearly, clearly it’s needed. Plus, if I don’t, the Mellows will just totally floor me. And it’s totally beneficial, because I’ve though of stuff to say.

So I bound out and I’m all like, “Hey, My, guess what I found yesterday?”

“A cure?”

I smile sweetly and flip him off. It is a reflex. “Not quite. I was going through my stuff yesterday, and I found this big box of old art – y’know, all those drawings of your ribs and shit? There’s, like, fifty of your fucking clavicle, I swear – and I just thought, it’s all totally fucking useless because I wanted to illustrate kids’ books and you just don’t need that level of detail.”

My raises an eyebrow. “You wanted to draw children’s books?”

“Uh-huh. Kids’ books are great. Like there was this one, it was all about a frog and a duck that were in love, and it was all like, um…like an allegory? Yeah, an allegory for inter-racial relationships, but it wasn’t asshole-ish at all, not like an adult’s would be. It just addressed the whole issue in words of one syllable or less. It was cool.”

My laughs. “I’m sorry – you? Children? What?”

“They damn well own. Where do you think I got your name from?”
“That ‘My’ thing? I thought that was you and Gerard being scarily possessive.”

“Nuh-uh. Kids’ book. Little My, she was like, really angry all the time? Screamed a lot. And I always saw you as a screamer. Where’s Gerard?”

I wanna get out. I mean, I’m bored of waiting but also Mikey’s eyeing me up, he’s kind of processing that I look like a reanimated drag queen and can’t really stop moving and might actually be being a lot louder than I think, and he’s putting two and two together and coming up with lines of speed in his bathroom and that’s bad, that’s fucking bad, because he hasn’t really grasped that just ‘cos I’m like this, just ‘cos I need to feel blood, doesn’t mean I’m gonna strap Gerard down and inject him in the eyes and he’s been clean for what, two and half years now so he obviously knows how to say no because I turn up, all the time I turn up, all the time I’m the same, so. It’s nothing.

“All ready?” Gerard comes in as if I’ve not been waiting twenty minutes for him. The guy’s wearing coats, as in more coats than a human should. He looks at me. “Won’t you be cold?”

I sigh dramatically. “No, mom, I’ll be fine. Gerard’s taking fifty jackets and says he’ll lend me one of it snows.”

He smiles sweetly and flips me off. We have similar reflexes.

*

“Oh!” I say, after an hour and fifty minutes of silent driving, during which I have done nothing but notice that there’s snow on the road and it glitters, and wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be so cool to just scoop up a handful and go through them one by one to see how they’re all different? I say, “Oh, by the way, I heard about whatshername.”

“Susanna.”

“Susanna, yeah. Whore. Hated her. Always. Almost as much as you did.”

“I didn’t hate her.”

“Oh, please. She was a guilt fuck. You were only nailing her because that Richard guy looked like your brother. I swear, you’re the only guy I know who has sex with girls as penance.” Eeep, shit, I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have spoken, but there are words like bubbles in my blood and they keep rising. “Is that why you look like someone drowned your puppy? Because she kicked you out?”

So then Gerard looks at me and for the first time that night it’s a proper look rather than an Is she fit to drive? one. “I’m pissed,” he says (very slow, very deliberate) “because I am currently living with Mikey, who is currently living with Alicia.”

And then my head’s full of light on skin and curved spines and the legs that wind round them and sweat slick in hollows and darkened eyes and oh, it must hurt to have that there always, to have those pictures in your head and have half of them be wrong. But I don’t say that, I say: “Really? I kinda thought you were over him.”

A twisted little laugh – Mikey’s fucking laugh, all jagged and dry – and he says, “What gave you that impression?”

“I dunno. The drinking? You always went on about him when you got drunk, so I figured you got drunk so you could go on about him and if you’re not drunk then according to logic and reason it follows that you no longer have anything to go on about, i.e. you’re now having safe sex with sane adults rather then rubbing one off over the family album. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My brother did it all the time. Why do they never grit the fucking roads?”

“I don’t think they bother this far out of town.” Then, quieter, “I kissed him once. It was New Year’s and he was – oh, God, what was it? – he was trying to get these two chicks to kiss and they’d said they would if we did – I didn’t know anything about them, though – so he grabs me by the shoulder, pulls me round and just kisses me. The bastard kisses me in front of everyone, and I’m stood there thinking, well, I’m drunk and he’s drunk so what if this is The Truth? What if we’ve both been too scared to say there’s more than blood between us? It was perfect and I was just so…happy. I know it’s sick to say it, but it was good, it was what I wanted, it was right. Then he pulled away and before I could say anything he’d turned round to the girls and said ‘your turn’.”

Gerard’s head is full of lips and tongues and the feel of teeth through skin and the way someone else’s breath tastes and his voice is shaking like it did ten years ago, like your voice shakes in confession because even though you know the priest shouldn’t tell there could always be someone listening.

“So? He didn’t freak. That’s something.” I tell Gerard this even though I know it’s a lie, partly because the look on Gerard’s face is enough to make dead things cry and partly because that’s why he keeps me. I’m, I dunno, nostalgia on tap. I was there before he was all rock star-ish and he has this total plan where I’m there after, so it’s like I ground him. I remind him that he comes from somewhere and he’s going somewhere and that’s why he calls me at three a.m. on the days when his soul’s seeping out under the hotel door and he can’twon’tcan’t do it anymore. Seriously, it’s like the only reason Mikey puts up with me is the fact that I’ve known Gerard ten years, and Gerard knows I know him, because no one else figured out the penance thing, so sometimes I have to tell him what he’s thinking because…well, you know the guy. You know how he gets. You can’t get addicted to prescription meds unless you need a prescription in the first place, you know?

Maybe the silence has been too long now, maybe I’m running away with myself, so I ask if Mikey’s a good kisser. Gerard says he doesn’t know, maybe it was just good because of what he thought it was. He thinks the world is ending. I tell Gerard he thinks too much, and then I stop because I don’t think I’ve balanced it right. See, I had those Mellows, yeah? And I’ve been smoking them all drive out and the slow blood-beat, that’s there in my head making things slow and smooth, but the rest of me’s still dancing, it’s one big fucking atom-rave and my hands are tapping on the wheel to stop me noticing they’re shaking because some things about me I don’t need to know, y’know?

Except then they’re not tapping, they’re sliding, the whole world is fucking sliding and everything is smooth and sharp and I can’t get a grip on it, no fucking purchase and it slides. There’s snow on the road and it glitters. Close now. It’s red and it shines and oh fuck no, seriously, no, fuck, please, it’s just glitter and blood and help me and he’s talking or I am, I’m saying I’m cold and he’s saying I’m fine but I don’t know, I mean, they aren’t words, they aren’t there, it’s just noise and light. It’s just blood and glitter between us. It’s just sudden, aching cold.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

My Brother's Blood Machine