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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.

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Title: My Brother’s Blood Machine Part 3: Bone

Author: Normal Human Being

Pairing: Gerard/Mikey

Rating: PG-13/R

POV: 2nd person, Mikey

Summary: Your brother’s heart is made of wire and bone. It’s a machine. It sluices blood through his system and it rattles enough to convince people he has a pulse, but it’s as incapable of breaking as it is of feeling.

Disclaimer: it’s all fiction and it’s all over, so any lawsuit would be pointless.

Dedications: Anyone who’s reviewed. Oh and rhea for being far too nice.

*

Part Three: Bone

Sometimes it’s slow. He’ll start staggering and slurring, then fold gently to the floor and for some reason you always think those fits look more graceful, like the fluttering of a bird on glass rather than the dying throes of an electroshock patient. Sometimes there’s a warning. He’ll call to you in that panicked, strained voice of his, sounding five years old and desperate, and you turn round just in time to see his wide eyes snap shut, the thin, blistered line of his mouth gape into a foaming ‘O’. Other times he just drops. Blink and he’ll be on the floor in a pile of twisted limbs, choked moans and groans being jerked out of him like hooks from the belly of a gasping fish. Blink again and it’ll be over; he’ll be lying still and quiet, propped up on his elbows while you give him sugar and water because after a fit they’re the things he needs.

"I should really quit this shit," he says, laughing, and shoots smack for a week instead.

You stand on the balcony and smoke as he drinks the water. You concentrate very hard on pulling the smoke into your lungs and then letting it out in perfect rings, just so that you don’t have to think about how Gerard is probably walking to the desk and cutting out thin, white lines that look like slivers of bone. You want to ask him what he’s on today. You want to ask him when he stopped being scared of needles. You want to pick him up, lock him in the trunk of your car and drive him out some clinic in Arizona where highly trained professionals will perform medical miracles on him. But you can’t.

You don’t expect people to understand. Frank sure as hell didn’t, or he wouldn’t have punched you in the face and stopped calling. Neither did Bob, though he pretended to. Ray just nodded and told you to approach things logically. You tried that, made a big list of things about Gerard that made you want to save him:

1.The fits. Which used to mean it was a coke day, but are now just reminders that he hasn’t got many days left.
2.The way his throat’s so fucked he can hardly speak anymore.
3.The way even your shirts are too big for him.
4.The days you’re scared he’s insane, when he paces and screams and flies at you as soon as you step through the door because he doesn’t recognise you (or maybe because he does).
5.The days you’re scared he’s insane, when he sits and stares and sleeps and doesn’t see you coming through the door because he’s oblivious to everything except the images playing behind his unblinking eyes.
6.The shaking.
7.The vomiting.
8.The blackouts.
9.The overdoses.
10.The fact that no one will speak to either of you until you do.

And then you made another list. All the reasons why you can’t bring yourself to put him through it:

1.The days when he’s truly gone and calls you in the middle of the night, begging and crying and pleading for you to just fucking see it.

You have no idea what ‘it’ is, but it’s been there a while now; the first time he came home from college he drank himself stupid and buried his face in the crook of your neck and explained that it was "all your fault, Mikes, Jesus, can’t you fucking see it? It’s in everything and I try, I fucking try, but it’s like I’m not even there. I’m fucking crawling here, it’s your fault and Christ, Christ you’re gonna kill me…" He talked in circles like that for hours, his head pressed to your shoulder and his breath acidic on your skin, saying the most godawful things about how ‘it’ was killing him, how you were killing him, how it was all your fault.

You know you should get over it.

You know it was a stupid, childish, drunken thing that you shouldn’t pay any attention to.

You know that the fact that Gerard repeats this rant every time you’ve worked up the nerve to confront him is merely coincidence, but that doesn’t make it any fucking easier to ignore. Because you look at him, you watch him live the life he no longer notices, and you think this is my fault. And in those moments you’d cut splinters from your own bones and offer them up to him if they were what he needed to feel better because Jesus, you just want to make him okay.

He’s throwing up now. You light a second cigarette from the still-burning stub of your first and listen to the way the paper crackles slightly as it catches fire. The sound of your breathing. The sound of the TV set, still blaring in the room. But not the sound of Gerard being sick. Gerard does not exist until he comes out onto the balcony and stands next to you, one elbow resting on your shoulder. You think you can almost feel his bones through the fabric, so you back away because touching Gerard…you just can’t. It’s not safe.

He looks sad. "I missed it."

"Missed what?"

"It was on the news. It only comes round once every ten years. Her arm came off."

You’ve become adept at piecing together your brother’s semi-sentences, so you think for a moment then say, "Comet?"

"She was really into all that shit. Taught me all the names. Fuck me if I can remember them." He takes the cigarette from between your fingers – well, he reaches for it and you practically throw it at him because his fingers are shaking and there’s blood under his nails and you can’t touch him, you can’t – and sits down on the concrete, slipping his legs through the gaps between the railing. It sickens you that they fit. "There was that hunter one," he says, "and the one that was just a W, I always used to lose that. I’d be, ‘There!’ and it’d be on the other side of the sky. How can you tell?" He shrugs, flicks the cigarette of edge of the balcony. "Her arm was in the middle of the fucking road."

"I know."

"You don’t. You missed it. You miss a lot."

He voice isn’t malicious, it’s sad, almost wistful, but all the same you find yourself thinking about the people that no longer call and the sixth album you’re never going to record and the old age that he’s never going to die from until you have to bite back the words, not half as much as you do.

*

You tried cocaine a couple of times, didn’t like it. You were buzzed for twenty minutes then the high went and you wanted more, as if you’d just smoked the world’s most expensive cigarette. Fuck that. You could get blind drunk for the price of an hour’s worth of the stuff. But then Gerard was born chainsmoking and has the same grasp of logic as a lobotomised ape, so you’re not really surprised that you went your separate ways where chemicals were concerned.

You’re kind of surprised now, though, because it’s five thirty in the morning and he’s spent the last ten minutes hammering on the door of your apartment.

"What do you want?"

"Can I come in?" he asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Quickly? Please?"

For a moment you consider pointing out that your wife, who hates him, and your kids, who he’s not allowed near, have all just been woken up by his attempts to get the door off its hinges and will probably kill him if he so much as draws breath in your apartment. But you’re a tactful guy, so you say everyone’s asleep.

"Oh." He digs his hands even deeper into his pockets and rocks back slightly, balancing on the balls of his feet. You want to run forward and catch him then, wrap him up (or smother him, maybe) and take care of him (or ‘take care of him’, whatever that means), but you can’t. Can’t bring yourself to touch him, let alone -

"Sorry," he blurts out. The words sound genuine enough, but they’re spoken to the third door on the right or the second on your left or maybe even your bare feet, because Gerard can’t bring himself to look at you, even if you’re studying him openly. "Kinda wanted to talk. Um. You okay?"

"Please, Gee, do not tell me you got me out of bed at five in the fucking morning to ask if I was okay." You’re trying to keep the irritation out of your voice, but it’s not happening. It’s five. You’re pissed. He’s…looking you in the eye. His head’s turned slightly but his eyes are on you, definitely on you, and it’s as if he’s suddenly catching every look you’ve thrown him over the last decade, as if he see straight through flesh, he can see the bones with their splinters missing and he can read the truth there. For a moment, you hope and you hope and you hope…

"It’s really sick, isn’t it? I know, I know, asshole me for thinking it, but fuck the things you do! The way you fucking parade it, like you know and you do know, I can fucking tell and fuck! You’re just there. And I’ve been trying so hard to make you leave, I have tried so hard to make you leave but you just sit there. You sit there and you know and God, you must really hate me." He’s desperate and hollow-looking, pressed against the wall as if he hopes the green tiles will melt and bear him away, and you feel cheated because you thought he’d seen something, you thought maybe this was a start, you thought maybe he was more sober then he seemed, but no. This is just the same circular snare as always.

You want to punch him, just to see what his skin feels like.

"I’ve put with a lot of shit from you, Gerard. A lot more than anyone else, because you’re my family and I have this bizarre idea that that’s what I’m supposed to do. But unless you tell me what the hell you’re on about, right now, I am going back in there and I don’t want to see you ‘til they ask me to identify the body." He looks terrified, so you steel yourself and lean forward and say, softer, "I’m your brother. You can tell me."

The look’s there again, and you hope and hope, but then your back’s up against the wood of the door and he’s crashing into you, his lips on yours. One hand twisting in your hair to hold you, the other round your back, the nails scratching splinters from your spine (except they feel more like claws or talons, because there’s something animal about this, about his tongue on your teeth and his breath on your face and the way he clings with a strength you didn’t know he still had. You have been hunted and devoured). You can feel his ribs sharp beneath your palms and it sickens you. Your arms tense, ready to push him away but then he pulls back, recoils, almost shoving you away from him.

Silence.

Thick and dark, this silence, like congealed blood or tar.

"You don’t hate me half as much as you should," he says eventually. "I am grateful. Really. But you should have just left."

*

The Doctors – they’re a collective to you, no names or faces – tell you his heart could go any day now. You have to fight the urge to say no, it won’t, because your brother’s heart is made of wire and bone. It’s a machine. It sluices blood through his system and it rattles enough to convince people he has a pulse, but it’s as incapable of breaking as it is of feeling.

Then again, maybe that’s you. After all, you spent a week trying to find him only to hide once you did. You walked into the motel room (the sixth you’d tried that day, you’d had no idea where he’d gone after he left your apartment that night) and he’d laughed, an empty movie-villain chuckle and said he knew he was irresistible. You had listened, you’d just stood in the doorway and studied your shoes while he raved and laugh and made sick jokes that left you wanting to punch him because you could almost feel his skin against yours. Eventually he’d gone down like you knew he would, like he did every day, down in a tangled mass of limbs and fish hook noises that scraped across your nerves like knives, and what did you do? You stepped outside, closed the door. Leant back on it and waited ‘til the sound stopped, then ‘til you knew there’d been too much silence.

You waited until he was cold, like dried bone (but then wouldn’t bone be warm? Isn’t it buried in flesh and blood and skin and living heat and all those things you’re sure neither of you have any more?), and then you made the call.

He isn’t dead yet, but the Reaper’s working his way down the queue. You can’t touch him because you’re afraid he’ll feel like plastic, as if he’s becoming part of the machines he’s hooked up to; you want to remember what it felt like, his skin on yours, what it felt like to be hunted and devoured. You want hear him raving. You want to watch him be as you remember, to have him taste of chemicals other than hospital disinfectant.

So you sit.

And you hope.

And you hope.

And you hope.
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My Brother's Blood Machine