Should the World Fail To Fall Apart

Title: Should the World Fail To Fall Apart
Author: ChemicalMuse
Pairing: Gerard Way/Mikey Way
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: WAYCEST. Don't like it, don't read it.
Summary: Pondering questions that don't have answers.
Author's Notes: Gerard's POV.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

I don't know how long we've sat here by the lake. Seems like hours, but it can't be that long. There's a full moon, shining down on the still water. It looks like glass. Like we could just step onto it and dance, waltz our way around the silver surface under the moonlight and get lost in each other.

It's a nice thought. But right now, I don't want to move. Mikey's in my arms, it's a beautiful night. It's like time decided to stop, just for us. Nice of it to consider two people who're pretty insignificant in the great scheme of things.

Or is this reserved for people like us? People who have to take their happiness in small doses, hide it from most of the world, people who'd be condemned and vilified if anybody knew what they meant to each other. Maybe this feeling of time standing still is made especially for me and Mikey, because we have so little time to be together the way we want.

He stirs in my arms, turning his head on my shoulder to look up at me. He's still wearing those damn glasses, and the moonlight is glinting off them. I can't help but smile, and I reach down to remove them. Mikey blinks up at me owlishly, his eyes wide.

"Why'd you do that? You know I can barely see without them."

I lower my head a little to brush a kiss against his velvety cheek. "Because I want to see those beautiful eyes."

Mikey blushes and closes his eyes, and I can't keep myself from staring hungrily at him, like a starving man who's presented with a banquet and doesn't know what to do first. God, I can't take my eyes off him. How can one person be so damn beautiful? How can everything I've ever wanted in my life be embodied in one perfect being?

"We can't stay here all night, Gee." His voice is soft, and his words come out a little reluctantly. Does he feel it too, the magic of this place, this night? Does he want to stay here like time's stopped for us, like we never have to go back to the realities of our lives?

I wish I could ask him. But as usual, I just smile and kiss him again, this time laying my lips on his. It's not a passionate kiss, not sexual -- just me affirming how much I love him, letting him know that he's safe with me and always will be.

Mikey doesn't say anything else, just parts his lips into the kiss. I love how he surrenders himself to me whenever I kiss him or touch him -- just more proof in my mind that he was made for me. This isn't wrong, I don't care what anybody else says. It can't be wrong to love someone this deeply, to feel this complete contentment when they're with you.

But he's right; we can't stay here in front of the lake all night, as much as I'd like to. For one thing, anybody from the other buses could decided to take a moonlit walk and see the Way brothers naked in each other's arms. Yeah, that'd be a great little rumor to have making its way around the tour. Wouldn't be a rumor for long. I swear, it's worse than high school gossip sometimes.

And for another, it's getting chilly. Mikey's arms are starting to develop goosebumps, and I can't help but feel a little guilty that I've let him sit here for so long without clothes on. But then, I can't feel too badly about it. After all, looking at him naked is one of the great pleasures of my life, and I've never been one to deny myself anything that pleased me.

Well, except booze. I've slipped off the wagon a few times since I got sober, I'm the first one to admit that. But seeing the disappointed look on Mikey's face, knowing that I'd let him down -- that's always enough to make me try harder to keep that sobriety. I hate feeling like I've let him down in any way.

Especially when he's helped me so much. He stopped drinking, too. He didn't do it for himself, even though god knows he needed to. He did it because he wanted to show some solidarity for me, to help me through my dark nights of the soul in any way he could.

And that's why I made it through. It's why I'm not dead in a fucking ditch somewhere, with a bottle in one hand and the other reaching for that last thread of sense in a world that seemed like it had gone crazy. Because Mikey was there for me. Because he kept me from wanting to check out of something that I couldn't control and bend to my will.

Every good thing in my life is because of him. The band, the success. The band wouldn't even exist without Mikey learning to play bass because he wanted to be in a band with me. And the success? I pushed us to get to this point more for him than I did for myself.

Because no matter what, it's always been about Mikey for me. People can say all they want that I'm some kind of conceited prick. They don't know me. They don't know how much I love him, that I'd do anything for him. They don't know what exists between us.

And they never will. As much as I wish I could scream it to the world -- I'm in love with my baby brother, I've always loved him -- I know I can never do it.

It doesn't matter. We've got each other. I love Mikey, and he loves me. That's enough.

He sits up, reaching for his discarded jeans. I can't help but sigh that the spell's broken, and I let him go and stand up, pulling on my own pants. I've got to laugh a little at the sight of the shirts we've been sitting on, crushed into the ground and embedded with grass. It's pretty obvious that they've been through the wringer.

"We're going to have to find a hotel with a laundry room pretty soon." It's a stupid thing to say. But I've never been good at finding appropriate things to say after sex. Unless Mikey and I are in bed and I feel comfortable and articulate. I wish this was one of those times.

Mikey nods, pulling on his shirt and grimacing. "At least we should be able to get back to the bus without anybody seeing us." He smiles over at me, sliding his feet into his sneakers and leaning down to tie the laces. I can't help but watch him, admiring the graceful curve of his shoulders, the way his hands are working at doing something as simple and everyday as tying his shoes.

It never fails to amaze me how everything Mikey does is like poetry to me. Just stupid little things, like tying his shoes, pushing his hair out of his face, opening a door. The perfect way his body just seems to flow from one movement into another. Like quicksilver, mercury flashing through the atmosphere.

I push my feet into my boots and silently hand him his glasses back. I even love the way he reaches out to take them and puts them on, pushing them up on the bridge of his nose. I just want to take them off, wrap my arms around him, kiss him until he's moaning for more and push him back down on the ground .....

No. I've got to stop thinking like that. This isn't the time to be focusing on my sexual appetites. But with Mikey standing there in front of me looking so insanely beautiful, it's damn hard not to.

I reach out and take his hand, nodding toward the path that we followed to get to the lake. "Back to the bus, huh?"

Mikey sighs, his gaze moving back towards the perfect silver surface of the lake. "Yeah .... back to reality. I guess we can't live in some enchanted fairyland forever."

I can't help but gape at him a little. He's just put into words the exact thing I was thinking. It's fucking eerie sometimes how our thoughts travel along the same paths, as if our brains are wired with the same synapses.

"What?" He gives me that confused look, that adorable I-don't-know-what-I-did-to-make-you-look-at-me-like-that stare that's a little scared, a little confused, and completely Mikey. I can't help but laugh and pull him into my arms, kissing his forehead.

"Nothing. It's just that you expressed exactly what I was thinking."

He's quiet for a minute, then, "We do that a lot, don't we?"

I nod and let him go, taking his hand again. "Yeah. But it just proves that great minds think alike .... or whatever that old saying is."

He shakes his head, looking down at the ground. "You've got the great mind, Gee. I'm just the little brother who tags along behind you."

"No, Mikey." I can't let him think like that. Pulling him into my arms again, I raise his face to mine, gazing into his hazel eyes, wide behind his glasses. So much like mine, and yet different. "You're the reason I am what I am. You're the reason I'm here. Everything I've done in my life has been for you. From the time we were kids. You're the reason I'm alive."

I don't have any more words in me. Just what I feel for him. I can't let him go now that he's in my arms; I have to stand here a few minutes and just hold him, feel his heart beating against mine. Letting him go now would feel like ripping my soul out.

I can't get anything out but a hoarse whisper. "Mikey .... you're my life. My heart and soul. You always have been. You're ..... you're everything."

His voice is just as soft as mine, a little choked. "You've always been everything. I don't need anything but you, Gerard. I never have."

"I know, baby. I know." And I do know. I know how much I mean to him. Because he means just as much to me.

I take his hand firmly in mine and head towards the path back to the bus, out of our enchanted forest and back to reality. There's still a lot of questions in the back of both our minds, I don't doubt that. Stuff we'll have to talk about eventually. But for tonight, those questions aren't important. All that matter is that we're together, that we love each other.

I'm going to have to face those questions sometime, and so will Mikey. Maybe sooner than we realize. I don't want to. I want us to stay the way we are now. But I know we can't. I know we've got some hard realities that we've got to wrestle with, and who the hell knows if we'll beat them.

There's so much facing both of us. I know I can handle it. I've always been able to stare down situations and get past them. But Mikey doesn't have that inner strength. He's always needed me to watch out for him, to protect him. And it scares the hell out of me that this is something I can't shield him from. He's got to find his own answers to the questions, and be able to deal with them in his own way.

Those answers can either bring us closer than we've ever been, or rip us apart so bad we won't ever find each other again. That's the only thing in the world I've ever been scared of, really. Losing everything I care about.

Losing Mikey. Because he is everything.

All I can do is squeeze his hand and hope he's not feeling the same way I am. Scared, nervous, not wanting to face the future. I want to protect him from those feelings. I don't want him to have to look them in the face. I don't want him to deal with anything that could hurt him. Or take him away from me.

There's the parking lot, the bus. Back to reality. Back to being Gerard and Mikey, just brothers and bandmates. Never mind that we're so much more than that. Mikey turns to look at me, and from the look in his eyes, I can tell his mind's been traveling the same paths mine has.

I just hope those paths don't scare him as much as they do me.