Drums Of The City Rain

As soon as I finished eating i raced upstairs to find my brother humming along to my music on my bed. He’d smudged all his makeup with his glasses but I didn’t say anything because he seemed pretty content. I crept right up to him, he couldn’t hear a thing through the earphones, and hovered centimetres from him. He took an awkward amount of time to notice me but when he did he shrieked and jumped round. “Fuck Gerard, don’t do that to me” Mikey hissed, realising it was only me before jokingly prodding my arm.
“Dude, look what I brought you” I said, retrieving a cold slice of pizza from under my leather jacket. Mikey looked for a second but brushed it aside mumbling “I’m not hungry”. “You’ve had nothing to eat for the past 24hours! How do you do that? I’d be ravenous by now” I remarked. Mikey muttered something indecipherable. “You gotta eat bro come here” I encouraged him, raising the slice to his lips. Suddenly his skinny hand shot past in a blur and the pizza made its way onto my nose, before dropping to the floor leaving a triangle of tomato sauce on my face.
What the fuck. I stared at him for a second, feeling anger bubbling up inside me but as i saw his innocent face turn from a smirk to a look of concern I realised he didn’t mean anything and in unison we both burst out laughing. It’s impossible to be angry at that kid I swear. “You know if you don’t like pizza you could have just said” I chuckled. “I was just getting you back” Mikey replied. “Anyway, you better get to bed before mum see’s you” I said as I shooed the boy out my room. I looked up at him as he scurried out and smiled, I’m so lucky to have him. I mean eachother is the only thing we both truly have and you know what I’m not sure I’d change that. Maybe I didn’t break so many mirrors in a past life after all.

***

I sat cross-legged on my bed, with Mikey opposite, flicking through comics. We’d just had more insults hurled at us but for some reason they didn’t sting quite as much when we were both in the same boat, though it did anger me so much more what they were doing to my brother. You see he’s a good kid, has never once done anything wrong. I found it best just to completely avoid the parents, avoid provoking them, it’s why I spent 90% of my time in my room.
Provoking them included the following things:
-Chewing
-Talking at the wrong time (but even if it was a proper conversation it was still like walking on eggshells)
-Dropping things
-Being slightly irritating to them
-Basically existing.
But Mikey hadn’t seemed to have realised this and the poor little dude kept putting his foot in it. He has anxiety and tries so hard to get past it often ending up overcompensating, he’d always try to help out round the house but often ended up dropping something or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and then as if the fact you could tell he was already torturing himself over it wasn’t enough, he’d 9 times out of 10 get hit.
That very child soon interrupted my train of thought, “look how thin that guy is agh I wish I were like that” he commented, pointing to one of the evil masterminds in my comic. His remark caught me off guard, Mikey was absolutely tiny! “What the hell, you’re already stick thin!” I exclaimed only to receive a mhmm in return. Thinking nothing of it, I tried to alleviate the building awkwardness by handing him another comic I thought he’d like. I looked down at mine, for some reason I wasn’t in the mood to read but I carefully studied the art, thinking about how I could draw the characters out in my own way. Every now and then I glanced up at my brother and he seemed engrossed in the comic. It was such a perfect moment, silent but not awkward, a mutual nothing-needs-to-be-said moment of companionship. I rested my head on Mikey’s shoulder and let my mind wander.
A few minutes, maybe a few hours, who knew, later my brother interrupted my train of thought for the second time. He had finished reading a comic and you could tell he couldn’t wait to talk about it. “dude have you seen this!” Mikey gabbled excitedly. He was clutching a familiar comic, in fact my favourite when I was his age. “Yes I love it omg” I replied grinning. “It was the one that inspired me to start drawing myself”. “Can you help me draw?” he asked, intrigued. I grabbed my sketchbook from under my bed and ripped out a page. “I started out just copying characters until I was used to it, you gotta plan it out in pencil first” I explained while beginning to sketch faint lines. “Who’s your favourite character? Which one do you want to draw?” I asked. Mikey thought for a moment flicking through the comic. “Her” he said, pointing at a curvy woman with long purple hair and a jet pack. “Why her?” I enquired, she was kinda irrelevant to the plot, I expected him to pick the mastermind dude he had mentioned earlier. “I don’t know, she’s, like, kinda, you know… hot” he admitted shyly. “Mikey way, you’re 13!!” I joked, faking shock. He looked away, slightly embarrassed. “Do you fancy her??” I teased. He mumbled something that sounded far too much like “piss off”. “Don’t worry, I get crushes on everyone” I reassured. He didn’t have to know I was lying. “So who do you fancy?” he asked. “Oh I don’t know” I murmured avoiding the question. Luckily just then mum called us both down for dinner and I got away with not answering.
We all sat at the table in painful silence. Our parents discussed parent things, bills, work, politics and me and Mikey didn’t dare open our mouths. I thought back to what Mikey had asked, who do I fancy? You see, in fact I have never had a crush on anyone in my life. For a while I thought I was gay, the thought of kissing a girl did nothing for me and the thought of having sex with one almost repulsed me, but then I realised the thought of the same with a guy had the same effect. I mean I can tell who looks more aesthetically pleasing to me and of course I want someone to talk to, a companion, someone to cheer me up when I’m sad, and I don’t really care who that person is but the thought of sex does nothing for me. I’m 17 for god’s sake, everyone seems to want to fuck everyone right now. My 13 year old brother already has a crush on a comic book character. What kinda freak am I?

Notes

Hi :)
So i'm not really confident with this, i feel like its kinda badly written, i'm sorry, please leave some feedback.
I wanted to use this chapter to explore their relationship a bit further and explore gerards sexuality, which i hope i achieved. I made gerard asexual because literal all fanfic characters are either gay or bi and i find asexuality often gets brushed aside n ya know representation is important n all that. If there are any aces reading this, could you please let me know if i have done this okay? I just wanna say you are not a freak or anything like that but it's how i'd imagine society would make you feel. I myself am bi if thats relevant idk. I'm gonna also do some non sexual frerard later on which i hope i will be able to do well.
Thanks for reading
Megan x
@snailthesaints
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