lie and wait forever (goy ficlet)

[schmerica]

I was kind of hoping this would turn into something more storylike, but it seems determined to be more of a plotless character ramble. Still, I like it anyway, and so I am sharing! Plus etben said it didn't suck, so. Here, have an angsty post-war Ghost of You ficlet!

I feel like I should apologize to the Gerard in my icon, to be honest.

Warnings: seriously, Ghost of You universe. The character death is a given, right? More gen than anything else.

lie and wait forever
by Pearl-o

*****

It's well into the evening by the time Gerard returns home, right at that point where the sun is almost but not quite gone, and the shadows hang around everything at odd angles, turning the brightest, most innocuous homes and bicycles and trees full of a new depth and creepiness.

It used to be Gerard's favorite time of the day. Now he barely looks up at the house before he heads down the staircase to his basement.

He tosses off his jacket, letting it crumple on the floor, and rips the tie from his throat, throwing across the room. He gets down on his knees to grope around under the bed until his fingers close around a half-full bottle of whiskey.

It isn't as though Gerard's quite sober, anyway, of course. A Iero family celebration was never stingy on the wine, from what he's gathered. Wine, and toasts, and dancing. It was exhausting, being surrounded by happiness for that long, but Gerard was getting better at it, he thought. All his friends were getting married and having children and going back to school and moving on with their lives; if Gerard wasn't managing any of that, the least he could do was be happy for them.

When Frank had first asked him to be godfather -- baby number two; he and Jamia had gotten married before he left for basic training, and little Frankie was born while they were still in Europe -- Gerard had blinked and burst out with "Frank, I can't, I don't even believe in God anymore."

Frank's smile hadn't faltered even a little. "I know," he said. "Do it anyway."

So he had.

Gerard hugs the bottle of whiskey to his chest and sits down hard on the floor, slumping back against the bed.

There's a glass around somewhere, from last time, and he debates searching for it. He decides against it, though, swigging back a heavy swallow instead.

Jamia had given him the baby to hold after they finished the pictures, ignoring Gerard's protests about how he was going to drop her, or break her, or something. "It's just a baby, you wimp," she'd said with a smile, and thrust her into Gerard's arms

Baby Judy was tiny, precious and amazing, and Gerard smiled despite himself, gazing down at her cranky frown and tiny fingernails and misbehaving hair. Then he looked up, and his eyes caught Alicia's across the room. She was watching him with a steady face, with no expression on it Gerard could read, and it made the bottom fall out of his stomach. He turned away as quickly as he could, but not before he noticed she was still wearing her engagement ring.

There's a small box in Gerard's closet right now filled with a handful of pictures of Alicia and Mikey -- kissing, hugging, holding hands in front of the house, smiling together on the couch the night they got engaged. The stack of letters Mikey carried around with him overseas is there, too, and the half-finished draft of a letter he'd been working on before he died. The unicorn pin he wore on the inside of his cap in his civilian clothes.

By rights, it all belongs to Alicia. If Gerard was a decent person, he would have sent it all back to her first thing. But it's part of Mikey, and Gerard can't make himself let go of anything of Mikey's anymore.

Maybe it'd be better if he could make himself talk to her, see her again. Maybe it'd be better to have someone else who misses him just as much, who has lost him just as much. When Elena had died, he and Mikey had had each other, even if they were across the ocean from the rest of their family and everybody else who knew.

But Gerard feels selfish, like he wants to keep his grief close to him, his alone; he doesn't want to share, not even with her.

Mikey was his brother, after all.

Gerard sets the bottle back on the ground and lies down in the middle of the floor. If he stretches his arms out, he's equidistant from both beds, his and the one that always belonged to Mikey. Gerard doesn't sleep that well anymore.

It's completely dark in the room now. Gerard can only make out the vague shapes of things, darker shadows among the shadows.

In Britain, on leave, he and Mikey had shared a room in a tiny hotel near the coast. There was only one bed and they slept curled up together, on their sides. When they woke up in the morning the sun was shining through the weak curtains, filling the whole room with soft yellow light, and Gerard's leg was wrapped around Mikey's, holding him closer, Mikey's back pressed hard against Gerard's front.

Mikey had said, "I don't want to wake up. Let's just stay here and nothing will ever change."

And Gerard had just laughed at him, kissed his cheek and gotten out of bed.

There's a knock on the door, and his ma calling down to him. "Gerard, honey, I've gotten dinner on the table."

"I'm not hungry," he yells back up.

There's a pause. He can just barely hear his ma's sigh. "Don't just sit down there in the dark, baby," she says. "Come up and talk to us."

"Sorry, Ma. I'm not feeling great. I'm gonna head to bed early."

Another sigh, and his door shuts, and Gerard lifts himself onto his elbows and grabs the bottle of whiskey again.

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