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The cigarette between Mikey’s index and middle finger shivered with him as he raised it to his mouth. It was too cold outside for a t-shirt, a thin sheet of shimmering, unmelting night-snow covering the yard, his breath forming puffs of fog in the air in between the puffs of smoke. Whatever. He’d been colder, probably.
The sliding glass door behind him squeaked open, and shut. He kept his eyes on the frosted chain link fence separating them from their neighbors as Gerard pressed into his side, taking his rightful place next to him. Usually this is when he’d lean his head on Mikey’s shoulder, but maybe even he thought that would be a little too much right now.
Still, he reached out his hand. Mikey dug around in his pants pocket with his free hand and presented the final three cigarettes in the pack to his brother. Gerard hesitated. Yeah, just as he thought, he’d been asking for Mikey’s cigarette, not just anything he could suck into his lungs and get cancer from. But he slipped one of the unused cigs between his lips, pressed it into the cherry of the lit cigarette, and started getting cancer anyway.
Every so often, the sun slipped between the cracks in the clouds and danced lightly on the snow, threatening to melt it but never following through. The taste of nicotine sat heavy on Mikey’s tongue. A gust of wind knocked a brown, withered leaf from the only-nearly-barren oak tree at the center of the yard and sent a deep, ghostly chill past his skin.
“You’re gonna die like this,” said Gerard, taking off his heavy, black coat, leaving him in a hoodie that probably wasn’t that much better than a t-shirt.
Mikey briefly entertained the idea of darting away and refusing to take it, maybe even leaving Gerard here on the porch alone. But only briefly. Gerard draped the coat over his shoulders, and the warmth immediately began soaking in. He pulled the soft fabric close, trying to take in all the last remnants of Gerard’s body heat.
“I wasn’t cold,” he said sulkily.
“Sure,” Gerard responded, and took another drag.
In the far distance, a car alarm went off for a few brief moments. Gerard shuffled in place next to him, preparing to say something. His hair was falling in his face, dark against his basement-pale skin and the white of the snow. “Look, Mikey…”
“I’m sorry.”
Gerard looked taken aback. “Huh? Why?”
He shrugged in place of baring his heart out. There were a few things Gerard couldn’t know about, no matter how badly the lines separating their thoughts seemed to blur sometimes. “I was being an asshole.”
More confusion knit itself into Gerard's face. “No, you weren’t. I'm the one who started yelling and throwing stuff and… y’know. I’m saying sorry to you right now.”
“I never said you weren’t being an asshole,” Mikey said pointedly. “But.” I was happy when you got pissed off. I wish you knew how I felt when you came back from college with a new girlfriend. I only did it with a random girl because stupid Kathleen wouldn’t cheat on you. “I shouldn’t have dragged you to that party anyway.” I feel like this is never going to end. “We were both being kinda stupid.”
“No, Mikey,” Gerard said quietly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Gerard met his eyes. For the first time since they came out to the porch, Mikey realized. Somewhat nonsensically, he started building walls in his head. It’s not like Gerard was actually reading his thoughts, but…
Gerard’s eyes glittered as a beam of sunlight fell on them. Brighter than the snow.
Then he turned away, and put his cigarette back to his lips. “‘Cause if what you did was wrong, then dating Kat makes me Hannibal Lecter.”
“Hm.” Mikey’s own cigarette was starting to burn his fingertips, so he flicked it into the snow, earning a tsk from Gerard. “That doesn’t actually mean it wasn’t wrong.”
“Are you calling me Hannibal Lecter?”
“Nah, you’re...” hotter than Anthony Hopkins. Shit. Close one. “...more like a Jack Torrance type. Y’know, crazy dude with an axe, not a sinister cannibal.”
“I could be a sinister cannibal!”
Mikey laughed under his breath at how genuine Gerard’s offense was. “Either way, you know.” He tucked the coat closer around his arms. All of Gerard’s heat was gone, replaced by his own, but if he breathed in the fabric, he knew he’d still be able to find the sweat-deodorant-beer scent that all of Gerard’s clothes were infected with. He couldn’t do that now; maybe later, if Gerard didn’t try to take it back. “It’s cool. I forgive you.”
Gerard smiled at him, easy and sincere. Mikey’s chest hurt. Yeah, he was way worse than Hannibal Lecter. Maybe they both were. “I forgive you too,” he said, then after a pause, “even though I still don’t know what you think you did wrong.”
“Cool,” Mikey said, eager to not talk about it, “now I don’t have to feel bad about all those murders I did after.”
Gerard snorted and laughed, and finally pressed his face into Mikey’s shoulder for a second, a kind-of fucked-up not-kiss. Downright evil. “If you ever killed anyone, I hope you’d show me.”
“What, the body?”
“Yeah.”
Mikey’s fingers found the tag of the coat, and started pulling on it absentmindedly. “I would,” he said. “I’d show you the body.”
It felt good to tell the truth. He should do it more often.
Gerard hummed. “So, are you gonna see her again?”
Absolutely not. He didn’t even remember her name, or her face, or her hair color, to be completely honest. And she probably didn’t want to see him either. “Maybe,” he said. “She was fun.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
There he goes again. Psychic powers. There was nothing he could do against that.
“I don’t.”
Gerard nodded against him. “Then don’t.”
Mikey started to feel the itch again, creeping up his skin, and raised his hand, but Gerard didn’t give him the cigarette. Instead, he lifted it up and delicately placed it in Mikey’s mouth himself. Gerard’s fingers were ice cold against his lips, and a shamefully excited shiver ran down his spine. He closed his eyes and breathed in as slowly as he could, like this was his dying breath. But eventually Gerard pulled away, took the cigarette back and immediately took a drag of his own. Mikey watched the cherry flare, watched his brother’s chest rise and fall, watched the smoke trail from his pretty-in-pink lips into the winter air and disappear. No amount of forgiveness was ever going to fix this.