Chapter Text
“Well, that kinda blew.”
Mikey huffs a laugh as he watches Gerard’s grumpy and disappointed expression. They’re walking out of a comic store, completely empty-handed. Gerard had been searching for a Batman issue that’s been pretty hard to find in any other stores, and this had come as a last resort. It was a pretty decent drive from their home, not crazy long, but long enough to make Gerard upset because they drove out here for no reason.
“Guess the guy was just a bigger Marvel fan.” Mikey shrugs in response. There’d been plenty of Avengers issues and a couple of X-Men issues, several posters and figurines around the shop. Only the more popular DC characters were found, while there were more obscure Marvel characters and heroes everywhere.
Gerard sighs, adjusting his jacket. It’s a fairly chilly April evening, just cold enough to require a thin coat or jacket. “I guess, but how many copies of Spider-Man does one guy need? Seriously, some of the recent ones haven’t even been that good!”
“First of all, you love Spider-Man, second of all, you haven’t read any Spider-Man comics since you read the one where Gwen Stacy died.” Mikey points out, a teasing grin on his face. He’d never seen Gerard as upset and emotionally destroyed by a book as he had when Gerard bought that comic.
“Please don’t mention that around me. I’m hurt.” Gerard clutches a hand over his heart dramatically as they turn a corner to a darker alleyway, a shortcut to get to the parking lot. “I really don’t know if I can handle seeing that in film form. I’m calling up Tobey Maguire and telling him to sit the fuck down.”
“The second one comes out this month, wanna see it in theaters?” Mikey offers, his voice echoing softly as they walk down the alley. “The trailer looked sick. Doc Ock is one of the cooler and more iconic villains.”
Gerard looks at him like he’s crazy. “More than Green Goblin? You’re full of shit,” he smiles, shaking his head. “I guess it won’t be so bad. Green Goblin killed Gwen in the comics, so if he’s already dead, I doubt she’ll die.” he hesitates for a second as he hears a sound, glancing around the area. Maybe a rat.
“Is she even in the first movie?”
Gerard is silent for a moment. “No,” he responds sheepishly. “But I can still worry about it! Maybe she’ll get introduced in this one, and then they kill her at the end! Plenty of movies do that!” he insists, throwing his hands out to express his point.
Mikey snorts in laughter, opening his mouth to respond but cuts himself off when he hears the sound of another pair of footsteps. He slows to a stop, keeping his eyes trained forward and watching as Gerard walks. The new footsteps are out of sync with Gerard’s. It can’t be him. Gerard must have noticed he stopped walking because he turned to look at him with confusion.
His eyes fall onto something behind Mikey, fear slowly flooding his features. “Mikey?” he whispers, his eyes never once leaving the figure behind him. Slowly, he reaches forward and grabs Mikey by the arm, pulling him closer to him. Finally, Mikey turns around and sees a scraggly-looking man standing there. His coat is raggedy and dirty, his hair uneven and shaggy.
“Ain’t you boys a little young to be out this late? Might get caught up in something you ain’t supposed to know about, seeing as y’all definitely ain’t from this area. Where you from, pretty boy? Rockleigh? Rumson?” the man questions. Gerard tries not to let his attention linger on the metal he can see glistening in the streetlight.
He puts his hands up slowly in defense, careful not to make any quick moves. “Summit, sir,” he answers, voice shaking. Mikey steps protectively in front of him, much to Gerard’s dismay. “We’re heading home right now, just had to stop at a store.”
The man raises an eyebrow, his steely blue eyes wide and crazy. “A store, you say? Well, that must mean you’ve got money on you, eh?” he grins maniacally, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a gun. Mikey cringes at the rotten teeth he sees, gaps between some of them where they’ve fallen out.
“I, um… I’ll give it to you. Just please leave me and my brother alone, okay?” Gerard says, fear written into his features as he reaches shakily into his jeans pocket for his wallet. The man doesn’t respond, keeping the gun trained on them steadily and watching Gerard pull out his wallet with hungry eyes. Mikey’s chest clenches as he watches Gerard outstretch his trembling hand to the man.
The man snatches the bills as though he were starving for the money. He flips through the money, and Mikey feels his heart drop to his stomach as he watches his face fall. His piercing eyes slowly look up, staring at Gerard through his eyebrows. “That’s it? Twenty bucks? You a city boy, I know you got more.”
Gerard is about to respond, but the world seems to move in slow motion as he watches the man point the gun at Mikey instead. No , he screams in his mind. Mikey puts his hands up in surrender, his shoulders shaking with anxiety. He feels Gerard’s fingers curl into his sleeve, pulling him impossibly closer as though that would help to stop a bullet.
“You got money on you, kid. You’ll hand it over if you know what’s good for you,” his voice is low as he speaks, his wild eyes trained and focused on Mikey. His posture is a mixture of unkempt and erratic, but he clearly is aware of what he’s doing.
Mikey shakes his head in response. “I don’t have anything on me. We just came from the comic book store down the street. We didn’t bring a lot of money.” he explains, trying to keep an even and steady tone so as to not upset the man any further. Unfortunately, his attempts to explain their reasoning only seems to enrage him.
“Who the fuck doesn’t carry money around with them? Twenty bucks? I could survive off of twenty bucks for a couple days at most!” the man shouts, swinging the gun around as he speaks. “You think just because you don’t need to worry about your money, other people don’t?”
“We didn’t say that! Just–– just listen, okay, we didn’t expect to run into anyone today. We wanted to look for comics, honest to god. Comics aren’t expensive, so we didn’t––” Gerard’s anxiety clearly seems to be catching up to him, beginning to ramble and stutter. His eyes are wide and terrified, and Mikey can only assume he looks the exact same way.
“You fucking city assholes and thinking you can step all over us. You come from Summit to here, where you know it’s dangerous, just to buy some damn comics,” the man growls under his breath, pacing back and forth. “You use us for entertainment and that’s it. Something to use for your convenience. You would’a never come here otherwise!”
Gerard flinches at the man’s screaming, keeping his grip on Mikey tight and trying to shield as much of him as possible. “No, that’s–– that’s not it. Look, we’re leaving right now, okay? We’ll leave and never come back,” he whispers, a hint of pleading in his tone as he tries to reason with the man.
But he loses all sense of hope when he hears police sirens in the distance. Sirens –– usually a glimmer of hope, it means good things. Someone is coming to help, and everything won’t be so dangerous and scary anymore, not when there’s authority present. But not here. Not now. Gerard watches as the sirens seem to register to the man as well, cutting his ranting off and drawing his expression blank. The sirens wail in the distance, slowly droning closer. They can’t be any further than a few blocks away, Gerard realizes.
The man seems to realize this, too. “You bastards,” the man curses, snapping his head up to look at them. Gerard expects him to say something else, expects him to run away and hide, but just when he seems to be turning around to run, he flips back and pulls the trigger.
The world pauses. Everything around him seems to freeze in place, the silence deafening and choking him. He watches as the bullet flies towards Mikey–– when did he get in front of him? ––and pierces him in the chest. The silence is broken by the awful sound of Mikey’s scream of pure pain, instantly falling back. Gerard reaches down to catch him, falling to the ground on his knees beside Mikey, who is twisting and writhing, his face scrunched in agony.
“Mikey!” he screams, his hands hovering over Mikey with complete uncertainty. After a moment of thinking, he begins searching for where the entry wound is. His fingers run over a hole in Mikey’s shirt right on his chest, right over his heart . “Oh, my god. Oh, my god, Mikey. Okay, I’m gonna-- I’m gonna get help, okay? You’re gonna be okay.” he scrambles into his pocket to grab his phone.
“Mikey, don’t–– don’t close your eyes, okay? I’m gonna get help. Just stay awake, Mikey, okay? Okay?” he begs wetly, a lump forming in his throat and causing his voice to be thick and shaky. He quickly opens his phone and dials 911. Before the operator can even finish asking him what’s wrong, he’s cutting her off, pleading for him to send someone to help his brother, that he’s been shot in an alleyway. She tries to calm him down, but he’s having none of it, spewing out the street name.
He turns back to his brother, his baby brother who is bleeding out in an alley, watching his chest rise up and down deeply and his breathing sounding shallow. “Just keep breathing for me, Mikey, okay? It’s–– It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay. Just keep your eyes open and talk to me, okay? Help–- Help is coming, Mikey.” he begs in a hushed tone, voice thick and shaking with emotions.
“I think I’m okay,” Mikey whispers, blinking slowly up at the night sky. “Really, I think it just–– just went in and out.” Gerard knows he means it as comfort, but it only makes the tears in his eyes build up further, his chest tightening and aching. “Doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
Mikey blinks again, and Gerard can only watch helplessly as his face goes slack.
Then, the world truly stops spinning. Gerard looks down at the wound in his still chest, the bullet hole gushing blood. He slowly brings his gaze up to look at the man who killed his brother, his eyes teary enough that he almost can't see the man. Not a hint of guilt in his eyes, nothing that indicates he regrets his actions or feels remorse. The man takes a step back, finally moving to run, but he hears a deep voice scream for him to freeze, and to put his hands in the air.
“Mikey,” Gerard cries, hesitant fingers resting on Mikey’s chest. He shakes him, even though he knows he won't respond. “You gotta wake up, we gotta… we gotta leave. We’re out way too late,” he pleads, his fingers clutching Mikey’s shirt.
“Mom's gonna kill me for keeping you out so late, she'll be so upset with me, Mikey, we have to go,” he begs, the tears stinging and gathering in his eyes. He hears the sound of a car pull up on the street, and his heart drops. “Mikey, please. Please , Mikey, get up. Will you just wake up, please?” A door slams, and he hears the sirens wail around him, the blue and red lights blinding him.
Gerard hiccups, cries beginning to escape his lips. His face scrunches up, his eyes squeezing shut as the tears begin rolling down his cheeks, and Gerard can’t help but feel like he’s falling. There’s a pit forming in his stomach, his heart having dropped down to his feet and leaving his empty chest aching with what can only be described as grief.
He sits there for what feels like centuries until a gentle hand rests on his shoulder, moving to help him get up.