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“Love you,” Gerard says, pressing a soft kiss to that sweet spot where Mikey’s neck and shoulder meet.
A soft huff is the only reply he receives.
Mikey never says it back and Gerard had gotten used to it. Maybe the words didn’t matter, he’d attempted to rationalize, and actions meant more because Mikey still kisses him like he loves him, touches him like he worships him and looks at him like he adores him, yet there were times when he craves the acknowledgment, the reassurance. Validation. Warm, real validation.
But he never quite gets it. Mikey had never given him any reason to doubt him, to make Gerard wonder if what they have is real, but the need to be told is a real and vicious thing. It alters his reality, mutes the colors of his once vibrant life. The urge to believe he is hated is debilitating, oftentimes threatening to strangle him. The lack of those three little words is a noose and it tightens with each wasted opportunity. However, Gerard believes those words might have the ability to heal all the little broken pieces inside of him. Dull the edges. Make everything hurt a little less. Make it okay. Make him okay.
But it never comes. The self–deprecation spreads, ink on paper, bleeding profusely. Doesn’t stop. Never stops.
“Love you,” Gerard murmurs days later, smoothing his hand across Mikey’s belly.
“Mmm,” Mikey hums in response.
Gerard wills himself not to seek out the devastation in the silence. He lets it sit heavy in his core, searing off layers of skin as it lay dormant within him. It grows, living and breathing, feeding off perceived rejection, chewing on it like hot tar, oozing between the gaps in its jagged teeth. The validation never comes. It abandons him like most good things did.
But Gerard never asks for it either, never begs Mikey to say it, never pleads with him to stick the knife in just a little deeper. Twist it slowly. Hit an artery. Put him out of his misery and let him die. Gerard never asks for that. Instead, he accepts the bitter indifference and lets it melt on his tongue. He swallows it down politely. Complaining about the taste would only make Mikey withhold it, wouldn’t it? He’d rather choke on it than be without it. Lacking the strength or self control to wean himself off of Mikey, despite how acrid the taste sometimes is, Gerard relents and accepts the poison he’s steadily offered. There are darker things lurking in deeper holes, Gerard knows this, so he simply allows his blood to curdle and clot to avoid ruining what he’d been holding onto so tightly.
It would probably hurt less, letting go and learning to accept the absence, but Gerard couldn’t picture himself doing any such thing. He’d quicker give himself permission to fade into the background, becoming the phantom that haunts his own life than inconvenience someone who he loves more than he’d ever love himself.
“I love you,” he says again, unsure if he even said it at all.
“Mm-hmm.”