Work Text:
Gerard closed the door to the guitar shop gently behind him, waving a hello to the man standing behind the counter before walking over to the bass guitar section.
Racks and racks of basses were displayed, their polished finishes gleaming under the warm ceiling lights.
The man who he had previously greeted at the door approached him. He must have been new, because Gerard didn’t recognize him in the slightest.
“Good morning,” the man greeted him professionally. “Are you in the market for a bass today?”
Gerard’s heart sank slightly as he replied: “No, just browsing.”
The man nodded and left him alone, which he was grateful for. Most employees knew he liked to be alone, but he couldn’t fault this man for not knowing.
Carefully, he picked up a bass, cradling it in his arms. It was beautiful and silver, just like the one Mikey had used to rave about before…
Before the accident had happened.
Gerard plucked at a string, revelling in the deep, rich noise it made. He didn’t know how to play bass, not really, but he wanted to learn.
In honor of Mikey.
He began to play a tune at random, sliding his hands up and down the fretboard as he flicked his fingers against the thick strings.
Mikey’s bass had been his pride and joy, but his parents had been forced to sell it in order to pay the medical debts. It hadn’t been enough. He couldn’t be fixed.
Gerard didn’t know many details. He just knew that something happened when Mikey was walking home from work, something that put him in a coma for months.
Something that killed him from the inside out, leaving him brain dead.
Something that forced his parents to pull life support.
Gerard hadn’t known what to do after that. He didn’t understand how to cope, how he could simply accept that he would never see his brother or hear him speak again.
Eventually, his voice would fade from Gerard’s mind. His features would blur. And that thought scared Gerard more than anything.
He turned to alcohol and drugs, and it took him nearly dying drunk in an alleyway for him to realize he couldn’t put his parents through that again. He couldn’t make them go through the pain of losing a child a second time.
He clawed his way up from the hole he had buried himself in, and that was when he found the guitar store.
The employees were so welcoming, guiding him to the basses, leaving him alone when they requested. They never kicked him out, never turned him away because he couldn’t buy one. They simply let him play.
And that was all that mattered.
One day, Gerard would be as good as Mikey was.
One day, he’d be able to go on with his life without having to come to a hole-in-the-wall guitar shop so often.
But not yet.
Not as long as he could still remember everything about his little brother, from his awkward laugh to his scrawny limbs.
Not as long as he could keep Mikey alive, in his own heartbroken way.