Archive of Our Own

On Gerard's eighteenth birthday, he watches his little brother buy his first razor.

"Is this what dad uses?" Mikey asks.

Gerard reaches around Mikey and pulls one off the shelf, red and metallic inside the plastic packaging. "This is the best kind," he says. Mikey raises an arched eyebrow at him over his shoulder. "I don't—I just heard, okay?"

Gerard turns and surveys the rows of toothpaste behind them while Mikey makes his choice. He thinks about weekends when he wanders the stores downtown by himself and stands right here. He knows all about the different razors, knows exactly which one he'll buy when he needs it.

They spend the rest of the afternoon in a thrift store, Mikey in the jeans section while Gerard makes his way through the t-shirts, fingering worn-in and pilling cotton. He checks out the decals, looking for anything cool.

"Longpoint? Is that where we used to go bowling?" he calls out to Mikey, narrowing his eyes at a faded black shirt with a vaguely familiar logo on it.

"Dunno, maybe?" Mikey's plastic shopping bag is hooked over his wrist, bumping coat hangers as he flips through the jeans. "So much fucking acid-wash, it's hopeless." He sighs and looks up, meets Gerard's eyes across the racks. "You gonna get anything?"

Gerard hesitates and then puts the shirt back where it was hanging. "Nah. Don't wanna go around promoting any old bowling alley."

On the ride home, sun setting on an overcast sky, Gerard watches people swaying side to side with the stop-start of the bus, their blank faces and dull grey raincoats.

"I'm an adult, Mikes. Can you believe that shit?" His brother snorts beside him. He's probably not even paying attention, long fingers wrapped around his walkman.

Gerard tries to picture himself working a day job, coming home every night on a bus that smells of vinyl seats and the funk of B.O., unlocking the front door and stepping into his apartment. Gerard can't imagine it, despite all that he does imagine every day. It's weird. Adult Gerard opens the door and it's sketchy and dark inside, like he can't turn the light on.

Gerard looks at the reflection of him and his brother in the window, feels the body heat along his left side, watches Jersey lurch by in the traffic... he doesn't feel like an adult.

Gerard wants to be annoyed with his parents for having a fancy dinner on his eighteenth birthday, but his mama tells the story about the time her co-worker Bettie's boob fell out when she was doing a cut-'n'-colour and his dad wants to help him with his SVA application and Mikey makes fangs with his asparagus so Gerard ends up smiling and laughing too loudly like always.

After dessert he and Mikey end up at the park down the block, where Mikey says some of their friends are going to be later. Gerard didn't want to invite anyone over because then it would feel like a birthday thing and he'd feel lame for having so few people show. But it's better like this, just bumping into them.

Mikey drops his sagging backpack heavily on the sand by the swings and waves a broad palm at it, grinning at Gerard in the orange of the streetlights.

"Present."

"Uh oh." Gerard sits on a swing and pulls the bag up into his lap, knees together to hold its heavy weight. He looks up at Mikey but he's just smiling.

It's a twelve-pack of Coors and Gerard rolls his eyes, pops the tab on one with a hiss and passes it to his stupid brother. Who is three years younger and got him beer for his birthday. "Way to make me feel like the older one, booting for me."

Mikey just shrugs and takes a long gulp, throat working. Gerard twists the swing side to side as he opens his own, and even though they're at a playground it feels celebratory, like how you're supposed to end your eighteenth birthday: with beer.

It's well past three when Gerard and Mikey climb in through the basement window, after their friends came and went and Mikey started complaining about being cold. Gerard's not going to miss this part of being a kid. He takes a piss while Mikey shucks his clothes and glasses in the bedroom and returns to the bathroom in his boxers with one of his baggy white undershirts on. He and Gerard maneuver around each other to brush their teeth, buzzed and a little uncoordinated. Mikey's collarbones are sharp in the yellow light and his chest looks almost concave; he's so fucking skinny.

Mikey mumbles something around this toothbrush and Gerard raises his eyebrows at him in the mirror, wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the sink. Mikey leans over and spits, hair falling in his face. "I said what are you looking at, weirdo?" He bumps Gerard's hip with his own bony one, straightening up and washing his toothbrush under the tap.

Gerard finishes and drops his toothbrush into the cup next to his brother's. "You're a fucking twig. How come you never get carded and I always do?"

Mikey makes faces in the mirror at himself. "I dunno. 'Cause they can tell I'm totally a man already and you're still a kid who keeps his pencil crayons in a Polly Pocket case?"

Gerard laughs even as he's saying "Fuck off," which is definitely a sign he's reaching that giggly saturation of beer and exhaustion.

"Reminds me!" Mikey grins, sprinting to their room—way too enthusiastically when their parents are asleep two floors up—and reappearing in the doorway, dangling a white plastic shopping bag between his long fingers. "I desperately need to shave."

Gerard laughs and takes a seat on the toilet, flipping the lid down. "Fine, let's see you shave that gnarly beard. I'll be the adult supervision." There is no way Gerard is leaving Mikey alone with sharp things right now.

Mikey grins to himself and sets the bag on the floor. Gerard watches as he goes about opening the packaging, getting the shaving cream out and filling the sink with water. Gerard likes this: it's late and dark and everyone else is asleep and it's just him and his brother in the tiny bathroom. Gerard doesn't even really mind that he can't shave yet, not when he can be here for Mikey's first time.

"Where do I start?" Mikey wraps his big hands around the edges of the sink and leans over to inspect himself in the mirror, tilting his chin up and turning this way and that. "It's kinda patchy and all over the place." The muscles in his arms are flexed; with the undershirt and his chin lifted it makes him look strong, intimidating. Not like Gerard's little brother.

"Um, I wouldn't know." Gerard laughs softly. "Maybe do one half of your face first?"

Mikey nods at himself in the mirror and shakes the can, filling his palm with white-blue shaving cream. He pats down one side of his face from the base of his ear to the bow of his upper lip, so thick that even Gerard knows he's doing it wrong.

"You got enough there, Mikes?"

"I feel like fucking Santa Claus," Mikey says, lips tight so it doesn't get in his mouth. Gerard stands up, reaching out to drag his fingertips down Mikey's cheek.

"Hey!" Mikey bats at Gerard's hand, getting cream all over his clean hand too. "You're trying to hone in on my man-time."

Gerard laughs and wipes his fingers down the front of Mikey's chest, smearing across his collarbone and the neck of his undershirt. "Adult supervision!" Gerard says in defense, laughing as Mikey splutters and bats at him, getting shaving cream all over Gerard's arm and probably the side of his face. "Okay! Okay!" Gerard lifts his hands up to protect himself. "I'm done supervising!"

Mikey's grinning and foamy on only one side of his face, his shirt is sagging and splattered with white, and he looks completely ridiculous. "You're my brother," he says, looking Gerard right in the eye even though they're standing so close. He's only a few inches taller but it's still strange for Gerard to look up at him.

"Um." Gerard feels around his temple for the blob of shaving cream and doesn't find it, probably just smears some into his hair. "Yes?"

Mikey rolls his eyes skyward and lifts his fist, swiping at Gerard's cheek with his clean knuckles. They come away foamy. "You're awesome, and even though you're an adult now or whatever, you're still my brother." He says it to his hand, curling and then flexing his fingers, smeared with white. He looks up again. "You know?"

"Yeah." Gerard wants to hug him, but it might get foamy. Fuck it, it's his birthday. "Me too," he mumbles into Mikey's shoulder, hugging him fast and squeezing hard like he always does, before letting go and stepping back. Mikey is giving him stupid emotional eyes that he sometimes gets after a few beers. Gerard knows there's even more shaving cream in his hair now.

"Hand over the razor," Gerard demands.

"Why?"

"No shaving under the influence. Plus you're a minor." Gerard grins when Mikey sighs at this. "Hold still."

Mikey's obedient, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his chin up. Gerard moves him back against the wall and steps in a bit closer, steadying Mikey's head with a hand on the clean side of his jaw.

"If you move, you could end up looking like the Joker," he says in a dark voice. It only makes Mikey grin and Gerard has to wait for his face to relax again. "Okay fine, no jokes. Just manly, manly shaving in the middle of the night on your older brother's beardless birthday."

As he lifts the razor to Mikey's face Gerard feels something big fill his ribcage, like this first stroke is it, it's the end of his little brother being a kid, of Gerard pretending to be the mature one when he's never felt like it, of the space between them. Then he blinks because he's stupid and everyone tells him he always turns everything into a big deal when it isn't. He makes himself touch the metal blade to the foamy skin just below Mikey's cheekbone.

By the time Gerard's worked his way in careful down-strokes from Mikey's ear to the side of his mouth, he has to stop to rinse the blade in the sink and he's got foam all up his wrist. It doesn't smell quite like the shaving cream their dad uses but it's got that same old-guy-cologne scent, kind of musky. Mikey's fingers fiddle with the hem of his undershirt and he shuffles his feet apart a bit so Gerard can step between them when he comes back to make short little strokes above Mikey's lip and along his chin.

Gerard is slow and precise, sobering quickly. It's his first time using a razor but it feels like second nature, like any tool he wraps his fingers around—paintbrush or sculpting blade—where it's about a steady hand, working methodically to stay inside the lines, wherever you want those lines to be. The curve of his brother's nostril, the edge of his red lips.

"What's it feel like?" Gerard asks quietly, thinking about all the times his brother's asked him that about things. Mikey swallows and Gerard feels it under his thumb, tucked below Mikey's jaw.

"Weird. Like it's scraping, but it doesn't hurt. My skin feels kinda stretchy." Gerard steps back, lets Mikey frown and bunch and wiggle his lips, moving his face around. "Rubbery. Not totally numb like at the dentist, but kinda like it's..." Mikey meets Gerard's eyes and lifts his own fingers to his shaved cheek, fingertips playing lightly down to his jaw. It's kind of weird and intimate to watch. "Like it's not my skin," Mikey says at last.

Gerard tries to imagine it, but just thinks about drooling on himself after getting a cavity filled. He reaches up but hesitates, Mikey's fingers still in the way. "Can I?"

Mikey nods, lets his head fall back against the patterned wallpaper, eyes on the ceiling and hands by his side. Gerard rubs two fingers in a small circle on the edge of Mikey's jaw, but it just feels like skin to him so he runs the forefinger of his other hand along Mikey's unshaved cheek, and—"Oh." It does feel different, and Mikey's chest rises with his quiet inhale as Gerard's fingers slip under his ears and he swipes his thumbs back and forth, cupping his brother's jaw in both hands. Gerard's thumbs look blunt and inelegant next to the defined lines of Mikey's face.

"So weird," Gerard whispers, inspecting the tiny dark dots of stubble on Mikey's cheek, feeling it drag like sandpaper under the pad of his thumb. The other side is strange with how smooth it feels. None of it seems to fit with who he's always known Mikey to be.

Mikey hums his agreement, a vibration against Gerard's hands, and almost in response he skirts his fingers down Mikey's neck, the hard ridges of his trachea.

"You're kinda prickly here too, y'know," Gerard says, and looks up, but Mikey's eyes are still on the ceiling and it feels suddenly awkward; it's the middle of the night and he's feeling up his brother's face. He huffs a soft laugh and lets his hands drop. "Sorry. Guess I don't have any of my own to feel."

Mikey shifts, hooking a finger into the neckline of his undershirt and pulling it down. "I'm gonna be fucking Wolverine, aren't I?" he asks with a small smile, baring a patch of wispy brown hair below his collarbone.

Gerard plucks at one of the strange-looking hairs, wanting to feel inadequate but not finding it in him because it's his brother. "'Least I won't have to wax my chest," he says, stepping back and reaching for the can of shaving cream. "Let's do the—"

"Gee," Mikey says quickly, soft but sharp, big hands coming up to bracket Gerard's face just like he'd been doing to Mikey. His eyes are intent on Gerard's face. "It doesn't really matter, I've got stupid Wolverine fur but you've got fucking everything else. I promise." Gerard frowns, shifts his weight, but his head is held still in his brother's palms. "I know," Mikey concludes.

"I don't have everything else," Gerard says in a small voice, and for some reason he finds it hard to meet Mikey's eyes. He wants to say forget it, it's not a big deal but sometimes it feels like it is and a part of him likes it being acknowledged. They stand like that for a moment, Gerard waiting for Mikey to say something or let go of him, but neither happens and he eventually drops his eyes to the stretched-down neck of Mikey's undershirt.

"I—" Mikey starts, moving forward slightly before stopping, like he was going in for another hug. Gerard glances up and realizes Mikey's staring at his face but not his eyes, a few inches below them instead, and Gerard's heart is suddenly hammering in his ears. Mikey moves in again and Gerard barely has time to wrench his head sideways in his brother's grip. Mikey's mouth lands on Gerard's jaw, his cheek sandpapery against Gerard's lips as Gerard clenches the can of shaving cream tight in his fist.

"Um," Gerard says, squeezing his eyes shut because suddenly they're prickling and his chest feels too small again, this time because it's flush against Mikey's, warm and solid. It's awkward and overwhelming and Mikey seems frozen. Gerard knows his brother hates talking about how he feels, so he takes a deep breath and lifts his own hands to cup Mikey's jaw, their arms touching where they're bent between them. He tilts, rests their foreheads together. He has no fucking clue what to say.

"Mikes," he breathes, and looks at him, blurry so close up. "I get it."

He feels Mikey's fingers clench a bit harder on his jaw, ten points digging in along his cheek and behind his ear. "No, it's not—" Mikey closes his eyes, breath minty and warm across Gerard's face. "It's not perfect, okay? Growing up. Shaving. Whatever."

"I know," Gerard says immediately, and then "I know" again when he realizes that he really does know. Being an adult, let alone a teenager, is fucking confusing and gigantic and huge and he never knows how to talk about it, always feels like he's going to fill up and burst with all the things he feels—all the anger and passion and possibility and fear, coming home from his someday-job, opening the door to his apartment and not knowing what it'll look like inside.

Mikey makes a choked noise. "You think so?" he asks as he moves his face out of Gerard's grip to press it into Gerard's neck, hands clenching tight on his shoulders. Mikey shifts his weight forward and it brings them flush up against each other from chest to knee and—oh. God.

"Fuck," Gerard sucks in on an inhale, and he goes to step back but Mikey's holding tight so he has to just stand there and feel it, feel his brother's dick, hard against his thigh. The shaving cream clatters into the sink, Gerard's nails digging into his palms.

"You can have the stupid beard," Mikey mumbles into Gerard's neck, like this way it's not part of him, not the same body. Gerard can smell him and feel his lips move—can feel everything—and it spreads out across his shoulder blades, down his spine.

"Jesus." Gerard turns his face and whispers into Mikey's hair, "You can't joke about—about this shit, okay?" His hands are restless and it's only when he uncurls his palms that he realizes where they want to go, what it might mean.

Instead Gerard grabs Mikey's shoulders and pushes as he steps back, eyes anywhere but Mikey's face, just putting space between them. Mikey's staring at him. Gerard sits heavily on the toilet seat and scrubs his hands over his face, waits for Mikey to say something that might make this okay, make Gerard feel less like he's going to throw up and pop wood at the same time.

Neither of them say anything for a few awkward moments. Gerard comes to the conclusion that thinking isn't helping, that it's giving him that anxious, spiraling feeling that he doesn't know how to deal with this, he's not really an adult, he never will be. He eventually looks up and he sees his brother standing against their bathroom wall, broad palms on his thighs trying to smooth the fabric of his boxers down, but he's fucking tenting them and his knees are turned in and his eyes are cast down and every fiber of Gerard's stupid eighteen-year-old being wants to make it better.

He runs a hand down his face again, catching his bottom lip, and the sensation of wet on his fingertips makes him shiver. He realizes he's tensed up, his skin buzzing. He wants to stand and do something but it's too big, scares the shit out of him, he doesn't know if it'll actually help.

"What do you want to do?" Gerard finally asks, measuring the exact order of the words before he says them, trying to keep his tone steady when the rest of him really, really isn't. It makes him feel responsible, something which still doesn't seem right for his body, the shape of the words on his tongue.

In response, Mikey squeezes his eyes shut and hooks a hand under the elastic of his own boxers. Gerard doesn't know what to do but start counting the diamonds in the wallpaper to the left of his head. Mikey's wide shoulders lift and fall on one side and he lets out a long breath through his nose, shaky at the end of the exhale. Gerard tries to think scientifically about it, like everyone does this, but everyone doesn't sit a few feet away on a toilet seat watching their brother do it.

Gerard finally decides to look because Mikey's eyes are closed, and it's not like he can see much of anything but Mikey's knuckles imprinted on the inside of the cotton as his fist moves, the flex of his skinny thighs. But seeing the whole thing—how Mikey's body reacts, from his hair to his bare toes—makes Gerard feel like he's just collapsed in on himself, and suddenly he's overwhelmed by how turned on he is, his shaky, sweaty palms gripping his thighs, getting shaving cream all over his sweatpants.

The sound of Mikey's breath really isn't that new, Gerard falls asleep to that sound every night, but it's like he's breathing hot, moist Mikey-air right into Gerard, filling his lungs and filling him with what it feels like to be in Mikey's skin, what it feels like to wrap that fist around his dick.

Gerard's toes curl against the cold tile and he moans at the thought. The noise is soft but seems huge in the bathroom, and shit, shit, they have parents upstairs and Mikey moans back almost immediately and Gerard can't fucking—parents. He folds in on himself, face pressed to his knees, hands clutching his shins.

"Gee," Mikey hisses, and all Gerard can think is that Mikey has never said his name with his hand in his boxers before, and Gerard thinks this is it, this is all the evidence they'll need. He wants to shut his brother up but he can't move, dick pressing up against his sweatpants, trapped between his clenched thighs and his folded-up stomach. God, he wants to touch himself so badly it sweeps through him from tensed calves to tight shoulders.

Mikey's bare feet are a soft slap on the tile and the air shifts around Gerard. "Do you want me to go?" Mikey asks from beside him, probably kneeling on the floor next to the toilet.

Gerard shakes his head against his knees and wills himself to sit up, arms braced on his thighs. "No." He bunches cotton in his palms, feels it shift, rough against the head of his dick, and his chest hitches. "Just—don't… don't look." His voice sounds dark, older. Gerard clears his constricting throat and asks "Okay?" a bit more softly.

Mikey nods and Gerard can't meet his eyes, but he doesn't have to because his brother turns around to sit on the bathroom floor with his back against the side of the toilet. "Can I…" Mikey trails off, and Gerard doesn't understand but looks down and sees Mikey's skinny, hairy legs and clenched fists and—shit—the dark spot at the front of his boxers, the shape of—

"Oh, um." Gerard swallows, eyes flicking back to his own lap. "Yeah. Fuck." Gerard has done this before, knows how to do this, doesn't think he's ever wanted to do it this badly in his life. His thighs are squeezed together just for the pressure, the friction.

He sucks in a breath when he realizes Mikey's got both hands already in his boxers, one low and barely moving—touching his balls, jesus fucking christ—the other fisting faster now, like he's just been waiting for the go-ahead. Mikey squares his shoulders against the toilet and his head drops back against Gerard's thigh, which twitches immediately before he forces it tense and still.

Okay. Okay. Gerard breathes, feels like he's blushing from head to toe, but no one's watching, so he goes for it: hand under the waistband, onto his dick.

"Nnnggh." He sounds stupid, like a whale or something, but he can't help it, holy shit. And there's his own hand, dry-rough circle of forefinger and thumb pulling up and down on his cock, but it's like all his nerve endings have rerouted to his left thigh where his brother's head is a solid point of pressure, rolling to the side with the shake of his shoulders. Gerard imagines it shaking through his bones, matches the tempo with his own hand, knows how fucked it is and is overwhelmed by how the thought sends another full-body wave of want through him, toes to prickling scalp.

It's way more intense than Gerard could have imaged. He knows that he's doing the same thing he always does—without any lotion, even—but it feels like so much more... it feels like sex, what the fuck, Gerard doesn't know what sex is like, but it's him and this other person and their body heat and energy are making Gerard so turned on he can't think in straight lines anymore. He wishes he could ask the same question of his brother that he asked earlier: What's it feel like? Gerard often wonders what it feels like to be Mikey, to be tall and thin, to have hips like a boy should and muscles in his shoulders from doing absolutely nothing at all. Gerard knows other people have touched his brother's body like that, but it's different, Mikey comes home and all he brings with him are his long legs, his tiny smiles and sloping posture, no one else's.

Gerard's left hand feels weird and unused, fingers tensing and releasing his sweatpants on his thigh. When he opens his eyes to look—shit, he's close, just looking at hair, the slope of Mikey's nose—his hand twitches sideways, brushes his brother's ear.

"Fuck," Mikey breathes, in that low harsh voice he only uses when he's badly hurt. It twists at Gerard's stomach because they're both here and they're both strung out, overwhelmed. Gerard can't stop it, his other wrist is pumping his dick and his left hand skates awkwardly down the prickly side of his brother's unshaved cheek. Mikey's breath catches and he leans into it immediately. Gerard can't stop himself from watching anymore; he isn't sure there's anything he'd be able to stop himself from doing right now, because he's so fucking gone.

"Not much of a fucking adult," Gerard says a bit hysterically, thinking about his birthday. This is nothing he could have ever, ever imagined—nothing he could have even known he wanted this badly.

"Unnh," Mikey grunts, feet pushing at the bare tiles as his knees draw in and straighten again, slap-slap between skin and cotton as he fists himself. Gerard swallows against his dry throat, shoulders twitching on their own, and rubs the back of one knuckle across Mikey's lips.

Mikey opens his mouth immediately and bites, moaning hard as he lifts off the side of the toilet bowl, stilling for a moment before sagging back. Shit, shit, Gerard's breath catches and Mikey's teeth release his knuckle, tongue sliding over the indents there, wet and hot. Gerard knew it was going to happen but he's somehow still blindsided by how good it feels when he comes, sucking short breaths in as he tenses up while it courses through him, stomach muscles quivering and his eyebrows drawn in tight.

"Oh my god," Gerard whispers when all his breath has left him, leaning back heavily against the toilet tank. "Oh my god."

"Oh my goddddd." Mikey startles him when he says it, laughing around Gerard's knuckle.

Gerard groans, pulls both of his hands back to lie in his lap, sticky with spit and spunk. He frowns and surveys his left hand again. "Did you just eat shaving cream?"

"I totally did." Mikey agrees and heaves himself sideways to sprawl on his back on the bathroom floor. His legs are bent awkwardly and his boxers are a mess, smeared shaving cream still dotting his chest. "Ow." He winces when one of his arms hits the wall as he flings it out.

Gerard lifts a socked foot with every ounce of remaining strength he has, prodding at Mikey's bony ribcage, like hey, hey or should we be talking about this or something. He's surprised to find himself smiling, to see the same curve on his brother's lips.

"Stop it," Mikey says, but doesn't move as Gerard rubs his toes over his chest and around the little patch of hair above the sagging neckline of his undershirt. Mikey grins when he realizes what Gerard's going for and he grabs Gerard's foot, stopping its movement but just holding it there against his chest, warm in the palm of his hand.

"You're my brother," he says, and this time it sounds decisive, final.

Gerard feels a little wild when he barks out a loud, inappropriate laugh in the tiny bathroom and says "I know. Fuck, I know."

END