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For those blissful five months, Richie was happy.
Mikey was quieter during the last month of his life. He just told Richie it was just a heavy mind. Stressed about the restaurant.
Richie was the optimist, only to Mikey. Only to him.
"Baby boy, you know we gonna be alright," Richie would say to him. "Life is too short to feel so much pain - or some stupid liberal shit like that."
Mikey would roll his eyes, but smile.
Richie would wrap his arms around his waist and kiss the back of his neck and rest his chin on his shoulder. A reassuring moment. He knew Mikey struggled with panic attacks.
He should have realized Mikey was struggling with his drug addiction too.
Mikey had made love to him the night before he killed himself.
Unaware of anything, Richie laughed, smiled, sighed and moaned and let Mikey take the lead. Held him tightly and panted his name. He could not get enough. More, baby boy, more. Mikey would laugh and say they were not so you g anymore. But he would try. And fail. And laugh and laugh.
He was so loud.
Richie was dozing in his arms after, dirty sheets tossed and missed to the laundry basket and fresh ones atop of them. So warm. So tired. So happy.
Mikey stroked his skin gently, pace so soft and slow that Richie felt it. Richie felt him tense.
Mikey sometimes cried after sex. He said it was a migraine - "Because of course I don't get post-nut clarity, I get post-nut insanity." - and Richie would comfort him through it. Say it was okay, that it was normal. And he could turn off the lights, close the vent a little bit to help the room turn cold and hold him close. Richie always took care of him.
But this was straight up sobbing. Straight up pain. Just crying and crying.
"Baby, what's wrong?"
Mikey could not talk. Could not breathe.
"Hey, hey, Mikes, come on. You're alright."
"I don't deserve you."
Fuck.
"Honey, you deserve the best. And that includes me," Richie had said. He wiped his tears. "You deserve everything in this world."
"But not you."
"Shh," Richie said. "Don't be saying that. Come on. Lay down. Switch with me. I love you."
"I love you too."
It was the last time he got to hold him.
The next morning, he kissed Mikey hard. Fiercely. Mikey kissed him back, slow, languid. Alive. He was still alive.
It was the last kiss they would ever share.
Now, Richie took two Xanax before he went to the cemetery. It was better than the funeral. He took three and a half.
He slept on Mikey's side of the bed. Ever since he found out that Mikey committed suicide, he began to stay on his side of the bed. He had not stopped.
He was exhausted. And he knew he would probably end up asleep in the office at the restaurant, like he did a few times. Carmy knew about it; the first time, it was after a particularly brutal panic attack in the walk-in fridge.
Oh, that walk-in fridge was sacred. The amount of breakdowns, tears, sobbing, repressed emotions spilling…also he made out with Mikey a few times in there before Mikey slapped his ass and told him, between laughters, to get back to work.
But he had slept in Mikey's office. He refused to call it Carmy's. Carmy told him to go home, and Richie confessed that he did not trust himself to drive.
So Carmy let him sleep. Didn't bring it up. Didn't reprimand him at all.
All he did was turn off the light and keep the door ajar.
Now, he had to go see Mikey, even in this awful cold and snow. He missed visiting him the week prior. He needed to see him, or else he would fail him.
"In another life, we could have been married. Is that why you never proposed? Because you did not want to make me a widow?
"It could have been us," Richie continued. "Our stupid taxes together. You and me, baby boy, against the world. Against everyone and everything.
We could work in your shitty little restaurant and laugh and drink and try to ignore the problems outside these four walls and roof. We could kiss more. Been happier. I would have married you, shown you off in every reunion and occasion and danced with you the same way you danced with me. I would have told you I loved you every single day, every single night, if I was ever honest to myself the way you were to me.
You knew myself more than I knew me. You were loud. Obnoxious, annoying. Enthusiastic. Cheerful. Your laugh made me laugh."
It was the Xanax. The Xanax. The Xanax was making him too honest.
"Baby boy, why did you leave me behind?"
Richie wept.
He fell to his knees against the hard snow.
"Mikey, baby boy, why did you leave me behind?"
And he sobbed. Ugly sobs that made his throat burn. Bitterly hot tears against his skin that could lead to frostbite. Frozen icicles against his skin.
Carmy and Richie were smoking cigarettes in the alley.
"Were you in love with my brother?"
Carmy is staring. In that weird, eerily nearly identical stare just like Mikey's. The inquisitive ("Hell of a word, Mikey would say. Can you spell it?") stare that he would do sometimes.
But the question was beyond out of left field. It was beyond unexpected.
It was fucking wretched.
Were. Were. Past tenses were. Like Richie moved on. Like Richie stopped loving him. Like Mikey was in the past, when he was not. When every breath Richie stole belonged to Mikey.
"What?"
"Were you in love with my brother?"
Richie needed to lie. Because if he admitted this truth. The truth. That he was in love with Mikey and he never once stopped loving him, even when there was a closed casket burial, even when he cried himself to sleep on days that the restaurant was too happy. Or when the Red Sox won. When it was a Fenway game.
He had to lie because if he said the truth, it would make the loss true.
Were. Were. Was. Were. Past.
Carmy waited for an answer.
Richie sniffled. He could barely breathe. Were. Was. Were. The word lost meaning to him now. He lost meaning the moment Mikey was buried.
Life lost meaning once Mikey's heartbeat stopped and once that stupid fucking bullet left the fucking barrel.
Richie couldn't answer.
Couldn't move.
"It's okay if you are."
Richie did not want to talk about it. But he felt like he was bursting beyond the seams. He had already burst. Broken.
Carmy did not wait for an answer anymore.
He pulled him into a hug and there it came. The waterworks. The tears. The outpour of emotions that he swore were no longer there anymore. He was in love with Mikey, still, and would never stop loving him.
"I am."
"It's okay if you are."
"No if, am. I am. I fucking love him. I---"
"It's okay that you are. It's okay. I'm sorry."
"I should have married him," Richie confessed.
Carmy stroked his head. The little brother of the man he loved.
All that was left of him.
He meant it in the car. You're all I have left. He meant it in the car. He meant it. He had to take care of Carmy. Had to keep him safe.
He won't let Mikey down.
He won't let him down at all.