Sunset Ave. by opensound (R)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mydecember_/]

Fandom: MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE RPS
Pairing: Gerard/Mikey
Author on LJ: opensound
Author Website: writing journal
Why this must be read: Practically everything that Opensound writes is amazing, and this is no exception. This fic is built on a 'what if?' premise, and it is beautiful. The writing is graceful. I can't say enough good things about this.

If Sunset were a real street probably there would not be room for shops and a school and a park all crammed in, but since it's hypothetical - well, if we want, we can fit in a restaurant here and there, too. Specifically, a block down from Dandelion Boutique. This hypothetical restaurant, it's called Ian's after Ian Curtis, and the inside is all black with neon lights up around the plate-glass windows, and posters from metal bands everywhere. (Plastered over one lone stall in the bathroom is a forlorn Woodstock poster - left up at first for humor value, then for irony, and finally because it was too glued to the wall to peel off.)

Ian's would be highly unremarkable, save for the bathroom stall next to the Woodstock one: the temple of underground gossip, in its own way. Sharpie'd to hell and back with a rainbow of blues and blacks and reds. Phone numbers and infantile song lyrics and, from the occasional poet, a reference - "manuscripts don't burn", "dean moriarty was here".

Best of all, Gerard and Mikey's message board.

It started with Gerard's first attempt at rebellion, when he scrawled in big letters across the back wall, "FUCK YOU" and hoped someone would want to start a fight over it. He was fifteen and his knuckles itched to punch something with solid bone beneath it. (Fight Club hadn’t been written yet; maybe it's for the best that Gerard didn't learn how to make nitroglycerin.)

Two days later he was back and scrawled underneath, in Mikey's spiky handwriting, was "i'll tell mom you said fuck."

Sunset Ave.