FicWad

So (Not) Alone



I don’t really know what happened. We used to be so close, for a time I was even closer to him than his big brother and that’s saying something; never have I known a pair to be so dependent upon each other’s love and support as the Way brothers.

I’d had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting Mikey Way on my first day of living in Belleville. I had been ten at the time and confused as to why I’d had to leave all of my friends behind, why my dad no longer lived with me; why my whole fucking life had been fragmented and scattered haphazardly all over the place. I’d tried to run away and it was going pretty well, too. But then, just as I got to the local park, a boy fell from the sky. No, an angel fell from heaven, a God sent boy to rid me of my troubles; a friend.

Okay,so it didn’t really happen like that. He didn’t descend from heaven in a shroud of radiant light with some sort of choir of angels singing his praise, that would have been far more fitting apart from I don’t believe in God and even if I did I doubt that he would show a kid like me any form of sympathy, far from it; he’d been climbing an old oak tree, trying to keep up with his brother, and had come crashing to the ground in front of me in a heap of bruises, cuts and tears. A sight that the following years would force my eyes to become accustomed with. I could have ran on, every logical part of me was telling me to keep going or else I’d get caught, but I instead listened to my heart, the one part of me that I allowed to always remain illogical, and stopped. I halted and knelt in front of him, taking in his appearance; his skin was like someone had stretched the finest white cotton over his bones, his hair was a sandy slick that flopped over his face and his face was strangely cute in an adorably awkward way. I’d tapped his shoulder gently in an unsure attempt to gain his attention amidst his hysterical wails that I found hurt me as much as the fall must have hurt the poor kid, a feeling that I would fast become used to. Mistaking the tap to be from his older brother, who had just realised what had happened and was racing to get down from the horrible tree that had inflicted such pain upon such an undeserving victim, Mikey had launched into me, knocking me flat on my back in the process. Unsure of what to make of it, I just held him and stroked him until Gerard could take over. By that point my mom had caught up with me and was furious, or rather she would have been had the Way brother’s not been there; they came home with me and we were best friends ever since.

My first day at Belleville Elementary could have been terrible. I could have been the difficult and miserable sod that had earned me many a bad school report in my past school. I could have cried my eyes out at the prospect of leaving my mommy. I could have screamed in terror upon seeing the big kids giving me threatening glares. It could have been the worst kind of hell. But it wasn’t. Because of Mikey Way. He made me feel happy and confident with his friendship, so much so that the teacher’s praised me for having such a positive attitude. He made me feel like I didn’t need my mommy because I had him to play with me, to help me out should the occasion arise. He told the scary big kids that his even bigger brother would teach them a lesson if they didn’t leave me alone. He made what could have been the worst kind of hell, every kind of fun and pleasure. It surprised me actually that I was the only one hanging around with him; the only one who called him Mikey instead of Michael; the only one who could look past his glasses; the only one that saw his intelligence, awkwardness and shyness as a part of him that made him who was and not as a negative characteristic that made all of the other kids hate him. The other kids. The other kids were narrow minded little shits that needed to have their asses handed to them. Yeah, they were fine to me and tried to befriend me, something which delighted me but seemed to destroy Mikes. When I’d asked him why he’d just told me that it didn’t matter, that he got it if I didn’t want him to be my friend. I laughed that off naively, taking it to be him overreacting, and told him that we could both sit with my new friends at lunch. Oh, how wrong I’d been. As soon as they saw us, me smiling happily and Mikes all but cowering behind me as though I was some sort of shield that could protect him from the relentless onslaught of insults that immediately flew his way, they stopped their mindless chatter. They’d asked Mikes what the fuck he was doing there, which made Mikes hide behind me even more and set free a few crystals of sorrow from his pained portals of vision. I angrily explained that Mikey was my best friend, hoping that it was just some sort of misunderstanding for the collective sake of all concerned, at which point they’d snorted with laughter, telling me to get some proper friends. Mikey had looked so scared that I was going to leave him, so downtrodden that he’d basically lost his only and first friend, so anguished; I just couldn’t take it, he was better than any of them, why was I the only person (bar Gerard) who could see that? One boy even snuck up behind us and shoved Mikey into a nearby muddy puddle, causing him to full on bawl in every type of pain imaginable. That was it. I completely flipped. The snotty little shit who had dared to hurt my best friend had to have stitches by the time I was done. After that I was about as much of an outcast as Mikey, but that was okay, because we had each other and for us, two young boys with a fascination about horror films and comics, that was more than enough.

And so it went on for years; us being best friends; him being picked on; me protecting him to the best of my ability. But then we hit high school. That tricky period of life that has a tendency to make people become someone they’re not; to turn innocent, pig-tail toting girls into easy sluts; to turn boys who want nothing more than to be a super hero into a mindless, lusty douche bag who wants nothing more than to have been with more cheerleaders than his so-called mates; to turn two best friends into strangers. As much as it agonizes me to admit, I grew up and grew out of being an outcast. Mikey, on the other hand, remained the quiet yet brilliant individual he’d always been. I felt the pressure to have more friends and to fit in. Mikey seemed to be content with having just me and his brother, he didn’t see the problem with wearing old band t-shirts instead of the latest trends. I got into sports so I could the cheerleaders that all of my new friends constantly wore on their arms. Mikey never showed any interest in athletics (probably due to more than one negative experience revolving around getting repeatedly tripped up) and came out as gay the second year of high school. I became everything that I had once hated in order to be part of an ideal I didn’t even fully believe in. Mikey remained everything that I longed to be because he's smart enough to know who he is and that no one else should be able to change that. Throughout the first year we were still pretty close, I was busy making new friends a lot of the time and he was busy studying, but the cracks were already starting to show; I ditched the majority of our routine sleepovers and movie marathons in favour of going to parties with a bunch of users who didn’t even know me. By the second year we only ever really spoke to each other in classes that I didn’t share with any of my new, popular friends and, even though I could tell that my lack of friendship was killing him, I thought that my life was pretty sweet; over five-hundred Facebook friends (over half of which were some slutty girls I’d never even spoken to), girls begging to go out with me and guys admiring me like I was some sort of god among men. Half way through the second year Mikes came out and things only got worse for him. I don’t think I ever saw him without someone yelling abuse in the background or without a black eye staining his perfect porcelain face. Once I even caught my “friends” kicking the shit out of him and I had done nothing, my ridiculous fear of rejection preventing me from saving the one person who actually knew and understood me. That had obliterated any happiness my fake life may have been force-feeding me, seeing someone I would have once killed for getting beaten up for being the person that I would have killed to be made me realise something; I was behaving like those little shits from elementary school, little shits who still make my blood boil. I became the one thing I had prayed I would never be; a stupid fake. But I was worse than that; I was a stupid, fake, bully. Yeah, I never actually hurt him physically but I saw how he looked at me when I let them beat him up, his eyes were conveying the exact same things as they had been all of those years ago at elementary school; something I’d wished to never see again.

Now here I am, three years into high school and still acting like the selfish bastard that I have become. It’s laughable really. Mikey is kind, smart and caring yet has no friends or lover. I, on the other hand, am falsely stupid and an absolute dick-head to everyone yet I have more friends than I care to count and have been with more girls than I have the ability to remember. But none of them know who I am, understand my thought process; none of them can ever come close to my true feelings and emotions. Only Mikey could ever know me, understand me, completely get my feelings and emotions. But no, I don’t even have him anymore; I pushed him away like the stupid prick I am. My god-sent angel that had fallen from the sky like some sort shooting star is now shattered and broken because I’ve ripped out his wings and left him to the mercy of gravity. You know what people say about not knowing what you have until you lose it? True, absolutely, one-hundred-percent true. Apart from I knew exactly what I had, I was just stupid enough to think that it wasn’t enough, that I could do better; I can never do better than Mikey Way. He’s the person he wants to be, an aspect that gives him my upmost respect, and I’m a person that I loathe, an aspect that makes me realise just how ridiculously stupid I am. If I ever came out as gay, I would lose everything, which is why I must keep telling myself that what I feel for Mikey is just an extremely strong sense of friendship and regret. Who the fuck am I kidding? I’m gay for Mikey Way and have been for years! But he can never know; it's not like he’d want me anyway, not after the way I’ve treated and betrayed him.

I feel my phone vibrate, nudging me out of my self-pitying thoughts. I flip it open and press it to my ear.

“Frank, is that you?” A panicked voice shoots through my mind, a voice that I know but can’t quite place. No. Wait a second; I know who that is!

“Gerard?”

“Yeah, Mikey’s big brother.” He sounds like he’s been crying. Oh shit. What if something’s happened to Mikey because I wasn’t there to protect him like I always vowed I would be? What if I’ve lost him? Despite all that has happened, the thought of losing him tears me apart; if anyone should be taken by the cruel hand of fate, it should be me because I am the worthless one, the one who has betrayed all that I know and love. “Look, I know that you two aren’t as close as you used to be.” Ha-fucking-ha. “But I think he really needs you right now.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” My words come out like a surge of blood from a bullet wound and seep through the silence that his worrying statement has caused. I hear him give a heavy sigh, weighing down my own feelings as I can sense that whatever he says next will impact me like a nuclear explosion. “Gerard, what’s happened to Mikey?”

“He’s in hospital. He… Frank there’s no easy way for me to put this, but…” My heart’s pounding so hard that I swear it’s about to burst through my chest and splatter across my bedroom. Mikey’s in hospital? That means he’s hurt bad, right? What if doesn’t get better? Then I’ll have to live with the guilt of letting him die alone, without hope and without his protector. I’ll have to live with a broken heart and soul, living the meaningless life of some douche bag guy that I made up to give myself some sort of life when I was unaware that I had the best life that this world has to offer; a life where someone loved me for me, not for someone I’m not. If he dies I know for sure that every version of me will die too, but even then we won’t be together because I’ll be burning in hell. “Frank, last night Mikey tried to kill himself.”

My heart stops beating and my ribs tighten relentlessly around it. My eyes mist over with a thick fog of tears but I can’t let them fall; I don’t deserve the release that crying delivers. Holy fuck. My best friend tried to blot out the one ray of hope that shines into my pitiful life and I had as good as told him to do it; how am I supposed to even allow myself the privilege of breath after hearing that? We used to be so close, we used to be able to sort out each other’s problems in the blink of an eye but now he’s lying in a hospital bed by his own hand all because I hadn’t been around to listen, hadn’t been there to show him that somebody does care. But nobody did, I can try and tell myself that I cared in some sort of attempt to lessen the guilt, but if I really had cared would he still have felt so utterly hopeless as to end all of my hope for a better future? No. Because I would have stopped any of this from happening.

But I care now, I know that I have to tell him how I feel.

“Frank? You still there, buddy?” Buddy. I’ve been called that a lot in the past three years, but this is the first time that the person saying it has actually known who he’s saying it to.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just… Fuck, I don’t even know what to say.” And it’s true, words can’t even begin to describe how completely shit I feel. “Can I visit him?” Even as I ask I’m shrugging my jacket on, I don’t care what the answer is because I will see him; no matter what.

“Of course. I’ll come pick you up.”

I hang up, my expensive cell falling to the floor and smashing like my world has just done because, as I have just realised, without Mikey Way my world is hell. No, not hell. Purgatory. With hell at least you can get the sense that you’re paying for what you’ve done; in purgatory you don’t even get that. I’d give anything to be in hell right now, just so that the deserved pain that would get inflicted upon my pathetic body would distract me form all that I have done to the one that I love. I don’t know how long I sit, tears slowly breaking free from the cold prison of my eyes and escaping down my cheeks, but it feels like an eternity has passed until I hear a car pull up outside.

Sure enough, it’s Gerard and before my mom can even ask where I’m going, I'm in the clapped out old Jeep and we’re accelerating down the road. Neither of us speak, so I just look at my old best friend’s big brother and take in how he’s changed. But then I realise that he hasn’t, not really. I’m the only one out of the three of us who has been stupid enough to change, stupid enough to lose my personality and individuality. I’ve never seen him cry before, though. He was always the strong one, but now, after almost losing his amazing little brother and not having done anything to stop it, now he is almost full-on weeping at the wheel. My heart cracks in sympathy; neither of the Way brothers deserve this and I don’t come anywhere close to deserving their friendships.

My doors open before the car is even stationary and I’m sprinting towards the hospital, my feet moving as quickly as the liquid daggers of pain that are slicing through my face. I instantly spot Donna Way sat crying in the reception area. She hasn’t changed either.

“Which room?” I demanded hurriedly, wanting nothing more than to make up for lost time, time that I know I’ll never make up for losing.

“Three-five-two.”

I nod my thanks and head for the lift, my legs working of their own accord.

Just what am I going to say? I can’t just expect him to welcome me with open arms, a smile on his face and a kiss waiting for me on his lips. As much as I want to believe that he’ll just forgive me, I don’t want him to; I have to make it up to him or else this screaming guilt will deafen me.

Before I know what I’m doing I’m outside of his door. I knock.

“Come in.” Fuck he sounds so weak, so resigned, so… unlike the Mikey I know. And it kills me.

I sheepishly step inside, letting out a gasp when I see him. He looks so pale, so helpless, so without motivation to live or breathe or be happy. I go and perch cautiously on his bedside armchair.

“Hello, Mikey.”

He turns to look at me and immediately a small smile illuminates his stunning face like the dainty lights of a Christmas tree lights up the intricate decorations.

“Frankie! You came!” Wow. He doesn’t hate me like he should do, like I feel I need him to.

“Of course I did. You’re my best friend.” And it’s true; he is my best friend, my only friend who actually knows me. His face lights up even more, like he expected me to say that I hated him, something that I could never do. “Shit, Mikes. I’m so sorry.”

“What for? You’ve never beaten me up or called me names, the only thing that you ever did was show me what friendship can be.”

“No, Mikes! I need you to be angry with me! This isn’t friendship; friendship is what we use to have. You have to tell me how awful I’ve been and how you feel before we can even consider going back to how we used to be.”

As much as it stings to yell those words at him, still in a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages around his precious wrists, I know it’s for the best, that it’s the truest thing that I’ve said since starting high school.

His face crumples and sobs explode from his gasping mouth like torpedoes being fired from a military vessel; they hit their target perfectly and completely bombard every iota of my being.

“Okay, Frank, okay. Do you know what? I fucking hate you! Remember the kids you used to protect me from, you’re just like them, but worse! At least they never acted like they were my friends; at least they weren’t fucking traitors! Want to know what hurts the most? I thought that you were different, that you actually liked me; guess I really am as stupid as I fucking look, huh? I wish I’d never met you, at least then I wouldn’t know what I’m missing. I could be perfectly happy, being a lonely little faggot, but no; now that I know what friendship feels like I have to live every day knowing that I’ll never have it.” I’ve never heard him like this before, never have I seen him so furious, so broken, so sad, yet so undeniably loveable. The only thing running through my mind is that I have to make it all better for him, that I have to kiss all of his wounds better. He sniffles slightly, breathing in deeply as though he’s preparing to bungee jump into Lucifer’s pit of destruction. “I have to live every day knowing that I’ll never have you. And that really fucking hurts, Frank! Knowing that I’ll die alone and unloved because the one person I’ve ever dared to love is some self-absorbed shit who breaks a different heart every week!”

Wait a second. Did he…. No. He can’t have. I replay his last anguished scream back in my head and sift through the true, yet burning, insults and my heart nearly stops. He loves me! Mikey fucking Way loves me!

“I love you, Mikey.”

“And now you’re taking the piss out of me! But what did I really expect? I love you with all of my broken heart because I stupidly believe that, below you shallow persona, you’re actually still the best friend that I almost flattened in the park years ago!”

I sigh, knowing that his reluctance to believe me is all my fault, and stand. I position myself on the grubby hospital bed so that I am kneeling with a knee either side of his thighs, thighs that I have often dreamed about as being mine to do with as I wish. He looks up at me in shock and fear, mouth hanging open in the most adorable way imaginable. I gently, yet forcefully, cup his masterpiece of a face in my caring hands and pull it towards mine. By now he is blushing the cutest shade of red possible and daring to smile slightly, which causes the first genuine beam of happiness in my life for a long time to ignite into a smirk of my own.

“Michael James Way, I fucking love you!”

Before I can, he pleasantly surprises me by initiating our first kiss. It was just a quick peck that lingered long enough to leave me gasping for more, but that made it all the more special; this won’t be like any of my other relationships. It won’t be built on lust and passion alone (although they will be contributing factors), but trust, friendship, love and hope for a better future.

“I love you, too.”

A better future being who we are because of who we want to be, not because of what everyone else wants us to be.





A/N: Sorry that it was so long. I’m really not too sure if this is any good at all, so please let me know what you think. I wrote this on the spot, so sorry if I’ve just wasted your time with some illiterate crap but I just edited it, so hopefully it wasn't too bad. Anyway, thank you very much for reading and please review! :)