Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance
Family
I always knew that Mikey Way was amazing, even before I earned the pleasure and pride of being able to call him my boyfriend which, admittedly, didn’t take long. I always knew that he was the nicest person in the whole of Belleville, fuck that; the whole of New Jersey. I always knew from the day that I laid eyes on him that he had to be mine, just as I had to be his; just like we are now. Okay, I know that I sound like some sort of crappy romance novel that you have to study and otherwise wouldn’t touch with a ten-metre bargepole, but it really is true; just from that first, fatally heart-stopping glance I knew everything I needed to know.
He wasn’t smiling when I first saw him. Far from it. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to him; I knew that I had to see his pale porcelain lit up with the blinding supernova of a smile. No, when I first saw him, smiling is the polar opposite of what he was doing. He was crying. And sobbing. And bleeding. And getting all of his stuff thrown into the harsh depths of nearby muddy puddles. I knew that I had to help him. I just couldn’t stand seeing the same bastards that broke my beloved guitar break someone so innocent-looking. There’s a reason that I say ‘innocent-looking’. He may have the appearance of a puppy-eyed saint but, as I found out later that same day, a pair of devil horns would be a little more befitting than the halo that his eyes would suggest he deserves. Which, in all fairness to him, he does. He’s kind and clever and loving and angelic in every possible way. Especially the loving part. I swear down that if his big brother knew half of the stuff that we got up to on the first night of knowing each other, he would never speak to me again. Or he’d murder me. Most likely murder.
His big brother. Gerard. Now, how to describe dear old Gee Way? I think that the words ‘fucking’ and ‘awesome’ (in no other order than specified) just about cover it. Because he is. He’s fiercely protective over Mikey, some would say to a fault, but that only makes me like him more; anyone looking out for my boyfriend is worth the world to me. He’s actually the one who suggested that I went home with him and Mikes on that fateful day that made my life worth living, even though I hadn’t even realised it was lacking a reason before that day. When I’d helped Mikes to Gee’s clapped out or ‘well-loved’, as he puts it, Toyota he’d acted as though I was worth my weight in Skittles. Just the fact that someone was willing to help out the brother he assumed was still a baby (a belief that I have managed to vehemently disprove many a time) was enough to make him treat me like his best friend. Which is what we have become; best friends and brothers. The only time we’ve ever fallen out was when he was drunk and upset Mikey by calling him some derogatory expletive or another, I care not to remember it as it still makes me livid, and Mikey had come running to me for comfort. Comfort which I had willingly given in the form of a relentless stampede of kisses; twenty for each deadly diamond that sliced down his face with the enchanting grace of a rotating bullet. But even then, Gerard and I hadn’t been at war for long. I yelled at him the next morning when I walked Mikey back to his house after sleeping encased in the loving blanket of my arms and Gerard had felt awful. Looked awful, too. He apologized to Mikey who, being the understanding and benevolent wonder that he is, forgave him instantly. I did too but, when Mikey went upstairs to take a shower, I told (or rather snarled at) Gerard that if he ever made Mikes cry again I’d slit his throat in his sleep. Not that he ever would do something like that again, the swirling storm of remorse that spiralled in his eyes told me that much; so I have yet to be arrested for murder.
I hate seeing Mikey cry. Hate isn’t a strong enough word, nowhere near strong enough. I despise it; I loathe it; I abhor it; I detest it, with every fibre of every iota of my being. Imagine the kind of pure hatred that a vampire feels for daylight and then multiply that by the outrage that an anarchist feels at being ordered around; then you may have a rough idea of how I feel about seeing Mikes cry. But I highly doubt it.
I know that there’ll always be times when he has to cry, I’m not stupid enough to believe that he’ll never be sad simply because I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean that I have to abide it. If I could stop his tears by somehow raising Atlantis with my bare hands, then I’d do it; even if it’s impossible, I’d make it happen. Because that’s what my boyfriend deserves.
I can remember when his mom died, the memories are too agonizing to forget. But I know that it hurt Mikey more. So much more. Not least because he was in the car with her when she swerved off of the road and into oblivion. I’d gotten a phone call from Gerard, who was practically wailing down the phone, telling me what had happened. I was at the hospital like a shot, not caring that my lungs had forgotten to breathe and that my heart was in too much searing pain to beat. Mrs Way was dead on arrival, Mikes escaped with a broken arm. He was in shock at first, like proper, extreme shock; the type where he couldn’t even talk to anyone or, unfortunately for Gerard who wanted nothing more than to comfort his little brother, even look at his big brother. Survivors guilt, the nurse had called it. I stayed in his room, waiting for him to explode so that I could catch the pieces of his soul as Fate tore them apart. Sure enough, that happened. Three days after the accident, he just burst into tears. And I was there for him. So was Gerard. His father never visited, though. I never found out why and nor did I ask; the last thing my precious perfection needed was me pointing out the absence of his one remaining parent.
That happened little over a year ago and he’s doing alright. Still has horrendous nightmares about it; who wouldn’t? But Gerard’s always there to wake him up and get him on the phone to me. Gee’s just great like that and he means the world to Mikes, perhaps even more than I do but I don’t mind; nothing can come between the Way brothers and, for Mikey’s sake, I wouldn’t have them any other way.
I sigh contently at thinking about my two most important people and stretch out lazily on my bed; relishing the fact that it’s a Saturday and that my parents are away like a pirate cherishes his treasure. I don’t care that I’m still fully clothed from the walk home from the Way’s last night, muddy Converse and all. Wait, no I do care; I love it that I can still smell Mikey’s body from where it was pressed into my own, I love it that I can still see the coffee stain from where Gerard choked out some of his beloved black liquid at Mikes teasing him by saying some very un-baby-like things to me, I love that I can feel my wallet in my back pocket because the frayed fabric conceals a picture of me with both Way’s, I love that I’m still wearing the watch the Mikey bought me for my sixteenth birthday last month. Today couldn’t be any better if it started raining Skittles and Coca-Cola. And it’s only eleven in the morning; it’s going to be a good day. I can just tell.
I hear a rushed, almost frenzied, ringing of the high-pitched doorbell that screams like a banshee through my blissed out daydreaming. Oh, well. At least I don’t have to get dressed.
I roll out of my comfy, warm bed and traipse down the stairs with the same amount of enthusiasm as a vicar walking into a satanic brothel. This day may be good, but I’d rather be in bed and thinking about my beautiful (in every possible way) boyfriend and how much I’m going to enjoy being with him tonight when we have our annual horror movie marathon. Which always results in him curling up into me, my arms tightening around him like I can protect him from all of the on-screen monsters, Gerard jokingly announcing that watching his baby brother getting touched up by his best friend isn’t his idea of good time and so leaves for his room; concluding with me and Mikey making out on their couch, before falling asleep intertwined like a vine wrapped around some exotic tree. Yeah. I’d rather be daydreaming about that than opening the door to who’ll probably turn out to be some sort of salesman. That or a religious nut-job trying to convince me that I’ll go to hell unless I join his religion. Fuck that. I’m already in heaven. I must be; I’m going out with an angel, albeit a less-than-pure one.
The doorbell rings again, once more annoyingly intruding my thoughts of my Mikey.
“I’m coming!”
I open the old, battered door and my heart stops. And not in a good way. In an I’d-rather-be-dead-than-seeing-this way.
“Mikey?”
Oh my God.
He looks… he looks broken. No, not broken. Completely and utterly obliterated.
All heaving sobs and ghostly, shaking body. His, normally flawless, hair is stuck up in a way that’s almost as messy as mine currently is, but it’s not messy through a lazy morning; more like from having his heavenly-sinful hands raking through it for reasons that, although I have yet to find out, infuriate me. The lips that were created solely for smiling and being pressed against me are trembling horribly, like an earthquake is pounding at his insides. His eyes are the worst though, by far. Usually they’re bright, full of mischief and love, but not now. Now they’re hollow like a long-abandoned well; pained like a daughter watching her father get executed for a crime that she committed; full of the tears that I dread and hate in equal measure. And longing for the kind of embrace that will make it all better; an embrace that only I can give. He raises his arms out towards me, melting my insides into sickly-sweet sulphur at how like a helpless child he looks, and tries (in vain) to control his whimpers.
I immediately pull him into the house with the urgency of a doctor preforming open-heart surgery, shut the door behind us and pull him gently down with me onto the couch. I tug him into me, his head burying deep into my neck like an unexploded mine. He’s pushed himself up right close to me so that our chests are digging into each other; I don’t mind though, not if this is what will make him happy again. I can feel the thumping of his heart like some chaotic bass line to a heavy-rock song, accompanied by the melancholy vocals of his cries. My concerned hands drum out the beat of soothing strokes onto his back, completing the distressing symphony of sorrow.
“Mikes, what’s happened?”
He looks up at me, making me regret that I asked; perhaps I should’ve let him calm down first. So I press his head back in between my neck and shoulder, letting him cry some more if that’s what he needs to do. I may hate it, hate it like a pacifist hates war, but if it’s what he needs so be it; I just have to wait it out and be ready when he wants to talk. To my surprise, he doesn’t carry on with the melancholy ballad, just brushes his cyanide-soaked lips against my cheek, earning him a firm and reassuring kiss to the forehead.
“I… He… Frankie, I don’t know what to do!”
And the symphony resumes, picking up tempo and volume until it’s almost ear-splitting.
“He who? Who’s hurt you, baby?” My voice is demanding an answer in a sort of soft way; I have to know so I can break the legs of whoever ‘he’ is. Because nobody makes my boyfriend cry like the apocalypse is fast approaching. Not unless they want to enter an intimate relationship with my fist. And my foot. And any other part of me that can inflict tedious amounts of vengeful excruciations.
He flicks his head up a little at me, his curtain of hair falling away from his left cheek.
To reveal a raised, red mark. A red mark that isn’t caused by his corrosively destructive tears. No, this was caused by a hand. A human hand. A hand which I am going to snap straight off of it’s cowardly owner’s pathetic wrist.
I carefully cup his face in the safety of my hands and examine the mark. It appears to have broken the flawless skin of my Mikey’s face, a small dribble of blood highlighting the lightning strike of cracked skin. I softly dust the line with my thumb, wiping the captivatingly evil liquid from the small laceration. He winces slightly and I snatch my hand contritely away, replacing it instead with my lips. Lips longing to love away the pain.
“Fuck, Mikes. Who did this? What happened?” More crystalline daggers bleed from his eyes, but I won’t relent; I have to know who to direct my fury and disgust at. “You can tell me, Mikes. You know you can. I won’t let them hurt you again, I promise.” He nods slightly, our noses rubbing gently. “Who did it?”
“My… Mr Way.”
Why the fuck won’t he just tell me?
“Your dad?” He morosely shakes his head. “What? Wait, you mean Gerard did this? I’ll fucking slaughter him!” I’m appalled and shocked. Really, truly shocked. If Gerard did do this, I won’t just make good of my old threat, no; slitting his throat in his sleep is too quick and painless for what he’s done. I’ll bludgeon him with a baseball bat and then let him bleed to death.
But I just can’t picture Gee hitting his little brother, no matter what happens he’s always endeavoured to protect Mikes; so why strike him?
“No! Not Gerard. You know that he’d never hurt me.”
“Then who, baby? Please tell me, I have to know because I can’t make it better if I don’t know what happened.”
“They lied to me. Gerard, Donald… even Donna.” He’s mumbling almost incoherently and it’s scaring me, making me worry like a sinner on Death Row. Why won’t he call his mom and dad by name?
“What do you mean; how did they lie?”
“I thought that I was Mikey Way. But I’m not, never have been. Mikey Way died fifteen years ago. I’m just a replacement. And a shit one, according to Donald.”
His eyes, that were earlier melted puddles of misery, have frozen into cracked ice; the only emotions that are showing themselves being shame and half-hearted fury.
And then, I get it. It snaps into place like a broken rib.
“You mean that you’re-“
“Adopted. Yeah.”
The cracked ice of his eyes shatters completely to reveal a wealth of tears that pour like lava from a volcano. I pull him closer to me, wondering how it must feel to be him right now. Everything that he grew up believing, all of the people that he thought were his family suddenly gone because, judging by what he’s said, his bastard ‘father’ lost his short fuse of a temper. Wait, that’s not the right way for me to view this. He has a right to know and it’s not like he’s lost his family. Just gained the freedom to make his own.
“ Da- I mean Donald was yelling at me and I said that I wished he wasn’t my dad and then he just told me. And he hit me. And then Gerard starting yelling too. Something about Mo- Donna making them promise never to tell me. Gerard knew, Frank! Gerard knew that he isn’t my brother and he lied to me!” With those confused, angry shouts he dissolves into me, and I kiss his sweating forehead thoughtfully. I can’t see him like this; I have to make him see that he’s lost no one. Not really.
“Baby, Gerard is your brother. Always has been, always will be. And I never want to hear you calling your mom anything less again. True, Donald isn’t your father; he lost that privilege the second he hit you. But the others are still your family.” He looked up at me in adorable bafflement. Or rather, it would be adorable if that bastard’s hand wasn’t stained down his face. “Gerard has always been there for you; has always looked out for you; has always done everything that a big brother should do. Does that not make him your big brother?”
“But he lied to me, Frankie.”
I sigh, the crushed shine in his irises hardening my resolve.
“Why do you think he did that? He knew that you’d be upset and who wants to see their little bro upset, huh? Certainly not Gee. He loves you too much for that.” He dares to smile a little and I catch it in a kiss. Nothing too lusty, because that’s not what he needs right now; but so full of love that it puts Cupid’s arrows to shame. “But nowhere as much as I do.” He squeezes me in a crushing hug that more than makes up for all that his tears have destroyed within me. “Your family, your real family, are the people who care about you; who help you when you need help; who make you smile even when tears are still wet on your cheeks. No documents or anything else can change that. Ever.”
We just sit, cuddled into one another and inhaling each other’s breath, until he looks up at me with a light in his eyes that was earlier short-circuiting; a light that only I can fix and find the switch for.
“Frankie?”
“Yeah, Mikes.”
“You and Gerard are the only family that I need.”
And that, that right there, is exactly why I love him; why I know that he’s amazing; why I know that he’s the nicest person in the whole of New Jersey, fuck that, the world; why I know that we’ll belong to each other, forever and for always.
A/N: Just a little one-shot that’s been running around my mind like a tumble weed for a while now. Anyway, thank you very much for reading and I hope that you liked it! If you were lovely enough to read please be awesome enough to review! Thanks for reading! :)
I always knew that Mikey Way was amazing, even before I earned the pleasure and pride of being able to call him my boyfriend which, admittedly, didn’t take long. I always knew that he was the nicest person in the whole of Belleville, fuck that; the whole of New Jersey. I always knew from the day that I laid eyes on him that he had to be mine, just as I had to be his; just like we are now. Okay, I know that I sound like some sort of crappy romance novel that you have to study and otherwise wouldn’t touch with a ten-metre bargepole, but it really is true; just from that first, fatally heart-stopping glance I knew everything I needed to know.
He wasn’t smiling when I first saw him. Far from it. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to him; I knew that I had to see his pale porcelain lit up with the blinding supernova of a smile. No, when I first saw him, smiling is the polar opposite of what he was doing. He was crying. And sobbing. And bleeding. And getting all of his stuff thrown into the harsh depths of nearby muddy puddles. I knew that I had to help him. I just couldn’t stand seeing the same bastards that broke my beloved guitar break someone so innocent-looking. There’s a reason that I say ‘innocent-looking’. He may have the appearance of a puppy-eyed saint but, as I found out later that same day, a pair of devil horns would be a little more befitting than the halo that his eyes would suggest he deserves. Which, in all fairness to him, he does. He’s kind and clever and loving and angelic in every possible way. Especially the loving part. I swear down that if his big brother knew half of the stuff that we got up to on the first night of knowing each other, he would never speak to me again. Or he’d murder me. Most likely murder.
His big brother. Gerard. Now, how to describe dear old Gee Way? I think that the words ‘fucking’ and ‘awesome’ (in no other order than specified) just about cover it. Because he is. He’s fiercely protective over Mikey, some would say to a fault, but that only makes me like him more; anyone looking out for my boyfriend is worth the world to me. He’s actually the one who suggested that I went home with him and Mikes on that fateful day that made my life worth living, even though I hadn’t even realised it was lacking a reason before that day. When I’d helped Mikes to Gee’s clapped out or ‘well-loved’, as he puts it, Toyota he’d acted as though I was worth my weight in Skittles. Just the fact that someone was willing to help out the brother he assumed was still a baby (a belief that I have managed to vehemently disprove many a time) was enough to make him treat me like his best friend. Which is what we have become; best friends and brothers. The only time we’ve ever fallen out was when he was drunk and upset Mikey by calling him some derogatory expletive or another, I care not to remember it as it still makes me livid, and Mikey had come running to me for comfort. Comfort which I had willingly given in the form of a relentless stampede of kisses; twenty for each deadly diamond that sliced down his face with the enchanting grace of a rotating bullet. But even then, Gerard and I hadn’t been at war for long. I yelled at him the next morning when I walked Mikey back to his house after sleeping encased in the loving blanket of my arms and Gerard had felt awful. Looked awful, too. He apologized to Mikey who, being the understanding and benevolent wonder that he is, forgave him instantly. I did too but, when Mikey went upstairs to take a shower, I told (or rather snarled at) Gerard that if he ever made Mikes cry again I’d slit his throat in his sleep. Not that he ever would do something like that again, the swirling storm of remorse that spiralled in his eyes told me that much; so I have yet to be arrested for murder.
I hate seeing Mikey cry. Hate isn’t a strong enough word, nowhere near strong enough. I despise it; I loathe it; I abhor it; I detest it, with every fibre of every iota of my being. Imagine the kind of pure hatred that a vampire feels for daylight and then multiply that by the outrage that an anarchist feels at being ordered around; then you may have a rough idea of how I feel about seeing Mikes cry. But I highly doubt it.
I know that there’ll always be times when he has to cry, I’m not stupid enough to believe that he’ll never be sad simply because I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean that I have to abide it. If I could stop his tears by somehow raising Atlantis with my bare hands, then I’d do it; even if it’s impossible, I’d make it happen. Because that’s what my boyfriend deserves.
I can remember when his mom died, the memories are too agonizing to forget. But I know that it hurt Mikey more. So much more. Not least because he was in the car with her when she swerved off of the road and into oblivion. I’d gotten a phone call from Gerard, who was practically wailing down the phone, telling me what had happened. I was at the hospital like a shot, not caring that my lungs had forgotten to breathe and that my heart was in too much searing pain to beat. Mrs Way was dead on arrival, Mikes escaped with a broken arm. He was in shock at first, like proper, extreme shock; the type where he couldn’t even talk to anyone or, unfortunately for Gerard who wanted nothing more than to comfort his little brother, even look at his big brother. Survivors guilt, the nurse had called it. I stayed in his room, waiting for him to explode so that I could catch the pieces of his soul as Fate tore them apart. Sure enough, that happened. Three days after the accident, he just burst into tears. And I was there for him. So was Gerard. His father never visited, though. I never found out why and nor did I ask; the last thing my precious perfection needed was me pointing out the absence of his one remaining parent.
That happened little over a year ago and he’s doing alright. Still has horrendous nightmares about it; who wouldn’t? But Gerard’s always there to wake him up and get him on the phone to me. Gee’s just great like that and he means the world to Mikes, perhaps even more than I do but I don’t mind; nothing can come between the Way brothers and, for Mikey’s sake, I wouldn’t have them any other way.
I sigh contently at thinking about my two most important people and stretch out lazily on my bed; relishing the fact that it’s a Saturday and that my parents are away like a pirate cherishes his treasure. I don’t care that I’m still fully clothed from the walk home from the Way’s last night, muddy Converse and all. Wait, no I do care; I love it that I can still smell Mikey’s body from where it was pressed into my own, I love it that I can still see the coffee stain from where Gerard choked out some of his beloved black liquid at Mikes teasing him by saying some very un-baby-like things to me, I love that I can feel my wallet in my back pocket because the frayed fabric conceals a picture of me with both Way’s, I love that I’m still wearing the watch the Mikey bought me for my sixteenth birthday last month. Today couldn’t be any better if it started raining Skittles and Coca-Cola. And it’s only eleven in the morning; it’s going to be a good day. I can just tell.
I hear a rushed, almost frenzied, ringing of the high-pitched doorbell that screams like a banshee through my blissed out daydreaming. Oh, well. At least I don’t have to get dressed.
I roll out of my comfy, warm bed and traipse down the stairs with the same amount of enthusiasm as a vicar walking into a satanic brothel. This day may be good, but I’d rather be in bed and thinking about my beautiful (in every possible way) boyfriend and how much I’m going to enjoy being with him tonight when we have our annual horror movie marathon. Which always results in him curling up into me, my arms tightening around him like I can protect him from all of the on-screen monsters, Gerard jokingly announcing that watching his baby brother getting touched up by his best friend isn’t his idea of good time and so leaves for his room; concluding with me and Mikey making out on their couch, before falling asleep intertwined like a vine wrapped around some exotic tree. Yeah. I’d rather be daydreaming about that than opening the door to who’ll probably turn out to be some sort of salesman. That or a religious nut-job trying to convince me that I’ll go to hell unless I join his religion. Fuck that. I’m already in heaven. I must be; I’m going out with an angel, albeit a less-than-pure one.
The doorbell rings again, once more annoyingly intruding my thoughts of my Mikey.
“I’m coming!”
I open the old, battered door and my heart stops. And not in a good way. In an I’d-rather-be-dead-than-seeing-this way.
“Mikey?”
Oh my God.
He looks… he looks broken. No, not broken. Completely and utterly obliterated.
All heaving sobs and ghostly, shaking body. His, normally flawless, hair is stuck up in a way that’s almost as messy as mine currently is, but it’s not messy through a lazy morning; more like from having his heavenly-sinful hands raking through it for reasons that, although I have yet to find out, infuriate me. The lips that were created solely for smiling and being pressed against me are trembling horribly, like an earthquake is pounding at his insides. His eyes are the worst though, by far. Usually they’re bright, full of mischief and love, but not now. Now they’re hollow like a long-abandoned well; pained like a daughter watching her father get executed for a crime that she committed; full of the tears that I dread and hate in equal measure. And longing for the kind of embrace that will make it all better; an embrace that only I can give. He raises his arms out towards me, melting my insides into sickly-sweet sulphur at how like a helpless child he looks, and tries (in vain) to control his whimpers.
I immediately pull him into the house with the urgency of a doctor preforming open-heart surgery, shut the door behind us and pull him gently down with me onto the couch. I tug him into me, his head burying deep into my neck like an unexploded mine. He’s pushed himself up right close to me so that our chests are digging into each other; I don’t mind though, not if this is what will make him happy again. I can feel the thumping of his heart like some chaotic bass line to a heavy-rock song, accompanied by the melancholy vocals of his cries. My concerned hands drum out the beat of soothing strokes onto his back, completing the distressing symphony of sorrow.
“Mikes, what’s happened?”
He looks up at me, making me regret that I asked; perhaps I should’ve let him calm down first. So I press his head back in between my neck and shoulder, letting him cry some more if that’s what he needs to do. I may hate it, hate it like a pacifist hates war, but if it’s what he needs so be it; I just have to wait it out and be ready when he wants to talk. To my surprise, he doesn’t carry on with the melancholy ballad, just brushes his cyanide-soaked lips against my cheek, earning him a firm and reassuring kiss to the forehead.
“I… He… Frankie, I don’t know what to do!”
And the symphony resumes, picking up tempo and volume until it’s almost ear-splitting.
“He who? Who’s hurt you, baby?” My voice is demanding an answer in a sort of soft way; I have to know so I can break the legs of whoever ‘he’ is. Because nobody makes my boyfriend cry like the apocalypse is fast approaching. Not unless they want to enter an intimate relationship with my fist. And my foot. And any other part of me that can inflict tedious amounts of vengeful excruciations.
He flicks his head up a little at me, his curtain of hair falling away from his left cheek.
To reveal a raised, red mark. A red mark that isn’t caused by his corrosively destructive tears. No, this was caused by a hand. A human hand. A hand which I am going to snap straight off of it’s cowardly owner’s pathetic wrist.
I carefully cup his face in the safety of my hands and examine the mark. It appears to have broken the flawless skin of my Mikey’s face, a small dribble of blood highlighting the lightning strike of cracked skin. I softly dust the line with my thumb, wiping the captivatingly evil liquid from the small laceration. He winces slightly and I snatch my hand contritely away, replacing it instead with my lips. Lips longing to love away the pain.
“Fuck, Mikes. Who did this? What happened?” More crystalline daggers bleed from his eyes, but I won’t relent; I have to know who to direct my fury and disgust at. “You can tell me, Mikes. You know you can. I won’t let them hurt you again, I promise.” He nods slightly, our noses rubbing gently. “Who did it?”
“My… Mr Way.”
Why the fuck won’t he just tell me?
“Your dad?” He morosely shakes his head. “What? Wait, you mean Gerard did this? I’ll fucking slaughter him!” I’m appalled and shocked. Really, truly shocked. If Gerard did do this, I won’t just make good of my old threat, no; slitting his throat in his sleep is too quick and painless for what he’s done. I’ll bludgeon him with a baseball bat and then let him bleed to death.
But I just can’t picture Gee hitting his little brother, no matter what happens he’s always endeavoured to protect Mikes; so why strike him?
“No! Not Gerard. You know that he’d never hurt me.”
“Then who, baby? Please tell me, I have to know because I can’t make it better if I don’t know what happened.”
“They lied to me. Gerard, Donald… even Donna.” He’s mumbling almost incoherently and it’s scaring me, making me worry like a sinner on Death Row. Why won’t he call his mom and dad by name?
“What do you mean; how did they lie?”
“I thought that I was Mikey Way. But I’m not, never have been. Mikey Way died fifteen years ago. I’m just a replacement. And a shit one, according to Donald.”
His eyes, that were earlier melted puddles of misery, have frozen into cracked ice; the only emotions that are showing themselves being shame and half-hearted fury.
And then, I get it. It snaps into place like a broken rib.
“You mean that you’re-“
“Adopted. Yeah.”
The cracked ice of his eyes shatters completely to reveal a wealth of tears that pour like lava from a volcano. I pull him closer to me, wondering how it must feel to be him right now. Everything that he grew up believing, all of the people that he thought were his family suddenly gone because, judging by what he’s said, his bastard ‘father’ lost his short fuse of a temper. Wait, that’s not the right way for me to view this. He has a right to know and it’s not like he’s lost his family. Just gained the freedom to make his own.
“ Da- I mean Donald was yelling at me and I said that I wished he wasn’t my dad and then he just told me. And he hit me. And then Gerard starting yelling too. Something about Mo- Donna making them promise never to tell me. Gerard knew, Frank! Gerard knew that he isn’t my brother and he lied to me!” With those confused, angry shouts he dissolves into me, and I kiss his sweating forehead thoughtfully. I can’t see him like this; I have to make him see that he’s lost no one. Not really.
“Baby, Gerard is your brother. Always has been, always will be. And I never want to hear you calling your mom anything less again. True, Donald isn’t your father; he lost that privilege the second he hit you. But the others are still your family.” He looked up at me in adorable bafflement. Or rather, it would be adorable if that bastard’s hand wasn’t stained down his face. “Gerard has always been there for you; has always looked out for you; has always done everything that a big brother should do. Does that not make him your big brother?”
“But he lied to me, Frankie.”
I sigh, the crushed shine in his irises hardening my resolve.
“Why do you think he did that? He knew that you’d be upset and who wants to see their little bro upset, huh? Certainly not Gee. He loves you too much for that.” He dares to smile a little and I catch it in a kiss. Nothing too lusty, because that’s not what he needs right now; but so full of love that it puts Cupid’s arrows to shame. “But nowhere as much as I do.” He squeezes me in a crushing hug that more than makes up for all that his tears have destroyed within me. “Your family, your real family, are the people who care about you; who help you when you need help; who make you smile even when tears are still wet on your cheeks. No documents or anything else can change that. Ever.”
We just sit, cuddled into one another and inhaling each other’s breath, until he looks up at me with a light in his eyes that was earlier short-circuiting; a light that only I can fix and find the switch for.
“Frankie?”
“Yeah, Mikes.”
“You and Gerard are the only family that I need.”
And that, that right there, is exactly why I love him; why I know that he’s amazing; why I know that he’s the nicest person in the whole of New Jersey, fuck that, the world; why I know that we’ll belong to each other, forever and for always.
A/N: Just a little one-shot that’s been running around my mind like a tumble weed for a while now. Anyway, thank you very much for reading and I hope that you liked it! If you were lovely enough to read please be awesome enough to review! Thanks for reading! :)
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