FicWad

Chapter Four – Conflict

Frank’s POV




Well, this is normal; some weird stranger is living in my house and said stranger’s big brother, who just so happens to be ever so slightly dead, seems to be bent on haunting me.

He has a good reason to though, I guess. I mean, Gerard seems like a nice person; in fact, he looked at me as though he cares just as much about me as he does his little brother, like he just wants to help and I really liked that. Liked having someone who didn’t care about who I’m meant to be, just that I’m another human being.

Apart from he did get way too pissy for my liking, like he thinks he can have his own way just because he’s dead.

Dead. Dead and gone but not gone at all.

Because he fucking haunted me before I went to sleep last night. I honestly don’t know how I feel about this; originally I thought that it was beyond cool because I’ve always had a secret geeky obsession with horror movies, always wanted to be the guy who makes contact and goes on some crazy adventure and this really could be the coolest thing to ever happen in the mind of a ghost-geek and a sucker for the supernatural like me. But now I’m not so sure if this is the greatest thing to happen since the invention of the guitar; now I’m starting to see the serious side of it dawning on me like a creeping sunrise over a city of damned souls.

Because I think that Gerard will not like the way I was neglecting Mikey this morning as we got ready to go to school.

It’s not that I purposefully ignored the guy or anything, just that I couldn’t think of anything acceptable to say to him largely because I normally have other people starting conversations with me and I don’t know how to talk to someone who just isn’t interested in talking back. I know that sounded conceited or whatever, but it’s true; when it comes to comfort or speaking to someone who doesn’t respect me like everyone else does, I’m about as useful as a chocolate teapot. But it’s not only that; how am I meant to speak to him when I know what he went through, when I know that his big brother was still clutching him as he died? How are you even meant to try to comfort that out of someone you don’t even know well enough to understand that special way in which to hug them that can make them feel all better and safe? How am I meant to even try to make him feel any better after knowing that he’s gone through something that heart-wrenchingly horrific?

I really do feel stabbingly sorry for the beyond-poor kid, but I just don’t know how to deal with this sort of thing.

And I shouldn’t have to either. If Gerard cares so much he should be appearing to Mikey, not to someone who honestly doesn’t really care. Because it isn’t my place to care, it isn’t my place to have to share my mom with some stranger and then get lectured by Casper the Crabby Ghost. It isn’t my job to make the antisocial little introvert open up and feel at home in a place where he isn’t even wanted.

He isn’t wanted. Not by me, anyway. I’ve got all of the friends anyone could ever wish for and that’s all I want by the way of company; not some train-wreck creeping around like a motherfucking mouse.

Wait. I don’t mean that.

That’s not fair at all. It’s not Mikey’s fault that this happened to him, it isn’t his fault that he’s so painfully quiet and shy, it’s not his fault that he got sent to live in my home, it’s not his fault that his big brother is an overprotective dick who needs to be put in his place. It’s not Mikey’s fault that I can’t get his goddamn face out of my head; his dull, dead eyes that I imagine would be as stunning as the first rays of sunlight on a winter’s morning if only they were to be alive once more; his pale starlight skin that could easily belong to some delicate fairy-tale princess; his downy hair that would probably feel like warm sand on a lazy summer’s day trickling through my fingers; his lips. Lips that better get the fuck out of my head unless they want to end up bloody and bleeding.

He really is stunningly beautiful though, in a kind of mournfully sorrowful way, in a way that makes me want to make everything better for his traumatised little soul.

Or it would do if his personality was as enchanting as his appearance. Which it definitely isn’t. He’s rude and disrespectful. As my short and less than pleasant introduction to him proves.

But that isn’t his fault; he’s just nervous and lost and frightened and shy. Just like Gerard said. But he still could have at least tried a little bit rather than shrugging as though I was boring him, something which has never happened before. But it did happen with Mikey Way. Mikey Way didn’t seem bothered by my presence, other than when I regrettably made the poor kid cry, and nor did he seem bothered by the fact that I stormed off when most people would come running after me with fearfully contrite legs and apologize for being rude to someone like me; but no, Mikey Way isn’t like all of the others. He’s different. Like a single white rose blossoming in a patch of ugly, dull thorns.

And I love it.

No. I hate it. Fucking loathe it because I have to live with it until I’m old enough to move out. I’ve got to put up with some whiny bastard reminding me of what I really am every time I look at him, because really I’m just as alone as he is. I really am; nobody truly knows the real me, the real me who loves comic books and horror movies and who spends hours practicing guitar alongside my Greed Day CDs, pretending that Billie Joe is stood next to me at some headlining gig with thousands of kids screaming my name like I’m some sort of hero. My ‘friends’ just know the version of me that’s got the perfect life that everyone dreams of having but really wouldn’t if they knew how empty it is.

What the fuck am I going on about?

Mom must have put some out-of-date pickle in my sandwiches again because I sure as fuck don’t think like this when I’m healthy. I have a great fucking life and this stupid motherfucking weirdo has come in and ruined it all like a toddler’s overeager crayon on some new cream wallpaper.

This stupid motherfucking weirdo and his dead big brother.

Which is why I am currently stood in the boy’s restroom at school, splashing cold water onto my face as though washing away the conversation that I had with Gerard last night, washing Mikey Way out of my spinning head. I should be hanging out with my friends like I normally do at lunchtime, but no. Because of Mikey fucking Way I’m stood in the clinical, if a little grotty, restroom of this hellhole that is only a heaven to me because of the person that I have turned myself into, trying to clear my head. A head that was doing just fine until Mikey Way came alone and ruined everything.

But that’s not the only reason as to why I am in here as opposed to in the cafeteria with my gang of friends; there’s one huge, black hole of a reason that is preventing me from leaving this piss-poor little restroom. If things are going as Liam, one of my greatest friends, was suggesting earlier, then Mikey is probably not the happiest person in the world right now. My friends don’t know that Mikey is my adopted ‘brother’ and so they, like with all new students who look like they might question our authority over the majority of the student body, decided this morning that they had to teach him a few things about how things work here. About how he can’t just not reply to Liam when he tries to speak to him. In all fairness to Mikey, he did shrug when Liam asked him who the fuck he thought he was but Liam had wanted a verbal answer, a shudder of fear or something else that could guarantee Mikey’s respect to the most respected kids in school. I could have told my friends that Mikey simply doesn’t speak all that much, that he’s been through something worse than hell and that we should just leave him alone because he’s got enough fucking him up as it is without the addition of Liam giving him private tutoring with regards as to how things work here.

In fact, I should have said that; Mikey Way doesn’t deserve to get beaten up, nobody does, and nor do I think that he can take it after what Gerard told me this poor guy has endured over the past few weeks. I should have said something.

I really fucking should have.

No. I shouldn’t. I’m not the kid’s mom and if he wasn’t so stupid as to make his differences as obvious as he does then he wouldn’t be faced with this problem. If he’d just given Liam the response that his ego craved then he wouldn’t have put himself into today’s line of fire like a sitting duck. He won’t stand a chance, they’ll tear him apart like tissue paper in the powerful jaw of a merciless werewolf and then I’ll have to deal with having to share my house with a reminder of the person that I have become haunting me like Gerard is. Was. I haven’t seen him since last night and I’m not too bothered by that; it’s not exactly normal to have a conversation with a dead man, is it?

Of course it fucking isn’t. Especially when I managed to make him cry in the most heart-breaking way humanly conceivable; because he was crying for his little brother. A little brother who I told him I would be nice to, a little brother who is probably getting friendly with my gang’s collective fury right at this very moment.

Shit. I should be out there protecting him, just like something deep within the abyssal cage of my heart is screaming at me to do for some reason that I don’t even want to understand; but I just can’t. To do so would be siding with the freaks, with the bullied, with those that I want to distance myself from as much as is humanly possible because I am one and if my friends realise then they won’t be my friends anymore; they’ll be the ‘us’ and I’ll be the ‘them’. The freaky short kid with an even freakier housemate. Both of which will end up with the bloody nose that Mikey is undoubtedly getting right now.

Some might call me selfish for acting like this, but I’m not. I’m simply being smart; ensuring my own safety like Mikey would be if he had the common sense to. Which he probably would do if he hadn’t been dislodged from all mental wellbeing by being in his big brother’s arms when he died, if he hadn’t had all sense turned upside down by losing everything apart from himself.

Guilt flares up within me like a haphazard firework, shooting up from the bonfire-pit of my stomach and exploding through my heart before clouding my lungs with the smoke of remorse and littering the rest of my insides with the burning embers of self-hate for what I am letting happen to him. Normally, I would be able to brush this away, but not today; because this poor guy really has been through too much already, because this poor guy’s dead big brother asked me to look after him and I agreed.

I may be many things that I regret being, but I am not a liar and nor am I someone who goes back on their word; but I have to be today. Because if I’m not then I put myself in the firing line and that is something that I can’t let happen. I’ll lose everything that Mikey Way has already ruined if I fill out my word.

So I’ll just ride it out, hide away in here like the coward that I am.

No. I’m not a coward; I’m just someone smart enough to know when I can’t win and so I am quite content to settle with not getting the living daylights kicked out of me. I don’t think that I’d take getting beaten up for Liam, my so-called best friend, let alone for some weirdo who has stolen my mom away from me.

“Frank!” An urgent voice snaps from nowhere but the deserted restroom atmosphere; a voice that I really don’t want to be hearing right now.

Gerard.

Motherfucking Gerard Way has followed me to school and is probably going to start going all horror-movie-cliché on me over something that I can’t even control. What gives him the right to practically stalk me and then yell at me as though I’m the one who is most likely hurting his little brother right now? Nothing. Nothing gives him the fucking right and if he were still alive I would be getting a restraining order.

Of course he has the right; his little brother’s a wreck and he just wants to make sure that the kid’s alright. I have absolutely nothing against him looking out for his baby brother; it’s just the fact that he expects me to do it for him that makes me feel more than a little pissed off. I barely even know the kid, other than the fact that he’s enchanted my attention and seems to be about as infuriatingly introverted as a dead mouse I know fuck all about him, yet Gerard seems to expect me to treat Mikey as though he’s my responsibility entirely. As though I care about him. Which I don’t.

I do though. I really fucking do. I realised that when I made him cry last night, when I made him sniffle even though he’d done nothing wrong. Not really, anyway; nothing that he could have stopped. I bet he looks stunning when he’s happy, when someone manages to light up his face with the solar flare of a smile jetting across his moonlike features. Features adorning a face that felt so dangerously delicate in my hands, like it could just smash at the slightest amount of pressure. So how the fuck is he meant to cope with my friends beating him up? No, not my friends; with bullies picking on a poor, defenceless and heartbroken kid? He can’t. He just can’t.

“Frank, he’s getting hurt! You need to go help him; they won’t stop hitting him, Frank! I’ve seen it, those kids are animals and he needs help!” Gerard’s screaming at me, panic rife in the voice that’s pulling at my heart like the thought of Mikey, a perfectly innocent kid, suffering even more than he has already.

But I ignore the voice from nowhere but thin air, splashing some more icy water into my face in a vain attempt to drown out the sound of Gerard’s desperate sniffles; he’s crying. Crying in a way that makes it all too clear how badly my ‘friends’ are hurting his little brother. And Gerard can’t do anything about it other than watch and get ‘help’.

But I can’t do anything about it either, not unless I want to start receiving the same harshly cruel treatment. Which I really fucking don’t.

But for Mikey Way’s stunning, almost ghostly, face I could. For the poor kid who has nobody left I could risk it all, just to have him. Because he really is the most intriguing person that I’ve ever met; he seems to have a blatant disregard for everyone else’s thoughts on what is normal, on how to be himself and he’s the first person in a very long time to not show me any sort of respect. It’s excruciatingly irritating, but in a way that makes him seem like a challenge; a challenge that I’m going to have to step down from purely because none of my friends would ever even look at me again if I started socialising with some freak like Mikey Way.

I guess they’re not really my friends then, are they?

Of course they fucking are! The older ones give me lifts home after school, they all laugh at my jokes, they all give me birthday presents, they all do everything that friends should do. Apart from actually know me. And they can’t ever know the real me; I do appreciate having my face in one piece.

“Frank! Listen to me; people are hurting Mikey!”

This time when I look in the direction of the soul-squeezingly desperate and panicked voice, I see Gerard standing a metre or so away from me; his hair tousled, eyes wide with agony and face even paler than it was last night, like seeing his little brother getting hurt has killed him all over again.

“Frankie, please, help him.” He whispers, eyes locked onto mine and beseeching me to do the one thing that he clearly misses the most about living; looking after a kid too weak to look after himself.

I want to say that I will help him, that I can make my friends stop hurting him, but I just can’t. Would Mikey do the same for me? Fucking doubt it, the kid has barely even spoken to me and has shown about as much interest in me as a blind man would in an art gallery; why should I help him when he clearly couldn’t give a shit about me?

Because he’s innocent. Because he’s introverted. Because he’s already been hurt far too much. Because his distraught big brother is begging me to. Because Mikey Way might just be my one shot at redemption; my one shot at getting rid of the guilt that I feel whenever the outcasts look up at me with beseeching, broken eyes praying for me to make my friends stop.

Because I actually want to.

But I can’t. I just… I can’t.

“Leave me alone, Gerard.”

He gawps at me, a storm of blinding rage taking over from his waves of sickening sorrow.

“You fucker! He’s getting hurt, he’s bleeding and all you can do is stand there like I’m asking you to change the world.” He pauses, looking at me with such a high amount of venom that I actually flinch away in shame; something that I don’t think I have ever had to do before. “I’m not; I’m just asking you to improve his. To show him a bit of kindness when he needs it the most.” He lets out a completely shattered sigh of anguished disappointment. “I guess I underestimated you…”

That sounds like a challenge; a challenge that I’m going to beat because I never back down when someone asks me to prove myself, to show them how awesome I really am.

Before I know it I’m running, my feet pounding on the corridors like the erratic pounding of drums in some upbeat punk song on steroids; I’ve got to get to Mikey. I’ve got to help him, if not because my heart is telling me that it’s the right thing to do, then because his big brother will make my life a living hell if I don’t. I know exactly where to go, exactly where they’ll have him cornered and unable to run. I should know, it’s a place that I pointed out to them a few months ago; behind the janitor’s shed.

My heart swells with a strange, almost alien feeling, of pride at what I’m doing; at the fact I’m finally doing something that the real me would do rather than the me that everyone knows and loves. I’m doing something that the me who I am right now would do and I couldn’t be prouder; I’m finally doing what’s right.

“Hey, Frankie!” Liam’s voice chimes from behind me, his hand clapping down jovially on my shoulder and stopping me from running onwards. “Where’ve you been? I can’t believe you missed it; we got that Way kid way good! Fucking little freak.” He laughs along with my group, making me feel slightly sick at the thought that I’m too late, that I waited too long and now Mikey will be lucky if he doesn’t have a black eye and busted nose.

But why should I care? He’s nothing to do with me, other than the fact that he lives in my house, and he has done nothing but frustrate me since he barged into my life last night, fucking everything up as he did so.

I should find him, make sure that he’s alright and make him be if he isn’t.

“Iero? What’s up, man?” Another guy, some twelfth-grader whose name I don’t care to remember, enquires in his thick, brutish voice.

I can’t go find him; to do so would mean siding with him and losing everything that I’ve always wanted. All of my friends, all of my respect, all of the things that everyone wants and that I have. I would lose it all. My whole life would end and I’d end up as just another Mikey Way; no friends and nobody to look out for me. So I turn to my sea of friends, a smirk painting my face to hide the retreating remorse.

“Nothing, just wish that I could have helped ya.”

Yeah, I do. Because that’s the sort of bastard that I am.

That I don’t want to be.






A/N: Thank you very much for reading, I hope that it was alright! Thank you very much to anyone who has read/reviewed/rated this story so far, it really does mean a lot to me! Thanks for reading and please review! :)