FicWad

Nine Lives





I can still with remember, with vivid clarity, the first time that I saw him, the first time that Mikey Way came tumbling into my life like a feather from the sky, like a fragile little angel falling from Heaven. Apart from I know that he could never be a fallen angel; Heaven would never expel someone as perfectly angelic as Mikey Way, as the willowy wisp of a kid who just so happens to have eyes deeper than any ocean and more mesmerizing than any love-tinted sunset. It was those eyes that first made me think about him, that first made my heart long to beat in time with his, that made my arms ache to hold his wiry frame against my own duvet-like structure. But it wasn’t his beauty that caused that ache; it was the fact that he was crying. Crying on the floor of the rancid school bathroom, just curled up in a ball like the world couldn’t hurt him if he couldn’t see the world. So I just gently approached him, slid down to sit next to him on the cold linoleum floor and just put my arm around his shuddering shoulders, not caring that for all I knew he could be some sort of psycho; he was a crying kid who needed comfort and I’ve often been told that I’m very good at cuddling people’s worries away. We didn’t talk, didn’t ask what the other was doing, didn’t even question each other’s names. We just sat. And that was more than enough. I don’t know how long we sat there, him slowly gaining the courage to hide his face in my black t-shirt, but by the time the bell went to announce the end of the school day, I knew one thing with such certainty that it made history books seem riddled with doubt; there, on the floor of the boy’s toilets, I fell in love with the most enchanting boy that I’ve ever seen. When the bell did go we just stood up and left, neither of us finding words necessary because our eyes said so much more.

The second time that I encountered Mikey was the next day in the cafeteria; he was stood in front of me in the seemingly endless queue for hot food. That was when I first fully took notice of how truly stunning, in an enchantingly unique way, he actually is. His legs were tightly coated in black skinny jeans, making him look like some sort of baby deer; adorably cute and in need of my protection. His hands were all cautious and hesitant when he picked his plate up, like he could cause the end of the world just by touching something, like every graceful movement was done with the intention of going unnoticed as my presence did to him whilst I observed his ghostly form. His arms were covered in wristbands and where there was visible porcelain, it was covered in idle doodles; ranging from what looked like some sort of tab notation to, what I think were, unicorns. It was his face though that nearly made me drop my piping hot slice of pizza in adulated awe, his lips in particular. Lips that, amidst the scarring of what I saw to be bleeding the day before, looked softer than any cloud and twenty times as magnetizing as any fridge door does to those little alphabet pieces that kids get bought up with. Those twin rose petals that looked to be gravitated towards the centre of the Earth in a frown that broke my heart because my heart craved to see him smile, screamed at my own lips to become dance partners with his own. But no; once more we didn’t speak. He hadn’t even seen me; the cuddly, shy drummer-boy with a burning infatuation for this Earthbound angel.

Three days later came the third time, and it really was a case of third time lucky; this time I actually spoke to him, heard is chillingly deep voice mumble his replies as though he feared me making him bleed like he was when I first met him. And that was something that made my mind spin, made my thoughts scramble around as though they were drunk on sorrow and disgust in equal measure; who on Earth could ever want to hurt such a meek, beautiful and sweet boy? Apparently a lot of people, too many for his big brother to keep in line anyway. It was in the local library where the third time took place; we were both in the music section and searching for the same book, some sort of history of punk music or something else of that sort. We were both searching for it and we both found it; our hands reaching out to grab the book at the same electrically-charged moment, our hands brushing in a way that sent his snow-white cheeks an adorable shade of crimson. He had, of course being the courteous being that he is, let go of the book immediately whilst mumbling incoherent apologies and looking down at his checkerboard Vans. So I told him to look at me. And he did, his bottomless eyes widening when they took in the face of the guy who had held him just days before. I asked him what his name was and he’d replied in an introverted little mewl that his name’s Mikey, in return I had told him that I’m Bob, that I’m his friend and that I’m not going to hurt him like his eyes told me he expected me to. As if I could ever hurt someone as fragile, as stunning, as perfect as Mikey Way. We agreed that I would take the book and then give it to him at school when I was done, something that made me read it all the quicker just so that it gave me an excuse to hear the sweet symphony of his voice once more.

So, sticking to my word, I took the weighty tome into school the following Monday, fully ready for my fourth run-in with the beautiful boy that was fast imprisoning my mind with thoughts of him, of how it would feel to make him smile; to make him smile against my own adoring grin. I had even gotten up an hour early that day just so that I could pick out something to wear that I thought would make him look twice at me. I’ve never, not in my entire sixteen and a half years, spent as much time as my mom does with getting dressed. Why? Because normally I don’t give a fuck about what everyone else thinks just as long as I feel comfortable, but that fateful Monday morning I knew that I just wouldn’t feel comfortable unless I managed to make Mikey gawp like he made me do on all three previous occasions. In the end I just settled with wearing my torn, frayed jeans and my Nirvana t-shirt; I’d seen a Nirvana badge on his rucksack in the library and so I thought that he’d appreciate my taste in music almost as much as I appreciate his adorable mouse-like nature. I didn’t manage to find him until the end of the day and by then the book was far from my mind; when I finally found him it was back in the boy’s bathrooms, his body slumped against the walls and with his knees pulled tightly into his shuddering chest like a snail pulling into it’s shell. I called out his name and, to my pleasant surprise, he’d held out his arms to me; apparently not caring that he had a fast-forming black abyss surrounding his left eye, just longing for the sort of comfort that I don’t think anyone else has ever shown him. So, without even a dash of hesitation, I knelt down next to him, took a moment to take in how much like an innocent little toddler begging for a teddy bear’s embrace he looked, and let him topple into my accepting lap. This bathroom-floor meeting was quite different from the first though; this time I couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t stop whispering soft placations to the boy that I felt my heart knew as intimately as I know my drum kit, I couldn’t stop rubbing his back as he sobbed his heart out into my chest. When I asked what had happened his answer had appalled me; ’It’s not important’, he’d said. Said it like he believed it and that was all I needed to know; a bully had done this to him, had reduced him to a shaking wreck when he should have been a proud example of perfection. So I just stayed with him until he calmed down and then I drove him back to his house, dropping him off and leaving him on the doorstep even though my heart was beseeching me to take him somewhere as far away from his tormentors as possible, somewhere where only I can get to him.

The fifth time was the Wednesday after the fourth, we had a snow day from school and I was walking through the local park, enjoying the serene purity of the blanket of wintery spirit that had doused everything. Or rather, I was trying to, but everything reminded me of Mikey; the way the snow was as pure as his skin, how his smile would easily blot out the blinding winter sunshine should it ever grace his china face, even the birdsong made me think of Mikey’s sheer innocence and natural wonder. As I neared the duck pond, a favourite place of thought for me, I saw a black-trench-coat-clad figure slowly throwing pieces of bread onto the frozen water for the shivering mallards. I stood there for a while, just watching him observe the ducks as though they were stunning figure-skaters gliding along the thin ice of the pond; his complete childlike innocence making him even more adorable to me, making my heart flutter even faster. Especially when he turned around to see me gazing at him with the eyes of an infatuated teenage boy, his eyes so full of wonderment that it made me smile like I do whenever I think of his intricate face. We sat on a nearby bench together, just taking in the beauty of our surroundings; a beauty only beaten by that of the boy who was sat next to me and starting to relax for the first time in way too long. We ended up trading memories of long-forgotten snowball fights, of cosy fires and roasted chestnuts; learning everything about all that the other held close, my heart rocketing at the idea of him opening up to me like he trusts me. Like I’m his friend.

The sixth blessed meeting that I had with my own little angel was mere hours after the fifth; I had given him a lift home from the park and he accidentally (although part of me would very much like to think that it may have been on purpose) left his iPod on my passenger seat. So, me doing everything that my soul yearned to do, I drove back to his home and handed it over. And he actually plucked up the courage to invite me in, to ask me to play videogames in his room with him. To me it was like asking a dog if it would like a bone; a question with only one possible answer. An overeager yes. So we sat in his room, exchanging pointless anecdotes about various online gaming experiences, and I let him win almost every game we played; his happiness seemed rare and the last thing that I wanted was to dampen it by making him feel like a loser. Not like he could ever be a loser, not really. Because even if he were to lose everything, he had most certainly won my heart at the very least. We ended up watching a movie, some gory horror or another, which in turn resulted in him falling asleep on me, in my arms. Just like I wanted. He looked so content, even if I could see a few scars on his face from his heartless tormentors, he at least looked as happy to be in my arms as I felt to have them encasing his precious body. His big brother had come in to say goodnight a few hours into me being curled around my new best friend’s frail form, but Gerard had taken one look at the two of us, smiled wryly yet with all the pride that the big brother of someone like Mikey Way is quite rightly entitled to, and then just snuck back out again, throwing me a friendly wink as he did so.

The seventh time that I saw his moonlike face was, quite obviously, the morning after the time before. I’d fallen asleep on his bed with him still in my arms, the two of us curled around each other as though I was the cat and him the adorable, innocent kitten in need of protection. I woke up first and for that I am truly grateful; I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as tranquil, as undeniably awesome as I do whenever I get the pleasure of simply watching him sleep. Watching him sleep in my arms, where I know that nothing can hurt him; no insults, no taunts, no punches, no pressure, no bullies. Nothing that I can defend him against. He looks so peaceful when he sleeps, like nothing can ever go wrong in the world ever again purely because nothing can disrupt such heavenly peace as that which dreams paint across his delicate face. When he did eventually wake up, to be greeted by another snow day, he had blushed so profusely that I was half tempted to get out my cell just to snap a shot of his unbridled cuteness. We spent the rest of the day talking, me telling him that everything he appeared to think about himself (the worthlessness, the vulnerability, the unimportance, the ugliness) was a load of bullshit. At the moment when I told him how special I truly believe him to be, he just burst into salty-disbelief; forcing me to hug him close as he just wailed, let out all of the hurt and anguish and misery. It should have broken my heart to see him in so much emotional pain, in a way it did, but with those tears came something miraculously amazing; his trust, a key into his innermost thoughts that gave me a licence to fix everything for him.

The eighth encounter was the following Sunday, we’d been texting one another the whole time though; me making sure that he was happy, him making sure that I really did want to be his friend. But I didn’t want to just be his friend; I want to be his boyfriend. The one person that he knows will always be here for him even if everything else falls to shit, the one person that will never let him down. He texted me asking if I wanted to meet up with him, something which made me glow like a shooting star, and so I it came to be that he fell through my front door, eyes wide and puffy, nose streaming a horrific cocktail of blood combined with tear-induced snot. At seeing him so piteously helpless my heart all but stopped in sorrowful panic and my breathing quickened to a pace to match my fury at my poor little angel’s attackers; but as much as I wanted to cry or scream or go out to hunt down the bastard who dared to hurt my best friend, I couldn’t. Mikey needed me. So I sat him down on my couch, for once thankful of my parents’ busy work schedules, and just rocked him like a small child until he had enough breath to tell me what happened. He’d just been walking over to mine, following the directions that I had given him, when the fuckers from school saw him and, of course not liking that their poor victim was for once happy, had decided to knock the smile right off of his naïve little face. He slept at mine that night, the two of us curled up under a blanket, sharing my headphones as the likes of Black Flag and Joy Division soothed away Mikey’s hurt.

And now, right this second, it’s the ninth time. Nine. My lucky number. Why? Because cats have nine lives, and cats are my favourite animal so it only makes sense for nine to be my lucky number. At least, I sincerely hope that it is because today, the morning after he fell through my door and into my arms, I’m going to tell him how I feel; tell him that I love him. I have to; it’s the only way that will make him see how amazing he truly is.

He stirs in my arms, his eyeliner smudged from both sleep and tears, before blinking owlishly up at me, my heart melting with each content little blink.

Fuck, I love this kid.

But then his adorably cute laziness shifts to pained confusion; the kind that I never want him to feel again.

“Bob, why d’you care so much about me? No-one else does.” He mutters sullenly, crystalline daggers stabbing at the corners of his shattered eyes.

This is it. I have to say it. Now or never.

So I squeeze him tight, and then manoeuvre us so that my baby-blue eyes are locked with his deep dishes of melted chocolate and he’s holding my gaze steadily back, regarding me with nervous apprehension.

“Because, Mikey Way, I think that I love you.”

I clamp my eyes shut in pure, honest-to-God fear. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve ever been this scared in my life, not even when I smashed my mom’s favourite antique vase.

“Bob?” His soft voice utters my name as though it’s some sort of angelic chorus and I feel my hear skip several rushed beats. “I love you too.”

I open my eyes to see something that makes up for all of the bad things in this world.

Mikey Way is smiling.

Because I love him.

And he loves me back.






A/N: Thank you very much for reading, I hope that it was alright. I really like writing Bikeys, so I hope that you liked reading it! Thanks for reading and please review! :)


NEW A/N: THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!! I can't believe that this has gone green, it really does mean the world to me and I would just like to say a huge THANK YOU to anyone who has rated/reviewed this one-shot; you've made a girl very happy! :D