FicWad

Chapter Five – You’re No Killer

Frank’s POV


God, he’s a mess.

A strangely enchanting mess, but a mess nonetheless. The kind of mess that caused me, despite his desperate whimpers of heartbreakingly terrified protest, to all but carry his horribly limp and battered body the short distance from where I found him to my empty house.

I quite honestly don’t think that I’ve ever been so scared, so nervous; this boy, Mikey Way, is hurt. Really, properly hurt. As in he keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, as in he’s groaning like an over-slammed door at every slight movement, as in I’m starting to think that my mom’s home first-aid kit and my notoriously fast fingers might not be enough to help him through what those two bastards have done to him.

I tried to keep him talking on the walk home, tried to not only learn more about my new friend but to simply keep him awake. Because he’s in that kind of state where sleep could easily turn into an endless oblivion of eternal rest. I did point that out to him when he very nearly fell asleep, slumped over in my arms, and it was the response to that which truly made my heart break; he just looked at me with living-dead eyes, eyes that reflected every emotion that I’m trying to leave behind me, and shrugged with his heaving shoulders. He really doesn’t care. From what I can gather out of his frightened little mewls and panic-stricken eyes that seem to follow me whenever I leave the side of my bed, which is where I have placed him through lack of any real and much-needed knowledge about what to do with him, he did definitely not deserve to be jumped like that.

I wonder if this sort of thing happens to him all of the time. That would certainly explain his shyness, his reluctance to just accept that I’m not going to hurt him. But this sort of thing just shouldn’t be normal and if it is then some responsible adult should do something about it. What if those two boys were actually intending on killing Mikey and just chickened out at the last minute; fuck, what if this poor, shivering kid was about to get murdered? And more importantly, why? People don’t just attack each other like this for no reason and those boys seemed to be adamant that this boy, this shaking heap of tears and terror, is a killer.

What if he is?

No. I can read people pretty well and I can tell that Mikey Way is no killer. He’s just a hurt, introverted and, if I’m going to be perfectly honest, adorable boy who was most likely in the wrong place in the wrong time. There is no way on this horrible world that the same guy who won’t even look me in the eye or reply with words if he can help it, is a killer; it’s simply impossible.

I look down to the bucket of lukewarm water that I’ve placed beside the bed and reach for the cloth that is hanging drably over the edge. I might not like the fact that I know nothing about Mikey, other than his name and that he’s sixteen years old, but I like the fact that someone so clearly innocent is hurting as much as he is even less; I’ve got to clean him up, I’ve got to see if he really is as adorable as I think he might be underneath the layer of, now dried, blood. He’s got a nasty-looking gash on his forehead, it resembles a crack in the Earth’s crust leading straight down into hell, and I know from experience that if it doesn’t get washed out soon then the odds are that it’ll get infected. And I really don’t want him to suffer more than he already is.

Why?

Because there’s something about him, no; everything about him just invites me in, like his fragmented little whimpers are tiny keys sliding down my ears and straight into my heart to unlock it, to make me ache to help him. Besides, like I’ve said before, I know what it’s like to be hated, to be hurt and I honestly think that this kid is way too sweet to be going through that. Or rather, to be going through hate and hurt alone. So I’m going to be the one thing to him that I never had at my old school. I am going to be his friend.

I wring out the cloth, testing the temperature against my wrist to ensure that it won’t burn his preciously pale skin, and reach gently from my spot on the edge of the bed to his weary face. A face that looks like it belongs in a fairy-tale portrait because of how eerily enchanting it is; all cracked porcelain skin and perfectly defined features, everything that all of the popular guys I have ever met have and yet here he is, laid out under my crumpled bedcovers and shaking as though he’s a dove’s feather caught in a merciless updraft.

In my bed.

No. Don’t start thinking like that, Frankie. He may be gorgeous, but that’s all you know about him. Please, for the love of Nirvana, do not start thinking like that. Not with him. Not after last time. He’s already hurt enough.

I shake my head viciously as though I can just shake the thoughts away, and resume reaching my hand towards the horrendous stain of red that is streaking across his face like a stripe of agony announcing to the world just how scared this poor guy is. Not that his helpless trembling and hopeless whimpers didn’t already make that brutally clear.

“Just relax, Mikey. You’re safe now.” I coo to him quietly when I spot him looking at my outstretched hand as though it could easily turn into the punch that it never will be. God, he must be so frightened, poor thing. “I’m your friend, remember?”

Although he nods, his response stamps out what little faith I may have had left in the goodness of humanity. The way that he nods and then looks back up to me with teary eyes tells me more than I ever wanted to know; to him the word ‘friend’ doesn’t mean safety, to him it just means being taken advantage of and hurt. Not that I’d ever do either of those things to him, or to anyone else for that matter. I can’t see how anybody ever could, especially to someone like Mikey Way. Someone as adorable as a baby bunny caught in the headlights; someone as introverted as a snail without it’s shell; someone as innocent as a new-born lamb; someone as sweetly naïve as, well, as Mikey Way. He definitely is naïve if the way that he’s hanging off of my every word as though it is gospel is anything to go by.

“Friends don’t hurt each other, Mikey. They look out for each other.” I smirk at him, my eyes beseeching him to understand so that I can at least believe that he’s not as broken inside as I am fast learning that he horribly is. And, out of tactless curiosity, I can’t help but add: “Haven’t you ever had a friend before?”

Well done, Frankie; fan-fucking-tastic job!

He sobs.

He full out sobs, eyes wide and full of the kind of hurt that I’d only just managed to start removing, and just lets his chin loll heartlessly into his chest, looking down as though he is pointlessly ashamed of his tears. Tears that I fucking caused with my own reckless stupidity; the sort that is probably the very reason for me constantly being the loner ‘emo’ kid nobody wants to be friends with no matter where I go. But my own past and misery doesn’t matter right now. Because I’ve made Mikey Way, the first person to ever look at me like I’m not some sort of freak, cry like I’ve just torn his heart straight out from his chest and stamped on it right in front of him.

I throw the dripping cloth back into the bucket with a resounding ‘plop’ and shuffle to be further up the bed so that I can make Mikey feel less alone, let him know that I wasn’t teasing him like so many others obviously have. Maybe if he were someone else, someone less vulnerable and blatantly sweet, I would be annoyed at his sensitivity, perhaps even angry that he’s acting like this after I went out of my way and put my neck on the line to help him when nobody else would. But he isn’t somebody else; he’s Mikey Way, the sort of kid who obviously has been through too much for him to cope with and who quite clearly just needs someone to take the time to understand him.

Someone like me.

“Three.”

I look at him in shock, the spluttered and choked out word rattling me to the rotten core with how desperate it sounded; how completely fucking smashed it shows him to be on the inside. I want nothing more than to just hug him, hold him until my caring arms have suffocated all of his pain and anguish. Yet I can’t, because I know how scared he is of me and I can’t risk ruining what meagre trust he may have in me by forcing unwanted contact onto his frail, sob-fraught body.

Besides, his squeak has got me completely stumped; intrigued to know what he means by his tear-clogged mewl of heart-broken heartbreak.

“Huh?”

He looks up once more, revealing such agony in his bottomless eyes that it actually makes me flinch, before swallowing down the sorrow that I desperately long to comfort out of him.

“I’ve had three friends.” He sniffles again before dropping his head down to where it was earlier, his hands gripping at the blanket to both reflect and relieve some of the putrid pain that he’s in. “They all hate me now.”

And with that he dissolves into his acidic tears once more, forcing me to take a risk that, if it works as I hope it will do, will relieve me of some of the guilt that is dousing my soul at both what my own species is capable of and the excruciating pressure that my thoughtless question has put him under. A risk that, if it goes as I half expect it to, will ruin the minute bridge that I’ve started to build between myself and the weeping angel sat semi-upright in my bed.

In a moment of unquestionable good intentions, I lean forward and pull him straight into a hug. The kind of hug that my mom gives me whenever I come home from school all beaten-up, the kind of hug that I’ve been aching to give Mikey Way since I found him a few hours ago. I hook my arms around his bony back and pull him gently into my chest, my legs dangling off the edge of the bed so that he can curl right up into me, should he so wish. He feels so fragile up against me, like anything could smash him completely given half of the chance, and I can already feel his tears soaking through my shirt like blood draining through gauze but I don’t care; all I do care about is his comfort, his safety, his pleasure. Everything that nobody has ever cared about for me and so I feel I must not let someone else go through it like life has forced me to.

Then it hits me; he hasn’t pushed me away, he’s just leaning lightly against my chest and letting my hands rub soothing circles onto his arching back. Maybe it’s because he’s just too exhausted to fight me off or maybe it’s because he genuinely isn’t all that scared of me, but one thing I know for sure is this; it is definitely because he just doesn’t want to feel alone, the way that his fingers are grabbing shyly at my shirt tells me that all too clearly. He may be terrified of me, but at the same time I’m showing him kindness after someone else showed him cruelty, showing him that I can be a friend when he’s just been shown all that his enemies can do to him.

He might not want to admit it, but Mikey Way needs to be hugged right now. And I’m the only person around so it looks like he’s going to be in my arms for quite a while longer, at least until I am satisfied that he’s been comforted enough for me to release him.

I know that to an onlooker this might seem slightly insane, me cradling a boy close to me after knowing him for just a collection pain-filled hours, but to me it seems like the most natural thing in the world; a boy, an extremely cute boy at that, needed comforting and I’m the only person able to give him that comfort. Some people might call me a freak, a weirdo for being so willing to cuddle up close to a stranger; I just call it being a decent human being. It’s not like I can just let him cry alone, is it? And besides, he seems to be liking it despite the fact that he was shaking in fear of me just minutes ago.

Maybe this was all I needed to do to gain at least a little bit of his trust; maybe all I needed to do was show him that I really don’t care even if he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t need to understand, just that I do. I really fucking do.

But that doesn’t fix the fact that he thinks his friends hate him. They can’t do, they just simply can’t. In fact, I bet they’re going out of their minds with worry because Mikey isn’t sat with them at the cafeteria right now; or are at least trying to get a hold of him. They can’t hate him though, it just doesn’t make sense how anyone could ever hate someone as non-existent as the boy who is currently sobbing into my chest.

And I have to make him see that. I have to calm him down so that I can try to clean him up again, make him feel all safe and loved.

Loved.

I could definitely love this sweet, innocent, cute, adorable, shy, naïve, kind-

No. Not now, Frankie, and definitely not him! He can’t deal with you right now.

“I’m sure that they don’t hate you, Mikey.” I whisper to him in velvety tones, letting my words lick at the wounds my earlier question tore into his lacerated soul. “What happened, did you fall out or something?”

He shudders against me but makes no move to free himself of my protective arms and I, in response to the increasingly large wet-patch on my torso, stoke my fingers caringly through his feathery tufts of dark chocolate hair; taking extra care not rub against any bumps or gashes that Matt and Bob inflicted upon his pretty little head.

“I was bad.”

Okay, that is not a normal answer for a sixteen-year-old boy to give.

Especially not in that lost-sheep voice that he delivered it in. That was the answer of a crushed soul, of a broken kid, of something so far beyond repair that it can’t even recall what it’s true answer would have once been. Because that is an answer that has been drilled into him, that he’s been forced to believe and it’s killing me inside to hear him say it. Say it like he truly thinks it’s the correct thing to say.

But I can confidently say that there isn’t a bad part to this boy, neither mentally or physically.

“Bob and Matt hate me.”

Hang on a second.

Those motherfuckers were his ‘friends’, they beat him to the point of blacking out and he still thinks that they’re his friends? Poor fucking kid. He must really be alone if he’s that desperate as to still want to cling onto the thought of those two being his ‘friends’. Even if they don’t like him as much as they did when they first started hanging out, which I find something impossible to believe, they can’t just abandon all loyalty to the kid and leave him for dead at the end of some dark, dank alleyway as though he’s some dog in need of being put out of it’s misery.

No wonder Mikey was so scared of me; I would have been too given that the two people who are meant to be nice to him just reduced to him to a pile of blood and bruises.

“And Ray’s dead.” He whimpers, his voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard before; unparalleled in it’s absolute misery and excruciating agony. “My boyfriend’s dead, Frank.”

Shit.

I’ve finally got this kid to speak to me, to maybe even trust me a little bit, and now I just don’t know what to do. And it scares me shitless. He’s crying and bleeding and grieving and I just don’t how to deal with it like my heart is screaming at me to.

So I just wash my hands over his back and rest my chin on his shoulder, pulling him even closer to eradicate any ideas of loneliness before they can blossom and add to his inner-torment. It’s what my Mom does for me whenever I’m upset and it always helps, so it’s the very least I can do for the boy who both my own actions and Fate have bound me to look after; to protect; to be his friend.

Ray. That name sounds awfully familiar… That’s the kid who died last week! I can remember it now; the article had said something about a ‘Raymond Toro’ getting hit outside the school, the only witness being Toro’s boyfriend.

Meaning that Mikey saw it, Mikey saw the love of his life getting snatched right away from him. I can’t even begin to imagine how that must feel and nor do I want to; the kind of things that must be going through that poor boy’s head right now…

It’s the least I can do to not crush him with my bear hug; I just want to hold him and never let go. Ever.

“I’m so sorry, Mikey. I’m so, so sorry.” I soothe into his ears, wincing as each of his whimpers slice straight through me. “But things will get better, I promise.”

And they will. I’ll make sure of that.







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