FicWad

What You Need





We all thought, Mikes included, that they were the perfect couple; that they fitted together like a key and a lock, like the sun and the sky, like two teenage lovers on a hot summer’s night.

As much as it pains me to admit it, I honestly did believe that Pete Wentz was the best person for Mikey Way, for my best friend of ten years. A best friend who deserves so much more than what everyone else gives him; it’s shocking, really, how quickly people are willing to loathe him and consequently hurt him for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. Apart from they do, it’s like little kids being scared of thunderstorms, they can’t take that Mikes is better than them and so put him in positions that they can’t possibly envy; ruby-adorned noses, ghostly whimpers, liquid-gold glistening eyes and a very nearly broken spirit.

But it isn’t the bullies who have finally done it, who have finally crushed the spirit that I poured everything into preserving. Oh no, it was his boyfriend of three months, Pete Wentz, who finally managed to kill the light that everyone thought Pete adored. The light that I did adore before Pete’s curious hands and insatiable heart stamped it out with two simple words; ‘it’s over’. Two words that I hoped I would never have to hear coming from his, thanks to Gerard, now punctured lips because I understand just how much Pete meant, still does mean, to Mikes.

To the boy who has broken my heart more times than there are stars in the sky simply by making his own heart soar at Pete’s touch. I know that it’s pathetic, a fifteen-year-old boy like me dwelling on his unrequited love for a boy with no heart left to give anymore, but I just can’t help it.

I, me, myself, Frank Iero, am completely infatuated with the younger Way brother.

Which is precisely why I feel like shit right now.

Because every part of me is telling me that Pete ending it with him is the best thing to happen since the electric guitar.

Every part of me that isn’t my heart. My heart’s aching for the guy, it feels like his sobs sound; destroyed, broken, obliterated and every other word that means the same. No matter how hard I try I just can’t be happy about this, about the fact that Mikey, my Mikey, could possibly actually be mine and I know precisely why. It’s because I really do love him and when you love someone you always put them first; if Mikey’s happy, even if it means him being in the protective fortress of someone else’s arms, then I’m twice as happy just because I get to see his sweet sunlight smile; if he’s scared, even if the bullies know well enough not to mess with me, then I feel twenty times as agonizingly frightened as he does just because if I fail to calm him down then I won’t ever get to see that perfect little grin of his dance across his face; if he’s sad, even if that means him no longer being in the treacherous arms of the boy who should have been me, then I feel completely fucking obliterated.

Because if he’s sad then that means that I have failed him, that I’ll never be worthy of all of those gentle lip-brushes painting blushes onto my face that I so desperately long for.

And he’s sad right now, up in his bedroom with the door locked so that none of us, Ray and Gee and me, can get in there to comfort him through the devastating storm that Pete Wentz has left in his reckless wake. I can’t believe that we all trusted this guy with our most precious possession, that we willingly handed over our most valuable and vulnerable treasure to some fucker who just had his fun and then decided that he didn’t love Mikes after all. I can’t believe that none of us saw who he truly is beneath the cheeky smirks and sleek remarks that never failed to have Mikes laughing as though Pete had enchanted his heart to do whatever he wished it to.

Wait. Gerard saw it. He even told Pete straight to his face that if he ever hurt his baby brother, the innocently adorable kid of our little group, that he’d kill him. But, of course, Pete convinced him that he would never hurt Mikes even if it was the only way to prevent the apocalypse. And Gerard believed him. Just like the rest of us.

”Look, Wentz, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’ve heard all about you; I know who you are.” Gerard growls venomously at the kid lounging restlessly on the battered living room couch, making sure that Mikes had disappeared to the bathroom so that we can interrogate him like we have planned to; we can’t let Mikes get hurt, we both love the kid way too much for that.

Which is why I’m so desperate for Pete to be twice as flawed as I am, because at least that way I’m still in with a chance to grab what I was too scared of rejection to take before I knew what it would feel like to see him snuggled up to someone else when we watch horror movies. A someone else who does have quite the reputation for breaking hearts, if the rumours that shroud him like a cloak of pride are to be true. No matter how much I want them to be, I sincerely hope that they’re not; I may not want Mikes to be with someone who isn’t me, but I want him to be heartbroken even less.

That’s how I know I really am in love with him, because his happiness means more to me than my heartbreak.

Pete just sniggers, his smirk broadening cockily at the idea of him being the topic of conversation like blood on a piece of tissue and his honey eyes ignite with interest teamed with mild amusement; as though he isn’t all that worried that his boyfriend’s big brother, who sends chills up even my spine when he’s angry, looks to be baying for blood at the prospect of Mikes being taken advantage of by some user. Just like I would be if I didn’t care about Mikey so damn much.

“And if believed everything that I heard about you, Gerard Way, then I would be holding garlic in one hand and a human sacrifice in the other right now.” He chuckles lightly, a chuckle that sounds reminiscent of soft music on the breeze; I can definitely see how Mikes could fall in love with this guy.

I mean, it’s not like he had anyone better hanging around him, is it?

Gerard shoots me the look, one that very nearly makes my heart stop in fear, and I turn up the television volume to blot out any sounds that we don’t want Mikey hearing. Not that I plan on doing any of the talking; Pete’s two years older than me, bigger and stronger too, but it’s more than that, I can’t tell him what I trust Gee will because I don’t want to wreck the one good thing that Mikes has got going in his life. The one guy who can make him smile on tap, like his gentle irises (that are only gentle when around Mikes) are keys to unlocking that which I have to work restlessly to even get a glimpse of; the first person to successfully protect Mikey from the bullies that torment him like a damned soul torments the one who sent it to hell early; the blessed boy who has stolen Mikey’s first kiss.

A first kiss that should have been mine.

“I’m not fucking around, Wentz, and I’ll only warn you once; hurt my brother and I will rip your dick off.” Gee’s animalistic snarl makes me shudder with the pure sincerity of it; some people might find his threat laughable, but when it comes to Mikey there really is no telling just what Gee is capable of.

And, judging by the admirable power behind his threat which is really more like a promise, this is something that he will carry out should it be needed.

I just pray that it never is.

I see Pete stiffen in his seat, his entire demeanour going from teasing and nonchalant to business-like, as though Gerard has actually managed to break through his thick skull with his solid, ominous and omnipotent promise.

“Gerard, I love your brother more than I can even begin to describe and I see him getting hurt every day by those bastards at school; do you really think that I could put the love of my life through even more pain?” His eyes flood with sorrow’s sweet cyanide, making me actually a little bit grateful that Mikes is going out with this guy; I think that I may have shamefully misjudged him. “No. I love him far too much for that. And, I think, he loves me just as much. I just wanna make him happy, guys, and I’ll do that with or without your blessing. Me and Mikes, we’re watertight; together forever.”

And we believed him with the same blind faith that Mikey did. His glossy glances and regimented recitals tricked us all. For that, for actually making Mikes believe that he loved him in the cruellest way imaginable, I hope that the bastard falls in front of a bus and gets to burn in the hell that Mikey’s unrestrained sobs are dragging me through right now.

Maybe I’m being unfair to Pete; perhaps he had meant those words when he said them, believed them as I much as I wanted to for Mikey’s sake, and they just faded away like a worn-out old photograph other the months. If he’d just put it like that, broken up with Mikes in a halfway decent manner, then I probably wouldn’t want to take a sniper to his head right now.

But the fact that he swanned up to my Mikes, my best friend in the whole wide world, with some other pretty little thing, Ryan I think he was called, and simply said ‘it’s over’ is un-fucking-forgivable.

It’s obvious that it had been going behind Mikey’s innocently trusting back, it had to have been; you don’t kiss like Pete and Ryan were after knowing each other for just a few days. That just makes it even more sickening to me, the fact that Pete took advantage of Mikey’s lamblike naivety and didn’t even stop to think of the repercussions. Bastard.

It was only yesterday that I was sat with Mikes in his room, him gushing about how in love he and Pete are. Were.

Bastard.

”You really love him, huh, Mikes?” I sigh into the airy atmosphere of the midnight blue haven of Mikey’s bedroom, fiddling with the love-stretched edges of his Batman duvet cover and looking out of his sun-flooded window in a half-hearted attempt to hide the hurt in my voice.

Hurt because it should be Ray speaking to Mikey like this about me, having a conversation about how amazing I am to the kid; not about how much Pete Wentz is like his knight in shining fucking armour. Armour that I was wearing long before he ever was.

But Pete makes him happy. And that’s all I could ever want for my Mikey.

“Yep! And he loves me back, Frankie. He actually loves me!” He squeals in a voice that I would kill to be for me, a voice that is so sickly sweet that it might make me throw up if it weren’t dripping with Mikey’s own brand of golden syrup; the kind that I could soak up all day if only it were generated by me rather than some other guy who will never be able to adore him as much as I do. “Someone actually loves me, Frankie! Even though everyone else thinks I’m a freak, Pete still loves me.”

Oh, Mikes. If I’d have known that it would have only taken those three little words to make you forget what those motherfuckers at school do to you then I would have said it years ago.

My heart pirouettes in both excruciation and exaltation as he leans back against me, exaltation at the way he just nestles nicely into me as though it’s just meant to be and excruciation because I can’t think about him like this. Not anymore, not now that he’s actually happy. I can’t believe that he actually felt unloved before Pete came along, that he truly believed what he was told just because he thought he was unlovable.

I loved him the whole time though. Adored him like a star adores the moon, like azure waves adore golden beaches; like Mikey Way adores Pete Wentz.

“I used to think that it wasn’t worth it, y’know. I just thought that it would be nice to curl up and fade out from everything, but Pete’s made me feel like it’s all worth it; like I can pull through anything if he thinks I can. Because he loves me.” He pauses, blinking up at me with those stunningly starlit eyes that should be shining for me, and leans further back against me in our usual movie-marathon embrace; a kind that feels like a twenty tonne weight is resting atop of my heart as opposed to the slither of boy who is pouring his heart out to me like he always does. “And I love him too. We’re forever, me and Pete.”

A forever that ended at lunchtime today, in front of the entire fucking cafeteria.

Now, I’m not sticking up for Pete or anything, but I honestly don’t think that the idiot thought he was doing anything wrong. He’s just a hormonal hurricane too good-looking for his own good and with no clue with how to deal with any sort of commitment. Perhaps he thought that Mikes was just a bit of fun, that Mikey would just be happy for his small time in the sun. But that bastard’s broken Mikey’s precious little heart, left him as shattered as his glasses from where he threw them at the living-room wall little over an hour ago in fit of confused frustration at one of the many things that makes him an easy target for bullies.

Bullies that meant nothing to him when he was in Pete’s arms.

I wish that he still was. At least then he was truly happy, even if it did make me miserable; I would go to straight down to hell right now if someone told me it might just make Mikes happy.

Instead I’m stood outside of his bedroom door, being able to hear his tortured cries in high definition, as though his agony is magnetized towards my soul by the burning ache that it has to hold him close. I’m stood here on the cream carpet of the hallway and I don’t have a fucking clue as to what I should do; he wouldn’t open his door to Ray’s sensible reasoning nor to Gerard’s desperate pleas that were drenched in fury at what Pete has unwittingly reduced his baby brother to. So how the fuck am I meant to be any more successful where both the genius of the group and his own big brother have failed?

I don’t know, but knocking on his bedroom door seems like a good start.

“Leave me alone, Gerard!”

“Mikes, it’s not Gee. It’s Frankie. Look, I just wanna know if you’re alright. Please let me in, Buddy.” I sound like a little kid hopelessly begging it’s mom for candy in a health food shop, using all of my self-control to keep my own agony out of my voice for Mikey’s sake.

Who the hell am I kidding? He’s not going to open this door to me, the only person that has any hope of getting this door open right now is Pete. And there’s no way on this Earth that with myself or Gee would let that bastard near Mikes any time soon, if ever. I’m not entirely sure if I even want him to let me in; at least if he doesn’t I can be unguilty in the knowledge that I tried, but if he lets me in then I have to see the face that matches up to the heart broken voice. That’s if he lets me in at all.

Both literally and metaphorically.

My lungs wrap themselves mercilessly around my heart to restrict both of their vital functions as I hear the unsure click of a lock.

My kidneys relentlessly kick my stomach until the dormant butterflies held within it awaken at the sound of the handle being turned…

“Oh, Mikes.”

He stumbles forwards, his hair looking like a tangled bramble bush after a storm and his eyes even redder than the knuckles that he’s just been using to beat the shit out of every possession that has lost all meaning since he lost his. His breathing’s shallow, like his lungs know that his heart is no longer functioning so there’s no point in even trying to keep him alive anymore. Everything about him kills me inside; from his trembling lips to his heaving shoulders and everything in between just makes my heart melt through the vice-like grip that my lungs have on it.

I’d much rather he was in Pete’s arms and happy rather than looking like the ghost of the shell of the person that he used to be.

He falls forwards into my unknowingly open arms, which react by fastening around him like a safety-belt; there’s no way that I’m about to let him go, not when he’s burrowing into my chest as though I can make it all better. And I will. Because I love him.

“I’m all alone again, Frankie.” He mewls up at me, making me wish that I could add to the black eye that Gerard inflicted upon Pete when he heard about Pete’s mindless actions; he really believes that, even though I’ve got him cradled close to me.

“Mikey Way, you’ll never be alone. I won’t allow it.”

I could kiss him and I know right now that he wouldn’t have it in him to push me away or to even think about whether it’s what he wants or not.

I could but I don’t. Because I love him enough to respect the fact that he needs a friend right now. And I’m not going anywhere fast.

When he’s ready, I’ll love him. Love him like he needs to be loved. But only when he’s ready.

And not a second before.

Because I really do love him.







A/N: Thank you very much for reading; I hope that this was alright! It’s an idea that I’ve been toying with for a while now but was too lazy to write up. I wanted to write something with my top two pairings, and so this 3000 word ramble was birthed. Sorry if it was crappy, I’m not a huge fan of this one at all. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! :)