FicWad

Smile For Me



Mikey. That’s all I can see. That’s all I want to see. Him. My boyfriend. My Mikey.

He’s smiling like he did on the day that I got him his bass, that majestic weapon of pure silence-destroying awesomeness. It was Christmas Eve and we were swapping presents, his to me being a framed photo of the two of us on our first date; him all adorable blushing cheeks and me all smug smirk at the fact I was the cat who got the cream. It was the best present I could have ever wished for purely because of the level of thought behind it. Sure, it didn’t cost him much but that’s okay. He put a hell of a lot of thought into it and, as a fifteen-year-old living in the rough part of town, he did his best. Which was more than enough.

I know he felt guilty about it, about not being able to spend more than five bucks on me, but he could have bought me a bar of gold and I wouldn’t have loved it any more than what he did give me. Because it really is the thought that counts. Especially with a sweet kid like Mikey, the sweet kid with too many scars for there to be a God.

Most of them self-inflicted.

Some of them parent-inflicted.

None of them inflicted by either me or his big brother, a vampire-esque eighteen-year-old with an attitude problem with everyone other than Mikes. In fact, if you saw him with Mikey you’d think he’s an angel. When you see him with me, his baby brother’s boyfriend who’s the same age as Gerard, you’d think that he’s a psycho killer.

Back to the point. I’d been teaching Mikes to play on my own long-necked beauty, explaining how to pluck each string and helping him to piece together soft little melodies. So for Christmas, from the pawn shop down the road, I bought him an bright blue electric bass.

The look on his face when he opened it was perfect. Just like I wanted it to be, as though all of the answers to his reams of problems lay in that one instrument. His eyes glistened like a moonlit lake, twinkling and looking at me as though he half-expected me to tell him it was just some sort of cruel trick. He was so happy. Nothing but smiles and laughter and everything else that I love to see coming from my boyfriend. Everything about the way he smiles is so sincere, like he really truly is overjoyed because it really truly is that hard to get him to smile. But I can. Whenever I want. Because I love that smi-

Screaming snaps me straight out of my dream like worn-down elastic snapping back on my hand.

Or rather, one single, prolonged sob-scream. Coming from the fitting body lying next to mine.

Coming from Mikey.

From the boy who deserves to smile like he hardly ever does, not like in my dreams of happier times. Not that “happier” even begins to cover the Christmas just gone, it was on a whole different level to where we are now. Curled up in my one-person bed, my body protectively wrapped around him and him starting to squirm and thrash in my grip.

Nightmare.

He’s having a nightmare. As in; Mikey Way, boyfriend to Pete Wentz, is suffering and aforementioned boyfriend can do nothing about it because I’m a complete failure. I’m nowhere near enough to make Mikes feel safe or content or loved or anything else that most kids take for granted. I try, I really fucking do, but I never get it right. At times I do, I always end up making him smile and snuggle into me, but then something even worse will happen because I’m not enough to protect him. To give him everything he needs in a world full of people ready to hurt him.

For now I guess I’ll have to settle for waking the poor sweetheart up before he has a full-on panic attack.

“Mikey, Honey, wakey-wakey!” I shout to him in a hushed, somehow cushioned, voice, my hands starting to shake him gently. “C’mon, Sweetie, let me so those big brown eyes of yours. Show me those beautiful eyes.”

He twists around against me, showing me the reason he’s spent tonight at my house; a huge purple mark across his face. The bruise painted there by the hand of his drunk father, not for the first time, and showing everyone just how in need of help he is. Yet I’m the only one other than Gerard who’ll give it to him when he comes crying for it.

The horrific shock of seeing that terrible stain on his face for the millionth time this evening makes me clutch him tighter, shake him harder in my pure desperation to prevent him from even more undeserved pain. Especially the kind that his own mind can conjure up to torture him.

“P-Pete-ete?” He stutters out weakly, tears still wet on his cheeks and lips still trembling in fear. “Pete!”

He latches onto me, with both his arms and his eyes, my hand resting on the back of his head as I rock him in my arms; just the two of us in my moonlit bedroom, clinging onto one another as though letting go is synonymous with death. Not that I’d ever let my Mikey die, either literally or metaphorically. To let Mikey Way die would be the same as killing him myself; impossible, evil, sick and twisted.

“I’m here, Sweetness, I’m here.” I coo down at him, letting him cry into my shirt because I know he’d do the same for me in heartbeat. Apart from I’d give anything to be crying into his shirt; at least that way he wouldn’t be the one quaking in fear at invisible monsters. “Nightmare?” I ask knowingly, only receiving a curt nod from him that’s barely detectable amidst his shaking. “Wanna talk about it?”

If I’d asked him that six months ago, he’d have said no without a second’s thought. Because he didn’t trust me, because Mikey doesn’t trust someone easily; it’s something I had to earn. Something which I did earn and which means he’s currently swallowing down a sob in order to get his thoughts together.

“It was about this afternoon.” I clutch him tighter at the strained words, kissing his forehead strongly when he leans against me, his exhaustion shining through like some sort of hell-fire. “When Dad h-hit-it me. I can’t get it out of my head.”

I sigh, using extreme amounts of self-control not to just march over to his house and murder his father in cold-blood, instead pecking softly at his nose, wincing as my lips run over the bump of a bruised cut that rests there. I know we should call the cops on his dad, but he just won’t, he says that his dad never means it, that he still loves the bastard even though he hurts him like this almost every week and only seems to be getting worse. And I can’t tell either; I can’t betray Mikey’s trust like that.

So I just brush his flop of fringe out of his watery eyes, fixing him with the most loving gaze I can muster and I start humming to him. Our song.

Not our song in the sense that it’s a song we both like singing along to on the radio, or that it was playing when we went on our first date. Our song in the literal sense; we wrote it. Mostly me for whenever Mikey’s upset, but he came up with the parts that I couldn’t figure out. It’s a soft song, kind of like a love-filled lament about how I can’t ever make everything all alright for Mikes. It’s lyric-less, but the passion I put into the humming and the way the notes change speak more than words ever could; it’s a promise that I’ll always be here for him to snuggle into, to talk to, to teach him new songs on his bass.

To hum him our song.

I prolong the last note, holding it as I look out of my bedroom window and into the star-filled sky, each star shining like Mikey’s eyes do whenever I kiss him. I soak in the silence left behind by the absence of music, until I’m forced to look down at the sound of soft snoring.

Mikey’s fallen back to sleep, curled up into my arms like a baby and sucking softly on his thumb in the most adorably innocent-looking way imaginable.

And he’s smiling.




A/N: Just a little bit of Pikey fluff for whoever may want it, I hope that you liked it and that it wasn’t too bad. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! :)

P.S. For anyone who's interested, I won't be posting for a few days as I'm staying with my dad until Wednesday.