FicWad

Six – Home Alone

Pete’s POV




I’m not perverted. Honest, I’m not.

I mean, I’m not stood outside the bathroom door just because Mikey Way’s having a shower and I’m hoping to get a peek. Not that that would be a bad thing by any stretch. No, I’m stood outside the door because he’s been in there for nearly an hour, ever since ‘Trick practically dragged Gerard out of the house with one of Those smirks on his face, and the water stopped running at least forty minutes ago.

I’m just checking up on him. Not getting a free show; that just so happens to be an added bonus, if it happens.

Actually, no. It wouldn’t be.

I really care about Mikey, the bruised skeleton kid, and that means that I want to respect him. Ergo, I don’t want to be a peeping tom with him because I know he wouldn’t like that. It’s kind of strange, really; normally I wouldn’t care and just take a good long look anyway, but with Mikey Way I just don’t want to do that. He’s too innocent and special to just be some cheap ogle-fest. He has been in the bathroom for an awfully long time though, he’s missed two of Gerard’s check-up calls because of it, and I really am starting to worry. For all I know he could have slipped on the floor and be unconscious or concussed or dead by now.

That idea fills me with another wave of terror to wash away what few reservations I had about the idea and I just creak the door open, just a tiny bit, my heart breaking at what it sees.

A sweet, cute boy staring at his, unfortunately re-clothed, reflection. Apart from the staring is more like scowling and there are tears on his cheeks like diamond rings on a cushion. He’s pulling down at the collar of his t-shirt, a too-baggy Joy Division number, and revealing that the bruise I saw last night in fact extends to pretty much the whole of his chest and around his delicate, swanlike neck. Looks like some bastard really did one on him, poor kid. No wonder he’s so shy.

“Stupid ugly faggot.” He spits at his own image, the venom in his voice making me wince at how not-cute he sounds. “Why can’t you just be better?”

How?

How can something so perfect be so broken, so utterly destroyed on the inside? Sure, we’ve all had our moments of wishing that we’re more than what we are, but this is so much more than that. This is an innocent fifteen-year-old giving up on the world, letting it tell him what he is even if he isn’t. I thought that my bass-playing this morning, all songs that I stayed up until the early hours perfecting for him, would let him know that I think he’s perfect just the way he is. Because it’s true; Mikey, from what I can tell, is kind, a genuinely good person with too many bad things going on with him for the world to be a decent place. Not only is he kind, but properly sweet too. And not just in a way that makes me want to kiss him until my lips sting with infection from his teeth, but in a way that makes me want to take him far from here, to a place where nobody can hurt him.

Because that’s what obviously happens. Even if the bruises weren’t enough proof, his attitude is; his introverted anxiousness saying that he’s been put-down too many times to not expect it and the way he’s just spoken about himself is screaming that enough is definitely more than enough. It’s not normal for a kid to talk about himself like that. In fact, it’s kind of scary that he is. Scary because it means that I’ve got even more to fix than I thought.

I’m still going to fix it though. I have to; how else am I going to prove to Mikey Way that I’m in love with him?

“Better off dead.” He mumbles, tone full of sincere defeat.

It might just be three simple words, but they make horror eat away at my usual carefree confidence like nothing else ever has. Because I can tell, from looking through the crack in the door and just hearing his shattered voice, that he means it. Not just in an angst-ridden-teenager way, but in the kind of way that makes people take antidepressants to block out all of the world’s badness when it becomes too much to handle.

I’ve got to do something. If I don’t I’ll never forgive myself for letting him cry alone. For letting him believe this kind of bullshit. But there’s something making me stop, forcing me to the spot, where I normally would have started spewing words at him from the second I saw him crying. And I know full well why; it’s because I can’t afford to mess this up with him. It’s because I’ve really got it bad for adorable, sweet little Mikey Way and I a) don’t want to hurt him anymore than he already is and b) do want to show him how much I care. Something that I have a gnawing feeling will be a lot harder than it should be. If it weren’t, Gerard would have sorted this out by now.

Gerard. Mikey really thought that he’d left him last night. Had actually cried over it, thus showing how fragmented he is on the inside. But I think that there’s more to him than just a dead mom and a few high school bullies. Something else must have happened to make him the way that the poor kid is. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with him, not at all, it’s just that I think he needs to be happier. And more confident in himself. And more trusting. And feel less alone.

And mine.

“Sweetness? You okay in there?”

I hear him gasp at my silky call, making him turn his head in my direction and see my eyes feasting on his damp image; an image that I couldn’t have gotten out of my head last night if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.

Spikey little tears bleed down his face even faster, small whimpers leaping from his lips and straight through my heart like tiny little bullets. A strange look flickers across his face, somewhere between longing for comfort and desperation to be alone, before he just shrugs his shoulders as though it doesn’t matter that he’s crying. Perhaps it never has done in the past, an idea that makes my blood turn to lava in fury at the thought of his sadness being ignored, and that would explain a lot about him. Apart from I don’t think that Gerard would ever let him cry alone, not from what I know of him anyway. So that must mean that Mikey just doesn’t care about himself anymore.

Well, I do. A hell of a lot. Probably a little too much for a guy two years older than him and who has only known him for less than a day.

But I guess that’s just how love at first sight and true love works. Because that’s what this burning sensation is in my chest whenever I see him; it’s what’s making me care so much about his sweet little self, even if he doesn’t.

So I step into the room, trying my best to be slow and steady like ‘Trick was last night even though the urge to bound at him is putting up a good fight, letting all of my emotions other than lust take over my eyes so that he can see how much he means to me. How much I want him to be happy.

“Oh, Sweetness. You poor thing.” I sigh, standing next to him, perhaps a little closer than necessary. I gesture towards the bruise peeking out from his the top of his shirt, feigning ignorance so that he has the opportunity to open up. “That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there. Wanna tell me where that came from?”

For a second he looks conflicted. A small battle raging in his glimmering pupils before he sniffles and swallows past his sorrow, being brave because he’s been taught it’s cowardly to be sad. It’s not.

“It’s nothin’, Pete. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” He tries to give me a small smile, but his lips only tremble a little, as though his misery is making them too heavy to lift. “I’m okay.”

No, no he’s not. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that. How else am I meant to help him be not not-okay?

There’s so many things that I want to do to him right now; force him into fixing his problems by talking about them; make him nibble on some strawberry bootlaces because they always make me feel better, especially when they’re dipped in peanut butter; pull him into a cuddle so I can snuggle away his problems; kiss his candyfloss lips until he’s smiling like I want him to. They might all be wants, but they’re all born of the same primal need. Making Mikey happy and making Mikey mine. But I can’t do either of those things until he knows that I care about him enough to hear his problems and help him to sort them out. Or at least hurt a little less.

Letting my instinct take control of me, like it always does around cuties like him, I scoot closer to the shuddering boy, a gentle smirk plucking at my lips as he turns a bright red upon realising that we’re practically chest-to-chest. My feet work of their own accord and bunny-hop me forward, so that the fabric of my top is caressing his, my thighs overlapping his slightly, touching in such a way that would make my head spin if I wasn’t doing this to help him out. I look down at his hands, slowly catching them in my own and rub them like I did last night; just the way he likes it.

I like it too; his skin’s all soft, like his hair would be if I was raking my hands hungrily through it.

But I’ve got to take this, Mikey Way, one step at a time. So I keep a hold of one hand and gently tickle my fingers up the arm of the other, steadily making my way up the willow-branch of his arm until I reach the top of his torso; the bruise. My hand hovers over it for a second, the sight of a faded oil spill on a tropical paradise ruining the moment, and then trails it’s way back down to Mikey’s small paw again. I look up from our joined hands, for I had been following the journey with my eyes, to see that Mikey’s all but stopped breathing.

Cute.

He’s not crying anymore either, just blinking at me with those beautiful eyelashes of his. Eyelashes that are so close to my face that I can feel the fan-like effect of his stunningly stunned blinks. It’s like he can’t quite believe that someone wants to help him, wants to hold him, and that fractures my heart; he’s too sweet to think that way about himself. But if he didn’t I wouldn’t have an excuse to be holding him, would I?

“You’re too pretty to cry, Sweetness.” My voice is a husk whisper, my breath falling on his face and making him glow with disbelieving joy, as well as the most adorable blush known to mankind. “Too pretty to be hurt as well.”

Our eyes lock, his beseeching me to actually not look away, as opposed to the frightened glimmer they’ve had all the times before our irises have met in heaven, and I am bowled over by how beautiful he truly is. I got a rough idea from seeing him pull a Sleeping Beauty, but standing he’s even more lung-stoppingly, heart-rackingly perfect. He’s tall for his age, not quite as tall as me yet although I doubt it’ll be long before he overtakes me, and skinny.

Too skinny.

Sickeningly skinny.

“Too pretty to be starving yourself.” An idea clicks into place in my head just as his quiet whimper registers. “Let me feed you, Sweetness.”

Hating myself, but loving me too, for using such unfair tactics, I use his hands to reign him further into me, making him tilt his head right back to see my face. A face full of care and a longing to help him, in my own strange way. I can feel him breathing against me, hot exhales drifting straight onto my skin and making my nerves squirm with pleasure. His own face is holding a look of blissful confusion, like a kid being told that Santa Claus is going to give him presents for the first time. He’s kind of like a baby rabbit caught in the headlights of Life’s huge SUV.

“Let me,” I pause, boring straight into his eyes, “help you.”

He lets out a breathy gasp, seeming to suddenly snap back into reality. And into the fact that he’s pressed up to some older guy in the middle of the bathroom. But he doesn’t do anything to move himself away, thank God, just turns his eyes bashfully to the side. To the mirror. And so my eyes follow, seeing two teenage boys staring back; one full of adoration and seduction, the other full of the kind of innocent naivety that makes me question if I really should be treating Mikey like this.

Of course I should. He likes it. And I do too.

Too much to let him go.

It strikes me straight in the heart when I notice something about our reflection; we fit together. Two puzzle pieces thrown together by a storm and clicking like we’re two halves of a whole. Well, I know that having Mikey this close makes me feel more complete than I have done in a long time. Not like any of the other boys who turned out to be just fleeting good times.

Mikey Way, if I’ve got him like the enchanted glaze that’s coating over his face where tears once were is anything to go by, won’t just be some mindless fuck to me. When and if we do go that far together. No, he’ll be a whole handful of good times. Bad times too, because I want to be there to see him through them. Just like I’m seeing him through this right now. Just like I’m going to have him eating as soon as possible in order to lay my fears to rest.

“See that, Sweetness? That’s two people, caring about each other.” My voice floats down to his ears like steam from a warm bath on a snowy day and his face finds that glint that it had in my dream last night. A dream where I was making him as happy as just being in the same room as him makes me. Yeah; true love is fucking powerful. “I care about you, Mikey Way.”

The powerhouse of his smile is punched out when his eyes rest on his mirror-image’s bruised collarbone, on the faded blue under his eye, and he pulls himself quickly away from me, leaving me with nothing but the absence of love where beauty once was.

“Why?” He squeaks, looking down at the ground, in such an honest voice that it makes me want to scoop him up into me like a baby. “You shouldn’t.”

“I probably shouldn’t eat three sherbet fountains before bed every night and four when I wake up.” I smirk at him, earning a soft almost-giggle. “I still do it. A little bit of what’s bad for you isn’t a bad thing, Sweetness.” I pause, tilting his chin up with my intent fingers so that he can see just how much I mean what I’m saying. “So a lot of a good thing can only be incredible.”

I know I should let go of his chin, let him fall back to where he placed himself, but his lips are like magnets. No, not magnets; like a funfair. Impossible to walk away from without taking a ride first. Besides, he’s not freaking out or anything, just smiling in a lopsided kind of way and his face has gone the red of a setting sun in August. He’s just so fucking cute. Too cute to resist. So, doing the only sensible thing, I lean my head down and pull his up more, the fact that our lips are millimetres apart driving me insane with want and desire and lust.

Until I hear a thunderous rumble, tearing me out of my mind and away from Mikey Way’s porcelain face. A rumble emanating from his empty little tummy, knocking the euphoria right out of me because I know I should be focussing on getting him to eat instead of getting him to kiss me.

Not like it took a lot of persuasion anyway. He likes me, as in like-likes me. And I love him. So much so that the fact he’s starving makes my gut ache in hunger for his own happiness. Sure, he might have been happy when I was holding him close or about to press our lips together, but it wasn’t actually happy. Just a temporary feeling of being cared for enough to be loved. Something that shouldn’t be the cause of his happiness because it should be commonplace.

“C’mon, Sweetness. I’ll show you the lounge.” I grin at the thought of the big, squidgy sofa and how nice it would be to snuggle Mikes on it. “Patrick left you a bowl of cereal on the coffee table. I’m under strict instructions to feed it to you.”

He just gulps nervously, letting me lead him through the maze of corridors and stairs until we reach the lounge. Or rather, the first lounge out of four. This house is pretty fucking huge. But not as huge as the hole that his parents dented into ‘Trick’s heart all of the times that they ignored him or missed his birthday because counting money is more important to them than watching their one and only son grow up. That’s partly why I moved in with him, to show him that his parents are idiots to miss out on spending time with ‘Trick. The other part of the reason being that I spent all of my own money, every last saving, on a second-hand Ferrari.

It’s just the sort of thing that I do.

I spot the aforementioned squidgy couch, blood red against the black plush of the carpet, and pull Mikey along with me to it, gesturing for him to take a seat whilst I reach for the full bowl on the coffee table in front of us. Both ‘Trick and Gerard had made it perfectly clear to me when they left this morning that they want the small bowl of cornflakes to be empty by the time they get back. I promised them, on pain of death, that it will be. And it will.

I just have to play it right. Like I did in the bathroom.

I sink down next him, watching in amusement as he wiggles around on the soft padding as though he’s sat on an angel’s wing. I’ve said it before and I’ll sure as hell is hot say it again; he’s cute. Would be like a little kid if it weren’t for the fact that little kids don’t feel as downtrodden, as genuinely frightened of the world as he does. But still, the idea of him being a little kid fills my chest with a warming sensation and I can’t help but imagine a three-year-old Mikey Way with enough hope in him to make the world beautiful again.

Doing the only sensible thing I can do in reaction to this train of thought, I scoop up a few of the flakes with the spoon and make them fly through the air like an aeroplane.

“Hey, Sweetness, open up!” I giggle, making the food fly up close to his face like a mother with an unruly toddler. “Here comes the plane! Neowwww-“

My awesomely accurate impression of a jetfighter is cut short when the spoon just crashes straight into his lips, it’s mini passengers falling through the air and splattering all over the carpet in front of us. Because nothing’s ever as easy as it should be.

A sigh escapes me, a sigh full of sadness for the boy who’s just staring at me as though he’s waiting to see if I’m going to yell at him. Not “as though”; he is looking at me with wavering eyes and teeth nibbling at his lip like I should be. He honestly thinks that I could get cross with him over something as silly as a few stray bits of cereal. He honestly thinks that I could ever get cross with him. I couldn’t, not with someone so innocent.

Only sad. Sad that he won’t eat anything even though it’s obvious he’s starving from the way his stomach keeps yelling at me to force some sort of substance into it.

But necessity doesn’t matter right now. Right now all that matters is that Mikey thinks I’m cross with him.

Poor, cute kid.

“I’m not mad, Sweetness.” I whisper, using my free hand to wrap an arm securely around his shoulders and pull him closer to me. He doesn’t put up any sort of fight, just falls straight into my chest in such a way that it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something even if he hasn’t eaten; I’ve accomplished his touch, his trust. His snuggle. “I could never get mad with someone as cute as you.”

His head lolls back against my chest, his ear pressed against my ribs as though listening for something, and he pulls up his knees into himself. Kinda like he’s just trying to disappear from the world and into the warmth of my body. That’s what I want too, and then he won’t be able to form any more bruises on his body or scars on his esteem. Scars that make trust and hope hard; that make me feel truly blessed that he feels like he can hide in me like I’m encouraging him to. But I’m not making him, just letting him know that he can. And he can, subsequently, move away the second he feels uncomfortable.

As much as I’d love to just let him simply be in his snuggled-down state, one of my hands flicking restlessly through his soggy hair, I’ve got a promise to keep to my housemates. I’ve got to make Mikey Way eat.

But how?

“Wanna eat this for me, Sweetness?” He shakes his head, smashing my last hope into oblivion. “Well, you gotta eat. You’ll get sick if you don’t.”

He just shrugs against me, bony shoulders digging into my ribs like it digs into my heart that he just doesn’t care.

“Well, how about we make a deal, huh?”

Mikey sits bolt upright at the enticing tone I sprinkle my offer with, pulling out from me but still staying with his body encompassed by my free arm. The look on his face tells me that I’ve got his full attention and that he’s willing to hear me out completely. Now I’ve just got to think of something to bargain with; what do you offer the kid who has stopped wanting through fear of disappointment?

A friend. You offer him a friend.

Apart from I could never put that sort of thing in front of Mikey as an incentive to eat, that just wouldn’t be at all fair on his fragile little mind. Besides, I think he knows that we’re friends now. Perhaps a little more after our bathroom embrace.

My mind’s racing at a gazillion miles an hour, not for a second letting me forget how vital this is, desperately thinking of something that I can expose and use for the greater good. As much as I’d like to think that I could use a kiss, I know that I can’t; he’s too introverted and fragile to be played with like that. And I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself from giving it to him the second he agrees to work for it.

Fears. Everyone has them and using them always works. Just like when ‘Trick hid the RedBull from me because he said he’d had enough of “looking after a hyperactive chipmunk on crack”. When I got to his hat collection he soon changed his tune, throwing me the six-pack without a second’s hesitation. See? Fears. That’s the best way to go.

And what do I know Mikey fears? Getting hurt. And who must hurt him? Bullies. And where are the bullies? School.

School! I’ve got it!

“How about you eat at least half of this bowl for me and in return I’ll drive you to school on Monday. It’s an awful long walk and you’re far too special to be getting on some stupid bus with a load of snotty-nosed brats.” He looks intrigued, biting on the bait and just waiting for the final tug to reel him in. “I’ve got a nice little Ferrari, awesome sound system on it. We can listen to CDs all the way.” I smile at him, begging the itching look of longing in his eyes to cave in. Before it does though, I’ve got one more thing I have to add on. Not because I think he needs it to be convinced, but because it might make him feel better about everything. “And if I see anyone even looking at you funny in the parking lot, the only thing that’ll be looking funny by the time I’m done will be their faces. Okay?”

Tears of pure gratitude are glistening in his eyes, pooling at the edges and making my heart melt for him all over again.

“Pete?”

“Yuhuh.”

“Feed me?”

“You got it, Sweetness.”









A/N: Thank you very much for reading and I hope this was alright. Please, please let me know what you think/how to improve; reviews make my day! :)