FicWad

Three in the morning. That's about the time Mikey woke up to loud banging. He couldn't find out where it was coming from, until he heard,

”Migey! Migey, lemme in!”

He sat up in bed. Alicia turned over beside him, a bit dazed.

“Babe, what's going on?” she mumbled.

“I'll be right back,” he replied, pulling on a shirt. He groggily stepped out of the room and went for the front door.

When the door opened, his brother Gerard fell onto him.

“Gee? What the fuck are you--”

“Migey, Uh broge 'im. Migey, Uh fuggin' broge 'im.”

Mikey held his brother up by the shoulders, squinting at him. “Gerard, what the ever-loving fuck are you talking about?”

“Brogen, Migey. Fuggin' brogen.”

Mikey decided it'd be best if he brought him into the living room, which he did as quickly as he could.

Once Gerard was on the couch, Mikey tried again.

“Gee? What are you talking about?” He caught his brother's gaze. He was tripping hard on something.

“Frangie.”

“What?”

“Uh broge 'im.” Gerard had tears running down his face at this point.

“Gerard, I can't understand a fucking thing you're saying.”

The older Way stared at the younger, looking probably as pitiful and helpless as the latter had ever seen him.

“Mikey,” Gerard said slowly, trying to enunciate correctly despite his warped state. “I broke Frank.”

“What? Gerard, you haven't talked to Frank in weeks.”

Concentration slipped, he slipped back into a slur. “Talged t'im earlier.”

“Today?”

“Yuh.”

“How'd that come about?”

“Well, Uh gotta thingin' an' Uh fel' bad, sho Uh wen' over an' tried t'tell 'im 'ow shorry Uh wush fuh fuggin' up e'rythin'.”

“So you went over? To his house?”

“Yuh.” A sniffle. “Uh tol' 'im Uh was shorry. 'e shaid Uh din't need t'be shorry...”



~Flashback~

Frank and Gerard sat awkwardly in Frank's apartment.

“I'm sorry I let our relationship get to the point it got,” Gerard was saying quietly. “I'm sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I’m relentless. I’m sorry I can't let you go. I mean, I tried, Frankie, I really did.” He was trying his best not to cry.

“You've got nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who fucked it up. I’m the one who can't be in a fucking committed relationship like a normal person.” It was hard for Frank to see Gerard hurting like that, genuinely remorseful.

Gerard wasn't really listening to Frank. “How did you fuck it up? I’m the one who was always like 'let's fuck' and didn't realize how badly I was fucking with your head.

And very softly, Frank replied, “Because I couldn't say no.”

“I should've been more responsible. You're fragile. I'm fragile. We shouldn't've been doing anything like that. But I’m fucked up in the head. I feed my illness instead of fixing myself.” And now Gerard was crying, like he totally didn't want to. “Ever since the last time we did shit and you lost your mind afterward, I haven't been able to get it up for anyone. Not even myself. It makes me sick if I try anything. I feel so fucking bad about it, you don't even know. I’m sorry.” A hiccup. “I know those are two pointless hollow words now, but fuck, Frank, I’m so fucking sorry.”

After a brief silence, Gerard felt the need to add,

“I feel like a fucking rapist.”

Frank snapped at this. “You are not a rapist. I swear to god, if I hear you call yourself that or anything else bad again, I’m going to beat your ass. How are you a rapist?”

Gerard, again, wasn't listening. “I hate myself for all this shit. For being unable to just stay friends. I’m fucking scum. Thinking about it just makes me want to put a bullet in my head.”

“Don't even talk like that,” Frank whispered.

“Why the fuck not?” Gerard replied bitterly. “It's how I fucking feel.”

“Because it scares me,” Frank admitted reluctantly. “And shit like that made me freak out about saying no. I was afraid I'd say it and you'd go and do something like that.”

Gerard was losing touch, getting absorbed in a world of emotion and self-loathing. “So I fucking raped you?” The word felt like poison. “Because you thought I'd lose my shit, you went along with it? Jesus fucking christ, am I that fucked up?”

“You're not fucked up.” By now, Frank was getting irritated, regretting that he said anything.

“Why couldn't you just tell me?” Gerard demanded, getting dramatic.

“I didn't want to fuck everything up.”

“You could've told me. I wouldn't've been upset.”

“I didn't know that.”

Silence.

“Look Gee,” Frank finally said, “Why don't you just go home and calm down?”

Gerard got up, stared down the guy he still loved, despite the fact that he hated himself severely. “Anything else I should know?” He was trying hard to lose all emotion, somewhat succeeding.

“I bought new strings for Pansy today.”

A glare. “You know what I fucking mean.”

“No,” Frank lied quietly. “Nothing else.”

“You're only saying that because I’m upset and you don't want me slitting your throat on your cream-colored rug. I don't even care. How much fucking worse can it get, Frank?”

The shorter man merely stared at his feet. “That's all for now.”

Gerard just forced an ironic smirk and muttered, “Whatever.”


The whole story, however, didn't leave Gerard's mouth quite as well as that. Mikey got the gist, though. He hugged his brother tightly, tears burning his own eyes.

“Gee, I love you, okay?” he tried to assure him. “No matter what, you're my brother and I love you.”

Gerard sobbed into his brother's shoulder. “Uh fugged it all up. Uh fugged 'im up.”

Mikey pulled back to look at Gerard. “Listen to me. You didn't fuck him up. Frank's got his own issues. You didn't bring those on for him. Things like that just happen and, most likely, there was something else outside of the relationship that started fucking with him.

Gerard nodded, wiped his eyes, but he was still such a mess that it was hard to tell what he was really understanding.

“Plus,” Mikey continued, “If you want to fix Frankie, you have to work on fixing yourself first. Take it by the seconds. Then the minutes. Then the hours. Then the days. Focus on what's important, which is calming down and getting a level head on your shoulders. Just work your way up. Take it little by little, Gee?”

The elder man nodded. “Uh luff you, Migey.”

“I love you too, Gee.”

Mikey held Gerard until Gee fell asleep. By that time, it was nearly five. Mikey gently spread his brother on the couch, covered him with a blanket, and snuck back to bed with his fiancée.

Gerard woke barely an hour later. He thought over the past twelve hours. He wanted to get off his ass again. That shit he scored last night really felt good for the initial hour before he made his way to Mikey's. It was the coming down that was the trouble. If he could only shoot up every hour on the hour...

...What was to say he couldn't?

Gerard got up from the couch, still feeling like a bag of shit. He went straight out the door.

*

At around ten, Mikey awoke and rolled out of bed once more. Alicia was making breakfast. He wandered into the kitchen, yawning and scratching his chest.

“Where's Gerard?” he asked groggily.

Alicia frowned. “uh, I dunno.”

“I left him on the couch.”

“That's who was banging our door down? What did he want?”

Mikey briefly explained that Gerard and Frank had a fight, not wanting to reveal the detail that was Gerard allegedly having raped Frank on more than one occasion.

“Oh, poor guy. Well, he wasn't here when I got up.”

“I should call him,” Mikey said, more to himself than Alicia.

She shrugged, flipped a pancake.

*

Gerard, at this point, was now attempting to extort money out of his dear friend Ray.

Ray, despite being woken up before noon, was surprisingly calm about the whole ordeal.

“Gerard, why do you need it?” he asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

“I just do, Ray. Please.”

Ray shook his head. “No. Are you using? You look like shit, Gee.”

The story poured out of Gerard rapidly, hardly even sounding much like what actually happened, just more of a watered-down and stripped abridged edition.

“Gerard, you're acting like an idiot,” his friend concluded. “You're over-reacting. Stop wallowing in self-pity.”

This stunned Gerard. “What?”

“I'm serious. I love you, bro, but you can't just keep obsessing about it. You're the one making you miserable, not Frank.”

Gerard slumped into a chair in Ray's living room, and quietly said, “I know.”

“Then why are you putting yourself through this?”

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

Ray sighed, just sorta stood there. “Have you been taking your meds?”

As if offended, Gerard snapped, “Yes, I have. Why, do I look especially crazy?”

“Oh cut it the fuck out. I’m not gonna give you sympathy right now. You need to just man up and get over it.”

It wasn't like Ray to be pissy, and Gerard knew that. That meant he'd fucked up pretty bad.

“Why don't I just go kill myself?” Gerard cried out bleakly. “I'm obviously just fucking everything up for everybody!” He'd started crying again, like the pussy he was. He bent over, hands covering his head, not even trying to muffle his pain.

And now was when Ray had to go from pissed off friend to responsible human being.

“You don't mean that, Gee.”

“Yes I do! I just want to fucking die, Ray!”

After a second, “That's really what you want?”

“Yes,” Gerard weakly replied.

Ray took a deep breath and headed for the phone. He dialed the number written on the refrigerator for these instances.

Not long later, there was a knock at Ray's door.

Gerard sniffled, looked up. “Who's that?”

Ray didn't answer, just opened the door. A pair of police officers came in. One pulled Ray aside to file a report, the other crouched in front of Gerard.

“Hi, Gerard, my name's Greg. You wanna tell me what's gotten you down?”

Gerard knew what was happening. He jumped up, fled for the door. He didn't stop running; not when he saw the police jump into their cruiser, not when the cruiser pulled up beside him, not when they called for him to stop. He kept running until he started to wonder why he was even bothering to run at all.

He cut out from the sidewalk and into the street, not giving a flying fuck about anything at all.

A blue Honda Civic hit Gerard almost immediately, and his world went dark.

*

Ray was on his cell all the way to the hospital, calling Mikey and Mrs. Way and—because he knew somewhere in his gut that he should—Frank.

The group sat anxiously in the waiting room as doctors worked to save Gerard's life.

*

He finally awoke two days later, most of his body throbbing sharply. His mouth was dry as fuck, he was hungry, and worst of all, fucking absolute WORST of all, he was in the most unimaginable pain.

“Hey,” a soft voice called from beside him.

Gerard tried to turn his head, but was met with more pain.

Frank stood up, realizing Gerard wasn't able to actually look at him from that angle.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

Little noises came from Gerard's throat, but he was too parched to really reply. Frank got the message, though, went off in search of ice or something. He came back, armed with a cup of ice and a spoon, and set to feeding Gee the frozen water.

After his mouth was functioning again, Gerard muttered, “Thanks.”

“It's nothing.”

“Frankie?”

“Yeah?”

“It hurts.”

For some reason, Frank felt bitter. “Of course it hurts; you threw yourself in front of a moving vehicle, you idiot.”

Gerard's eyebrows knit together. “Why are you mad?”

“You totally flipped your shit, that's why I’m mad!”

“Frankie, please, can you just--”

“Asking me for favors now? Since you tried to kill yourself, I think you owe me something for having to go through that shit!”

A whimper escaped from Gerard. “Frankie--”

“Don't 'Frankie' me! How do you think it makes me feel that I cause you to do this? It makes me want to go and hang myself, that's how it makes me feel!” Frank was getting extremely upset.

Gerard felt very dizzy. “Frank, the button--”

Not listening, Frank continued on. “You need to stop this, Gerard! You need to stop overreacting so badly! How would you like it if I pulled shit like this every time you remotely hurt my feelings? We'd both be dead, wouldn't we?”

“I'm sorry,” Gerard insisted. “I'm sorry, Frankie.”

“If you were sorry, you'd stop!”

A nurse entered the room, asked if there was anything she could help with. Frank barked a harsh “no”, glaring at Gerard. Gerard lifted his left arm, which felt like it was a hundred pounds, to point at the blue box containing the morphine drip. She came over to his side, ignoring Frank, and pressed a button on the box, handed Gerard a button on a cord so he could be in control of the pain medicine. She left without another word.

Frank looked at a speck on the floor.

“S'all I wanted,” Gerard mumbled.

“Sorry.”

“It's okay.” A pause. “Hey, Frankie?”

“Yeah?”

Gerard's eyes started to get heavy. “I still love you.”

Frank nodded, but didn't return the saying.

Weakly, “Frankie?”

“What?”

Gerard held his hand out as best as he could. “Don't leave me.”

Frank took a breath before clasping his hand. “I won't.”