For the Monsters that I've Been.

Mikey woke up in his bed the next day to a soft light seeping in through his window. He glanced to his bedside table and his eyes found an alarm clock. 7:34 A.M. He yawned, pressing his f ace into his pillow. It was way too early to be awake. After expelling another yawn, he blinked and attempted to turn to his other side to fall back asleep, but he found himself rather constricted by an arm slung around his chest. Damn it…He grabbed the wrist of the arm wrapped around him and moved it so that it lay instead on the side of the boy who was laying next to him then sat up, watching as Frank groaned softly, pulling the blankets closer. God, he was just ridiculous.

The previous night, he had sworn his allegiance to Mikey. He had sworn to stay through daily beatings that may or may not have the potential to happen daily and when Mikey had blown him off, he simply swore his integrity even more fiercely.

Recalling these events, Mikey sighed, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He ran a hand through his own hair, yawning a third time, then finally stood. Frank’s words swam in his thoughts, just fucking with his head. I’ll stay for however long you’ll let me, Frank had said, No matter what. . Mikey just laughed at this at the time, but now, it was just so unnerving. He was not exactly sure what made him laugh. Maybe it was the naivety of the whole statement. Maybe it was because because it was just such an obvious statement that it didn’t need saying. Maybe it was because it was all of them, which is why it reminded Mikey of something that he would have said himself when he was eleven.

He turned to watch Frank sleeping on the bed. He was the same peaceful sleeper that Mikey had noticed the first night that he’d seen Frank sleeping- the night that he’d fallen asleep on the kitchen floor after they’d slept together. The more he thought about it, the more he was exactly like Mikey had been. And the more Mikey thought on this, the more he was unsure of whether this was a good or a bad thing. Of course, he enjoyed the new subservience of Frank. It would allow him to control his interaction with Gerard. With this thought, Mikey found that he preferred Frank sleeping. He preferred his eyes closed, unable to wander to anyone else.

A rhythmic buzzing drew Mikey’s eyes from Frank before he could think more on this thought. His eyes moved to his own jacket draped over a dresser. He strode the length of the room and extracted the phone from his pocket, flipping it open. The vibration was a notification for a text message. A friend of Frank’s, Mikey presumed, because it simply had a greeting. He exited out of the message and scrolled through the rest of Frank’s texts. He actually had a few unread messages. A jealous pang seemed to course up his arm from his fingers as he read them. There were so many relationships that Mikey had no idea of.

Of course, there was nothing sexual, well, a few things, but even Mikey was socially aware enough to realize that it was simply playful banter. No, the jealousy simply streamed off of how many people Frank was in the company of. How many of those people could look at Frank with lustful eyes, or worse, who Frank could look at in that manner. This immediately confirmed Mikey’s faith in his decision to confiscate the phone. It would be simply pointless to allow Frank to keep it if he wanted to keep the level of compliance that he currently held over Frank. He had never asked for one when with Gerard, but could Mikey say with absolute certainty that Gerard would not have allowed him to have a phone.

Actually, there were many things that Gerard had deprived him of and, like Frank, Mikey’s allegiance to him never faltered. No. That was a lie. It had. And when Mikey thought about it, he supposed that it was because of the simple fact that Gerard had encouraged him to talk to other people. Mikey replaced Frank’s phone in the pocket in which he had found it, his eyes moving back to the boy: he certainly wouldn’t make the same mistake that his brother had.

In fact this revelation inspired an action in Mikey. He opened a drawer in the dresser that his jacket had been laying on, taking a shirt out, pulling it over his head. He then pulled the jacket on and found a fresh pair of jeans to dress in. His hands rustled around the pockets of his jacket until he heard a jingle and felt a cool metal against his skin. He moved to the door, pulling it closed behind him, then walked the hall to the bathroom and caught his reflection in the mirror, forcing himself to ignore the healing abrasions on his lips. He smoothed his hair back, then pulled a beanie over the evening hair on his head and descended the stairs, heading toward Gerard’s car.



“Fuck,” Gerard actually smiled from his hospital bed as Mikey entered the room, “I didn’t actually expect you to come back.”

“Yeah, well,” Mikey’s eyes settled on the new man in bed who sat before him. His company seemed to consist only of men in beds today, he noted sarcastically, before he shut the hospital door behind him and proceeded forward, slightly put off by his inability to think of his own smart ass comment. “I had to talk to you about some things,” he said instead, taking a seat next to the bed. This was not a situation the he could say that he felt comfortable with, but it had to be said. He had to talk about the occurrences over the past few days with someone, and it couldn’t be Frank. Letting Frank that far into his head would just shatter any respect that he could demand from the boy. He had to talk to someone else and the only someone else that even knew about the events from the last few days was Gerard, so that was who he had to settle with.

Apparently, Gerard also felt this uncomfortableness. So far from the previous way that he used to behave, he simply watched Mikey, the look of ferocious lust replaced with confusion. “About-” he started.

“About Frank.” Mikey finished.

Gerard straightened up in the hospital bed, his brow high as he starred at Mikey as if he were waiting for his younger brother to laugh and tell him that he was joking. But when no such expression came, the other brother simply shrugged with an almost bewildered air. “Okay then, let’s uh… let’s talk.”

“You saw his face yesterday, right?” Mikey asked in regards to the boy's bruises.

Gerard nodded in response, perhaps too shocked to be having this conversation to actually say anything.

“I did that,” Mikey admitted. “I do it a lot. I snap on him. I scream at him. I threaten him. And he doesn’t care. He asked me if I’d ever stop yesterday and I told him I didn’t know. I asked him if he would leave if I didn’t and he said no. He pretty much told me that he didn’t give a fuck what I did to him. He’d stay no matter what.”

Gerard stayed silent for a few moments, clearing his throat a few seconds after Mikey had stopped talking. “I was under the impression that you were having a problem.”

“I just told you my problem.”

“Hah,” Gerard shook his head, chuckling. “Your problem is that you’ve got a bitch handed to you on a silver platter? You fuckin’ with me, Mikes? I thought you proved yesterday that you had a backbone.”

“He’s just…” Mikey shook his head, letting a deep breath of air expel from his chest. “It’s fucking with my head, Gerard. He’s so… he lets me do anything. Just fucking anything. It’s ridiculous.”

“God,” Gerard rolled his eyes, his attitude taking a sour turn, “you’re complaining because Frank’ll let you do whatever you want to him and keep crawling back for more?”

“Hey,” said Mikey lifting his hands in front of him defensively, “I wouldn’t say complaining. It’s just like… I wish he’d just stop for a moment or two. Just stop clinging to me all the time. He’s fucking suffocating with his goddamn affection. I woke up today with his fucking arm around me for christ sake. It’s like the more I do horrible things to him, the more he wants me.”

Mikey wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected Gerard’s response to this to be, but it was not the laugh that came. “Just knock him out,” he replied. And with an observation of the bemused expression on Mikey’s face, he laughed again, “Not like that. Those pills. The ones I would give you. That way, you get to fuck around with him when you want to, but when he’s a clingy little fuck.” He snapped his fingers, a smirk on his lips. “Give him an Ambien or two and he’s out and you can go do whatever else seems fitting that day. He wakes up before you’re ready for him? Simple, feed him a few more blues ones and he’s down for the count. And, then, when you’re ready for him again, you take an Adderall and shove it down his throat. He wakes up an half hour later buzzed out of his mind and raring to go. And the best part is, they make it almost impossible to eat, so you get the added perk of getting a slightly hotter little fucker.”

The Way brother’s sat in silence for a few moments, the younger one considering the older’s words. He had expected some sort of advice, but he hadn’t expected Gerard to react like this; to treat him like a counterpart, an equal. And this raised several questions. Questions which Mikey took a few moments to effectively articulate. “Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked, finally. “Aren’t you supposed to want revenge?”

“I suppose I am,” Gerard admitted, “but that’s also the beauty of it. If I help you, I’m getting it, aren’t I?”

“How so?”

“Well, helping Frank be drugged and abused sure as hell sounds like a fitting payback to him for taking my things, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn't call it abuse," Mikey frowned. Was it honestly abuse if Frank wanted it? Surely not. But a raised eyebrow from Gerard kept him talking after a sigh. "I guess it is revenge with the drugs though,” he conceded, “but,” he raised an eyebrow of his own, looking Gerard square in the eyes, “you do realize that you’re not getting me back either way.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of things can happen while Frank’s out for the night.”

Mikey almost found him snorting at this comment, allowing himself to laugh freely, “I’ll bet they can.” He continued to express his amusement, ignoring Gerard’s deterred expression. “But all bullshit aside,” he said, wiping his eyes in an attempt to further humiliate his brother, “how do I even get this shit? These pills, I mean.”

Gerard took a few moments to respond, surely offended by his brother’s response. “I can spot you,” he finally responded. “There’s some of each in my dresser. When you run out, I’ve got scripts to get more.”

“Alright.” Mikey nodded, that particular situation settled. Then another thought came to his head which made his lips purse together disapprovingly. “And what do I do,” he said, his fist tightening slightly, “about his job.”

He didn’t have to explain what he meant to Gerard because the older Way knew exactly the point that his younger brother was struggling with. This was why Gerard had gotten both of them jobs at the same place, working the same hours, in the same areas: you never could account for the risk of a work place romance forming without consent, especially when there was such a tragic life for half of the equation to be saved from.

“There’s nothing you can do for the moment,” Gerard admitted, “but if things go well with recording,” he said, regarding the album that they were scheduled to start work on in a matter of months, “we won’t need side jobs at all. So work hard, little brother, and make Frank do the same, and you’ll get your kicks in the end."