Frank on a Leash

"Gerard, what do I do?" Mikey cried desperately into the phone, flipping back on his bed with a sigh. His bed creaked unreassuringly with the weight being suddenly exerted on it, and Mikey wondered for a brief second what he would do if the whole thing completely collapsed right then and there.

He didn't even know why he'd called up his brother a few minutes ago, it's not like he was helping in the slightest bit. But Mikey decided it was because Gerard was the only one in the world he could talk to about this shit. Gerard has always been his psychiatrist when he didn't understand why the world worked the way it did. He had the whole 'life hates me' mentality firmly planted in his brain from where he'd grown up with a goth brother as the only influence in his life, but Gerard had lightened up considerably since going to school. It must be the town that does this to people.

But Mikey had no way of escaping it for another year, and even then, where was he going? Nowhere, because he already knew he couldn't leave. So he's sticking it out with the help from his all-knowing brother, in whom he'd just confided his biggest secret: he stared at Frank's hips whenever he could.

He figured that was the most he could say, because he didn't recognize the emotion 'like' yet. He was fond of Frank, and he thought Frank was beautiful with his good-natured Superman act, and he relayed these thoughts to Gerard as well, nonchalantly as if he were talking about a TV show that he liked. Frank was always on his mind now, his over-used brain --that he really needed for his History test on Friday--constantly revolved around everything that Mikey liked about him. His naturally dark hair that didn't look nasty or crusty even with sweet-smelling gel in it, his cheeks, sunburned from staying outside all the time, that settled plumply over his too-genuine-to-be-fake grin that he would always give Mikey in the morning, the way one of his shoes always seemed to be untied, and everyday it would be the other shoe from the day before. When Frank would bend over to lace the offending shoe, Mikey would skim his eyes over Frank's back if he was wearing a shirt small enough to rise up far enough to reveal skin, to display the beautiful...Mikey had started to want to call it chartreuse instead of olive, despite his knowledge that chartreuse was yellow, but it sounded more like Frank, so his chartreuse skin that looked like it belonged more on a roman god instead of a teenage boy.

He wanted it to stop...but he didn't.

It exhausted and confused him and made him want to break down so low no-one would stoop down to save him from the depths of himself, but it also filled him with a completely knew feeling that he'd come to enjoy a little bit. It was his stomach knotting up in excitement when Monday rolled around, it was the grin stuck on his face when he made Frank giggle, it was the hugs. Once, not so long ago, he hated any kind of physical contact with humans--but not cats, cats were nice and didn't try to hurt him--but now all he wanted was to be smothered with Frankie.

"I don't know, Mikes, I-" Gerard's voice cut out and Mikey could hear him yelling at someone on the other end of the line.
"Sorry about that, bro. Ahem...so this means that you're...what? Gay? Bi?"

Mikey rolled his eyes at the bluntly shallow question.

"No, Gerard, I don't like boys, I like a boy. Just one. Only him, and I wouldn't feel any differently if he was a girl. Gender isn't an issue with me." His thin hand trailed to the bedsheets, picking at the fabric lightly. He hadn't washed the bedsheets since Frank had stayed over, so when he wrapped himself up in his blankets in the middle of the night, he could still smell the lingering aroma of Axe that made him smile into his pillow and miss the warmth on the other side of the bed.

He smiled at the traces of black lipstick on his pillowcase that stuck there despite Frank's episode with the makeup remover. Those must have been made while they were tackling each other into the bed over whether Wonder Woman made a good superhero, or whether nerds just bought the issues to stare at her boobs.

Frank, ever the little optimist that he is, thought she made a good superhero. Mikey pointed out that her greatest weapon was a rope. Oh, and the cleavage to hide her cigarettes, since she didn't have pockets.

"So, Mikey...is he cute?" Gerard chirped. Mikey could tell without seeing him that he was smirking, running a hand through his dark hair, pleased at himself with annoying his little brother in his time of need. Mikey could just see him, leaning back into a big leather armchair with the weird little circles that traced the front of the armrest, a leg propped up on a coffee table in front of him that was littered with beer cans and empty Broncos packs, cause Gerard was a cheap bitch and couldn't afford Marlboro. His roommate, Mark, was probably somewhere in the background on his computer looking up anime porn, because from what little information Gerard had relayed about him, he was a complete geek. Of course, this was just Mikey's assumptions.

"Gerard! You idiot, I'm not even dignifying that with a response."

Okay, he lied.

"And yeah, he is," he muttered quietly. He blushed, bright pink colour blooming on his cheeks because he'd already taken off his makeup today. The blood rushing to his head made him feel hot, and he regretted making the phone call in the first place. He tried to busy himself by messing with the knobs on his radio, his hands restless as they searched through the stations for a song to drown out his brother's laughter that rang through the reciever from the other end of the line.

Mikey decided that since Gerard already knew this much, it did him no good to keep it all in. After he found a complacent song he flopped back on his bed and sighed.

"He let me put makeup on him," Mikey said with a crooked little smile hung on his lips. Now, thinking back, he took pride in that because now he knew that normal boys didn't do that. He had assumed it was normal, since Gerard did it, and some of the boys--the ones who liked other boys and took them into the bathrooms during class--at his old school did it too. But no boy at Newark did it besides himself, and he learned it was because it meant you were gay, and that would get you beaten up. But he wasn't afraid of getting beaten up because it happened all the time. In fact, it had been happening less and less lately. The only person who bothered to intimidate Mikey was Bob, and it had nothing to do with the makeup. Maybe it was safe to un-goth himself.

The only problem was...he loved it now. It was part of him. Before all this started, he never made any kind of impression on anyone, he was a shadow flitting around the edges of life. Now, people definately knew who he was, and Mikey loved that.

He loved the stuffy candles that sat on his vanity and made his room take on eerie corners and dips in the soft wash of light that hid in themselves demons and ghosts threatening to grasp out razor sharp claws and drag Mikey down to their depths.

He loved popping in an Otep CD and banging his head, thrashing around in his room and ramming into the walls, letting out all the rage that build up over the course of a day in one hour-long thrash.

He loved to see his face pale as bone and eyes rimmed with black that made him look like he never slept.

"Congradulations, Mikes. You can be a goth couple now...hold on Matt! Mikey, I have to go, Matt just super-glued his dick to the window. Love you, bye!"

The line clicked off before Mikey could respond. He rolled his eyes at the phone in his hands, still warm from his conversation with his brother that failed to give him any insight as what he should do.

"Thanks, Gerard...