Frank on a Leash

Ray didn't want to notice it--the look of pain that crossed Mikey's face when he adjusted himself in his desk during math, the way he flinched when someone touched him even if it was an accident, Bob's smug look when he started to notice it as well. Four fucking weeks of this, Ray would watch Bob drag a lethargic Mikey into the bathroom, or, once, out in the parking lot and do...whatever. While Ray just stood there doing fucking nothing when he should have been chasing after Bob and ripping him limb from limb.

Four weeks of waking up with his heart pounding loudly in the silence of his room and the ghosts of Mikey's cries for help ringing in his ears, bleeding into his brain and replaying themselves over and over. The CD is broken, and it skips until he's forced to turn it off and contemplate throwing the CD out.

It was starting to take a toll on his everyday life, he'd nod off during class and have someone hitting him awake because it's a different period and he's in their seat. Even Frank was asking about the dark circles under his eyes. It was getting bad. He couldn't...wouldn't do anything for Mikey, the poor kid who really didn't do anything, maybe one of the only people left in America who truly didn't deserve what he was getting. If life was a comic book--like the ones that he and Mikey liked to nerd out over during 1st period--some spandex-clad muscle man with bad hair and a strong chin would swoop in, pow Bob, and set everything right. Clean Mikey up, pretty him up, get rid of the chains and eyeliner and make everyone love him as the poor victim that he is, The Hurricane of gothy, skinny white teenagers.

Today, when Ray looked up from the tiled floor to see Bob with an arm slung around Mikey's drooped shoulders, traditional user-smile set in place, leading him into the bathroom--holding the fucking door open and pushing him inside--Ray followed without a plan of action, without knowing what to expect to see. What if it was bad, like scarring bad, like rape bad? Cliche bad, with Mikey's chest pressed up against the dirty wall painted in grime and piss with his pants pulled down around his knobbly knees, crying for some kind of mercy that he knew deep down in his heart will never come because there has to be a sacrifice for mankind to move on in its advances as a culture.

Without noticing it, Ray had wasted a whole minute of Mikey's time waiting with his hand pressed up to the door, not moving toward the doorknob, just hoping he wouldn't have to walk in on something sick.

Somehow he found his voice from where it had hidden from reality, sudden inspiration striking him, and pushed open the door, loudly yelling, 'teacher coming' and ducking back when the door swung open and Bob bolted out. Ray wasn't given a second glance, remaining the shadow he was, as he slipped into the bathroom. All his mental preparation he built up as he stood outside and let this happen wasn't enough for this. He expected worse, yeah, but somehow this brought tears to his eyes, just a bit. Mikey doesn't deserve to bleed like that.

His head lolled back on his shoulder, hitting the wall behind him, eyes closed tight, blood seeping through the cracks of his fingers as his hand gripped at a a spot on his hip. When he saw Ray--Bob's friend--he sunk to the floor in a last result and curled into himself, bringing his knees up to his chest and crossing his arms over them.

Ray had a moment of confusion, wondering why Mikey was trying to hide from him, but then he realized--oh. He gasped quietly.

"Mikey, relax, I'm not here to hurt you."

"Then why are you here?" he spat out. His eyes were just black soot rings in his face, and he lifted them to meet Ray's, blinking away tears and letting them run down his cheeks shamelessly, pooling white and murky at the end of his jaws. Ray held his gaze until he felt Mikey probing around in his brain. He looked down.

"You're bleeding."

"No shit."

Ray rolled his eyes. He wasn't bothered by the bitchy attitude, he got used to it from following Bob around all the time. Instead he busied himself grabbing some of the paper towels out of their dispenser, running them under cold water and wringing out the excess. He went over to the little corner Mikey had holed himself up in, and held out his hand. Mikey stared at it. "Mikey, get up, you need to get cleaned up."

He only got a grunt in response so he hooked an arm under Mikey's and pulled him up, letting him lean his weight on the wall. He really was too light.

Mikey had tried to squirm away when Ray lifted up his shirt, shyness and modesty taking a hold of his senses and overpowering the fact that he knew he needed to get cleaned up before Frank saw him like this. He batted Ray's hands away weakly when his writhing didn't help, then gave up and sat back. When Mikey's body went limp, Ray raised his shirt. Mikey gasped at the sudden blast of air on his cuts and bruises. Ray just gasped.

"Mikey...how did Bob do this?" Ray asked, pressing the paper towel to the biggest cut. It was on his hip, and the bone was showing white and yellow through the layers of blood and skin. He worried about pushing down too hard on the cut and hurting Mikey, but he didn't know any better way to stop the blood.

Mikey sniffed and looked anywhere other than down at his own exposed stomach. His whole body hurt with an unattached ache now instead of each individual cut hurting, and he didn't know if that was good or bad. He was torn between wanting Frank here so bad he wanted to start crying again and never wanting Frank to see him like this.

"Bob took a piece of the mirror and cut me with it." Mikey nodded over to the mirror hanging over the sink that had a chunk missing from the corner.

"Oh Mikey..." Ray curled his free hand around Mikey's waist and pulled him a little bit closer, thinking that if he could just kidnap Mikey and take him somewhere that he could protect him from all of this and they would be able to read comics all day and discuss everything. "How long has this been going on?" Ray asked, reading the timeline of bruises and scars.

"...about as long as I've been dating Frank."

"Have you told Frank?"

"No! And don't let him know, okay?"

Ray stopped all movement, just taking a minute to wonder about Mikey. If Mikey would tell Frank about this, his pain would be over. Frank would kill Bob if he knew about this.

"And, and you have to promise not to tell him, okay?" Mikey gripped Ray's shoulder for emphasis, hand shaking. Ray was the only person other than Frank that he'd ever willingly touched at this school.

"Yeah, okay."

Mikey knew Ray didn't understand. No one ever understands him. "Ray, Frank likes to hang out with Bob. If he finds out, he'll hate Bob and all he'll have is me. I can't make him happy, and he won't want me anymore."

Ray bit his lip and nodded, not knowing how to respond to that. He tightened his grip on Mikey when the boy's body seemed to finally give out all the way. He slumped against the wall, knees turning into a mass of jumbled nerves encased in bone. Ray was afraid the kid was going to pass out, so he bent down to hook his arms underneath Mikey's knees, his other arm supporting his back, and stood up straight, cradling the wiry boy in his arms.

"What're you doing?" Mikey sputtered out groggily as his free arm wrapped around Ray's shoulder, tangling his fingers in the curly hair at the nape of his neck. The buzzing lights shone too brightly when Ray carefully brushed the hair out of Mikey's eyes so he tucked his face in Ray's sturdy shoulder and waited for his head to stop spinning.

"I'm taking you to the nurse, Mikey." Obviously, you're about to bleed to death.

Ray could already feel Mikey's blood seeping warm and sick through the flood gates of their combined shirts and jackets, felt it already beginning to dry on his skin. He hitched Mikey just a bit higher in his arms, re-planting his feet for balance, waiting for Mikey to object to his plans. To not allow others to see him in this pain. Instead of any objections or useless squirming, Mikey nodded weakly into Ray's hair and muttered, faint as a whisper, " Why are you helping me?"

Ray breathed out loudly and looked to the ceiling for some kind of answer other than 'you're really really hot'. Not only would that freak Mikey out, but the repercussions (mainly the ones involving Frank) could be painful.

Mikey watched as Ray struggled to grasp onto something. Finally, "You're my friend. I don't want you to bleed out in the fucking bathroom, Mikey."

*

The nurse told him that he really needed to go to the hospital and get stitches. School nurses didn't have the technical basic shit like that, they had Advil, ice packs, band-aids, and a place to sit, and in the event of something serious she wasn't really able to do anything but watch a teenage kid die. But she had enough experience to know when a cut was serious, and the one she was looking at was so deep she could pick out the epidermal layers. Nothing about the lanky boy screamed healthy, he looked on the brink of death in her opinion, but he adamantly refused to go to the hospital when the other, frizzy-haired boy suggested it for a third time.

Ray let his face disappear in his hands for a moment, shaking off the urge to tie Mikey up and drag him to the fucking hospital. "Please,Mikey, it could get infected--"

"Hospitals are scary! And it won't get infected, I'll put neosporin on it!" Mikey interjected, crossing his arms over his chest. The dull pounding ache in his stomach was being ignored on his part, instead he decided to poke at one of his own brown bruises just above the sleeve of his shirt. Bob always made sure to grab him and mark him in places no one could see. It was the only thing Bob had done right.

"Ugh, Mikey Way, I swear to God if you die from a goddamn infection that I'll kill you."

Mikey smiled for the first time since lunch. "You think I'll rise from the dead too?"

Ray's eyes bugged out of his head as he took a playful swing at Mikey. "You fucking dork."

"Says the boy with the Batman shoelaces."

Ray's eyebrows raised at the rebuttal. God, it was too easy to fall in love with that cheesy superior grin.

"Shuddup. But no, seriously, I'll kill you, like, with an axe or a chainsaw--"

"No, no, do it with a sledgehammer. That's the way to fucken go, I wanna...fucking crunch when I'm killed, okay Toro?"

"...okay, Way."

The smile was infectious, really.