Incisions to Corrupt a Mind

Frank Iero did not know, when that morning he had slipped his tie through the loop, kissed his mother on the cheek, and half-carelessly driven himself to school, that his day was going to be interesting. These were the kind of things that Frank never knew– he never found himself caring about the what ifs in life, nor was he much too concerned about the hows or whys.

So when he shuffled himself into 4th period world history, walking right by the slightly familiar lanky boy sat on the desk right next to his, he didn’t give him one single thought. He just slumped himself down into the crap plastic chair, crossing his arms along the desk and resting his chin upon his upturned palm, prepared to be bored into sleep, such was the day before. He probably would have been, too, if it weren’t for the words of interruption coming from his left side.

“He-e-ey, short stuff.” Frank blinked, raised his head and looked around in confusion for the voice that was seemingly directed at him. He heard a short whistle coming from the same direction and turned to face the boy beside him. Oh.

The boy was indeed familiar, and it took Frank a while before realizing it was the same kid from the office yesterday. He strained his memory back to Brendon’s words, trying to remember the kid’s name. Fuck, what was it? Matt, or Michael… Mickey?

“Mikey!” Frank exclaimed, and upon realization that he had just given outburst to the entire class and not just in his head, clamped a hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

“That would be me,” the tall, blonde boy said. His legs were crossed as he sat atop his desk, watching Frank. “What’chya doin’?” The boy leaned in towards Frank, expressionless as he took in the younger one’s features. He popped his gum. “You’re kinda cute,” he slurred, sitting back, “for a catholic boy, anyways.”

Frank squeaked, and could feel his face heat up at the boy’s words, but not finding the ability to look anywhere but the kid’s face, instead took in his appearance.

He was tall, limbs lanky and folded awkwardly on his desk. He wore a loose muscle tee with the phrase “too young to give a duck”, one biker’s glove on his right hand, and shock-red skinnies with the knees missing. His hair was dirty blonde with bleached tips, choppy in the back though some of it hung gelled and out of place in his muddy, hazel eyes. He had a very defined jaw and expressionless face, and a sharp nose of which the same glasses of the day prior sat askew.

This observation finally triggered a thought other than, “what”, from Frank, a thought that just so happened to be exactly, “You almost killed me yesterday!”

Mikey blinked. “With the door...?” Frank moaned miserably. A raised eyebrow was all he got in response.

“You’re the new kid,” Mikey finally said. It wasn’t in any way a question but Frank still nodded, eyes still wide with the memory of near death. “Real cute for a Catholic boy,” Mikey added with a purr, and then, “Oh. Sorry about my blatant homosexuality. I realize that I’m going to hell, I just don’t care anymore.”

Mikey’s face hardened with each word and Frank paled, stuttering out a, “N-no, I’m not– I–”

Mikey let out a grunt, but his eyebrows unfurrowed somewhat. “Teasing,” he exasperated. “You’re sure one strung up motherfucker. What did those priests do to you at that school?” And then Mikey became silent for a second, eyes widening in what Frank could only assume was amusement. “Never mind, don’t tell me. Keep your dirty little secrets, those I don’t need to know.”

Frank decided that this would be a good time to attempt a response, but Mikey never let him. “So, tell me about yourself,” and this wasn’t a question either. The words were drawled out and Frank was paying nearly too much attention to the tone of them to even realize he had been asked a question.

“I– I don’t… Sixteen, um… vegetarian, dogs–”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down there Einstein! You’re making so much sense, it’s just too hard to follow.” Frank blushed at Mikey’s sarcasm. “So you have sixteen vegetarian dogs, continue?”

“No, I am sixteen, as of October 31st, anyway. I’m vegetarian, and I like dogs.” Mikey just stared at Frank. “What?”

“You were born on Halloween,” Mikey monotoned. “So cool,” and Frank couldn’t tell if he was actually being sincere. “Continue, though.”

“Uh…” Frank didn’t remember having to go through this initiation process with Brendon. “I like Black Flag, play guitar, and smoke chronically… oh, and I love horror movies. That’s…” Frank attempted to think of anything else interesting about himself, but came up blank. “That’s about it.”

“Great so my brother will love you,” Mikey intoned, words rushed. “Okay well I’m Michael ‘Mikey’ James Way, and you are Frank Anthony Iero Jr.” Frank gaped at the older boy. “What? I’m a Way. We know things. No biggie?” Mikey waited for Frank’s response.

“Ah, oh… okay?”

“So, Iero,” Mikey drawled, ignoring the younger boy’s noises of confusion. “Lunch is in,” and he checked the clock across the classroom, “ten minutes. Sit with me.” No a question.

Frank blinked. “B-but, I’m– I can’t. I’m sitting with Bren–”

“You sat with tall, dork, and handsome yesterday, right?” Frank nodded. “Well, Baby Bren can wait. Today you are mine.” Frank ignored the slightly disturbed shiver that coursed through him at Mikey’s words. Maybe Brendon was right; the Ways really were fucking weird.

“Okay…?” Mikey’s eyebrows furrowed at Frank’s expression, and he sighed, slumping down off his desk and into his chair, expression if only the slightest bit caring towards the younger boy.

“Hey, no. I don’t wanna scare you,” and he sat back, exasperated. “I just– I’m sorry, or whatever.” He let out a ruff bark that Frank supposed was a more humorless laugh. “I dunno, you’re cool. You like Black Flag, and you smoke, so you aren’t a pansy. You play guitar, that’s sick. I play bass.” Mikey shrugged. “I don’t have friends,” he said to Frank. “I’m sixteen n’ a half, and I have a senior year brother who should be in college by now but is too dumb to do math, and he drink so I drink. I have daddy issues, and I play way too many video games. I’m not okay, or whatever.”

Frank really didn’t know what to do with all of this information. He wasn’t sure if this would be a good time for him to as well insert his entire life story; he was sure he didn’t want to end up crying in front of this guy, or anything. So he really wasn’t planning on saying anything, until, “I have no dad, not anymore, and we can’t afford milk.” Mikey looked up in confusion and Frank felt exactly the same, on the inside.

“What?”

“Well, you were saying how you weren’t okay, right? And you got daddy issues, and drinking shit, well…” Frank trailed off, sighing as his shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I don’t have a dad anymore, I mean I do, but not when I come home from school, or nothing like that. So I get the daddy issues thing. Yeah, ‘n sometimes we’re too poor to afford milk, cos my mom spends too much money on the least important shit, like my education–” Frank cut himself off with a snort, “–an’, like a car, and shit. And, you know, I’m really grateful, but she’s just dumb with money and I think I realize it more than she does. So I guess we’re not okay either…” Frank shrugged.

“I guess we’re not okay together, then,” Mikey added, the corner of his mouth tipping up, and Frank didn’t have to know him for more than a day to tell that smile was something the kid didn’t do much often.

•••••

Sure, Frank thought, Mikey was actually a pretty okay dude –after you got over the initial sugarbomb mixed with bored old math instructor that his personality was akin to– but he most certainly did not expect to find himself in the middle of his room, changing into normal people clothes because he was actually going to the kid’s house. Frank was almost reluctant because despite Mikey being pretty awesome (they had talked through lunch, and Frank felt almost bad for abandoning Brendon until he realized the kid was nowhere to be seen, anyway), he was a bit of an handful on sight, and now Frank was about to endure meeting Gerard, who he’d heard straight from the brother of the damn horse’s mouth was a bit of a… well, dicksmack. At least Frank thinks that was the word Mikey had used to describe his older brother.

“I’m so glad you’re going to a friend’s house,” Linda had said when he’d told her, which was the first thing he had done upon walking into his house. Except that upon leaving, she had begun to nag her son about dinnertime, curfew, “Don’t overstay your welcome, Frankie, don’t get into an accident, and call me before you’re coming home!”

“Yeah, ma,” Frank sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. He was now in what he would categorize as ‘normal’ clothes¬– if his black muscle tee, black skinnies with the knees gone, and black beat up Chucks were to be considered normal by anyone but him.

“Well anyway, I’m happy you have two new friends now!” Then Linda frowned. “This is a different friend, right?”

“Mom! I’m leaving now,” Frank grunted, stepping through the open doorway. “See, I’m outside now. Can’t hear you, la la la, bye mom!” and he spun on his heel, making a point to book it to his car before he was harassed any further by motherly love.

The instant he was off the road he pulled a pack from his glove compartment, placing a cigarette between his lips and holding it to the flame of his lighter until the cherry burned red. He breathed out and sighed, tossing the pack onto the passenger seat and placing both hands on the wheel, already lost in his thoughts.

•••••

Gerard most certainly expected, when he had woken up that morning, that Mikey would still be taking up the majority of the bed next to him (because although Mikey was small, he had no awareness of personal space, nor did he care). But when he threw an arm over and yawned, “G’morning,” he was not met with a response.

Gerard sat up and looked around in confusion until he spotted a note taped to where Mikey’s presence should have been. The note simply read, “Sorry– Mikes <3”. Gerard grunted, crumpling the note up into a paper ball and tossing it carelessly in which direction he hoped his trashcan was.

“Traitor,” he muttered, and yawned again. His eye caught the blaring 10:27 AM blinking red on his alarm clock and it was no wonder anymore why Mikey was missing, because school had started hours ago.

Even though Gerard had begged (okay, more like demanded) his kid brother to stay home with him for fear of having a mental breakdown, and Mikey’s exact words had been, “Yeah, Gee. I’m right here. I’ll stay right here.”

“Really traitor,” Gerard added aloud, and he couldn’t even be bothered that it didn’t make any sense because he was tired and needed a drink. So he swung one arm over his bed and buried it in the pile of absolute disgust and not at all clean clothes that littered his floor and, when he could not find any of his three precious baby vodkas (because Mikey must have taken them again, Gerard refused to believe his room was really that messy), he pulled himself back up and collapsed onto his bed, sleep dragging him down once more within seconds.

•••••

When Mikey came home he half expected his brother to be up and about– mind you, up and about for Gerard was ass planted on the couch watching Bela play Drac with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He even hoped (not expected, hoped) that maybe Gerard had gone out for a change, instead of locking himself up once more in the dank cavern he liked to call his room.

Of course, no such luck.

So when Mikey traipsed through the empty living room, Frank high in mind, he thought that his brother had to at least be up and in his room, bent over his drawing board or god forbid drinking again. Anything involving Gerard awake was a better option than him sleeping, because Gerard slept as dead as a rock and Mikey would not have his brother being an introverted creeper in the basement, not when a prospective friend was just around the corner.

“Gerard,” Mikey groaned as he trudged down the stairs. “Company in like, twenty. Get your ass up now!” He stopped in front of the door to Hell and sighed. This would be the sixth time in two days he had to go into the cave of horrors, and probably not the last. He pushed his way into Gerard’s room, expecting his brother dead at the worst, and upon finding him once again in a bundle of comforter on the floor, snoring loudly, almost gave a sigh of relief.

But he didn’t.

Mikey stepped into Satan’s personal cavern and nudged the snoring lump with his boot, giving an audible whine when Gerard didn’t move. He crouched down next to his brother, one hand on the older boy’s shoulder, and said, “Gee, don’t do this to me.”

He knew that wasn’t quite fair, except that it kind of was and Gerard was dead to the world anyway so it didn’t really matter. But he reached around the sleeping lump that was his brother, pulling him up by the shoulders and hoping to jostle him into consciousness.

“Ugh, you reek, Gee. God, take a shower once in your life,” Mikey groaned. Gerard stirred, and upon realizing he was being touched by an undistinguishable source, began to flail helplessly.

“Gerard. Gee! It’s just Mikes,” Mikey sighed, and Gerard blinked, his vision zoning in on Mikey.

“Oh, God I thought you were trying to murder me,” Gerard spat. “Don’t do that. And stop touching me,” he hissed, yanking his arm away from Mikey.

Mikey’s hand was still held out awkwardly, stiff with shock as if he had just been burned, and he sighed, slumping down next to the very pissy Gerard who was shuffling about in an attempt to untangle himself from his comforter. “You used to let me touch you all the time,” he said softly.

Gerard stopped shuffling about, turning to glare at Mikey. “Well I don’t like it,” Gerard says. “I don’t like people being close to me.”

“But only sometimes,” Mikey shot back. “Yesterday you didn’t care.”

“You want the truth? Yesterday I was too far gone to care.”

“You used to take me around all the time, and when we were little you’d hold my hand and guide me everywhere. You don’t like me touching you now. You don’t let mom hug you, and dad–” Mikey stopped, and looked down, finally bringing his arm to his chest. “Just fucking get in the shower, you’re disgusting. I don’t know if I’m sitting on a shirt or a patch of mold, and it’s so gross.”

Gerard looked almost pained for a second, but he spat back, “Fine. But don’t expect me to be nice to company.”

“You will be extraordinary to company, dicksmack. I don’t have fucking friends because of you!” Mikey growled. He really didn’t want to have this fight with his brother; they were both too damaged to endure it again.

“Mikey if you fucking wanted friends, you’d have friends.” Oh, no. No. No, Gerard did not just say that, because Mikey was two seconds away from tears and if Gerard didn’t shut up now– “Maybe you don’t have friends because you don’t deserve them, did you ever think of that? Maybe no one wants to be your friend!”

Mikey was officially bawling. Gerard’s anger lasted for only a second longer before he slumped down into a pile of regret next to Mikey, reaching out to the younger boy. “Oh, no, Mikes. I’m sorry. I’m shit, I’m worthless, I didn’t mean it. God, Mikey, I’m so sorry…” and he extended his hand out to Mikey, who only slapped it away.

“No! You don’t like it, remember? You don’t like touching people, why should I be the exception?” Mikey pushed himself to his feet and looked down at Gerard, one hand up to wipe at his eyes. “Just fucking wash up, and be nice to Frank.”

“Anything, Mikes, just please forgive– wait, Frank?”

But Mikey had already left the room, and not thirty seconds later there was the unmistakable sound of a loud door slam.

Gerard was fucked. Officially fucked.