So they always go for Mikey. I mean, back when they had a choice, of course. Now Mikey's fifteen, still with the innocence of a new-born baby lamb, and at high school all on his own. Without me and Gerard lending him what little powerless protection that we once could. It's just him, all alone and with nowhere to run to whenever they start yelling at him for daring to be true to himself.
I know that Gee knows and that it's killing him watching their leech-like words killing his baby brother; not least because he knows that there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it other than hold Mikes whenever the poor kid goes in search of comfort. Not that Mikey even really does that anymore. Why? Because some kids started teasing him for always running to Gerard and acting like his "whiny little bitch". And thus those bastards tore away the tiny little ray of hope Mikes had at having someone who could quite possibly save him from the bullies.
From himself.
The amount of times I've heard that poor kid run up to his bedroom after school and just start smashing things up, yelling at his reflection, simply flat-out sobbing, is enough to make anyone sick. Because I know what it means; the sweet, innocent little kid who learned to trust me through fairy-tales, is long dead. All that's left is the shell of a hollowed-out person with no beating heart left to break. They drove a knife of self-loathing and despair straight through it.
But that doesn't stop me from being where I am today, just like every Thursday afternoon after dropping Gerard off at his house after our shared shift at the local record store. It doesn't stop me from sitting on the Way family couch, picking at my nails like an anxious school-girl waiting for her date, just simply trying to pull through the minutes that resound until Mikey stumbles through the door and, more often than not, runs up to his bedroom before I can even give him one of my trademark soft smiles. Because every Thursday I tell myself that it'll end, that I'll go up to his bedroom after him and make him happy again with my fairy-tales that never failed to make him smile back when he was still capable of doing so without having to actually dig for the motivation.
Every Thursday, though, I chicken out. I get distracted with the hopeless look of hurt on Gee's face when his baby brother, the one who used to tell him everything including the stuff that Gerard didn't even want to know, runs straight past him with tears in his eyes and no intention of asking his big brother for help like he once would have in a heartbeat. Then by the time I've comforted Gerard, usually by letting him win a few rounds on Street Fighter, I've either done one of three things; left it too late and Mikey's burnt himself out into a horribly fitful sleep; lost all thoughts of what I could possibly say to the kid to make it all better, or; get too nervous to even work my way up their creaky wooden stairs to his bedroom.
