Work Text:
~one~
(ten years old)
There were no scars at first. At first it was subtle bruises that he excused like Frank did - it was a bully, Bob or one of his friends. And it was believable enough, because between Frank and Mikey, they were picked on more than anyone else, even Patrick, even Brendon (who ignored it, mostly), even Gerard.
Nevertheless, when Gerard saw the first awful one, he freaked out. Mikey had a huge, though light, bruise on his upper arm, extending from his right shoulder halfway to his elbow. He had hidden it all day, but Gerard had burst into his room as he was changing that night.
“What the hell, Mikey?” his brother gasped, grabbing his wrist to tug him closer. “When the hell did this happen?”
Mikey turned red, squirming to get away from Gerard. “It’s not a big deal,” he mumbled, trying to tug his wrist from his brother’s hand. “Bob’s just a jerk, alright?” (Which, though true, was not the reason the bruise existed.)
Gerard narrowed his eyes, and, thankfully, dropped the subject. (He never found out that Mikey had purposely slammed his shoulder against the wall.)
~two~
(eleven years old)
“So, let me get this straight,” Pete laughed. “You fell out of a fucking tree, landed on your wrist, and broke it.” Mikey nodded, glancing down at the cast that Gerard was drawing a cobra on with a few colorful sharpies that Patrick had produced from his backpack.
“You idiot, oh my God,” he laughed again. Mikey tried to hide how much Pete’s words hurt him, but he couldn’t stop himself from getting defensive, even as he dug his fingernails into the palm of his uninjured hand.
“It was an accident,” he mumbled, sinking further into the beanbag he was seated in.
“Stop moving,” Gerard said softly, tongue sticking out from between his teeth as he concentrated on his drawing. Mikey muttered out an apology that was too soft for anyone to hear, but his brother glanced up long enough to smile at him nonetheless.
He didn’t notice Frank and Ray exchanging glances. Unlike Pete and Gerard and everyone else, they had been there when Mikey fell from the tree. They knew what the others didn’t know - that there was no way Mikey had accidently fallen from that stupid tree. He had jumped. (Plus, Mikey never climbed trees. He prefered video games, thank you very much.)
~three~
(thirteen years old)
“Do you wanna know how I got these - hey, wait, Mikey. Where’d you get that scar?” Jack said, cutting off his joke to peer down at Mikey’s arm. Mikey turned red, pulling the sleeve of his black uniform jacket over his knuckle, and smiling sheepishly at the boy dressed as the Joker.
“It was just our cat,” he muttered. “It was an accident - normally she’s really sweet.”
Alex grinned from the other side of Jack. “I didn’t know you had a cat!” he said. “That’s awesome.” Mikey just grinned and prayed that Frank couldn’t hear their conversation from the other side of the classroom. (He was the only one in this class who would know that the Ways didn’t have a cat.)
~four~
(fifteen years old)
Donna froze as her son reached over his brother to grab the salt. A glance at her husband confirmed that he had seen the red mark down Mikey’s arm as well. She bit her lip, then plastered on a smile.
“Mikey, honey, what happened to your arm?” she asked casually. Mikey shot Gerard a panicked glance, then smiled brightly at his mother.
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “I was playing with one of Frank’s dogs and, well, her nails haven’t been trimmed in a while.” Everyone at the table relaxed as he laughed it off, but no one relaxed more than Mikey as they believed his lie. (He hadn’t been at Frank’s in a week, Gerard remembered, but he said nothing.)
~five~
(fifteen years old)
Ray, Frank, Patrick, Lyn-Z, and Dallon were spread out in Gerard’s basement. Frank lay starfished on the floor, and Gee was using his stomach as a pillow. Ray was spinning himself around in the desk chair with Dallon was perched on the desk. Lyn-Z lay on the bed with her hanging off the side and a smirk on her face as she gazed at Gerard and Frank.
Patrick was seated on the stairs awkwardly watching the others. Amongst their friends, there was a subtle divide between smaller subsections, and the people gathered in this room were not really his division - yes, Patrick liked all of them, but he wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up here. (Same with Dallon, to be honest.)
“Hey, has anyone noticed something’s off with Mikey?” Dallon asked, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen in the room. Gerard seemed to tense up, though no one noticed but Frank. Ray frowned, running a hand through his ‘fro.
“Yeah, like all those ‘accidents’ he keeps having - how come we never see them?” he asked.
Gerard breathed in sharply, closing his eyes for a moment. “I’ve seen them,” he lied, because though he was concerned about his brother, they had an unspoken agreement to not discuss their issues unless they began to fear for themselves. “It’s not like he’s lying about them or something.”
Patrick remembered the day before when he had been at Pete’s and Mikey dropped by for a couple hours. (And Patrick was definitely not jealous.) He and Mikey had been in the kitchen, and Mikey reached up to grab the sugar for his coffee. His shirt had slid up, revealing angry red lines on his sides and hip, something he recognized from Pete’s arms. Patrick hadn’t said anything then, but he thought he should at least bring them up to his brother.
“Um, Gerard,” he said, slowly moving to settle himself on the bottom step. “I saw a bunch of really suspicious scratches on his side the other day. I’m not saying they’re anything bad, but, uh, maybe… maybe you should talk to him, make sure he’s okay?”
Gerard strained a smile that Frank could see right through, laughing stiffly. “Mikey’s fine,” he said, propping himself up to look at everyone more seriously. “Fine. Thanks for the concern, Dal, Pat, really, but he’s okay. The scratches you saw were from him nearly falling off the roof the other day - I was there, I caught him.”
Lyn-Z and Frank frowned at each other, but didn’t call out Gerard’s lie. They didn’t know why he was covering something like this for Mikey - normally, he’d be the one on top of making sure his younger brother was okay. But then again, maybe if Gerard said it was an accident, it really was. (Memories of Mikey jumping from a tree, stepping in front of a car, and “accidentally” cutting his hand on a piece of glass tugged at Ray’s mind, but he said nothing. There was no proof.)
-ONE-
(eighteen years old)
Frank yanked Mikey between the buildings as he walked by, unknowingly placing his hand over some painfully new cuts on his upper arm. “Shit, Frank, what the Hell?” Mikey hissed, stumbling over his long legs. His friend sighed loudly, pulling out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered one to the older boy, but Mikey shook his head.
“Hey,” Frank said, placing the cigarette between his teeth and lighting it. He breathed in the nicotine-laced smoke, blowing away from Mikey’s face.
“Don’t you have gym class this period?” he asked, even though he leaned against the wall and made no move to get to his own sixth period Economics class. Frank scoffed, taking another drag from his cigarette. He doubted either of them would end up in sixth period - he knew this spot too well. It was their meeting place, the one place that faculty seemed to overlook, with no cameras to spy on them. A safe haven in their hellhole of a school.
“Me. Attending gym? That’d be the day,” he joked, rolling his eyes. “I was thinking about leaving early and heading to Pete’s. Unless you don’t want to, which’d be cool too.”
Mikey took about a half-second to make his decision. “Sounds good to me,” he said, shrugging his nearly empty black backpack into a more comfortable position. Frank grinned at him, running a hand through his black hair. Mikey didn’t miss the bags and dark circles under his friend’s eyes, probably a by-product of staying up all night and worrying about the trial against his step-father. However, he could also see the worry on Frank’s face whenever he looked at him, and he didn’t like it. He was worthless in comparison to the other boy, he didn’t deserve Frank’s concern.
“We going, or what?” Mikey asked, already heading towards the gap in the fence surrounding the school. Frank glanced over his shoulder, idly wondering if he should wait for Tyler, Patrick, and Josh to show up. Then he shrugged stamping out his cigarette and chasing Mikey, who’s long legs were already carrying him off campus and into the small wooded area behind the school.
They hurried through the trees, eventually reaching the backside of a small gas station that most of the kids in their school blew too much money at. Once they reached the other side of the station, they relaxed, finally feeling like they wouldn’t be caught - though not many people would believe that Frank was actually seventeen if they were.
Mikey and Frank walked down the road in silence until they reached Patrick and Pete’s neighborhood, thankful that they lived relatively close to the school. “Seriously, I’m not cut out for all this exercise,” Frank huffed jokingly as they walked up Pete’s driveway. Mikey scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“Well, maybe if you went to gym…”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Michael.”
Pete greeted them at the door, ushering them down to his basement quickly. Mikey was only mildly surprised to spot his brother sketching on the sofa, Brendon and Ryan with their heads bent over their songbook, and Debby plucking away at a guitar. “Andy’s in the bathroom,” Pete said, “And I’m guessing you ditched Tyler, Josh, and ‘Trick.” Mikey shrugged, slinking across the room to sit next to Gerard.
“Hey, Gee,” he said, propping his ankle up on his knee. He peered over the top of his brother’s sketchbook, trying to see what he was drawing, but Gerard shied away. Mikey froze - Gerard didn’t hide his work from him. The others, yes, but him? Not typically.
Gerard looked up at him with slightly red eyes, and that was when Mikey realized his brother had been crying. He was too busy trying to figure out what was wrong (this would be a really fortunate moment for telepathy to be a thing) to notice the way Pete turned the AC off, and everyone else shed their jackets.
“So, Mikey, Frankie,” Pete grinned, throwing himself into a beanbag. “Psyched for graduation?”
“Hell yeah,” Mikey grinned, running a hand through his bleached hair. Tyler and Josh cut off the rest of what he was going to say when they ran down the stairs, laughing wildly. Patrick trailed in behind them, shooting Frank a glare that pretty clearly said, “Why didn’t you wait for us?”
Frank grinned, shrugging back. “Sorry.”
Mikey slowly felt himself falling into the comfortable routine that came with being with his friends. Once school let out, the rest of the group arrived, gathering in the basement as they had so many times before, and something about it was so familiar that Mike wanted to cry. The only one missing was Hayley, but that stung a little too much to think about.
He didn’t even think when he slid his jacket off of his shoulders, unintentionally exposing the scars that he had tried to hide from his friends - his family, really - for so long. Mikey didn’t even realize his mistake until Brendon glanced at him, and then slowly leaned over to Pete and whispered in his ear.
Pete whipped around to look at Mikey, who had his arms crossed and loosely resting on his legs. The older boy stared at his friend with huge, watery eyes that mad Mikey look down subconsciously. It wasn’t long before the talking stopped and all eyes turned to him. The blond shifted uncomfortably, knowing it was too late to reach for his jacket. They had all already seen.
“Shit, Mikey,” Gerard muttered, “I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad.” He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the many scars, new and old, that ran up his younger brother’s arms. Mikey flinched as he reached towards him, finally able to move.
He grabbed his jacket, jumping to his feet and heading to the stairs. Right before he ran up them, he turned to the group of concerned teenagers, and let out a small, teary sob of an “I’m sorry.” Then he ran as fast as he could, reminding himself and everyone else of the way Hayley had run out of the Way home six months before. (Because they knew that he had done this to himself, this time. There was no way he could lie himself out of this one. He hated himself for screwing up like this. He didn’t mean to screw up - they weren’t ever supposed to know.)