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The Ways' fights really fucking terrify Frank. He knows it’s normal for people to fight, however much they love one another. Knows it’s practically de rigeur for brothers to fight. But he knows other siblings, knows that their fights are petty and mean and simple. Quick and easily fixed and without real rancour. It’s not like that when the Way’s fight.
Part of the fear is because Frank doesn’t understand their fights. When he fights it’s with words, stupid simple Anglo-Saxon words, and with fists. The Ways fight with looks and ideas and emotions. No shouting, no throwing punches. Just pain and anger and so much resentment he can’t breath.
“It’s because we need one another,” Mikey says one day. The Ways haven’t spoken to one another for three days and Frank’s really fucking scared. The rest of them are replaceable, but without either Way, they’re not MCR any more. He’s never kidded himself about that. It’s MikeyandGerard’s band, the rest of them are graciously allowed to join in.
“Without one another, we don’t really exist,” Gerard says to him, the next night. Things aren’t fixed, not yet, but the tension seems to be lessening. “That can get a bit smothering.”
Frank had never thought about it like that.
“It’s really fucking difficult having a normal relationship when you have to explain to the girl you like that however much you love her, she’ll always come second. I fucking hate having to do that.”
“You could try… not?” he suggests, though he knows they won’t listen. They’re good guys, too good to ever not be open with a girl, and they’re never going to give up one another.
“It’s how we are,” Gerard says with a shrug. The room is dark, the orange glow of streetlights and the cherry of his cigarette the only sources of light. “He thinks I made him like this. He’s probably right. I didn’t mean to.”
Frank doesn’t know what to say, so he just stares, tries to make out Gerard’s expression in the darkness. His face is as blank as Mikey’s ever is. Frank fucking hates it when he does that.
“I think it might destroy us one day,” Gerard says, and Frank’s breath catches at how broken he sounds. “The drinking and the drugs and the hooking up, that’s mostly to get away from this. To get away from one another. But we can’t keep doing it for ever. One day we’re going to have to sober up, and I think that might fucking break us.”
Frank’s always wondered about the Ways and their drugs, about the way they seem to need them just that little bit more than other people, about the way it seems to be about more than just fun for them.
“I can’t lose him, Frank,” Gerard says, and there’s a catch in his voice, like he might be going to cry. “I can’t lose him and I can’t fucking keep him. We need other people, we need to fucking fall in love and get married and have fucking lives, but we can’t because we’ve got each other, and no one else will ever come close. It’s so fucked up.”
Frank thinks, not for the first time, that the Way brothers would probably be better off if they were fucking. He’d said as much to Mikey after one too many beers and mysterious pills and Mikey had smiled his tiny sad smile and said, “Yeah. But that’s not how we are.”
“It’ll be okay,” Frank says, wishing desperately that he believed that. “When you’re ready, we’ll help you get sober, and we’ll help Mikey get whatever the fuck help it is he needs, and the two of you will be okay. You’ll remember how to just be brothers, and you’ll find awesome girls to marry, and you’ll wonder how you could ever have believed everything was fucked.”
Gerard laughs, and it’s not a happy sound. “We were never just brothers,” is all he says. “We don’t know how to be.”
“Then you’ll learn. We’ll all help you learn.”
The cherry of Gerard’s cigarette glows in the darkness, and Frank wonders if there’s any chance any of the things he’s just said could ever come true. He hopes so. But he doesn’t really believe it.