Work Text:
August 2007
"Canada's granting asylum now, even without an exit visa from the US government," Frank said. "You're going to have to say you're gay, though."
The girls nodded their heads in unison, and the blonde one gave this watery little laugh, which, yeah, coming out to a bunch of Canadians was really the least of their worries. They were holding hands so tightly their knuckles were white.
He took their money and didn't ask where it came from. He gave them the time and location of the pick-up.
When they left the back office, the girls weren't holding hands anymore, and there was a careful foot of space between them.
"Oh, hey," the dark haired one said, just before they left. "My sister was a big fan of Pencey Prep. She took me to one of your shows once, when I was, like, thirteen."
"Yeah?" Frank said, like it didn't feel like being sucker-punched.
"Yeah," she said, giving him a shy smile. "It was pretty cool."
He just nodded, and watched them go.
Ray was racking glasses behind the bar. "Good deed of the day?"
Frank flipped Ray off, then tossed him the envelope of cash. "Make sure Bryar gets his cut when he shows up tonight."
He grabbed an extra bottle of Grey Goose on the way back to the office.
Twelve hours later last call had come and gone, and the crowd was thinning out.
Frank was sitting at the bar, watching Ray close out the register and trying to decide if the run on Jägermeister was a fluke or if they needed to increase their order. Ray half-looked up when the door opened, then looked up all the way with a startled expression.
"Holy shit!" he said, and actually vaulted over the bar.
Frank blinked and turned around.
Ray was hugging the guy who had just come in. After a moment, the guy lifted his head from Ray's shoulder and looked right at Frank.
His hair was shorter and darker, and he wasn't wearing glasses, but it was Mikey Way. Maybe it was thinking about Pencey again, but it wasn't as much of a shock as it should have been. Frank felt kind of...numb.
Ray let Mikey go, stepping back and cupping his face between his hands, saying something that made him smile. Frank made himself get up and walk over to them.
Mikey hugged him, dipping his head to whisper into Frank's ear, "I'm sorry."
Frank closed his eyes and leaned into the embrace and thought—
"We didn't have anywhere else to go," Mikey said.
Frank opened his eyes and looked at the guy who'd come in behind Mikey and now had an arm around Ray's waist. His face was thinner than Frank remembered, and his hair was cropped short and bleached platinum blond.
It was Gerard Way, and Frank knew exactly what Mikey was going ask for.
January 2005
Frank hadn't seen Mikey Way in three or four years, not since Frank's band got busted and Mikey's band went underground, so it was kind of a shock to open his door at three a.m. and see Mikey hanging off of, Jesus, Ray Toro like he was drunk or hurt or both.
"Jesus," Frank said again, and stepped aside to let them in.
"Can you, can he—" Ray said.
"Yeah, yeah, no, it's cool," Frank said, and Ray hugged Mikey tight, then kind of shoved him over to lean on Frank instead.
"Thank you," he said, and kissed Frank on the forehead. He was gone before Frank could even blink.
"Um," Frank said.
Mikey looked him in the eye. "I think I should lie down now," he said, very serious, and passed out.
Frank managed to wrestle him into his bed. Mikey's shirt rode up and for a second, Frank wondered how he'd gotten that dirty under his clothes. Then he pushed the shirt further up and realized the smudges over Mikey's ribs and belly were bruises, dark and ugly against his pale skin. Mikey flinched away in his sleep when Frank ran his fingers over them.
Frank sat up all night, waiting for Mikey to wake up or the police to break down his door, but all that happened was the sunrise.
Mikey slept into the afternoon. When he stumbled out of the bedroom, slow and stiff, Frank got out the bottle of aspirin and started another pot of coffee.
They sat at the kitchen table and didn't say anything.
Finally, Mikey said to his coffee cup, "Ray had to hit some guy in the face with his guitar to get them to let go of me. I don't know what happened to Otter." He looked up. "They arrested Gerard."
"How bad is it?"
Mikey shrugged a little. "You know we're on the list already. The last show, Gerard wore the American flag like a boa and made out with Ray on-stage."
Sedition, desecration of the flag, public indecency. Frank had gotten six months for incitement and resisting arrest, and Pencey hadn't been political, just angry. That was back in 2001, as well, before the worst of the new laws. "Your brother doesn't believe in doing anything half-assed."
Mikey gave a little humorless laugh, but he looked kind of proud anyway when he said, "Yeah."
Mikey dumped the rest of his coffee down the drain and went back to bed. Frank made macaroni and cheese for dinner, and went to work.
By the time he got home, he'd actually kind of forgotten about Mikey. He'd been awake for twenty-four hours and had spent the last ten on his feet, plus he'd gotten a split lip breaking up a fight at the bar. He didn't bother turning on the lights, just navigated by muscle memory to the bedroom, shedding his coat and boots and jeans as he went.
He remembered when the dim glow of the streetlights and the space heater showed him that his bed was occupied.
He blinked and swayed a little on his feet, then decided, Fuck it, and burrowed in next to Mikey.
He half-woke in the pale morning sunshine and found that Mikey had curled around him, face and one hand pressed into Frank's hoodie. It was weird, but also the first time since October that Frank had been warm, so he just closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
That was the way the second day went as well. Fortunately, Ray showed up on the third day with chicken soup and made Mikey get out of bed.
They sat at the kitchen table while the coffee dripped and Mikey showered.
"How much trouble are you guys in?" Frank asked.
Ray shrugged a little. "Gerard's the one they really care about. One of my cousins is a cop; he says we're on the list, but we're not a priority."
"You asked him?"
Ray gave him an irritated glance. "My mom asked his mom. Anyway, as long as we keep our heads down it shouldn't be a problem."
Mikey came into the kitchen then, dressed in Frank's t-shirt and sweatpants and a pair of tube socks he'd pulled up over the part of his shins the sweats didn't cover. He picked at the chicken soup when Ray pushed it over to him, but mostly he looked pale and listless.
Ray looked a Frank, giving him an anxious frown, and Frank shrugged back.
It surprised him that he could tell the difference between this Mikey and the Mikey of four years ago. Back then, Mikey had always been so animated. Not, like, smiling all the time, but always...vivid.
It was maybe less of a surprise that the difference bothered him.
Frank didn't ask Mikey about the sleeping arrangements. The heat in the apartment was unreliable at best, and Frank mostly just moved the space heater from room to room. He didn't have enough blankets to make sleeping on the couch bearable. He figured Mikey could tell him if sharing a bed freaked him out, but Mikey didn't say anything either, and after awhile, it stopped being weird.
On Frank's day off, he brought all the blankets and the space heater into the living room so he could watch terrible daytime television. He dragged Mikey out as well, because he was pretty sure that otherwise, Mikey would just lie there on the bed and freeze quietly. Mikey was silent the entire time, but he eventually ate two Pop Tarts of his own accord.
A couple of weeks later, Frank came back from the grocery store to find Mikey sitting on the living room floor, wrapped in the comforter and surrounded by CDs, listening to Frank's discman.
"Hey," Mikey said. "You've got all our songs."
"Yeah," Frank said. "That's 'cause you guys are awesome. I think I mentioned something about that when you were practicing with us." He dropped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and hesitated a moment before turning around. "Listen, there's a band playing tomorrow night—you should come."
"Who is it?"
"Just some guys."
Mikey snorted. "It's not the worst name I've ever heard."
"No, I mean, that's not the name. It really is just some guys." It was kind of a superstitious thing now, not naming your band. Like the government wouldn't notice you if you didn't have a name.
Mikey looked at him for a long moment. Then he shrugged and said, "Okay, sure."
Frank invited Ray, too, who was much more enthusiastic.
It was Mikey, though, who insisted on a disguise for Ray.
"We should straighten your hair," he said, and Ray and Frank both snorted.
But in the end, neither of them could refuse Mikey, and Ray came back the next day with his brother's girlfriend's straightening iron.
Afterwards, the three of them stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
"Staying out of prison is not worth it," Ray said, and Frank actually bent over at the waist laughing like a hyena.
Mikey didn't smile, but it looked like maybe he wanted to.
The band was playing in someone's poorly-lit basement, to a crowd of about fifty kids. They were good, not spectacular, but good, and even Mikey was nodding along to their music. For a minute it was almost like the last four years hadn't happened, like they were all just scene kids again, and the worst the cops would bust them for was underage drinking, or maybe possession.
But then Mikey met his eyes, thinner and older and worn around the edges, and it wasn't like four years ago at all.
They were both pretty drunk by the end of the night. They got a ride most of the way home with someone's girlfriend, staggered the rest of the way leaning on each other.
Frank was talking about these guys from Philadelphia that were doing some really amazing stuff, one hand waving around for emphasis, one hand knotted in Mikey's coat. When they got back to the apartment, he made Mikey sit on the couch and dug out the bootleg CD of the guys he'd been talking about.
He flopped down next to Mikey and all the alcohol he'd drunk suddenly caught up with him. The room did a slow swoop around him, and he went from being buzzed to feeling loose and sleepy. He kind of melted down into the couch, against Mikey, and his head ended up on Mikey's shoulder, close enough to hear the music leaking from his headphones.
He didn't realize he was playing along until Mikey reached over and caught his hand, turning it over, touching the tips of their fingers together. Mikey's fingers were rough with familiar calluses that Frank's had lost. "Do you still play?" he asked.
"Nah," Frank said. The arrests back in 2001 hadn't killed the scene, but they'd broken its back. (He thought maybe they'd broken something in the country, too, those first arrests that hadn't had anything to do with national security or fighting terrorism, and everything to do with moral outrage and "protecting the children.") He couldn't think of a way to say, Your band made me want something I couldn't have, that wouldn't make Mikey sad, so he didn't say anything.
"You should," Mikey said. "You should."
Frank looked at their tangled fingers. "Yeah," he said, "maybe."
It seemed, the way it did every year, like winter would never end. Frank was always cold, and Mikey felt it even more, still too skinny.
Mikey actually took the space heater into the shower with him one time. Frank caught him before he could plug it in.
"Dude, I know you have a death-wish, but please don't take my space heater with you," he said, and froze, because they never talked about Mikey's depression.
But Mikey laughed, surprised and rusty-sounding.
"Seriously, you're standing in water right now. What about this seemed like a good idea?" He was mostly joking, but he still felt that tiny pang of anxiety.
Mikey got an odd, unreadable expression on his face, and when he reached out, Frank thought he was going to punch his shoulder or push him, not angry, of course, just fooling around. Instead, Mikey kissed him. It was clumsy and a little bit desperate, but when Frank opened his mouth and kissed him back, Mikey softened and slowed, still urgent, but sweeter now.
He put his hands on Mikey's waist, on his bare skin just above the towel, and pulled him forward. Mikey followed, crowding him up against the sink, sliding his hands under Frank's t-shirt.
Frank let him do it, caught between the hard edge of the counter behind him and the hard, bony edges of Mikey's body in front of him. Mikey slid a hand into Frank's sweatpants, and Frank gasped.
Mikey pulled back for a second.
"Yeah, okay," Frank said, and yanked the towel off of Mikey's waist. He wrapped his hand around Mikey's cock and leaned up to kiss him again.
They stroked each other hard and fast in the tiny, freezing bathroom. Frank could feel his own orgasm just at the edge of his reach when Mikey broke the kiss, pressing his mouth against the scorpion tattoo on Frank's neck.
"You'd be sad if I died, right?" he asked, the words breathless against Frank's skin.
"Fuck, Mikey, yes," Frank said, but then he came, spilling over Mikey's hand, and he didn't know if Mikey understood. "I would be very fucking sad," he said, and Mikey bit down on his neck and came.
Mikey still curled up around him when they slept, but now Frank just pressed himself tighter into the embrace.
It wasn't that he didn't believe Mikey when Mikey said he loved him.
But when Frank walked into the apartment and saw Ray sitting at the kitchen table, it was like the other shoe that he'd been waiting for finally dropped.
"He's gone," Frank said, and it wasn't a question.
Ray nodded.
"Gerard?"
"Frank, man, you know I can't tell you anything." Which was a yes.
He wanted to be angry, at Mikey for leaving, at Ray for staying, at Gerard for being Gerard-fucking-Way, but all he felt was a kind of tired grief.
Ray shoved a juice glass and a bottle of vodka across the table to him.
Later, he realized Ray must have been waiting for something, too. After Mikey left, Ray cut his hair and got an apartment and started using his mother's half of his last name. Frank got him a job at Rick's when their bouncer quit, and Ray turned out to be good at it, calm and easy-going enough to break up fights before they got started, but also willing to hit a guy in the face with a chair if necessary.
Frank tried not to think about it that much, and ended up spending most of the rest of the spring drunk.
If he'd been sober when he left Rick's that night, maybe things would have been different. But as it was, he had to concentrate extra-hard on locking the back door, so he was still in the alley when the kid came careening around the corner and slammed into him.
Frank steadied him automatically, and for a split second they stared at each other. The kid was shaking, gasping for breath, and he looked terrified and angry and maybe just a little like Mikey. The door was still unlocked. Frank pulled the kid inside and slammed it behind them. He locked the door and reset the alarm, so the little red light glowed in the window.
They both froze when they heard the shouting and the footsteps, boots slamming into concrete just outside the door. They stared at each other in the dark, crouched down and flattened against the wall, underneath the windows with the peeling black paint. The kid had one hand pressed over his mouth, like he was trying to muffle the sound of his own breathing.
Frank silently cursed his drunken impulse. He apologized to Rick in his head, because if the cops came through that door and found them, they were all screwed, Frank, the kid, Rick, probably the rest of the employees just on general principle.
No one came through the door. The footsteps and voices moved off, and eventually everything was quiet.
Neither one of them spoke.
The kid left when the sky was just starting to lighten.
It was on the early morning news, how the police had raided a Koran study group. That's what turned Frank's stomach, the way they just came right out and said it was a fucking religious study group and not a terrorist cell, as if they were the same thing. He was still sitting at the bar when Rick came downstairs, when Ray showed up for his shift, which wasn't new, but he wasn't drinking, which was.
When he told them what he wanted to do, Ray's face actually lit up.
Rick sighed and shook his head. "I'm getting to old for this political shit," he said, and Frank tried not to be disappointed.
Three days later, Rick signed over to the deed to the bar to Frank and Ray, and moved to Florida. The last thing he did before he left was arrange a meeting with one of his cousins' connected friends.
Which was how Frank met with a minor but still powerful branch of the Jersey mafia to discuss how maybe they'd like some paying passengers on their trips into Canada.
Bob Bryar showed up a couple of weeks after Rick left. Frank looked at his short blond hair and his Homeland Security badge, and brought his arms up onto the bar so the tattoos were more noticeable.
Bryar looked at his arms, then met his eyes. His expression didn't change, mild as milk.
"Nice place you've got here," he said, and Frank snorted. Rick's was a shithole.
"Well, we try."
They settled on ten percent of all the illegitimate stuff.
"Just don't do anything stupid," Bryar said. "I can't protect you if you get one of the other agencies involved."
Frank smiled back, all teeth. "Yeah, well, if I go down, I'm taking you with me."
Bryar nodded once. "Fair enough," he said, and left.
Bryar was from Chicago; he seemed young for the job, but it wasn't like Belleville was a hotbed of terrorist activity. Frank tried to give him shit about it, saying he'd heard that they'd been in such a hurry to get Homeland Security up and running that they'd hired pretty much anyone without a warrant out against them.
Bryar had actually laughed at that. "Yeah, pretty much. Otherwise, I never would have gotten this job."
He kept his end of the deal at least. Frank and Ray never had a problem with the cops or the feds, even though by the time summer rolled around, the patrons of Rick's were breaking every law that Vice enforced, and a good number of the ones that Homeland Security did.
It didn't mean that Frank liked him.
But the thing about Bob Bryar was that he had a scar on his mouth. It was small and thin, on the right-hand side of his lower lip. You couldn't even see it unless you were up close and the light was good.
He'd probably gotten it fighting terrorists or trampling someone's civil liberties. It was just—it looked exactly like the scar Frank had on the left-hand side of his lower lip, where his lip-ring had been torn out.
August 2007
The night after Mikey and Gerard showed up, Bryar closed Rick's down.
"What?" Frank said, almost incoherent with rage. "Why?"
"I am shocked, shocked to find there's gambling going on here," Bryar said, deadpan, and the only reason Frank didn't punch him in the face was that Ray had a very tight grip on his elbow.
"How long?" Ray asked flatly.
"Until I say you can reopen."
"What are we paying you for, motherfucker?"
Bryar's expression didn't change. "Trust me, this is what you're paying me for. Shut it down and keep it shut, or you're going to regret it."
When the bar was empty, Frank and Ray sat down with the spreadsheets and figured out how long they could afford to stay closed.
"Two weeks," Ray said, "after paying for Gerard and Mikey's transit."
"Motherfucker," Frank said, not really angry anymore, just tired, sick and tired of everything.
"Yeah," Ray said. "Yeah."
Two nights after that, Homeland Security knocked on his door.
"You got a warrant?" Frank asked, and the agent looked momentarily surprised. No one asked for warrants anymore. Then his eyes narrowed.
"Here's my warrant," he said, and put his whole hand on Frank's face and shoved.
Frank stumbled back and fell on his ass, and the agents filed in past him.
Bryar was the last through the door. "Don't be a smartass," he said, mildly, and held out a hand.
Frank scowled at him and got up, ignoring the hand. He knew better than to try and interfere with the search, so he just stood there, arms folded across his chest, grateful that Ray wasn't there. Bryar stood next to him the whole time.
Finally, the agents all came back to report.
"Several pallets of cigarettes in the basement, but that's the worst of it," one said.
The grey-haired guy who seemed to be in charge raised an eyebrow in Frank's direction, and Frank shrugged. "We're a bar. We sell cigarettes."
"I suppose you have the receipts, to show you paid the appropriate taxes?"
"I must have thrown the paperwork out with the boxes."
"Sloppy. Confiscate it," he added to the agents.
"You should also see this," another agent said, and led the way to one of the back rooms, the one with the bright fluorescent lights and the ever-present smell of disinfectant.
Grey-haired guy looked at him sharply.
Frank shrugged again and tried to look cool. "It's a tattoo parlor."
"And the...table?"
"We got it cheap when they closed down the Planned Parenthood clinic in Newark." Which was completely true. "Vince says the stirrups are good for doing ankle tats." Which was also true, but not the reason they'd gotten it. Frank didn't mention it had come with its own ob-gyn.
"We only found basic first aid supplies, and what looks like legitimate tattoo equipment."
Frank felt a little of the tension in his shoulders ease. The abortion equipment and supplies, along with the emergency contraception, were hidden in the closet with the false back (which was why the cigarettes were in the basement).
"Do you have a license for this?"
Frank jerked his chin towards the wall, where the framed business license was hanging next to the pictures of Vince's work. They'd paid Bryar a lot of money for that license and he really hoped it was a good one.
Apparently it was.
Grey-haired guy was starting to look pissed. "I hear Gerard Way is back in town."
"Yeah?" Frank said. "I'll have to catch a show then."
Grey-haired guy stepped in closer. "You are aware that helping a known terrorist is a felony."
"Music's terrorism now?" Frank could almost feel the waves of shut the fuck up coming off of Bryar.
"It is when it gives aid and comfort to our enemies."
Frank kind of wanted to laugh, or maybe say something sarcastic, but this was really bad.
"I'm sure you'll do your part to fight terrorism," the agent said, with a smirk, and Frank made himself smile back meaninglessly and nod.
Bryar hung back when the other agents left, so he could stand close to Frank and say very quietly, "You should maybe think about cutting your losses, Iero."
"What?"
"The Justice Department is saying cigarette smuggling funds terrorism now. They're mostly going after the guys with Arabic names, but Homeland Security doesn't like sharing power with anyone. They're going to use this to get at the mob, and you don't want to be a part of that when it happens."
Frank opened his mouth to argue, but Bryar held up a hand. "Look, I'm just saying think about it, okay? Think about it, and don't do anything stupid."
Frank almost laughed at that. "You're always saying that."
"You always seem to need to hear it."
Gerard wanted to play one last show before they fled the country.
Frank just shrugged when Ray brought it up; no one that high up on the wanted list had ever played at Rick's, but what the hell, blaze of glory, right?
"Who're you going to get on drums?" he asked.
"Um, me, actually," Ray said.
"If you'd play guitar," Mikey added.
"I—really?" He looked at them, and all three of them nodded. "Then, yeah, fuck yeah."
They grinned back at him, bright and happy, and Mikey bumped his feet against Frank's under the table.
Standing on the makeshift stage, gripping the neck of Ray's brother's guitar, Frank didn't know if he was more scared that they'd suck, or that they wouldn't.
Objectively, it was kind of a shitty set, borrowed instruments and stand-in players in the basement of a bar, but it was still a better high than any drink or drug he'd ever tried. He jumped and spun and flailed and rested his head between Mikey's shoulder blades when he got tired. The music spilled from his hands like water, and when he screamed the chorus into the microphone, it was like the voice of God pouring out of his mouth.
Afterwards, he was shaking with the rush of it, and Mikey said, "Shit, Frank, your hand."
He looked down and saw that the fingertips of his left hand were bleeding, rubbed raw by the steel strings, and he couldn't even feel it. He laughed.
Mikey was frowning at the damage. "You got band-aids or something?" he asked.
"Upstairs."
Mikey didn't stop at the bar, just tugged Frank up the second flight of stairs. They were kissing before the door to the apartment closed behind them, as hard and fast and desperate as the first time, the rush of performing shifting into a different kind of thrill. Mikey pushed him back against the door, grinding their cocks together, and even through the layers of denim it felt good. Better than good. Frank thought, Blaze of glory, right?, and broke the kiss.
"Fuck me," he said, and Mikey sucked in a hard breath.
"Yes," he said, low and rough, "yes."
Frank pushed him back from the door, nudging him towards the bedroom. They shed their clothes as they went. Frank knew they had to have stopped kissing, stopped touching, at some point, to take off their shirts at least, but he didn't remember that part.
Mikey sat down on the bed when the edge of it hit the back of his knees. He pulled Frank down on top of him, and then rolled them both over into the center of the bed, still kissing, all sweat-slick skin and body heat.
"You got stuff?" Mikey asked.
"Closet," Frank gasped, and then laughed.
Mikey scrambled off the bed and opened the closet door. He looked at the cases of condoms and lube and spermicidal jelly. "Is there something you want to tell me?" he asked finally, and Frank could hear the smile in his voice.
"I know this is what they all say, but it's not mine. When they passed the laws about not selling birth control to minors, our ob-gyn started giving this stuff away under the table. We just don't have room for it downstairs."
Mikey was laughing when he came back to the bed. It made Frank want to laugh back at him, but it also made something clench, tight and painful, in his chest.
Frank made Mikey go faster than he should have. He wanted the burn, wanted it hard and fast, so he'd have something tangible to remember this by when Mikey left, even if it would only last a few days.
He bit down on Mikey's shoulder when he came.
"I'll stay," Mikey gasped, "I'll stay, I'll stay."
Frank bit down harder, and Mikey shuddered over him.
Afterwards, Mikey curled around him and whispered, quiet and sleepy, into his neck, "I'll stay. Ray can take care of Gerard in Canada, it'll be fine. I'll stay."
Frank turned his head and kissed him, softer than he meant to, so he didn't have to say anything.
Mikey fell asleep after that, going heavy and boneless against Frank's side. Frank lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Finally, he got up carefully and went into the bathroom. He smoked the last two cigarettes in the pack and put Neosporin and Band-Aids on his fingers. He went back to the bedroom. Mikey had one arm flung out into the space where Frank had been. His face looked soft and young in sleep, and fuck, Frank needed another cigarette.
Ray and Gerard were sitting on the couch in his office. Frank kind of froze in the doorway, feeling like he was intruding. Ray had fallen asleep with his head on Gerard's shoulder, Gerard's arm draped around him, and that was when Frank realized that he'd be losing Ray, too.
Ray didn't move when Frank opened the door, but Gerard looked up.
"Um, I just needed my cigarettes," he said, then hoped the because I just got done having wild animal sex with your younger brother was only obvious in his head.
Gerard nodded at him, and Frank got the pack from his desk as quietly as he could. Gerard reached out and touched Frank's wrist as he walked back to the door, stopping him.
"Hey," he said softly, "thanks for playing with us. I really appreciate it."
"No, thank you," Frank said. "Seriously, that was amazing."
Gerard smiled back at him and said, "You should come with us."
Frank felt his smile slip and shrugged. "Felony conviction," he said.
"If it was political—"
"It wasn't. Not technically." Frank knew what he was talking about. The day after Mikey had kissed him in the bathroom, Frank had gone to the Canadian embassy in New York and asked about it. If you applied and had a lawyer to argue your case, maybe, the woman had said apologetically.
Gerard looked at him for a long moment. Frank was just starting to think the conversation was over when Gerard said, "Do you know why we're the most dangerous band in America?"
"Because you and Ray are luring young people into a life of depravity and sin with your acts of public indecency?"
Gerard let out a huff of laughter, and tipped his head sideways to brush his cheek against the top of Ray's head. "That, too." His smile faded and he looked serious and intent. "Their weapons are fear and apathy. That's what keeps people in line. But we make people angry, and if you're angry, you care. If you're angry, it's harder to be scared."
Frank remembered the crowd screaming Gerard's words back at them, how good it felt to say I'm not okay, This is not okay, and know other people felt the same way. He nodded, and some of Gerard's intensity faded.
"But, hey, the real question is will we be the most dangerous band in Canada?"
"Oh, yeah," Frank said, "absolutely."
He was almost out the door when Gerard said, "Thanks for taking care of my brother last time," and Frank forced himself to smile and say, "Anytime."
Frank sat at the bar, staring at a bottle of vodka, and debated taking up drinking again. It hurt more than he'd like to admit that Mikey had left that morning and not come back.
Then Ray walked in the door and just looking at his face made Frank's stomach clench up.
"Are they here?" Ray asked.
"No," Frank said, and Ray seemed to slump over.
"They missed the pick-up."
"Shit. Did you—"
"The van's there, but no one's in it. Their mom hasn't seen them, no one else knows where they are."
"Shit," Frank said again. "Okay, okay. I'll talk to Bryar."
Frank used a pay phone in a strip mall five miles away to call Bryar, but he wasn't at the station. Frank slammed the palm of his hand against the wall, and then jumped when his cell phone rang.
"Come back," was all Ray said, and he sounded grim.
"Bryar stopped by while you were gone, thought we'd like to know that they arrested Gerard and Mikey," Ray said, when Frank got back to the bar, and he looked as grim and tired as he sounded.
"Shit," Frank said. He started pacing, almost unconsciously. "Last time, how did you guys get him out?"
"Last time they charged him, court date and everything. Brian made bail, I don't know how, but he did. They're not going to be that stupid this time. If, if, they charge them, they're a flight risk now—they won't set bail." Ray rubbed a hand over his face. "They're just going to disappear into the system this time."
Frank drummed his fingers on the counter, chasing down an idea. "If they won't let them out on bail, maybe they'll let them out for another reason."
"You want me to get my boss to let the Ways go." Bryar didn't actually laugh in his face.
"Only temporarily. Look, I know the Ways are not really a big bust. Not like, say, the mob guys who are smuggling wanted terrorists out of the country. That's the kind of thing that gets you noticed, and I can set that up for you. I'll tell you when and where the meet is, you follow them and arrest everyone when they try to cross the border."
"Why are you doing this?" Bryar asked.
Frank pressed the palms of his hands against his knees, trying to seem nervous and not the jittery, panicky mess that he was. "I've been thinking about what you said, about how Homeland Security is going to start breaking up the Jersey branch of the family, and I want to be on the winning side for a change."
Bryar nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "I can sell that."
And he did. Twenty-four hours later, Mikey and Gerard were blinking in the grimy summer sunlight outside the police station.
"You bail us out?" Gerard asked when they were in the car.
"Something like that," Frank said.
Ray's eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror again. "They're following us."
"No trust at all anymore," Frank said.
The pick-up was that night. Frank had basically signed Rick's over to the mob to get one last trip to Canada, but it wasn't like he could stay in Jersey after this.
He called Bryar and let him know the details. Bryar didn't tell him to not do anything stupid, and Frank wondered if Bryar had faith in him, or was just tired of his advice not being followed.
They drove to the meet in Ray's massive old Caddy, pulling into the warehouse alongside the semi full of cigarettes.
About twenty minutes later, the truck left without them.
Mikey and Gerard climbed into the trunk of Ray's car. Mikey had hesitated before he got in, like he had something to say, and Frank had hugged him tightly.
"Get in the trunk so we can get out of here," he said, and Mikey did.
"I can't believe this is our plan," Ray said after they closed the trunk.
"Yeah, well, unless you can come up with something better, like, now, we're kind of stuck with it."
Ray drove through Newark and Belleville in no particular hurry, while Frank smoked out the window and watched the mirrors. It took him a little while to realize that Ray was driving past sentimental stuff: bars he'd played, record shops and comic stores he'd liked, random streets that Frank didn't recognize.
Finally, Ray said, "Well?"
Frank shrugged a little. "If we're being followed, they're way better at it than we are."
Ray snorted, but he turned the car towards I-80 anyway.
After awhile, Ray turned the radio up a little more, and said, "Mikey was talking about staying behind."
Frank's fingers stopped drumming on his knee. "Oh?"
Ray glanced at him. "I don't think he mentioned it to Gee, but yeah, he talked to me about it."
"Oh," Frank said again, around the tight feeling that was almost happiness in his chest. "I guess you shouldn't let him out of the trunk until you cross the border, then."
"You don't want him to stay?"
"It's too dangerous for him."
"That's not—"
"I want a lot of things, okay? I want people to stop bending over for the government because they're afraid of their own shadow. I want September eleventh to have never happened. I want my record clean. I want..." I want Mikey Way to stay with me and live happily ever after. "Maybe I want Mikey in Canada with you guys, missing me, instead of here, resenting me and missing Gerard."
"Okay," Ray said softly. "I get it."
Before they got to the border, Ray pulled over to let Frank out; there'd be another mob-owned truck coming back from Canada full of prescription medication, and the driver knew to look for Frank.
They hugged, awkward but tight, in the front seat.
"Take care of yourself," Ray said.
"Yeah, you too. And them."
Frank slammed the car door behind him, and that was when Bryar said, "Keep your hands where I can see them, Iero."
Frank's heart started pounding like crazy. He met Ray's frozen, wide-eyed look through the window for a second before he turned around slowly, hands up.
Bryar was holding a gun on him, and he looked surprisingly scary, hands steady and competent on the weapon.
"Step away from the car," he said, and Frank did.
"I gotta say, I'm kind of disappointed in this plan," Bryar said. "I was hoping for something smarter."
"Sorry, short notice," Frank said, and bit down on a hysterical giggle.
Bryar was taking short steps sideways and forward, and Frank turned to keep facing him. Bryar ended up facing back the way they'd come. It meant he'd have to turn around to shoot at the car if Ray drove off, and Frank could maybe buy him a little time if he tried to jump Bryar.
Some of that must have shown on his face, because Bryar met his eyes and said, low and calm, "Hey, Frankie, did I ever tell you I used to be in a band?"
"What?" he said, surprised into stillness, and Bryar pulled the trigger.
Everything happened very fast after that. Ray pulled out with a screech of tires and Frank lunged forward, slamming his shoulder into Bryar's chest. He had Bryar down on the ground for a good minute before he realized that Bryar wasn't fighting him, and he himself was not full of bullet holes. He was pretty sure Bryar wasn't that bad a shot.
Frank scrambled off him and turned around. There was a guy in a trench coat on the ground behind him.
"Oh, shit," he said, and Bryar grabbed his arm, pulling him back down the road. As the passed the guy, Frank saw it was the grey-haired agent from before.
"Is he—"
"He's wearing a bullet-proof vest," Bryar said.
"Are you sure?" Frank looked back over his shoulder.
"Pretty sure," Bryar said, and kept walking.
His car was parked just around the bend of the road, out of sight of where Ray had pulled over, the keys still in the ignition. Bryar pushed him in through the driver's-side door, like he didn't trust Frank to get in on his own.
"Are you, um, going after them?" Frank asked. He dug his cell phone out, already texting Ray I aten't dead.
Bryar pulled the car out into a hard, fish-tailing U-turn, and they were moving away from the border. "I am dumping this LoJacked piece of shit and picking up a clean car at the Victory truckstop, and then I am driving to Chicago." He glanced over at Frank. "I can drop you at the Greyhound terminal, if you want."
"Did you call the border guys?"
"No. We didn't want them to warn you. The guys at the Thousand Islands crossing are yours, right?"
"Not mine, but, yeah, the mob pays them off."
"Don't worry about it; your boys are free and clear."
Frank watched Bryar's profile for a minute. Bryar, who had shot his superior officer so Gerard and Mikey could get away, who had maybe planned this the whole time. "What did you play? In your old band, what did you play?"
"Drums."
"Do you miss it?"
Bryar's shoulders hunched a little. "Look, do you want to get dropped at the bus station or what?"
"I hear Chicago has a good scene."
Bryar gave him another look. "Yeah. It's different, but, yeah."
Frank laughed. This was a fucking win. He felt giddy all of the sudden, like anything was possible, like he had when he was playing.
"What?"
"Bob, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful band."
"Oh, fuck off." Then, "If you're coming to Chicago, you're paying for gas."