Unholyverse

Twenty-Two

"You're doing what?"

"We're going with him," Mikey repeated, his fingers curled in the shoulder of Gerard's jacket. He was perched on the arm of the seat, eyeing Frank a little warily. "We're going with him to save lives."

Frank waited longer than he usually would for the punchline, even one of Mikey's punchlines, which you sometimes didn't notice at all unless you were paying attention, but none arrived.

"You're going with Gerard to save lives," Frank repeated slowly, just to make sure it sounded just as stupid when he said it. It did. He looked at Bob. "Don't tell me this 'we' includes you, man."

Bob shrugged, but he looked a little uncomfortable. "If we can stop what happened to you happening to someone else, then...yeah."

Frank stared at Gerard. "Was this your idea?"

"Sort of," Gerard shifted in his chair, knotting his hands together and then pushing them through his hair. "I mean, I mentioned it to Mikey, but I didn't really think he'd say yes."

Mikey rolled his eyes so hard they almost disappeared. "Of course I said yes."

Gerard smiled minutely, but stopped when he caught Frank's eye again. "You're upset," he said in a puzzled tone.

"Obviously the 'we' includes you as well!" Ray piped up suddenly, sitting up straight in his chair.

"Oh!" Gerard looked enormously relieved and nodded vigorously at Frank. "Yeah, of course it does."

"It does?" Frank clasped his hands under his chin and fluttered his eyelashes at them. "You guys! You're so sweet to think of including me in your completely fucking insane plan to go out looking for more crazy assholes who like to bleed people to death. I'm so fucking touched I could just shit."

Ray waved his hands hurriedly, and he sat forwards in his chair. "Frank, you don't understand, okay - when you were - when you were suffering? It was awful, completely terrible, of course it was."

"But you're hungry for more?" Frank demanded.

"No," Ray rolled his eyes in the way that meant he was trying to keep his patience. "But the part where we kicked that guy's ass, and you didn't bleed to death? That part was pretty awesome, Frank, I gotta tell you, and now it's like - I cut hair. I just cut hair. How can we go back to that when we know what it's like to really matter?"

"We mattered before," Frank told him, and Ray kind of ducked his head.

"Not like this," he said quietly. "This is something that - I think I can really do this, Frank, and I get why you're upset-"

"None of you get why I'm upset!" Frank yelled, slamming his hands on the table. "Not a single fucking one of you understands anything about what I went through. Yeah, maybe it was awesome for you to run around playing with magic spells, but that guy tried to kill me, and he very fucking nearly succeeded, and you want to go looking for more? How could you possibly want that? Was it fun for you, watching me go through that?"

"Shut the fuck up, Frank, don't be such an asshole," Mikey said quietly. "It was the worst thing in the world, you gotta know that."

Frank couldn't even look at him.

"If we can keep other people from going through it," Ray went on, "Then we have a duty to-"

"How are you even gonna pay for it?" Frank cut him off, gesturing at Gerard. "I don't know how much the Vatican pays, but I doubt it's enough to keep all five of you alive."

Brian cleared his throat. "I'm selling the shop."

Frank felt like he'd just been slapped in the face by a superhero; he was pretty sure his head was actually spinning on his shoulders. "You're what?"