"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?"
"You heard," Brian looked over at him. "It won't be a huge amount, but it'll be enough to keep us going for a little while."
"What happened to 'this place is my life'?" Frank asked him, even though he knew when Brian was decided on something, and he knew you could rarely if ever change mind. "What about the shop being your whole world?"
Brian wiped a hand over his mouth and looked away. "World's bigger now."
Oh. Well. Of course. Frank looked over at Gerard. "You want anything else?"
Gerard looked at Mikey uncertainly, then back at Frank. "What?"
"You want I should open a vein? Bleed some more? Because I gotta tell you, Father," Gerard actually winced at that, and it just wound Frank up further. "I lost my job and my friends to you in the last five minutes, and I don't really have much else to give."
"He saved your life, Frank," Mikey said, standing up, but Frank wasn't listening.
"You did this to me," he told Gerard, a shock of nasty pleasure going off in his stomach when Gerard looked like Frank had broken his heart. "You and your precious fucking Church. You tell people to come along every Sunday morning and drink Christ's blood, you tell them - you tell them to eat his flesh, you sick motherfuckers, and then, what, you get all shocked when some crazy son of a bitch takes it a step too far?"
Gerard's face had gone white. Brian said, "That's enough," but Frank wasn't about to stop now.
"What are you guys even going to do, anyway? You gonna walk into rooms after all the shit went down like those creeps in the suits, and get people to sign away their right to talk about the worst thing that ever happened to them? Brian," Frank stabbed a finger in his direction, "Brian wants me to see a therapist, did you know that? But even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because if I tell anyone what happened, some dude in a pair of fucking Ray-Bans is gonna come and slit my throat while I'm sleeping."
"I can arrange for you to see someone inside the Church," Gerard began, and then he stepped back quickly, his arm coming out to cover Mikey when Frank kicked the nearest chair as hard as he could across the room.
"Fuck the Church," Frank said wildly, "And fuck all of you."
"You need to get a fucking grip on yourself, Frank," Gerard said into the following silence, folding his arms. "Shit happens. You deal with it. That's how life goes on."
Frank laughed and threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, you're not going to tell me to turn the other cheek?"
"A bad thing happened to you," Gerard talked over the top of him, in a tight, angry voice Frank had never heard before, "And you're mad, and I get that. Maybe you should have punched Luke in the face when you had the chance. But I'm glad you didn't, because it wouldn't have fixed anything, and yelling at us isn't going to fix anything either - if you want to fight something, then come with us and fight."
"You don't even know me, you can't just expect me to-"
"Yes, I do just expect you to. Because Mikey is, and Ray is, and Bob and Brian, and because the idea of you wasting your life being bitter and helpless makes me sick to my fucking stomach, and if you want to know the truth," Gerard held Frank's eyes for a minute, "If you really want to know the truth? I don't believe that this was 'just a whackjob with a spellbook'. I think this was supposed to happen."
"What?"
"Luke didn't need just anybody, he said that to us, he said he needed a good soul in a bad place. And he needed the kind of person who might get a tattoo to make themselves feel better. And what, you just happen to be in his neighborhood, fresh from the worst week of your life? Two days before I show up? That's not a coincidence, not by anyone's standards," Gerard said urgently, coming over to grab Frank by the elbows and look into his face. "And what about your bird tattoos, and your name is Frank, okay, I don't know how much more evidence you need!"
"Evidence of what, that God was using me to make a point to you?" Frank shook Gerard off and glared back at him. "Because that doesn't exactly make me feel special and treasured by my creator, and also? Not everything is about your grand spiritual journey, Gerard. You just said it yourself: shit happens."
Gerard folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. "Mulier, ecce filus tuus."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Frank shot back immediately, ignoring the spark of recognition that went off in his mind.
"It means 'Mother, behold thy son.' It's another one of the Seven Words of Christ." Gerard looked at him steadily. "You didn't understand that?"
Frank shook his head and held his hands up. "You know I don't speak Latin, man."
"Then how come you said it when I was praying over you at Luke's place?" Gerard said triumphantly, eyes gleaming.
Frank's stomach turned over; for a second he was back there, helpless and hurting on the table. "I couldn't have-"
"But you did," Gerard insisted, all pink in the face with excitement. "I heard you, and so did Mikey and Ray."
"I didn't understand it either," Ray offered. "But yeah - you did, Frankie."
"If it was just Luke, if it was just some sick mockery, how would you know to say that? How could you possibly know?" Gerard was right up in Frank's face again now, searching Frank's eyes with his own. "You saw something," he said, hushed and serious. "I know you did."
Frank closed his eyes, remembering. The hushed murmur of the crowd, the familiar voice. Finally he admitted, "I heard my mother crying."
When he opened his eyes, Gerard was still there, still watching him. Gently, he said, "I don't think that was part of the spell."
Frank pushed away and paced up and down, holding his head to stop it exploding with all the thoughts that were barreling into each other at a hundred miles an hour. "This is bullshit. It's all bullshit."
"You don't believe that," Gerard protested.
"I don't know what I believe anymore," Frank said sharply. He dropped back into his seat and covered his face with his hands, grinding the heels into his eyes until he saw orange sparkles. He counted to three, vaguely hoping that when he looked up they'd all be gone, but they were still there, staring at him like a sideshow. Frank shook his head. "A month ago, I didn't even believe in God, and now you tell me he's trying to ask me to throw down for him. And by the way, how do your bosses feel about having a bunch of godless heathens on their side?"
Gerard shifted uncomfortably. "I haven't exactly told them. We're not supposed to let outsiders get too involved."
"Again," Frank said, "Throat. Slit. Sleeping."
"It's the Catholic Church, Frank," Gerard sighed. "Not the Mafia."
"You're damn straight it's not," Frank said heatedly. "The Mafia never led me to a psycho's door as a really weird way of saying they wanted my help. I thought God was supposed to deliver us from evil, not deliver us to its fucking doorstep."
Gerard made a strange, abortive movement in the air with his hand, and kind of rolled his eyes at himself before saying earnestly, "We don't have to understand everything He says to us. We just have to listen."
Frank let a small, uncertain laugh escape him, scraping his throat on the way up. He thought about that night on his bed when Gerard had talked about prayers. "He never answers back in the way you expect, right?"
"Right," Gerard said ruefully. Frank knew he was remembering too.
Frank scrubbed his hands over his face, through his hair, down the back of his neck. He laced his fingers there and looked up at Bob. "And the rest of you just accept this?"
"I don't know about the God part," Bob admitted. "But I think, you know..."
"There's an opportunity here," Brian supplied.
"And it would be really dumb not to take it," Ray finished.
"It took all of us to help you, Frank," Gerard pressed. "It'll take all of us to help other people, too."
Frank sighed and leaned back in his chair. There was a crack in the material and it rubbed against his back through his shirt; he thought about his ruined tattoo, underneath. "I don't know."
He heard someone moving around; then Gerard was sitting down in the chair next to him. "Will you at least think about it? Please?"
Frank looked up at the ceiling. He thought about the roof above it, the sky above that; he thought about the Heavens and how thinking there might be somebody up there was way fucking scarier than being sure there wasn't.
Gerard touched his arm. Across the room, the others waited.
"Okay," Frank said finally. "I'll think about it."