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bandomstuffsitTitle: Mikey Way and the Quest for the Stone
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roxy_palace
Pairing(s): Mikey Way/Frank Iero
Rating: NC 17
Warnings: Some potty talk, mock violence, guns, people shooting at Mikey, jokes about drug running, drug use and drug related violence, handle bar moustaches, death defying feats and Mikey Way’s faily Kung Fu.
Word count: 28, 656
Summary: “I’m in Colombia!” Mikey said, raising his voice over the crackle of a poor connection.
“No. no, no, no, no,” James wailed.
Mikey could really relate to his disbelief. He couldn't believe he was in mother fucking Colombia either.
A/N: This fic is based very loosely on Romancing the Stone a really wonderful 80s, post-modern Rom-Com staring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. There are also nods to Indiana Jones and the Goonies. The 80s were another country, dude.
Also, a nod to Stephen King for supplying Mikey with the best Twilight smack down of all time.
Immeasurable thanks to my betas who made this story what it is. And huge thanks to the mods for running the exchange. Xoxo
"You must understand," Edgar said, looming above her like a pale, yet surprisingly well-built wraith in the night. "You are my life now, Ella."
"I do understand," Ella sighed, tilting her neck and offering the pale column of her throat to him like a gift. "Drink…"
Edgarleaned loomed letchedretchedfetchedbleched *delete*
Mikey pushed away from his computer, spinning himself round and round and round on his office chair. “Drink, drink, drinky drink,” he said and sighed. He watched the bookcase-lined room flit past as he twirled, wondering how on earth he'd written himself, and his characters, into this corner.
Grabbing the edge of the desk to stop spinning, he pulled himself closer to the keyboard and took a deep breath.
“You are my life now, Ella.”
Mikey leaned on the desk and pushed his fingers up under his glasses to massage his eyes.
There was no way to deny it. The book was shit.
He took another deep breath.
As his finger hovered above the delete key, moments from consigning whiny obsessive Ella and her dead-and-hating-it beau Edgar to the trash can for all time, Mikey had a momentary vision of hoards of vengeful Moonies baring down on him, preparing to rend him limb from limb.
"We want the 'Hawk' and 'Sparrow' to consummate their timeless love!!" The hoard screeched. "We want Moonlight Book Five! YOU PROMISED!"
Mikey shook his head. “Moonies rhymes with Loonies," he said to himself, and pulled his hand back from the keys, nudging a towering stack of fan mail balanced on the edge of his desk as he did.
The nickname used to make Mikey laugh. Now, not so much. He couldn’t really understand the relationship he’d written anymore, or why it was so popular with his readers. Not that Mikey knew jack shit about relationships. The longest one Mikey had ever had was with his left hand. He sighed. What was he doing.
Before he could work himself up into a real round of existential angst, the sound of a Skype call coming in broke the moment. Mikey shuddered. The call cut off only to start again a couple of seconds later.
Happy for the distraction, Mikey answered and was puzzled to see the stern round face of Jack White fill the screen. Mikey blinked.
It was a picture of Jack White on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The Rolling Stone in which his most recent, and least flattering, interview appeared. Oh, shit.
With a droll lilt, a voice from behind the magazine said, "I don't think I would have been interested in my novels when I was a teenager."
Mikey sighed. "Hey James," said Mikey, rubbing his hands on his thighs. He had kind of been waiting for this call.
The eyes of James Dewees, the editor who’d taken his funny little college story about a vampire getting a crush on a girl 85 years his junior and turned it into the number one fantasy romance best-seller of all time, appeared over the top of the magazine.
James continued reading. "I would never tell anyone to read one of my books’, says Way, whose novels - in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years - are beloved of teenage girls and middle age women all over the world."
James Dewees was not beloved of teenage girls and middle age women. James Dewees was the kind of guy middle age women warned teenage girls about.
"Not when there are so many superior works of fiction for young people to be reading,” James read on.
Mikey took a deep breath and settled in. This could take a while.
“Wait, there’s more...” said James, fixing Mikey with a narrowed stare and holding up his hand.
He pointed at the page. “‘Personally, I preferred Batman and that kind of thing. Harry Potter, you know? Even Dungeons and Dragons is better than reading my books because it, like, teaches you so many life skills,’ and then the journo says, 'Way pushes up his glasses and shrugs because. That’s all. He has. To say. On the subject.’”
James squinted. “That was all you had to say on the subject?”
Mikey spun away from the desk a little. Stopping in front of the screen again, he pushed his glasses up and shrugged.
"Why, Mikey? Why?” James asked, pulling on his thinning hair a little bit.“You're supposed to make people want to read the goddamned books we publish." He chucked the magazine over his shoulder and leaned into his camera. "Not head straight to Barnes and Noble for a 12 sided die and a copy of the Fortean Times!"
"Well, playing a half elf when your brother’s an Ork and the Dungeon Master taught me a lot about self control.”
"But...” James whined.
"Also, Harry Potter is about, like, on a number of levels, confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity, ” said Mikey, avoiding James’ eyes by shuffling through some of the fan mail pile.
"Yes, but your books...”
"My books,” said Mikey, cutting him off. “Are about how neat it is to have a boyfriend.”
James went silent.
Mikey picked out an envelope from the pile and tore it open.
Inside was a multi-paged letter with a photo of the letter-writing Moonie clutching a ragged copy of Moon Under Water to her chest, grinning widely. She was wearing a tee shirt with Mikey’s face on it.
"Mikey,” James said gently. “I know you wouldn't know it, on account of how you haven't had a date since 1997, but it is in fact ‘neat’ to have a boyfriend."
Mikey gave James his most withering look over the rim of his glasses and got an eye roll back.
“Honestly, when was the last time you went out? When was the last time you got laid?”
“Ungh,” Mikey groaned, it was his turn to role his eyes.
James disappeared from view and Mikey heard what sounded like him scrabbling round on the floor. He came back up with the magazine again and shook it at the camera. “Also, has Gerard read this? He’d be the first to tell you you’re as worthy as Rowling or any of them, Mikey. Where is Gerard, anyway?" He chucked it over his shoulder again.
"Oh, you know,” Mikey said, putting down the photo and letter and flipping through the rest of the mail.
Another envelope in the pile caught his eye. It was a big office type envelope and had about thirty stamps on it, stuck all over the place as if someone had slapped them on in a mad panic, or in the middle of a psychotic break. He picked it up and flipped it over.
James raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I know Gee,” he said. “And I know that Gerard Way is the best cover artist in the history of publishing. It'd be cheaper to get some schmuck to do it all in Photoshop, but it'd never have his magic.” James sighed.
Mikey let James’ moaning about Gerard and the business and the Way brothers in general wash over him. The many-stamped envelope was posted from Cartagena, Colombia. Gerard was in Colombia. He liked to travel. That’s what he did when he wasn’t designing book covers or baiting James Dewees with Mikey.
Besides, Mikey would have recognized the spidery scrawl of the address anywhere. Gee.
"...Because I could have been a writer, too Mikey. I coulda, but...”
“Hmmm,” said Mikey.
“But sabotaging interviews? Sabotaging interviews with Rolling Stone? No, no.”
Mikey looked up. "Dude. Margaret wanted me to say I based Edgar on Jared Leto,” he said, interrupting James mid-rant. “Because I have a crush on him.”
"Oh, yeah. Well,” said James, wincing and running his hands through his – blue this week – hair. “She ran the numbers with the ‘demographic’ and, ah, Leto came up tops."
Mikey just looked at James, who at least had the good grace to look sheepish.
James took a deep breath. "Mikey, man, this isn't like the old days – you and Gerard in a dorm room, drinking your roommate’s beers and giggling over the plot all night." He held his hand up before Mikey could correct him. "You have a contract now."
Mikey didn't have much to say to that. Their mom’s house, Grandma, the hospital bills... That five book deal had taken care of it all. He owed the publisher that book.
“Anyway, you know where Gee is James,” Mikey said with a sigh. He tore open the envelope; inside was a bulky piece of paper, folded numerous times, looking well thumbed and battered. Mikey frowned, turning the envelope upside down and shaking it. There was nothing else.
He unfolded the paper and spread it out on his desk. It looked like some kind of crazy map art thing. There were geographic features drawn in detail with flamboyant - Spanish? - calligraphy curling between them. In the centre was a blood red X next to the words El Corazon.
“What?” James said.
“Hmmm? Oh, Gerard,” said Mikey, rubbing his chin and picking up the envelope again. “He's in Colombia. He’s been in Colombia for weeks. On the art pilgrimage thing. Remember?”
Of course, that’s what this was, some kind of art project thing Gerard’s sent him. It was really beautiful. A new direction for Gee, Mikey wondered.
James scoffed. "He’s still in Colombia? Are you kidding me? How’s he gonna do my cover from down there?"
Mikey pursed his lips.
“Okay, okay,” James said, reading exactly as much into Mikey’s silence as Mikey’d intended. He took a deep breath. “Refilling the artists’ well and all that. I get it, I get you, just - you can't let all the little Moonies down, can you Mikey?” James said, and made the most sickening puppy eyes Mikey had ever seen. “They’re counting on you to finish the series. Unite Edgar and Ella for all eternity and you’re done, kid. Done and dusted."
Mikey sighed.
“One last book, James. And that’s it.”
“One last book.”
Yeah, Mikey sighed, okay. He could do one more. He owed it to the fans who’d stuck with him, and he definitely owed it to his mom; part of him even owed it to Edgar and Ella. Their forbidden, often thwarted, verging on insane love had paid for his mom’s house. The least he could do was write them a flashy wedding and filthy honeymoon. What kind of romance didn’t have a happy ending?
Mikey nodded.
"That's my boy!" James cried, spinning around in his chair. "You give me words, Gerard does the art and - hey presto - New York Times Best seller list, here we come!"
Mikey adjusted his glasses and glanced at the package. Why wasn’t there a letter? Gee always sent a letter.
“Okay, I'm gonna get out of your hair," James went on. “How are things looking anyway? I'm shitting bricks to know if Edgar can still give Ella what she needs even though he has become more demon than man because of his passion for her."
Mikey looked up. "Seriously?"
"Do not harsh my squee, Michael James. Your books are GOLD."
Mikey pressed his eyes closed and shook his head.
James made an incredibly patronizing 'dawwwwww' sound. “When you’re done,” he said, his voice pure saccharine. “We can talk about that little Gay Space Action Romance thing you were telling me about the other day. Okay?”
Mikey pricked up his ears. “Okay. But - ” Only, James had already hung up.
Mikey shut down Skype and pouted at the screen. It wasn’t a Gay Space Action Romance, God. It was serious Science Fiction. The big gay romance was purely incidental.
He took a deep breath and pulled up Word, back to his personal hell and the vampire nightmare therein.
He stared at the screen for a few seconds before opening his secret Twitter account, @SlayerBoy77.
Edgar Mullen has no sense of personal style, he wrote, and hit send.
He sat back and watched a Twitter-fall of outraged Moonies berating him for a couple of minutes.
Mikey Way smiled.
The sound of the phone ringing in the other room was kind of weird, like he'd forgotten he even had a land line. Mostly people just texted him, or Skyped him these days since he was always at his computer.
Maybe it was James trying to keep him on his toes?
He hit send on His hair is stupid, too’ - He owed his buddy Pete a fruit basket for showing him how to use Twitter for stress relief - and leapt up to get it.
He grabbed the handset. “Yes, I am writing, James," he said into the handset, rubbing his eyes.
"Mikey?" Gerard's voice, frantic and high, came down the line.
"Gee? What’s up, bro?"
"Mikey! Oh my god! You have to do something!” Gerard’s voice was scratchy and Mikey could hear the terror in it. “You have to come down here,” he hissed. “They're going to kill me!"
***
“What?” Mikey juggled his cell phone with one hand as he bundled his luggage off the carousel. “What? Hello?”
The airport was packed – over-excited tourists jostled him, small dark women in multicolored skirts brushed past him ; a man with a trilby and a handle-bar moustache sneered at him, and Policia carrying machine guns watched the crowds from behind mirrored sunglasses. The air was different too, sharper smelling, denser with humidity, like warm breath on the skin. Coming from the sedate controlled chaos of Newark International, De Presia airport in central Colombia was pure pandemonium.
Mikey almost dropped the phone, but managed to grab it just in time. He pressed it to his ear. "Hello?" The connection was pretty spacey. A voice crackled and warped, “Where the hell are you, Kid? It’s like your computer is turned off or something.”
Fuck. Dewees. Mikey immediately regretted getting an international plan on his phone.
“Um, well, I’m in Bogota. Outside... Bogota. A lot... outside. I’m not actually in Bogota anymore. I’m in - I’m going to Cartagena.”
“Sorry, what now?”
“I’m in Colombia!” Mikey said, raising his voice over the crackle of a poor connection. He patted his messenger bag and felt the bulge in the side pocket.
“No. No, no, no, no."
Mikey could really relate to his disbelief. He couldn't believe he was in mother fucking Colombia either.
“I have to go, bus is leaving,” Mikey muttered into the phone, clicking it closed over the sound of James sputtering and complaining as he navigated the crowd and edged out through the airport doors.
There he found a row of busses and cabs and private cars with hundreds of people trying to cram onto them and almost as many more people vying for Mikey’s attention.
He tried not to make eye contact with any of them. Maybe this was like New York, after all.
He pushed past a group of tourists and a boy selling tea from an urn. He had to get to Cartagena, for the love of God, and kill his only sibling.
This was just so not like Gerard. Well, the hysterical phone calls were a bit like Gerard, only they usually involved broken hearts or crises of artistic faith. But mysterious packages, desperate pleas for rescue in strange exotic places? No. Gerard taught art to underprivileged kids and held weird exhibitions in church halls, for crying out loud.
Except for that terrifying month in his senior year in High School when Gerard decided he was going to be a masked vigilante and ended up nearly garrotting himself swinging down from the roof of their garage on a rope made from their mom’s pantyhose and couple of bungee ties, Gerard had never really been in peril.
But then the call.
“Bring the parcel to Cartagena The- the Hotel De la Muerte.“ Gerard had said. “Please Mikey. I’m not fucking around!”
Then there had been a silence, and then what sounded like a scuffle and a high pitched squeal that made Mikey’s blood run cold. Gerard had come back on, “Jesus, Mikey, please.”
And then the line had gone dead.
Mikey had been on a plane three hours later. He’d thought about calling the police, but then some of the things Gerard had told him had seemed so outlandish. What if it was just Gee, being Gee? He’d gone anyway because, fuck’s sake. It was Gee. Of course he was going.
And now, here Mikey was, in Colombia.
“Fucking six hour layover in Houston,” Mikey muttered to himself as he dragged his suitcase towards a likely looking bus.
The wheel of the case snagged in between some broken paving. Mikey looked to the sky.
They’re going to kill me, that’s what Gerard had said.
Mikey would have laughed, would have put it all down to Gerard’s lifelong penchant for amateur dramatics. But something, something in Gerard’s voice had been genuinely scared.
And one thing Gerard never was, was scared. Mikey pressed on.
A hand in the middle of Mikey’s chest brought him up short.
“You are looking for a ride? Where you want to go?”
A lithe looking woman with short dark hair and neatly penciled brows stood in front of him, hands on her hips, eyebrow arched.
“Um... Per vaborrr, donde esta la ... um... Cartagena? Del... dela? bus??” Mikey gave up and pointed at one of the busses with the least chickens in crates strapped to the roof and shrugged. “Cartagena?”
The woman winked.
“I tell you best bus, yes? Cartagena? Yes?”
“Um, yes? I mean, si?” Mikey said, yanking his luggage out of the crack and following the woman.
“This is Cartagena bus,” she said, wrapping her knuckles on a brightly painted vehicle.
Mikey nodded.
She helped him pass his suitcase up to the roof, haggled with the driver on his behalf, and then nodded when he counted out the correct negotiated fare in brightly colored, unfamiliar bills.
“Thanks,” he said to her.
“Take seat! Enjoy ride! Muy facil! ” She said and patted him on the ass as he stepped up onto the bus.
Mikey was altogether too flustered to do anything about it; he really didn’t travel well. Besides, when he turned around, she’d already disappeared into the crowd.
Okay he thought and climbed aboard. He patted his bag again. He only had to worry about one thing: the package, Gerard’s envelope. “ The, the Hotel Dela Muerte. I-I... you have three days.” He'd said.
“I’m coming, Gee,” Mikey muttered, stepping over suitcases feet as he walked down the aisle of the bus. “I’m coming.”
He wedged himself into a gap on the rear bench seat, sighed with relief, removed a chicken’s butt from his lap and promptly fell asleep.
*
Mikey stood in the middle of the road, sweating. “What do you mean everyone off?” He asked, wiping his face on his already sopping shirt. If he'd thought it was hot on the bus, it was nothing compared to the sticky heat of standing under the high sun, trying to get answers from the distracted driver.
With a sudden lurch and the sound of grinding metal, the bus had stopped in the middle of the road about an hour into the ride. They were half way up long, winding road that twisted and turned into the jungle-covered mountains. When it was clear the bus would go no further, everyone got out and Mikey followed.
He pulled his phone out of his bag and held it up. Absolutely no coverage. Not so much a half a bar. Guess that rules out trolling the Moonies on Twitter from here, he thought. The No service letters on the screen blinked like they were mocking him.
The other passengers, who all seemed far less surprised or concerned than Mikey at this turn of events, milled around him. He stood stock still in the middle of the road, clutching his messenger bag and trying to surmise the situation. God, he didn’t have time for this. Three days, and he had no idea how far away Cartagena still was.
Next to him, the bus tilted at an alarming angle, and every time the guy threw a piece of luggage down from the roof it seemed to tilt even further. Mikey didn’t know all that much about cars and whatnot, but even he could see the axel was a goner. It lay in two pieces under the bus, the wheels angled out and useless.
“So, when’s the next bus?” Mikey asked.
The driver laughed, and said something to one of the men catching luggage from the roof. He laughed even harder.
“Um, then, which way to Cartagena?” Mikey asked, and clutched his bag to his chest even more tightly. The driver’s only reply was to catch Mikey’s suitcase from the roof and plonk it down in the road in front of him. It splashed in the mud, spraying Mikey’s jeans and Adidas.
His hair flopped in his face, lank with sweat and humidity. He was not cut out for this weather. He was not cut out for weather of any kind, let alone this clammy hot breath thing.
The driver shrugged and pointed in the direction of the road uphill and started trudging after his former passengers. Mikey looked at the sky. Fuck. He started heading after them.
As he walked past the back of the bus a final passenger stepped out onto the road. “There will be a bus along in a little while,” he said, smiling brightly at Mikey. “We should just wait.”
It was the guy with the handlebar moustache, the one Mikey had seen sneering in the airport. He was an American, Mikey could hear as much in his accent, but he’d obviously been here for a while; he was so realxed and confident stuck there in the middle of the Jungle, he didn’t come off as a tourist. The guy lit a cigarette and walked a few paces up the road, looking into the jungle and stretching his shoulders.
“But everyone is leaving,” Mikey said, watching the passengers disappear around a bend in the steep road.
“Oh, yeah, well, most of them only live in the village in the valley. They’ll get there and send the replacement for us.” He shrugged.
Mikey watched the others on the road. He looked back at Moustache Guy who was leaning in the shade of the bus. He turned and smiled at Mikey again.
Seemed kind of sensible not to hike up a fucking mountain in this heat, not if a bus was coming anyway. Mikey nodded and sat heavily on his suitcase.
Moustache Guy smiled wider. “I’m Eric Nally,” he said, “And you are?”
Mikey fidgeted. “Um, Mikey,” he said after a second. He didn’t really want to tell the guy his name. It usually ended badly, with Mikey signing old till receipts or people’s foreheads. But Nally didn’t press; he just kept smiling at him. Mikey reminded himself not to be such a crappy tourist, freaking out every time someone was friendly.
But as the voices of the other passengers faded up the road, he was left only with the sounds of the jungle - like some kind of movie - alive with a strange bird call: something that sounded, unnervingly, like monkeys screaming, and the chattering of millions and trillions of bugs. And Eric Nally’s hairy grin. It was hard not to be un-nerved.
Mikey took a few moments to imagine the variety and number of ways he was going to kick his brother's ass when he found him, and when that didn’t seem to make a replacement bus come any faster he took a deep breath and tried to resign himself to a long, long wait. Someone had to come along eventually, right? Nally certainly seemed to think so. Nally, who was just waiting over there… watching Mikey. Right.
Mikey stood up and pointed in the direction the other passengers went. “You know what, I think I’m gonna...”
"I think you’re going to give me the map, Mr. Way.”
Or... not.
Mikey stopped himself from falling backwards over the suitcase at the sight of Nally holding a gun, an actual gun, with a sharp, self-satisfied smirk twisting his face.
"Um," said Mikey, casting about wildly for he didn't know what.
"Give me the map, Mr. Way."
"The, ah, what?" Oh, fucking fuck. He knew Mikey's name and he knew about Gerard’s parcel.
Nally sneered. "Don't be a fool. Just give me the map and you can go on your way,” he continued, advancing slowly on Mikey and raising the gun a little as he did.
Okay. Mikey tried to think. He looked up the road; the other passengers were long gone. He looked into the dense jungle; monkeys and macaws screeched back. Where the fuck was Manimal when you needed him?
"I don't know what you’re talking about,” Mikey said slowly, clenching his fingers around the strap of the satchel.
The man’s eyes shifted to where Mikey was gripping the strap. “Yes, yes, you do, Mr. Way. Don’t be an idiot. Give it. To me.”
Mikey edged slowly towards the back end of the bus. He had every intention of diving into the under growth and hoping for the best, screeching monkey death be damned.
But the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the bus above Mikey's head, far louder than he'd ever imagined gunshots could be, stopped him in his tracks.
"Fuck, dude!” Mikey pulled his neck in. “Do not fire a gun at me!”
"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, Mr. Way," Nally said. "Give me the map your God-forsaken brother sent you, or next time, my aim will be a little...” He waggled his eyebrows. “Lower."
Nally pointed the gun at Mikey's face.
Mikey slowly raised his hands in the air. Oh Gerard, he thought, what the hell have you done?
"You and your brother, so pathetic,” Nally sneered advancing on him. “You think you can come down here and take anything you want. El Corazon belongs to me. You understand? ME..."
But he didn't get to finish his dastardly monologue, because one of the screaming monkeys came screaming out of the jungle, swinging on an vine and bowled Nally on his ass, sending his trilby hat flying along with the gun.
Nally's head connected with the side of the bus with a sickening thunk, and then the screaming monkey leapt to its feet and asked Mikey if he was okay.
Only it wasn't a monkey, it was a short tattooed guy in khakis and a Misfits tee shirt. And it wasn't a vine he’d swung in on; it was a bullwhip, an Indiana Jones bullwhip, which the guy was shaking loose from the overhanging branch, coiling up and hanging from his belt. His… Indiana Jones belt.
Mikey raised his eyebrows.
The guy looked at Mikey with an amused smirk. He leant down and picked up the trilby and set it on his own head. Turning to the bus, he checked his new look out in the windscreen. "Huh," he said, apparently pleased with the addition to his outfit.
He turned back to Mikey and raised his eyebrows. "Whadda ya think?" He said with a wink.
Mikey stared. He'd been lost for words before in his life; you didn't grow up with Gerard Way without being stunned into silence on occasion, but this? This was something else.
"No really," Indiana said, cocking an eyebrow. "Saving your life was totally my pleasure. Your effusive and heartfelt thanks are not required." He shook his head and then, apparently done with Mikey, he moved on to Nally.
'Indiana' squatted over the guy and checked his pulse. He then started rifling through the guy's pockets, tucking everything he found into his beat up backpack.
"Camels?! Awesome!" he said, liberating a box of smokes and some matches from Nally’s inner pocket. He put one in his mouth.
"Um," said Mikey again. Mikey Way’s Word of the Day, apparently, was ‘um’.
Indiana glanced over his shoulder at Mikey. "Yeah, I know. They'll kill me, but the nearest Circle K is about 3000 miles away. I've been jonesing for months," he said, and then giggled.
Mikey watched as the guy dug around in Nally’s back pockets coming up with a box of matches. "Is - is he dead?" Mikey asked, afraid of the answer.
Indiana lit his smoke, shook out the match and walked back to Mikey slowly. He nodded towards Nally. "Nah, just out cold."
He frowned at Mikey's wide staring eyes. "Faceplant over there hit you on the head or something?" Indiana asked, eyes scanning Mikey’s hairline.
Mikey shook his head. "He didn’t touch me. I don't know who that guy is or what the fuck he wants."
Indiana raised his eyebrows and smirked, looking Mikey up and down.
"Sure," he said, with a knowing wink. “Shall we make an educated guess?”
Mikey felt his face heat up. "Actually," he countered. "I’m trying to find my brother."
"Jesus." The dude cut Mikey off and sauntered over to where Nally's gun had landed, pocketing that too. "There are two of you? That I gotta see."
The guy walked to the rear of the bus and back.
"How long ago did the driver leave?" He asked over his shoulder as he stepped gingerly into the bus and looked around for something.
Mikey shrugged. "Five minutes."
The guy cursed and squinted, looking up the hillside where the Mikey's bus-mates had gone. "Well that's a half day's hike wasted."
"Look," Mikey tried to scrabble back a modicum of control from the... cute, little guy who’d just swung in on a frikken bullwhip, kicked a guy's ass and blown smoke in Mikey’s face.
Batman and Indiana Jones had been Mikey’s go-to jerk off material as a young geek sliding around on the Kinsey scale. He had no defenses and a hell of a frame of reference for that kind of shit.
But still, Gerard! Guns! Maps! God.
"I need to get to Cartagena," Mikey barked. "Do you know when the next bus is coming?"
"Dude, this isn’t downtown Manhattan," Indiana said, setting his hat at what would commonly be called a rakish angle. Mikey blinked. Oh…wow, he thought stupidly as the guy looked up at him from under the brim.
"There won't be another bus until someone gets up here and fixes this one." Indiana kicked a tire. "Which means there won’t be another bus."
Mikey looked along the road. Jesus, this had to be some kind of joke. “He said there’d be another bus,” Mikey said, and he absolutely did not bite his lip.
Indiana snorted. "Who? The nice man with the gun?”
Mikey felt his face heat up again. Okay, so Indiana McAsshole was a total jackass, but Mikey had to hold his tongue. So far, he was the only person who could potentially help Mikey. Plus, he had what looked like a scorpion tattooed on his neck. Mikey figured that was Jungle for ‘do not fuck with me.’
Mikey had to get to Gerard. If goons like Nally were on to him, then Mikey had to get there. He had to get there fast.
"Can you, I dunno, like.” His voice broke off, and he swallowed. "Guide me? Or whatever it is you do?" Mikey cringed inwardly.
“Nope.”
“Right,” Mikey said, and eyed the guy. “Because you’re in no way set up for jungle travel. Where did you come from anyway?”
The dude stopped, put his hands on his hips and gave Mikey an appraising look.
“Look, I can see you’re in a jam, so, I’ll be kind. I mean, what was the point of me saving your ass, if I’m just going to leave you here in the middle of the Amazon to,” he laughed and looked at Mikey’s shoes, “fend for yourself.” He pointed at the prone form of Nally. “Clearly you’re a master of the art of self defense.”
“Yes, God, okay,” Mikey grit out. “Thank you for saving my ass. Can you get me to a phone at least?” He waved his useless cell phone at the guy and tried really, really hard not to roll his eyes. He honestly did, but come on.
Indiana pursed his lips. "My minimum price for taking a stranded dude to a telephone is $400," he said.
Fumbling through his messenger bag Mikey came up with, "Um... $75 dollars and packet of Twizzlers?”
Indiana set his hat back a little on his head. "You got yourself a deal. Ah?"
"Mikey Way," Mikey said.
"You got yourself a deal, Mikeyway," he said and he held out his hand. Mikey shook it. "The name is Iero."
Indiana Iero, Mikey thought.
“Frank Iero,” the guy said. “What the hell are you doing out here anyway?”
Mikey sighed. “I’m supposed to meet my brother. I dunno. That guy...” Mikey pointed a thumb at Nally, still out cold. “I think that guy knows him. I dunno.”
“You in some kind of trouble?” Frank asked.
Mikey gave Frank a shrewd look.
“Well, I’m guessing since you just had a mother fucking gun pulled on you by a guy with a handle bar moustache, the answer is yes.”
Mikey rolled his eyes. “Okay then, yes.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on. But I need to find my brother.”
Did someone think the map in Gerard’s parcel was real, and not one of his more obscure art projects? Maybe it was real, real enough to try shooting Mikey for anyway. He didn’t know if he should trust Frank, but the guy had just saved his life, and anyway, Mikey would probably die out here in the jungle without his help. He looked at Frank. He was little, and cute. But Mikey wasn’t gonna let little cuteness decide if he should trust someone. Frank seemed... Well, he seemed like kind of a dick. And it was that that made Mikey relax. Nally had seemed charming at first and look how that turned out.
Frank nodded and shrugged.
“Okay, so, how much for all the way to Cartagena?” Mikey clutched his messenger bag closer. The parcel made a rustling sound. Mikey reached in and pushed it deeper into his bag.
Frank stubbed out his butt, he looked Mikey up and down. "You can barely afford a trip to a phone; you can’t afford a trip to the coast, dude."
Mikey swallowed and moved close to Frank. He smelled, Mikey realized, of fresh sweat and stale smoke and loamy earth. A good smell. A tough smell. The kind Mikey was always trying to describe on the men in his novels.
“Okay, forget the phone and the $400,” Mikey said, “You get me to Cartagena? I’ll pay you $4000.”
Frank narrowed his eyes. “And where’s this 4k coming from? Wait, are you a drug mule? Because you’re supposed to be taking it out of the country, not—”
Ugh “My bro,” Mikey said, cutting him off. “He’s pretty rich."
Frank leant back and narrowed his eyes at Mikey. “How rich?”
“Rich,” said Mikey. He looked Frank up and down. “Richer than you can imagine anyway.”
“I dunno, dude.” Frank grinned back, seemingly unintimidated by Mikey’s assessment. “I can imagine quite a lot.”
Mikey shrugged. “He’s fucking loaded. Like, why else would someone be trying to– to kidnap me or whatever?”
Frank frowned. His eyes searched the jungle, then the prone form of Nally. He turned to Mikey.
"Okay, if we're gonna do this you will do exactly as I say when I say it. No back chat, no questions, no whining. Got it?"
Mikey's knees went weak. Must have been the heat. "Yeah," he replied.
"Okay," Frank said. "Okay, let's blow this popsicle stand."
And he pulled an actual machete from his God damned Indiana Jones belt and hacked his way into the dense jungle, leaving Mikey to drag his suitcase in after him.
*
Mikey was not equipped for Jungle Life.
"I am not coping at all right now,” he said as he hefted his suitcase over yet another log and retrieved his once pristine Adidas sneaker from yet another soggy, disgustingly warm jungle bog.
Frank glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, shit,” he said, letting the foliage live a little longer and turning back to Mikey. He took his suitcase from him. “I’m sorry. I should help you with that.”
“Thank fuck,” Mikey said, letting his shoulders droop.
Frank had been completely silent as they hacked their way through the jungle - fucking JUNGLE - while Mikey had been on something of an emotional roller coaster. First of all, brother in mortal peril, then Mikey in mortal fucking peril. And now guy with a fucking machete, an insanely hot guy with a machete the jungle, leading him to… who knew what.
Also, bugs, slime, leaf mold and the fucking heat. God, Mikey could feel just how slimy was. And as for his hair? Forget about it. Also, his glasses kept fogging up ever five seconds. He had a moment of panic thinking about the state of his Space Invaders tee shirt - it was vintage - but what was done was done. He flicked a couple of leaves off his shoulder.
Frank hefted and bag and frowned. “What’s in here, Mikeyway?"
“Oh, clothes, shoes, hair straighteners, um, a copy of Rolling Stone, the usual," he shrugged.
Frank smiled. “Rolling Stone?”
Mikey felt his face heat up. The last thing he needed was Frank – who clearly had no idea who Mikey was - seeing the interview. Why did he bring it with him? That’s what comes from packing in a panic. “Yeah, it’s, you know, really out of date... Hey!”
Frank was on his knees tearing open the suitcase. He rifled through Mikey’s gear, pulled out the Rolling Stone, folded it and tucked it into his back pocket. Then he zipped up the suitcase, stood up and hurled it out into the densely covered ravine they had spent the last hour hacking out of.
“You did not just do that,” said Mikey, as he watched his possessions fly out into the air and be swallowed by the lower canopy of green.
“You don’t need hair irons in the mother fucking jungle, Mikeyway,” Frank said and turned back to hack the path to God alone knew where.
Mikey contemplated throwing himself in after his luggage, or just sitting on that log over there and waiting to die. But then he thought of Gerard and a spike of fear jabbed at his guts.
He followed after Frank.
“Why, why are you here,” Mikey panted, pushing through the clinging knee high greenery. He tore a snagging vine off his calf. “I don’t even know how you stand it,” he said after the thirteenth branchsnapped back and smacked him in the face. “It’s fucking horrible. Forget majesty of nature. Nature is about as majestic as a flock of rabid bats.”
Mikey really fucking wished he hadn’t just thought about rabid bats.
"You’ll get used to it,” said Frank, glancing back over his shoulder. “I was scared of all sorts of shit, I mean, pretty much everything, before I came down here. But,” he shrugged and hacked a whole tree, like, in half. “You get used to it.”
He started to lead them up hill.
“Man, spiders, that was my big thing,” he continued. "Now, I could give a shit."
"Spiders?" Mikey pulled his messenger bag closer.
"As big as your face."
Mikey swallowed. A second later the rain bucketed down like tiny, grimy pebbles.
“Neat,” Mikey said.
Frank stopped and turned back to Mikey. He grinned.
“We gotta get out of this,” said Frank. “And it’ll be dark soon.”
Mikey tugged a nearby banana leaf over his head. “Can we like... Just stop for one hot minute? I know it’s raining, but fuck.” His feet ached, he couldn’t see, he had no spare clothes, he was sweaty, and smelly and sore. Things had bitten him; he could feel the itching just starting on his ankles. And now, now, it was raining on Mikey. He’d had enough. “How far is Cartagena?” he demanded.
Frank threw his hands up in the air. “I dunno, thirty, maybe forty clicks East.”
“Okay, Tour of Duty, can you tell me how far that is in like, civilian speak?”
Frank opened his mouth to reply, but burst out laughing instead. He reached out and pulled a foot long thing with a million legs from Mikey’s banana leaf.
Mikey shoved the leaf away from him and danced back from Frank. “Yargh!”
“Yeah, you might wanna watch out for...”
But before Frank could tell him what he might want to watch out for Frank disappeared. And then Mikey felt the ground under his feet give way too. He was falling, no sliding, fast, right down the side of hill on a muddy luge to certain doom.
He flailed his arms, trying to grab anything he could as he rocketed downwards but there was no way. He had a second to think Sorry, Gerard, before he was sailing, arms windmilling, into the air and landing in a pool of stinking mud and Frank’s lap, face first.
“Really, I’m flattered,” said Frank from somewhere above him. “But it seems a little forward for a first date.”
Mikey scrambled away, panting and desperately scraping the mud and mountain crap off his face. Oh, God... leeches, he thought, jungle parasites, bugs. Indiana Iero’s COCK.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Nothing was broken, his glasses were still on his face and he still had his bag. Frank clambered out of the pool although, unlike Mikey, he’d somehow managed to make it down the luge looking only marginally the worse for wear.
“Fuck yeah!" He crowed over to Mikey. “What a rush huh?!”
Mikey hauled himself out of the pool, completely ignoring Frank’s offer of a hand up.
He tried to wipe the mud off his knees, but there was just more mud under the mud.
“Come on, City Boy. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a blast,” Frank said, scooping a little jungle goop out of Mikey’s hair. “We survived.”
Mikey stood for a minute still pointlessly brushing at his clothes. He didn’t want Frank to see the small smile creeping onto his face. It had been kind of a rush, right after the bit where it was absofuckinglutely terrifying, and hideously mortifying at the end there.
“Also, seems like it was a pretty good move,” Frank continued, his enthusiasm for this shit totally unabated by the surrounding filth. Mikey looked up to see him pointing into the jungle.
At an airplane.
*
The plane had a whole tree growing out of it and was almost smothered in vines, but Mikey could see the fuselage pretty solid in most places, and inside, God, yes it was dry.
“That is some motherfucking Lost shit, right there,” Frank said, hacking the creepers away from the door and kicking it the rest of the way off its hinges.
Mikey stood behind him and let him stick his head in first. It was getting pretty dark outside, and the rain was still coming down in fat, warm splodges.
He bent down and picked something up from just inside the door. Fishing a torch out of his backpack, he flicked it on and pointed it at the slowly drenching paper. “Look at this.” Frank held up an old, yellowed and mildewed newspaper. “‘1983’, they’ve been missing a long time.” Chucking the paper aside Frank stepped inside. “Locke?!” He hollered. “Sawyer? You guys in here?”
“I think you should be calling for Charlie,” Mikey said. Frank looked back at him and Mikey pointed at bulging cargo straps, still intact just inside the door.
“Well,” said Frank, slashing through the nearest strap and pulling out what looking like a 2kg brick of weed. “I guess that explains why they crashed,” he said and made a truly hilarious toking face and waggling his neatly arched eyebrows.
*
If Mikey could have had his way they wouldn’t have stopped. But it was getting too dark to see out there – it wasn’t like there were street lights in the jungle, right? - and now that he was inside, he was glad they wouldn’t be sleeping rough, well, rougher.
Actually, plastic-covered weed bricks made a surprisingly comfortable bed after slogging through the jungle for a day, Mikey mused as he reclined in a little nest of pot next to the fire Frank had started beneath one of the bigger holes in the roof.
Frank ripped open a brick, grabbed a handful and dumped it on the fire. “To help us sleep,” he said when Mikey raised an eyebrow at him. Mikey didn’t really care, just as long as he was dry.
He cared a little more an hour or so later when he was so stoned he couldn’t remember his middle name.
“So that’s what I was doing there, when the bus arrived. Waiting for my mail,” Frank giggled. “But the fucking driver must have taken it with him, so I can kiss that good bye. Asshole,” said Frank, grabbing another couple of handfuls of weed and throwing them on the embers.
“Oh my god, dude,” Mikey said – his voice a deep, dark monotone. “Please, no more.”
“What’s the matter?” Frank said, and it sound to Mikey like it was one word, but that was probably just a reflection of how epically stoned his ears were. “Can’t handle your buzz?”
Mikey frowned. He could handle it; he just hadn’t, for ages. He was too busy for buzzes. He had novels to write so he could divest teenage girls and their mamas of their pennies... or something...
He started to cough and Frank laughed. “’S what I thought,” Frank shook his head. “All you get up in the big city is that weak assed hydroponic crap some college kid’s grown in the back of his closet. This shit,” he asid, thumping the weed bricks, “is the real deal. Grown in the wild, as God intended. He took a deep breath. “Fuckin’ A.”
“Give me a break,” Mikey managed. “It’s not like you were born here and grew it yourself. I know an, an East Coast fucking accent when I hear one. Where did you grow up? In the middle of the fucking pine barrens?”
Frank grinned. “Concrete jungle’s still a jungle, wise ass. Trenton, the Jerz.”
Mikey pushed himself up. “Me and Gee, we’re from Belllyfull... Belleville. Yeah.” He slumped back down again.
“No shit?”
“None.”
Frank nodded and smiled. “See, I knew I liked you. How’s the old town doing?”
Mikey shook his head. “No idea, haven’t left Manhattan in five years. Well, until yesterday,” he said.
Frank frowned. “Dude. If I lived that close to Lodi I’d be back every weekend.”
Mikey tried and failed to sit up again. He just let himself drift. “What the hell are you doing down here, man?”
Frank looked away. “Adventuring,” he said, as if that were obvious. “Seeing the world. Making my fortune. Saving beautiful - what are you, an accountant? Saving beautiful accountants in distress. You know. The usual.”
“You think I’m a,” Mikey said, and then made a pfft sound and looked away. He knew there was something else in Frank’s statement that he should be paying closer attention to, but right now he was just concentrating on not passing out.
“I happen to be a bestselling author,” Mikey said, somewhat morosely.
“You don’t say,” Frank said, and he reached past Mikey to grab the magazine where it was lying next to Frank’s Indiana Jones back pack.
Mikey immediately regretted speaking. God, his interview was in that thing.
Frank lay back on his weed chez lounge and started flicking through the magazine.
“Um...” Mikey said, and contemplated making a grab for the mag before Frank found the article.
Too late. “Holy,” Frank squeaked and sat up straight. Mikey cringed at Frank’s manic grin. “‘Way, whose hazel eyes and smooth looks - ’,” Frank looked up at Mikey, “That’s you. This is...Wow...”
Mikey just shook his head and hid his face in his hands.
“Way, who is so cute when he’s blushing,” Frank mocked and went back to reading. “Has tapped into a vein – if you’ll excuse the pun – of teen angst and discontent with the Moonlight series...’ Holy shit,” said Frank. “You like Bruce Willis? I love Bruce Willis!”
Mikey looked up, utterly bewildered. “What?”
“Moonlighting, right? The show? From the 80s? Man, that show rocked. Bruce Willis is the motherfucking king.”
Mikey gave Frank a blank look.
Frank’s face fell.
“Dude, I was like, three when that show was on,” Mikey said. “How were you even born?”
Frank blinked. “Oh, well, you know, re-runs and stuff? So, you’re not writing a novelization of Moonlighting?”
Mikey shook his head slowly.
Frank looked at him expectantly and waved his hand for him to continue.
Mikey took a deep breath. “It’s a, a, romanceaboutagirlandhervampirelovershemeetsathighschool.”
Frank shook his head. “I must be stoned out of my gourd," he said. "Because I could have sworn you just said a romance about a girl and a vampire at high school.”
Mikey looked at the fire really hard.
“Oh, oh please - please,” Frank crowed. “I may never stop laughing.”
Five minutes later it was possibly true; Frank might never stop laughing.
“Everyone,” Mikey said, lids at half-mast, “is a critic.”
And then Frank laughed so hard he actually did fall all the way back off the pile into the fuselage.
Mikey would have leapt up to help him, but he was too stoned and too pissed.
“Asshole,” muttered Mikey, pushing his glasses up his nose.
After a minute Frank climbed back into the nest. He hunkered down, snickering to himself from time to time as he continued to read.
“Dude,” he said, periodically. “Dude.”
*
Mikey might have slept, he wasn’t sure, but he came-to pretty blearily to see Frank standing and shucking his shirt.
His skin glistened in the firelight and Mikey had a few seconds to marvel at all the ink spreading out over his chest and belly before Frank pulled another shirt from his backpack and pulled it on. He used the old one to wipe his face as best he could and then tucked it into his bag.
“You awake?” he whispered, hunkering down again over his bag.
Mikey made a noncommittal noise, and Frank pivoted to look at him, cocking his head a bit. Mikey drew the inside of his cheek in between his teeth. It seemed stupid to pretend he’d been sleeping, but now Frank was staring at him like he knew Mikey’d watched while he changed.
Mikey’s face grew hot and he swallowed, suddenly wide-awake.
Frank scratched his jaw, like he was trying to figure something out, and then shuffled over to Mikey. “Hey, hey…” he said, nudging Mikey with his toe. “I’m sorry about giving you shit. You know, about your books.”
Mikey shrugged and pulled his shirt collar up a little. It was still warm, but there was a chilly little breeze coming from somewhere.
“Seriously,” Frank insisted.
Mikey shrugged. “They’re not. That’s not what I really want to write. I mean. They pay the bills,” Mikey said, aiming for nonchalance and hitting ‘surly teen tantrum’.
Frank raised his eyebrows. “You got something you’d rather be writing? Why the fuck aren’t you?”
Mikey sighed. “I owe the publisher,” Mikey said. “I owe the kids. I owe my folks.”
Frank nodded. “You know that’s total bullshit, right?”
Mikey looked at him.
“You gotta, you gotta live every day as if it was your last. Every day,” he said, poking a finger at Mikey with vehemence.
“Okay, Tarzan,” Mikey said.
Frank frowned.
Mikey rolled his eyes. “I mean, I guess that would be the case for you, living in the fucking jungle where, hello, every day could actually be your last. But I have responsibilities, you know?”
“Fuck you, 'responsibilities'," Frank said. "I got 'em. But I've got dreams too. And I’m not fucking waiting round for someone else to make them come true. That’s why I came down here.”
He pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to Mikey.
Mikey pushed himself up. The fire had died down although the plane was still pretty smoky. His head was a little clearer but he was still as high as a goddamned kite.
He unfolded the bit of paper. It was a clipping from a magazine – an advert with a picture of a record store: Rick’s Record Ranch.
Mikey blinked. “You want to buy some records?”
Frank gave him a look. “No, dickhead, I want to own Rick’s one day. I want a store like that, for, you know, music and shit. Books, comics, coffee - that kind of place. “
Mikey sat up a bit further. “Comics? That would be awesome. I’d – I mean, I’d love to hang out in a place like that.”
“I know right,” Frank breathed.
Mikey didn’t know why they were whispering, but there was something kind of comforting, and comfortable about it.
“But you’re not doing that; you’re here, playing Indiana Jones and rescuing me.”
Frank shrugged. “Might as well have an adventure or two, while I try to figure the rest out.”
Mikey nodded and gazed into the fire. He made it sound so reasonable.
“So,” Frank said after a second. Poking the fire with a stick. “You, ah, you got anyone waiting for you? Back home?”
Mikey snorted.
Frank edged away a little, and Mikey regretted it immediately.
"No," Mikey said quietly. "Unless you count a disgruntled Pepto-Bismol-addicted editor and thirty thousand lovelorn teenagers,” he muttered under his breath.
"Huh," Frank mumbled. "'S funny coz, you don’t look like the type."
"Don’t look like what type?"
"You know," Frank said, and he shoved the stick into the fire a little too far ending up with a charred twig. "The type who’d be single, or whatever."
Mikey blinked. "Are you calling me needy?"
Frank frowned. "I don't know," he said, poking at the fire with his booted foot instead. He shook his head as if to clear it. "Am I?"
Mikey frowned. He wasn't needy. He didn’t need anyone. Back home he could go whole days without seeing a single person and not even, like, care. At all. If he needed people he could, like, Skype and shit. He wasn’t needy. He scowled.
"Hey, man," Frank said. His eyes were huge in the flickering firelight. "I'm just dicking around. Don't pay attention to stoner talk, dude. You're - I'm sure you're fine and all. You just seem like the kind of guy who'd have the people, all the people, lined up. Or, I dunno. Okay, I'll shut the fuck up now."
"Dude, if I wasn't so wasted," Mikey said, lifting his arm slowly and trying to make a fist. He couldn’t. God, he was way more stoned than he'd realized.
Frank snorted and shook his head again. “Always with the violence, Mikeyway. Why so angry?”
Mikey rolled his head on his neck and gazed up at the ceiling. "Well, what about you?" he said, dropping his chin to his chest again. "Living out here in the wilderness all alone. Who all's waiting for you? Bongo the Bonobo?”
Frank giggled. “What the fuck? Bongo the Bonobo… Holy shit, sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon." Frank went quiet. "Man, I miss Saturday morning cartoons.”
“Me too,” said Mikey. They both sighed. Mikey looked up at Frank. They snickered together and Frank leaned over and covered Mikey's grinning face with his hand. Mikey pushed him away.
Frank's hand was warm and surprisingly soft for someone who went around swinging from bullwhips and wielding machetes. His fingers trailed along Mikey's cheek. The laugh died in Mikey's throat. He swallowed, but suddenly his mouth was pretty dry.
Frank's eyes, Mikey noticed, flicked down to his lips. He shuffled a little closer. "You ever get lonely, Mikey?"
Mikey leaned in a little. "I -"
Mikey didn't know what to say. He swallowed and looked away, pulling back from the fire a little.
Frank sighed. "Yeah, me neither," he said, looking away and pushing himself back onto his pile of weed.
Mikey blinked. “Um.”
"We've got a total bitch of a hike ahead of us,” said Frank, rolling onto his side. “You should, you know, get some sleep and whatnot."
Mikey's skin was still tingling, but he didn't say anything, didn't do what his body was screaming at him to do, and reach out for... what?
He rolled over and pulled his messenger bag under his head, shut his eyes and tried to sleep.
Part Two
Author:
roxy_palacePairing(s): Mikey Way/Frank Iero
Rating: NC 17
Warnings: Some potty talk, mock violence, guns, people shooting at Mikey, jokes about drug running, drug use and drug related violence, handle bar moustaches, death defying feats and Mikey Way’s faily Kung Fu.
Word count: 28, 656
Summary: “I’m in Colombia!” Mikey said, raising his voice over the crackle of a poor connection.
“No. no, no, no, no,” James wailed.
Mikey could really relate to his disbelief. He couldn't believe he was in mother fucking Colombia either.
A/N: This fic is based very loosely on Romancing the Stone a really wonderful 80s, post-modern Rom-Com staring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. There are also nods to Indiana Jones and the Goonies. The 80s were another country, dude.
Also, a nod to Stephen King for supplying Mikey with the best Twilight smack down of all time.
Immeasurable thanks to my betas who made this story what it is. And huge thanks to the mods for running the exchange. Xoxo
"You must understand," Edgar said, looming above her like a pale, yet surprisingly well-built wraith in the night. "You are my life now, Ella."
"I do understand," Ella sighed, tilting her neck and offering the pale column of her throat to him like a gift. "Drink…"
Edgar
Mikey pushed away from his computer, spinning himself round and round and round on his office chair. “Drink, drink, drinky drink,” he said and sighed. He watched the bookcase-lined room flit past as he twirled, wondering how on earth he'd written himself, and his characters, into this corner.
Grabbing the edge of the desk to stop spinning, he pulled himself closer to the keyboard and took a deep breath.
“You are my life now, Ella.”
Mikey leaned on the desk and pushed his fingers up under his glasses to massage his eyes.
There was no way to deny it. The book was shit.
He took another deep breath.
As his finger hovered above the delete key, moments from consigning whiny obsessive Ella and her dead-and-hating-it beau Edgar to the trash can for all time, Mikey had a momentary vision of hoards of vengeful Moonies baring down on him, preparing to rend him limb from limb.
"We want the 'Hawk' and 'Sparrow' to consummate their timeless love!!" The hoard screeched. "We want Moonlight Book Five! YOU PROMISED!"
Mikey shook his head. “Moonies rhymes with Loonies," he said to himself, and pulled his hand back from the keys, nudging a towering stack of fan mail balanced on the edge of his desk as he did.
The nickname used to make Mikey laugh. Now, not so much. He couldn’t really understand the relationship he’d written anymore, or why it was so popular with his readers. Not that Mikey knew jack shit about relationships. The longest one Mikey had ever had was with his left hand. He sighed. What was he doing.
Before he could work himself up into a real round of existential angst, the sound of a Skype call coming in broke the moment. Mikey shuddered. The call cut off only to start again a couple of seconds later.
Happy for the distraction, Mikey answered and was puzzled to see the stern round face of Jack White fill the screen. Mikey blinked.
It was a picture of Jack White on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The Rolling Stone in which his most recent, and least flattering, interview appeared. Oh, shit.
With a droll lilt, a voice from behind the magazine said, "I don't think I would have been interested in my novels when I was a teenager."
Mikey sighed. "Hey James," said Mikey, rubbing his hands on his thighs. He had kind of been waiting for this call.
The eyes of James Dewees, the editor who’d taken his funny little college story about a vampire getting a crush on a girl 85 years his junior and turned it into the number one fantasy romance best-seller of all time, appeared over the top of the magazine.
James continued reading. "I would never tell anyone to read one of my books’, says Way, whose novels - in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years - are beloved of teenage girls and middle age women all over the world."
James Dewees was not beloved of teenage girls and middle age women. James Dewees was the kind of guy middle age women warned teenage girls about.
"Not when there are so many superior works of fiction for young people to be reading,” James read on.
Mikey took a deep breath and settled in. This could take a while.
“Wait, there’s more...” said James, fixing Mikey with a narrowed stare and holding up his hand.
He pointed at the page. “‘Personally, I preferred Batman and that kind of thing. Harry Potter, you know? Even Dungeons and Dragons is better than reading my books because it, like, teaches you so many life skills,’ and then the journo says, 'Way pushes up his glasses and shrugs because. That’s all. He has. To say. On the subject.’”
James squinted. “That was all you had to say on the subject?”
Mikey spun away from the desk a little. Stopping in front of the screen again, he pushed his glasses up and shrugged.
"Why, Mikey? Why?” James asked, pulling on his thinning hair a little bit.“You're supposed to make people want to read the goddamned books we publish." He chucked the magazine over his shoulder and leaned into his camera. "Not head straight to Barnes and Noble for a 12 sided die and a copy of the Fortean Times!"
"Well, playing a half elf when your brother’s an Ork and the Dungeon Master taught me a lot about self control.”
"But...” James whined.
"Also, Harry Potter is about, like, on a number of levels, confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity, ” said Mikey, avoiding James’ eyes by shuffling through some of the fan mail pile.
"Yes, but your books...”
"My books,” said Mikey, cutting him off. “Are about how neat it is to have a boyfriend.”
James went silent.
Mikey picked out an envelope from the pile and tore it open.
Inside was a multi-paged letter with a photo of the letter-writing Moonie clutching a ragged copy of Moon Under Water to her chest, grinning widely. She was wearing a tee shirt with Mikey’s face on it.
"Mikey,” James said gently. “I know you wouldn't know it, on account of how you haven't had a date since 1997, but it is in fact ‘neat’ to have a boyfriend."
Mikey gave James his most withering look over the rim of his glasses and got an eye roll back.
“Honestly, when was the last time you went out? When was the last time you got laid?”
“Ungh,” Mikey groaned, it was his turn to role his eyes.
James disappeared from view and Mikey heard what sounded like him scrabbling round on the floor. He came back up with the magazine again and shook it at the camera. “Also, has Gerard read this? He’d be the first to tell you you’re as worthy as Rowling or any of them, Mikey. Where is Gerard, anyway?" He chucked it over his shoulder again.
"Oh, you know,” Mikey said, putting down the photo and letter and flipping through the rest of the mail.
Another envelope in the pile caught his eye. It was a big office type envelope and had about thirty stamps on it, stuck all over the place as if someone had slapped them on in a mad panic, or in the middle of a psychotic break. He picked it up and flipped it over.
James raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I know Gee,” he said. “And I know that Gerard Way is the best cover artist in the history of publishing. It'd be cheaper to get some schmuck to do it all in Photoshop, but it'd never have his magic.” James sighed.
Mikey let James’ moaning about Gerard and the business and the Way brothers in general wash over him. The many-stamped envelope was posted from Cartagena, Colombia. Gerard was in Colombia. He liked to travel. That’s what he did when he wasn’t designing book covers or baiting James Dewees with Mikey.
Besides, Mikey would have recognized the spidery scrawl of the address anywhere. Gee.
"...Because I could have been a writer, too Mikey. I coulda, but...”
“Hmmm,” said Mikey.
“But sabotaging interviews? Sabotaging interviews with Rolling Stone? No, no.”
Mikey looked up. "Dude. Margaret wanted me to say I based Edgar on Jared Leto,” he said, interrupting James mid-rant. “Because I have a crush on him.”
"Oh, yeah. Well,” said James, wincing and running his hands through his – blue this week – hair. “She ran the numbers with the ‘demographic’ and, ah, Leto came up tops."
Mikey just looked at James, who at least had the good grace to look sheepish.
James took a deep breath. "Mikey, man, this isn't like the old days – you and Gerard in a dorm room, drinking your roommate’s beers and giggling over the plot all night." He held his hand up before Mikey could correct him. "You have a contract now."
Mikey didn't have much to say to that. Their mom’s house, Grandma, the hospital bills... That five book deal had taken care of it all. He owed the publisher that book.
“Anyway, you know where Gee is James,” Mikey said with a sigh. He tore open the envelope; inside was a bulky piece of paper, folded numerous times, looking well thumbed and battered. Mikey frowned, turning the envelope upside down and shaking it. There was nothing else.
He unfolded the paper and spread it out on his desk. It looked like some kind of crazy map art thing. There were geographic features drawn in detail with flamboyant - Spanish? - calligraphy curling between them. In the centre was a blood red X next to the words El Corazon.
“What?” James said.
“Hmmm? Oh, Gerard,” said Mikey, rubbing his chin and picking up the envelope again. “He's in Colombia. He’s been in Colombia for weeks. On the art pilgrimage thing. Remember?”
Of course, that’s what this was, some kind of art project thing Gerard’s sent him. It was really beautiful. A new direction for Gee, Mikey wondered.
James scoffed. "He’s still in Colombia? Are you kidding me? How’s he gonna do my cover from down there?"
Mikey pursed his lips.
“Okay, okay,” James said, reading exactly as much into Mikey’s silence as Mikey’d intended. He took a deep breath. “Refilling the artists’ well and all that. I get it, I get you, just - you can't let all the little Moonies down, can you Mikey?” James said, and made the most sickening puppy eyes Mikey had ever seen. “They’re counting on you to finish the series. Unite Edgar and Ella for all eternity and you’re done, kid. Done and dusted."
Mikey sighed.
“One last book, James. And that’s it.”
“One last book.”
Yeah, Mikey sighed, okay. He could do one more. He owed it to the fans who’d stuck with him, and he definitely owed it to his mom; part of him even owed it to Edgar and Ella. Their forbidden, often thwarted, verging on insane love had paid for his mom’s house. The least he could do was write them a flashy wedding and filthy honeymoon. What kind of romance didn’t have a happy ending?
Mikey nodded.
"That's my boy!" James cried, spinning around in his chair. "You give me words, Gerard does the art and - hey presto - New York Times Best seller list, here we come!"
Mikey adjusted his glasses and glanced at the package. Why wasn’t there a letter? Gee always sent a letter.
“Okay, I'm gonna get out of your hair," James went on. “How are things looking anyway? I'm shitting bricks to know if Edgar can still give Ella what she needs even though he has become more demon than man because of his passion for her."
Mikey looked up. "Seriously?"
"Do not harsh my squee, Michael James. Your books are GOLD."
Mikey pressed his eyes closed and shook his head.
James made an incredibly patronizing 'dawwwwww' sound. “When you’re done,” he said, his voice pure saccharine. “We can talk about that little Gay Space Action Romance thing you were telling me about the other day. Okay?”
Mikey pricked up his ears. “Okay. But - ” Only, James had already hung up.
Mikey shut down Skype and pouted at the screen. It wasn’t a Gay Space Action Romance, God. It was serious Science Fiction. The big gay romance was purely incidental.
He took a deep breath and pulled up Word, back to his personal hell and the vampire nightmare therein.
He stared at the screen for a few seconds before opening his secret Twitter account, @SlayerBoy77.
Edgar Mullen has no sense of personal style, he wrote, and hit send.
He sat back and watched a Twitter-fall of outraged Moonies berating him for a couple of minutes.
Mikey Way smiled.
The sound of the phone ringing in the other room was kind of weird, like he'd forgotten he even had a land line. Mostly people just texted him, or Skyped him these days since he was always at his computer.
Maybe it was James trying to keep him on his toes?
He hit send on His hair is stupid, too’ - He owed his buddy Pete a fruit basket for showing him how to use Twitter for stress relief - and leapt up to get it.
He grabbed the handset. “Yes, I am writing, James," he said into the handset, rubbing his eyes.
"Mikey?" Gerard's voice, frantic and high, came down the line.
"Gee? What’s up, bro?"
"Mikey! Oh my god! You have to do something!” Gerard’s voice was scratchy and Mikey could hear the terror in it. “You have to come down here,” he hissed. “They're going to kill me!"
***
“What?” Mikey juggled his cell phone with one hand as he bundled his luggage off the carousel. “What? Hello?”
The airport was packed – over-excited tourists jostled him, small dark women in multicolored skirts brushed past him ; a man with a trilby and a handle-bar moustache sneered at him, and Policia carrying machine guns watched the crowds from behind mirrored sunglasses. The air was different too, sharper smelling, denser with humidity, like warm breath on the skin. Coming from the sedate controlled chaos of Newark International, De Presia airport in central Colombia was pure pandemonium.
Mikey almost dropped the phone, but managed to grab it just in time. He pressed it to his ear. "Hello?" The connection was pretty spacey. A voice crackled and warped, “Where the hell are you, Kid? It’s like your computer is turned off or something.”
Fuck. Dewees. Mikey immediately regretted getting an international plan on his phone.
“Um, well, I’m in Bogota. Outside... Bogota. A lot... outside. I’m not actually in Bogota anymore. I’m in - I’m going to Cartagena.”
“Sorry, what now?”
“I’m in Colombia!” Mikey said, raising his voice over the crackle of a poor connection. He patted his messenger bag and felt the bulge in the side pocket.
“No. No, no, no, no."
Mikey could really relate to his disbelief. He couldn't believe he was in mother fucking Colombia either.
“I have to go, bus is leaving,” Mikey muttered into the phone, clicking it closed over the sound of James sputtering and complaining as he navigated the crowd and edged out through the airport doors.
There he found a row of busses and cabs and private cars with hundreds of people trying to cram onto them and almost as many more people vying for Mikey’s attention.
He tried not to make eye contact with any of them. Maybe this was like New York, after all.
He pushed past a group of tourists and a boy selling tea from an urn. He had to get to Cartagena, for the love of God, and kill his only sibling.
This was just so not like Gerard. Well, the hysterical phone calls were a bit like Gerard, only they usually involved broken hearts or crises of artistic faith. But mysterious packages, desperate pleas for rescue in strange exotic places? No. Gerard taught art to underprivileged kids and held weird exhibitions in church halls, for crying out loud.
Except for that terrifying month in his senior year in High School when Gerard decided he was going to be a masked vigilante and ended up nearly garrotting himself swinging down from the roof of their garage on a rope made from their mom’s pantyhose and couple of bungee ties, Gerard had never really been in peril.
But then the call.
“Bring the parcel to Cartagena The- the Hotel De la Muerte.“ Gerard had said. “Please Mikey. I’m not fucking around!”
Then there had been a silence, and then what sounded like a scuffle and a high pitched squeal that made Mikey’s blood run cold. Gerard had come back on, “Jesus, Mikey, please.”
And then the line had gone dead.
Mikey had been on a plane three hours later. He’d thought about calling the police, but then some of the things Gerard had told him had seemed so outlandish. What if it was just Gee, being Gee? He’d gone anyway because, fuck’s sake. It was Gee. Of course he was going.
And now, here Mikey was, in Colombia.
“Fucking six hour layover in Houston,” Mikey muttered to himself as he dragged his suitcase towards a likely looking bus.
The wheel of the case snagged in between some broken paving. Mikey looked to the sky.
They’re going to kill me, that’s what Gerard had said.
Mikey would have laughed, would have put it all down to Gerard’s lifelong penchant for amateur dramatics. But something, something in Gerard’s voice had been genuinely scared.
And one thing Gerard never was, was scared. Mikey pressed on.
A hand in the middle of Mikey’s chest brought him up short.
“You are looking for a ride? Where you want to go?”
A lithe looking woman with short dark hair and neatly penciled brows stood in front of him, hands on her hips, eyebrow arched.
“Um... Per vaborrr, donde esta la ... um... Cartagena? Del... dela? bus??” Mikey gave up and pointed at one of the busses with the least chickens in crates strapped to the roof and shrugged. “Cartagena?”
The woman winked.
“I tell you best bus, yes? Cartagena? Yes?”
“Um, yes? I mean, si?” Mikey said, yanking his luggage out of the crack and following the woman.
“This is Cartagena bus,” she said, wrapping her knuckles on a brightly painted vehicle.
Mikey nodded.
She helped him pass his suitcase up to the roof, haggled with the driver on his behalf, and then nodded when he counted out the correct negotiated fare in brightly colored, unfamiliar bills.
“Thanks,” he said to her.
“Take seat! Enjoy ride! Muy facil! ” She said and patted him on the ass as he stepped up onto the bus.
Mikey was altogether too flustered to do anything about it; he really didn’t travel well. Besides, when he turned around, she’d already disappeared into the crowd.
Okay he thought and climbed aboard. He patted his bag again. He only had to worry about one thing: the package, Gerard’s envelope. “ The, the Hotel Dela Muerte. I-I... you have three days.” He'd said.
“I’m coming, Gee,” Mikey muttered, stepping over suitcases feet as he walked down the aisle of the bus. “I’m coming.”
He wedged himself into a gap on the rear bench seat, sighed with relief, removed a chicken’s butt from his lap and promptly fell asleep.
*
Mikey stood in the middle of the road, sweating. “What do you mean everyone off?” He asked, wiping his face on his already sopping shirt. If he'd thought it was hot on the bus, it was nothing compared to the sticky heat of standing under the high sun, trying to get answers from the distracted driver.
With a sudden lurch and the sound of grinding metal, the bus had stopped in the middle of the road about an hour into the ride. They were half way up long, winding road that twisted and turned into the jungle-covered mountains. When it was clear the bus would go no further, everyone got out and Mikey followed.
He pulled his phone out of his bag and held it up. Absolutely no coverage. Not so much a half a bar. Guess that rules out trolling the Moonies on Twitter from here, he thought. The No service letters on the screen blinked like they were mocking him.
The other passengers, who all seemed far less surprised or concerned than Mikey at this turn of events, milled around him. He stood stock still in the middle of the road, clutching his messenger bag and trying to surmise the situation. God, he didn’t have time for this. Three days, and he had no idea how far away Cartagena still was.
Next to him, the bus tilted at an alarming angle, and every time the guy threw a piece of luggage down from the roof it seemed to tilt even further. Mikey didn’t know all that much about cars and whatnot, but even he could see the axel was a goner. It lay in two pieces under the bus, the wheels angled out and useless.
“So, when’s the next bus?” Mikey asked.
The driver laughed, and said something to one of the men catching luggage from the roof. He laughed even harder.
“Um, then, which way to Cartagena?” Mikey asked, and clutched his bag to his chest even more tightly. The driver’s only reply was to catch Mikey’s suitcase from the roof and plonk it down in the road in front of him. It splashed in the mud, spraying Mikey’s jeans and Adidas.
His hair flopped in his face, lank with sweat and humidity. He was not cut out for this weather. He was not cut out for weather of any kind, let alone this clammy hot breath thing.
The driver shrugged and pointed in the direction of the road uphill and started trudging after his former passengers. Mikey looked at the sky. Fuck. He started heading after them.
As he walked past the back of the bus a final passenger stepped out onto the road. “There will be a bus along in a little while,” he said, smiling brightly at Mikey. “We should just wait.”
It was the guy with the handlebar moustache, the one Mikey had seen sneering in the airport. He was an American, Mikey could hear as much in his accent, but he’d obviously been here for a while; he was so realxed and confident stuck there in the middle of the Jungle, he didn’t come off as a tourist. The guy lit a cigarette and walked a few paces up the road, looking into the jungle and stretching his shoulders.
“But everyone is leaving,” Mikey said, watching the passengers disappear around a bend in the steep road.
“Oh, yeah, well, most of them only live in the village in the valley. They’ll get there and send the replacement for us.” He shrugged.
Mikey watched the others on the road. He looked back at Moustache Guy who was leaning in the shade of the bus. He turned and smiled at Mikey again.
Seemed kind of sensible not to hike up a fucking mountain in this heat, not if a bus was coming anyway. Mikey nodded and sat heavily on his suitcase.
Moustache Guy smiled wider. “I’m Eric Nally,” he said, “And you are?”
Mikey fidgeted. “Um, Mikey,” he said after a second. He didn’t really want to tell the guy his name. It usually ended badly, with Mikey signing old till receipts or people’s foreheads. But Nally didn’t press; he just kept smiling at him. Mikey reminded himself not to be such a crappy tourist, freaking out every time someone was friendly.
But as the voices of the other passengers faded up the road, he was left only with the sounds of the jungle - like some kind of movie - alive with a strange bird call: something that sounded, unnervingly, like monkeys screaming, and the chattering of millions and trillions of bugs. And Eric Nally’s hairy grin. It was hard not to be un-nerved.
Mikey took a few moments to imagine the variety and number of ways he was going to kick his brother's ass when he found him, and when that didn’t seem to make a replacement bus come any faster he took a deep breath and tried to resign himself to a long, long wait. Someone had to come along eventually, right? Nally certainly seemed to think so. Nally, who was just waiting over there… watching Mikey. Right.
Mikey stood up and pointed in the direction the other passengers went. “You know what, I think I’m gonna...”
"I think you’re going to give me the map, Mr. Way.”
Or... not.
Mikey stopped himself from falling backwards over the suitcase at the sight of Nally holding a gun, an actual gun, with a sharp, self-satisfied smirk twisting his face.
"Um," said Mikey, casting about wildly for he didn't know what.
"Give me the map, Mr. Way."
"The, ah, what?" Oh, fucking fuck. He knew Mikey's name and he knew about Gerard’s parcel.
Nally sneered. "Don't be a fool. Just give me the map and you can go on your way,” he continued, advancing slowly on Mikey and raising the gun a little as he did.
Okay. Mikey tried to think. He looked up the road; the other passengers were long gone. He looked into the dense jungle; monkeys and macaws screeched back. Where the fuck was Manimal when you needed him?
"I don't know what you’re talking about,” Mikey said slowly, clenching his fingers around the strap of the satchel.
The man’s eyes shifted to where Mikey was gripping the strap. “Yes, yes, you do, Mr. Way. Don’t be an idiot. Give it. To me.”
Mikey edged slowly towards the back end of the bus. He had every intention of diving into the under growth and hoping for the best, screeching monkey death be damned.
But the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the bus above Mikey's head, far louder than he'd ever imagined gunshots could be, stopped him in his tracks.
"Fuck, dude!” Mikey pulled his neck in. “Do not fire a gun at me!”
"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, Mr. Way," Nally said. "Give me the map your God-forsaken brother sent you, or next time, my aim will be a little...” He waggled his eyebrows. “Lower."
Nally pointed the gun at Mikey's face.
Mikey slowly raised his hands in the air. Oh Gerard, he thought, what the hell have you done?
"You and your brother, so pathetic,” Nally sneered advancing on him. “You think you can come down here and take anything you want. El Corazon belongs to me. You understand? ME..."
But he didn't get to finish his dastardly monologue, because one of the screaming monkeys came screaming out of the jungle, swinging on an vine and bowled Nally on his ass, sending his trilby hat flying along with the gun.
Nally's head connected with the side of the bus with a sickening thunk, and then the screaming monkey leapt to its feet and asked Mikey if he was okay.
Only it wasn't a monkey, it was a short tattooed guy in khakis and a Misfits tee shirt. And it wasn't a vine he’d swung in on; it was a bullwhip, an Indiana Jones bullwhip, which the guy was shaking loose from the overhanging branch, coiling up and hanging from his belt. His… Indiana Jones belt.
Mikey raised his eyebrows.
The guy looked at Mikey with an amused smirk. He leant down and picked up the trilby and set it on his own head. Turning to the bus, he checked his new look out in the windscreen. "Huh," he said, apparently pleased with the addition to his outfit.
He turned back to Mikey and raised his eyebrows. "Whadda ya think?" He said with a wink.
Mikey stared. He'd been lost for words before in his life; you didn't grow up with Gerard Way without being stunned into silence on occasion, but this? This was something else.
"No really," Indiana said, cocking an eyebrow. "Saving your life was totally my pleasure. Your effusive and heartfelt thanks are not required." He shook his head and then, apparently done with Mikey, he moved on to Nally.
'Indiana' squatted over the guy and checked his pulse. He then started rifling through the guy's pockets, tucking everything he found into his beat up backpack.
"Camels?! Awesome!" he said, liberating a box of smokes and some matches from Nally’s inner pocket. He put one in his mouth.
"Um," said Mikey again. Mikey Way’s Word of the Day, apparently, was ‘um’.
Indiana glanced over his shoulder at Mikey. "Yeah, I know. They'll kill me, but the nearest Circle K is about 3000 miles away. I've been jonesing for months," he said, and then giggled.
Mikey watched as the guy dug around in Nally’s back pockets coming up with a box of matches. "Is - is he dead?" Mikey asked, afraid of the answer.
Indiana lit his smoke, shook out the match and walked back to Mikey slowly. He nodded towards Nally. "Nah, just out cold."
He frowned at Mikey's wide staring eyes. "Faceplant over there hit you on the head or something?" Indiana asked, eyes scanning Mikey’s hairline.
Mikey shook his head. "He didn’t touch me. I don't know who that guy is or what the fuck he wants."
Indiana raised his eyebrows and smirked, looking Mikey up and down.
"Sure," he said, with a knowing wink. “Shall we make an educated guess?”
Mikey felt his face heat up. "Actually," he countered. "I’m trying to find my brother."
"Jesus." The dude cut Mikey off and sauntered over to where Nally's gun had landed, pocketing that too. "There are two of you? That I gotta see."
The guy walked to the rear of the bus and back.
"How long ago did the driver leave?" He asked over his shoulder as he stepped gingerly into the bus and looked around for something.
Mikey shrugged. "Five minutes."
The guy cursed and squinted, looking up the hillside where the Mikey's bus-mates had gone. "Well that's a half day's hike wasted."
"Look," Mikey tried to scrabble back a modicum of control from the... cute, little guy who’d just swung in on a frikken bullwhip, kicked a guy's ass and blown smoke in Mikey’s face.
Batman and Indiana Jones had been Mikey’s go-to jerk off material as a young geek sliding around on the Kinsey scale. He had no defenses and a hell of a frame of reference for that kind of shit.
But still, Gerard! Guns! Maps! God.
"I need to get to Cartagena," Mikey barked. "Do you know when the next bus is coming?"
"Dude, this isn’t downtown Manhattan," Indiana said, setting his hat at what would commonly be called a rakish angle. Mikey blinked. Oh…wow, he thought stupidly as the guy looked up at him from under the brim.
"There won't be another bus until someone gets up here and fixes this one." Indiana kicked a tire. "Which means there won’t be another bus."
Mikey looked along the road. Jesus, this had to be some kind of joke. “He said there’d be another bus,” Mikey said, and he absolutely did not bite his lip.
Indiana snorted. "Who? The nice man with the gun?”
Mikey felt his face heat up again. Okay, so Indiana McAsshole was a total jackass, but Mikey had to hold his tongue. So far, he was the only person who could potentially help Mikey. Plus, he had what looked like a scorpion tattooed on his neck. Mikey figured that was Jungle for ‘do not fuck with me.’
Mikey had to get to Gerard. If goons like Nally were on to him, then Mikey had to get there. He had to get there fast.
"Can you, I dunno, like.” His voice broke off, and he swallowed. "Guide me? Or whatever it is you do?" Mikey cringed inwardly.
“Nope.”
“Right,” Mikey said, and eyed the guy. “Because you’re in no way set up for jungle travel. Where did you come from anyway?”
The dude stopped, put his hands on his hips and gave Mikey an appraising look.
“Look, I can see you’re in a jam, so, I’ll be kind. I mean, what was the point of me saving your ass, if I’m just going to leave you here in the middle of the Amazon to,” he laughed and looked at Mikey’s shoes, “fend for yourself.” He pointed at the prone form of Nally. “Clearly you’re a master of the art of self defense.”
“Yes, God, okay,” Mikey grit out. “Thank you for saving my ass. Can you get me to a phone at least?” He waved his useless cell phone at the guy and tried really, really hard not to roll his eyes. He honestly did, but come on.
Indiana pursed his lips. "My minimum price for taking a stranded dude to a telephone is $400," he said.
Fumbling through his messenger bag Mikey came up with, "Um... $75 dollars and packet of Twizzlers?”
Indiana set his hat back a little on his head. "You got yourself a deal. Ah?"
"Mikey Way," Mikey said.
"You got yourself a deal, Mikeyway," he said and he held out his hand. Mikey shook it. "The name is Iero."
Indiana Iero, Mikey thought.
“Frank Iero,” the guy said. “What the hell are you doing out here anyway?”
Mikey sighed. “I’m supposed to meet my brother. I dunno. That guy...” Mikey pointed a thumb at Nally, still out cold. “I think that guy knows him. I dunno.”
“You in some kind of trouble?” Frank asked.
Mikey gave Frank a shrewd look.
“Well, I’m guessing since you just had a mother fucking gun pulled on you by a guy with a handle bar moustache, the answer is yes.”
Mikey rolled his eyes. “Okay then, yes.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on. But I need to find my brother.”
Did someone think the map in Gerard’s parcel was real, and not one of his more obscure art projects? Maybe it was real, real enough to try shooting Mikey for anyway. He didn’t know if he should trust Frank, but the guy had just saved his life, and anyway, Mikey would probably die out here in the jungle without his help. He looked at Frank. He was little, and cute. But Mikey wasn’t gonna let little cuteness decide if he should trust someone. Frank seemed... Well, he seemed like kind of a dick. And it was that that made Mikey relax. Nally had seemed charming at first and look how that turned out.
Frank nodded and shrugged.
“Okay, so, how much for all the way to Cartagena?” Mikey clutched his messenger bag closer. The parcel made a rustling sound. Mikey reached in and pushed it deeper into his bag.
Frank stubbed out his butt, he looked Mikey up and down. "You can barely afford a trip to a phone; you can’t afford a trip to the coast, dude."
Mikey swallowed and moved close to Frank. He smelled, Mikey realized, of fresh sweat and stale smoke and loamy earth. A good smell. A tough smell. The kind Mikey was always trying to describe on the men in his novels.
“Okay, forget the phone and the $400,” Mikey said, “You get me to Cartagena? I’ll pay you $4000.”
Frank narrowed his eyes. “And where’s this 4k coming from? Wait, are you a drug mule? Because you’re supposed to be taking it out of the country, not—”
Ugh “My bro,” Mikey said, cutting him off. “He’s pretty rich."
Frank leant back and narrowed his eyes at Mikey. “How rich?”
“Rich,” said Mikey. He looked Frank up and down. “Richer than you can imagine anyway.”
“I dunno, dude.” Frank grinned back, seemingly unintimidated by Mikey’s assessment. “I can imagine quite a lot.”
Mikey shrugged. “He’s fucking loaded. Like, why else would someone be trying to– to kidnap me or whatever?”
Frank frowned. His eyes searched the jungle, then the prone form of Nally. He turned to Mikey.
"Okay, if we're gonna do this you will do exactly as I say when I say it. No back chat, no questions, no whining. Got it?"
Mikey's knees went weak. Must have been the heat. "Yeah," he replied.
"Okay," Frank said. "Okay, let's blow this popsicle stand."
And he pulled an actual machete from his God damned Indiana Jones belt and hacked his way into the dense jungle, leaving Mikey to drag his suitcase in after him.
*
Mikey was not equipped for Jungle Life.
"I am not coping at all right now,” he said as he hefted his suitcase over yet another log and retrieved his once pristine Adidas sneaker from yet another soggy, disgustingly warm jungle bog.
Frank glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, shit,” he said, letting the foliage live a little longer and turning back to Mikey. He took his suitcase from him. “I’m sorry. I should help you with that.”
“Thank fuck,” Mikey said, letting his shoulders droop.
Frank had been completely silent as they hacked their way through the jungle - fucking JUNGLE - while Mikey had been on something of an emotional roller coaster. First of all, brother in mortal peril, then Mikey in mortal fucking peril. And now guy with a fucking machete, an insanely hot guy with a machete the jungle, leading him to… who knew what.
Also, bugs, slime, leaf mold and the fucking heat. God, Mikey could feel just how slimy was. And as for his hair? Forget about it. Also, his glasses kept fogging up ever five seconds. He had a moment of panic thinking about the state of his Space Invaders tee shirt - it was vintage - but what was done was done. He flicked a couple of leaves off his shoulder.
Frank hefted and bag and frowned. “What’s in here, Mikeyway?"
“Oh, clothes, shoes, hair straighteners, um, a copy of Rolling Stone, the usual," he shrugged.
Frank smiled. “Rolling Stone?”
Mikey felt his face heat up. The last thing he needed was Frank – who clearly had no idea who Mikey was - seeing the interview. Why did he bring it with him? That’s what comes from packing in a panic. “Yeah, it’s, you know, really out of date... Hey!”
Frank was on his knees tearing open the suitcase. He rifled through Mikey’s gear, pulled out the Rolling Stone, folded it and tucked it into his back pocket. Then he zipped up the suitcase, stood up and hurled it out into the densely covered ravine they had spent the last hour hacking out of.
“You did not just do that,” said Mikey, as he watched his possessions fly out into the air and be swallowed by the lower canopy of green.
“You don’t need hair irons in the mother fucking jungle, Mikeyway,” Frank said and turned back to hack the path to God alone knew where.
Mikey contemplated throwing himself in after his luggage, or just sitting on that log over there and waiting to die. But then he thought of Gerard and a spike of fear jabbed at his guts.
He followed after Frank.
“Why, why are you here,” Mikey panted, pushing through the clinging knee high greenery. He tore a snagging vine off his calf. “I don’t even know how you stand it,” he said after the thirteenth branchsnapped back and smacked him in the face. “It’s fucking horrible. Forget majesty of nature. Nature is about as majestic as a flock of rabid bats.”
Mikey really fucking wished he hadn’t just thought about rabid bats.
"You’ll get used to it,” said Frank, glancing back over his shoulder. “I was scared of all sorts of shit, I mean, pretty much everything, before I came down here. But,” he shrugged and hacked a whole tree, like, in half. “You get used to it.”
He started to lead them up hill.
“Man, spiders, that was my big thing,” he continued. "Now, I could give a shit."
"Spiders?" Mikey pulled his messenger bag closer.
"As big as your face."
Mikey swallowed. A second later the rain bucketed down like tiny, grimy pebbles.
“Neat,” Mikey said.
Frank stopped and turned back to Mikey. He grinned.
“We gotta get out of this,” said Frank. “And it’ll be dark soon.”
Mikey tugged a nearby banana leaf over his head. “Can we like... Just stop for one hot minute? I know it’s raining, but fuck.” His feet ached, he couldn’t see, he had no spare clothes, he was sweaty, and smelly and sore. Things had bitten him; he could feel the itching just starting on his ankles. And now, now, it was raining on Mikey. He’d had enough. “How far is Cartagena?” he demanded.
Frank threw his hands up in the air. “I dunno, thirty, maybe forty clicks East.”
“Okay, Tour of Duty, can you tell me how far that is in like, civilian speak?”
Frank opened his mouth to reply, but burst out laughing instead. He reached out and pulled a foot long thing with a million legs from Mikey’s banana leaf.
Mikey shoved the leaf away from him and danced back from Frank. “Yargh!”
“Yeah, you might wanna watch out for...”
But before Frank could tell him what he might want to watch out for Frank disappeared. And then Mikey felt the ground under his feet give way too. He was falling, no sliding, fast, right down the side of hill on a muddy luge to certain doom.
He flailed his arms, trying to grab anything he could as he rocketed downwards but there was no way. He had a second to think Sorry, Gerard, before he was sailing, arms windmilling, into the air and landing in a pool of stinking mud and Frank’s lap, face first.
“Really, I’m flattered,” said Frank from somewhere above him. “But it seems a little forward for a first date.”
Mikey scrambled away, panting and desperately scraping the mud and mountain crap off his face. Oh, God... leeches, he thought, jungle parasites, bugs. Indiana Iero’s COCK.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Nothing was broken, his glasses were still on his face and he still had his bag. Frank clambered out of the pool although, unlike Mikey, he’d somehow managed to make it down the luge looking only marginally the worse for wear.
“Fuck yeah!" He crowed over to Mikey. “What a rush huh?!”
Mikey hauled himself out of the pool, completely ignoring Frank’s offer of a hand up.
He tried to wipe the mud off his knees, but there was just more mud under the mud.
“Come on, City Boy. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a blast,” Frank said, scooping a little jungle goop out of Mikey’s hair. “We survived.”
Mikey stood for a minute still pointlessly brushing at his clothes. He didn’t want Frank to see the small smile creeping onto his face. It had been kind of a rush, right after the bit where it was absofuckinglutely terrifying, and hideously mortifying at the end there.
“Also, seems like it was a pretty good move,” Frank continued, his enthusiasm for this shit totally unabated by the surrounding filth. Mikey looked up to see him pointing into the jungle.
At an airplane.
*
The plane had a whole tree growing out of it and was almost smothered in vines, but Mikey could see the fuselage pretty solid in most places, and inside, God, yes it was dry.
“That is some motherfucking Lost shit, right there,” Frank said, hacking the creepers away from the door and kicking it the rest of the way off its hinges.
Mikey stood behind him and let him stick his head in first. It was getting pretty dark outside, and the rain was still coming down in fat, warm splodges.
He bent down and picked something up from just inside the door. Fishing a torch out of his backpack, he flicked it on and pointed it at the slowly drenching paper. “Look at this.” Frank held up an old, yellowed and mildewed newspaper. “‘1983’, they’ve been missing a long time.” Chucking the paper aside Frank stepped inside. “Locke?!” He hollered. “Sawyer? You guys in here?”
“I think you should be calling for Charlie,” Mikey said. Frank looked back at him and Mikey pointed at bulging cargo straps, still intact just inside the door.
“Well,” said Frank, slashing through the nearest strap and pulling out what looking like a 2kg brick of weed. “I guess that explains why they crashed,” he said and made a truly hilarious toking face and waggling his neatly arched eyebrows.
*
If Mikey could have had his way they wouldn’t have stopped. But it was getting too dark to see out there – it wasn’t like there were street lights in the jungle, right? - and now that he was inside, he was glad they wouldn’t be sleeping rough, well, rougher.
Actually, plastic-covered weed bricks made a surprisingly comfortable bed after slogging through the jungle for a day, Mikey mused as he reclined in a little nest of pot next to the fire Frank had started beneath one of the bigger holes in the roof.
Frank ripped open a brick, grabbed a handful and dumped it on the fire. “To help us sleep,” he said when Mikey raised an eyebrow at him. Mikey didn’t really care, just as long as he was dry.
He cared a little more an hour or so later when he was so stoned he couldn’t remember his middle name.
“So that’s what I was doing there, when the bus arrived. Waiting for my mail,” Frank giggled. “But the fucking driver must have taken it with him, so I can kiss that good bye. Asshole,” said Frank, grabbing another couple of handfuls of weed and throwing them on the embers.
“Oh my god, dude,” Mikey said – his voice a deep, dark monotone. “Please, no more.”
“What’s the matter?” Frank said, and it sound to Mikey like it was one word, but that was probably just a reflection of how epically stoned his ears were. “Can’t handle your buzz?”
Mikey frowned. He could handle it; he just hadn’t, for ages. He was too busy for buzzes. He had novels to write so he could divest teenage girls and their mamas of their pennies... or something...
He started to cough and Frank laughed. “’S what I thought,” Frank shook his head. “All you get up in the big city is that weak assed hydroponic crap some college kid’s grown in the back of his closet. This shit,” he asid, thumping the weed bricks, “is the real deal. Grown in the wild, as God intended. He took a deep breath. “Fuckin’ A.”
“Give me a break,” Mikey managed. “It’s not like you were born here and grew it yourself. I know an, an East Coast fucking accent when I hear one. Where did you grow up? In the middle of the fucking pine barrens?”
Frank grinned. “Concrete jungle’s still a jungle, wise ass. Trenton, the Jerz.”
Mikey pushed himself up. “Me and Gee, we’re from Belllyfull... Belleville. Yeah.” He slumped back down again.
“No shit?”
“None.”
Frank nodded and smiled. “See, I knew I liked you. How’s the old town doing?”
Mikey shook his head. “No idea, haven’t left Manhattan in five years. Well, until yesterday,” he said.
Frank frowned. “Dude. If I lived that close to Lodi I’d be back every weekend.”
Mikey tried and failed to sit up again. He just let himself drift. “What the hell are you doing down here, man?”
Frank looked away. “Adventuring,” he said, as if that were obvious. “Seeing the world. Making my fortune. Saving beautiful - what are you, an accountant? Saving beautiful accountants in distress. You know. The usual.”
“You think I’m a,” Mikey said, and then made a pfft sound and looked away. He knew there was something else in Frank’s statement that he should be paying closer attention to, but right now he was just concentrating on not passing out.
“I happen to be a bestselling author,” Mikey said, somewhat morosely.
“You don’t say,” Frank said, and he reached past Mikey to grab the magazine where it was lying next to Frank’s Indiana Jones back pack.
Mikey immediately regretted speaking. God, his interview was in that thing.
Frank lay back on his weed chez lounge and started flicking through the magazine.
“Um...” Mikey said, and contemplated making a grab for the mag before Frank found the article.
Too late. “Holy,” Frank squeaked and sat up straight. Mikey cringed at Frank’s manic grin. “‘Way, whose hazel eyes and smooth looks - ’,” Frank looked up at Mikey, “That’s you. This is...Wow...”
Mikey just shook his head and hid his face in his hands.
“Way, who is so cute when he’s blushing,” Frank mocked and went back to reading. “Has tapped into a vein – if you’ll excuse the pun – of teen angst and discontent with the Moonlight series...’ Holy shit,” said Frank. “You like Bruce Willis? I love Bruce Willis!”
Mikey looked up, utterly bewildered. “What?”
“Moonlighting, right? The show? From the 80s? Man, that show rocked. Bruce Willis is the motherfucking king.”
Mikey gave Frank a blank look.
Frank’s face fell.
“Dude, I was like, three when that show was on,” Mikey said. “How were you even born?”
Frank blinked. “Oh, well, you know, re-runs and stuff? So, you’re not writing a novelization of Moonlighting?”
Mikey shook his head slowly.
Frank looked at him expectantly and waved his hand for him to continue.
Mikey took a deep breath. “It’s a, a, romanceaboutagirlandhervampirelovershemeetsathighschool.”
Frank shook his head. “I must be stoned out of my gourd," he said. "Because I could have sworn you just said a romance about a girl and a vampire at high school.”
Mikey looked at the fire really hard.
“Oh, oh please - please,” Frank crowed. “I may never stop laughing.”
Five minutes later it was possibly true; Frank might never stop laughing.
“Everyone,” Mikey said, lids at half-mast, “is a critic.”
And then Frank laughed so hard he actually did fall all the way back off the pile into the fuselage.
Mikey would have leapt up to help him, but he was too stoned and too pissed.
“Asshole,” muttered Mikey, pushing his glasses up his nose.
After a minute Frank climbed back into the nest. He hunkered down, snickering to himself from time to time as he continued to read.
“Dude,” he said, periodically. “Dude.”
*
Mikey might have slept, he wasn’t sure, but he came-to pretty blearily to see Frank standing and shucking his shirt.
His skin glistened in the firelight and Mikey had a few seconds to marvel at all the ink spreading out over his chest and belly before Frank pulled another shirt from his backpack and pulled it on. He used the old one to wipe his face as best he could and then tucked it into his bag.
“You awake?” he whispered, hunkering down again over his bag.
Mikey made a noncommittal noise, and Frank pivoted to look at him, cocking his head a bit. Mikey drew the inside of his cheek in between his teeth. It seemed stupid to pretend he’d been sleeping, but now Frank was staring at him like he knew Mikey’d watched while he changed.
Mikey’s face grew hot and he swallowed, suddenly wide-awake.
Frank scratched his jaw, like he was trying to figure something out, and then shuffled over to Mikey. “Hey, hey…” he said, nudging Mikey with his toe. “I’m sorry about giving you shit. You know, about your books.”
Mikey shrugged and pulled his shirt collar up a little. It was still warm, but there was a chilly little breeze coming from somewhere.
“Seriously,” Frank insisted.
Mikey shrugged. “They’re not. That’s not what I really want to write. I mean. They pay the bills,” Mikey said, aiming for nonchalance and hitting ‘surly teen tantrum’.
Frank raised his eyebrows. “You got something you’d rather be writing? Why the fuck aren’t you?”
Mikey sighed. “I owe the publisher,” Mikey said. “I owe the kids. I owe my folks.”
Frank nodded. “You know that’s total bullshit, right?”
Mikey looked at him.
“You gotta, you gotta live every day as if it was your last. Every day,” he said, poking a finger at Mikey with vehemence.
“Okay, Tarzan,” Mikey said.
Frank frowned.
Mikey rolled his eyes. “I mean, I guess that would be the case for you, living in the fucking jungle where, hello, every day could actually be your last. But I have responsibilities, you know?”
“Fuck you, 'responsibilities'," Frank said. "I got 'em. But I've got dreams too. And I’m not fucking waiting round for someone else to make them come true. That’s why I came down here.”
He pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to Mikey.
Mikey pushed himself up. The fire had died down although the plane was still pretty smoky. His head was a little clearer but he was still as high as a goddamned kite.
He unfolded the bit of paper. It was a clipping from a magazine – an advert with a picture of a record store: Rick’s Record Ranch.
Mikey blinked. “You want to buy some records?”
Frank gave him a look. “No, dickhead, I want to own Rick’s one day. I want a store like that, for, you know, music and shit. Books, comics, coffee - that kind of place. “
Mikey sat up a bit further. “Comics? That would be awesome. I’d – I mean, I’d love to hang out in a place like that.”
“I know right,” Frank breathed.
Mikey didn’t know why they were whispering, but there was something kind of comforting, and comfortable about it.
“But you’re not doing that; you’re here, playing Indiana Jones and rescuing me.”
Frank shrugged. “Might as well have an adventure or two, while I try to figure the rest out.”
Mikey nodded and gazed into the fire. He made it sound so reasonable.
“So,” Frank said after a second. Poking the fire with a stick. “You, ah, you got anyone waiting for you? Back home?”
Mikey snorted.
Frank edged away a little, and Mikey regretted it immediately.
"No," Mikey said quietly. "Unless you count a disgruntled Pepto-Bismol-addicted editor and thirty thousand lovelorn teenagers,” he muttered under his breath.
"Huh," Frank mumbled. "'S funny coz, you don’t look like the type."
"Don’t look like what type?"
"You know," Frank said, and he shoved the stick into the fire a little too far ending up with a charred twig. "The type who’d be single, or whatever."
Mikey blinked. "Are you calling me needy?"
Frank frowned. "I don't know," he said, poking at the fire with his booted foot instead. He shook his head as if to clear it. "Am I?"
Mikey frowned. He wasn't needy. He didn’t need anyone. Back home he could go whole days without seeing a single person and not even, like, care. At all. If he needed people he could, like, Skype and shit. He wasn’t needy. He scowled.
"Hey, man," Frank said. His eyes were huge in the flickering firelight. "I'm just dicking around. Don't pay attention to stoner talk, dude. You're - I'm sure you're fine and all. You just seem like the kind of guy who'd have the people, all the people, lined up. Or, I dunno. Okay, I'll shut the fuck up now."
"Dude, if I wasn't so wasted," Mikey said, lifting his arm slowly and trying to make a fist. He couldn’t. God, he was way more stoned than he'd realized.
Frank snorted and shook his head again. “Always with the violence, Mikeyway. Why so angry?”
Mikey rolled his head on his neck and gazed up at the ceiling. "Well, what about you?" he said, dropping his chin to his chest again. "Living out here in the wilderness all alone. Who all's waiting for you? Bongo the Bonobo?”
Frank giggled. “What the fuck? Bongo the Bonobo… Holy shit, sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon." Frank went quiet. "Man, I miss Saturday morning cartoons.”
“Me too,” said Mikey. They both sighed. Mikey looked up at Frank. They snickered together and Frank leaned over and covered Mikey's grinning face with his hand. Mikey pushed him away.
Frank's hand was warm and surprisingly soft for someone who went around swinging from bullwhips and wielding machetes. His fingers trailed along Mikey's cheek. The laugh died in Mikey's throat. He swallowed, but suddenly his mouth was pretty dry.
Frank's eyes, Mikey noticed, flicked down to his lips. He shuffled a little closer. "You ever get lonely, Mikey?"
Mikey leaned in a little. "I -"
Mikey didn't know what to say. He swallowed and looked away, pulling back from the fire a little.
Frank sighed. "Yeah, me neither," he said, looking away and pushing himself back onto his pile of weed.
Mikey blinked. “Um.”
"We've got a total bitch of a hike ahead of us,” said Frank, rolling onto his side. “You should, you know, get some sleep and whatnot."
Mikey's skin was still tingling, but he didn't say anything, didn't do what his body was screaming at him to do, and reach out for... what?
He rolled over and pulled his messenger bag under his head, shut his eyes and tried to sleep.
Part Two
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