bandombigbang 09: Part 4 [Perhaps Vampire...]
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“And that’s everything,” Brian finishes. He puts the papers he’d been using as reference down and sits back in his chair. “Any questions?”
“Yeah. How long is it going to take you losers to stay out of our way?” Matt says from the section of wall he’s currently holding up. “We’ve work to do, and we don’t need a couple of amateurs tripping up the works.”
Bob looks Matt over from his seat next to Brian. The guy hasn’t stopped complaining yet. He bitched for the entire walk back, he whined when Frank and Ray decided they wanted showers before anything else, he grumbled through raiding the cupboards, and he’d snipped through Brian bringing everyone up to speed from his and Bob’s end of things. Bob has no idea how the other four have dealt with living with him; he’s known the guy for four hours, and he already wants to tear his head off and ram it firmly up his ass.
“And just how many werewolves have you managed to kill off?” Bob asks quietly. “Because this isn’t our first time around the mulberry bush.”
Matt bristles, his shoulders coming up off of the wall. “Listen, asshole...”
“Matt, would you knock it off already?” Ray sighs. He runs a hand through his hair, which is still fluffy despite it still being wet from his shower. “We haven’t fought werewolves before and they have. It’s a logical choice to team up with them.”
“Plus they just fed us,” Frank pipes in. He’s been quiet since his shower, either standing away from everybody else or curling up in a chair by himself. And other than the occasional tapping of a finger or a foot, there’s no sign of the barely repressed energy from the walk back to the house. Bob realizes that he doesn’t know the guy well enough to have a say anything one way or the other about Frank’s habits, but seeing him sitting so still is fucking creepy. “I say that gives them extra points in the goodwill column.”
“You would,” Matt growls before he pushes away from the wall. “I’m going to walk the perimeter; we wouldn’t want you pussies being eaten in your fucking sleep.” All of the windows in the living room shake when Matt slams out of the house.
“He always like that?” Brian asks in the resulting silence.
Mikey shakes his head. He’s looking through one of the stacks of notes Janice had left behind, Gerard reading quietly over his shoulder. “He’s been weirder the last couple of months.”
Frank snorts. “Yeah, if by weirder you mean ‘pissy little bitch’.”
“Frank, please, can we not do this again?” Ray sighs. “You egging him on isn’t helping, you know.”
Frank snorts again but doesn’t reply. Instead he swings to his feet, grabbing his plate from the side table and stalking over to the kitchen.
“There’s been some tension lately,” Ray admits quietly over the sound of Frank washing the dishes. He shrugs at the questioning look Brain gives him. “We had this case a few months ago, some sort of demon energy sucker. The thing had been gathering energy to open this portal doorway to some hell dimension for its master to come through.”
“Hm, fun,” Brian comments.
“Yeah,” Ray nods. “Well, it nailed Matt pretty bad in the fight. I mean, we thought he was dead for a minute or two there before we killed it. Well, Mikey and Gee did anyway - Frank and I had gotten tangled up in some rope and shit, and it dropped a fucking case of naked dolls on our heads.” Ray yawns before continuing. “Anyway, Matt’s been a little grumpy ever since.”
“And Frank’s his favorite target,” Bob fills in. Makes sense, in a sort of retarded middle school way. Doesn’t change that he doesn’t like Matt. “What kind of demon was it?”
“Hilinp.”
“Huh,” Brian says. He shrugs and starts straightening the clutter on the table in front of him. “You two have any ideas for hunting these assholes?”
“Thought you two had all the experience?” Gerard asks. Mikey glances up from the papers, eyebrow cocked.
Bob shrugs. “We took a couple out about six months ago, but suggestions are always welcome.”
“Set a trap,” Gerard says. He takes one of the papers out of Mikey’s hands and passes it over to Brian. “That clearing we were in, that’s where they’ve been hanging out.”
“It’s marked on the map, too,” Bob agrees. That’s why they’d headed out there earlier. Brian had thought they could pretend to stumble in on the werewolves like a couple of stupid, drunk tourists and take them out in the resulting confusion. He hadn’t counted on ending up lost like a couple of stupid tourists.
“We found some fur on a couple of the bushes, so they’re definitely coming around,” Ray confirms.
“Fur? Still there from last month?”
Ray blushes. “Frank jumped me,” he mumbles.
“He had to crawl under a bush to get away from him!” Gerard giggles. He falls against Mikey, almost knocking both of them to the floor. Mikey sighs and pushes Gerard behind him, so that Gerard lands between him and the back of the seat.
“The pieces were lodged down at the bottom,” Ray explains. He grabs a throw pillow and tosses at Gerard. “Dude, shut up. You had an idea?”
Gerard hiccups, but he manages to get himself back under control. He doesn’t move from behind Mikey, though. “Yeah. We set a trap. A bunch of us can hide in the trees and a couple of us stay in the clearing as bait.”
“Bait, huh?” Brian asks. He turns to Bob with a smirk on his face.
Bob doesn’t like the look on his face one bit. “No, Schechter. Not a chance in hell.”
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One of these days, Bob is going to find a way to talk Brian out of the shit he makes Bob do, seriously. The only condolence he has for once again being used as bait is at least this time he isn’t being locked away in a small box with the short, tattooed and spazzy guy.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t negate the fact that he does have to deal with the short, tattooed and spazzy guy who, like Pete, doesn’t understand the idea of personal space. Frank had spent the entire night right next to Bob, annoying him with stupid questions, poking him to gain his attention, and even jumping on his back demanding a piggyback ride at one point.
Even more unfortunate is the werewolves don’t show that night. Bob could hear them howling in the distance, but that is it. Which means Bob is going to have to do this again tomorrow. And again in a month if they don’t show then.
Frank pokes him again on the way back to the house. Then he runs off to jump on Ray’s back when Bob growls and swats at him.
“You’re blushing,” Brian comments idly.
“You’re a dead man walking,” Bob snaps back. Brian just hums and saunters away to pull Frank off of Gerard before they fall and he has to take someone to the hospital. Brian, Bob has found, doesn’t know how to turn off his manager mode; stick him with a group of immature guys who don’t act like they know how to take care of themselves and Brian starts to mother hen them. It’d be cute if Bob didn’t want to kill someone.
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Brian manhandles Bob out of the room by his collar. “You can’t kill him, Bryar.”
“Watch me,” Bob growls. He swats at Brian’s hands and tries to twist out of Brian’s grasp without any success. “I’m gonna throw him through the fucking window.”
“You can’t,” Brian repeats. He pushes Bob into the guest room they are sharing (because the house is fucking creepy with only a handful of people in it, and it isn’t like either of them really know the other group well enough to trust them, not really, and besides the room isn’t really a room in the sense that most people think when they think ‘room’. Seriously, it’s like a house set within a house, and the creepiest part is that it’s one of four.) and down into a chair. Then Brian shuts and locks the door.
“We may only be on the second floor, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt the bastard,” Bob promises. “I’ll even make sure to open the window first so Janice doesn’t have to replace it.”
“No, Bryar. I mean you can’t kill him, even if you were throwing him off the Empire State Building,” Brian snaps. He turns around and glares at Bob. “That isn’t Matt.”
Bob looks at Brian for a long moment, then shakes his head. “You’re delusional. Did you hit your head on a tree branch or something?”
“What? No, Bryar, shut up,” Brian orders. “What I’m saying is that thing in that room masquerading as Matt? It isn’t Matt. That’s a demon wearing a Matt suit. And I’m pretty sure that’s why the other four are acting like drunks and druggies without the added plus of actually taking the drugs or drinking the alcohol.”
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?” Bob repeats.
“Ugh, don’t make me slap you, Bryar,” Brian groans. He goes over to his bag and pulls out a notebook. He flips it open to a page he’d bookmarked, then passes it to Bob.
It’s the notebook that Andy had given them, the one with a number of Fall Out Boy’s hunts rewritten as a sort of study guide. Brian had read through the entire thing like it was water in the fucking desert; Bob had glanced through it and gone back to practicing his hand-to-hand with Andy. It’s not like Bob doesn’t like doing research and shit, but old case files are a little dry.
Brian has the notebook open to the case where one of Andy’s friend’s friend’s cousin had been killed by a demon, then the demon had taken over the cousin’s body. The demon had run around for a few months sucking up energy from the people around it like a sponge. By the time someone had realized that the cousin wasn’t actually the cousin anymore, the demon had been so powerful that the members of Fall Out Boy almost weren’t able to kill it.
“You have to be kidding me,” Bob says.
Brian smiles grimly. “Nope. Ray said that they fought a Hilinp demon right before Matt and everyone started acting weird, right? Well, that’s the same kind of demon that almost killed Andy by using Pete as a skewering rod.”
Bob puts the notebook down so that he can cradle his head in his hands. His fucking life, seriously. He takes a few deep breaths to calm down before he lifts his head to look at Brian. “Please tell me you already have a way to kill the bastard?”
“Yeah. Andy has it all written down in there, plus Joe’s instructions for the potion part of the spell.” Brian sits down on the bed across from Bob and he’s frowning. “That’s not the problem.”
“Let me guess. We can’t just cast the spell on the Matt-suit, because the four of them would believe we’re killing him and that would negate the spell,” Bob sums up.
“Got it in one,” Brian agrees. “We have to make him show his true colors, and that isn’t going to happen easily.”
“Great,” Bob sighs. They’re fucked. “I fucking hate magic. And demons. They really fucking suck.”
“Any ideas?” Brian asks. “Because I’ve been going over this in my head for the last day, and I haven’t thought of a thing.”
Bob shrugs. “Not unless you think letting one of the werewolves eat him would work.”
Bob had meant that as a bad joke, but Brian’s eyes light up in a way that makes Bob want to hide himself in a fallout bunker. This is going to end so badly for him, he can see it now.
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Actually, as it turns out, it mostly just ends badly for Matt. Or, well, it does for the Matt-suit. Bob just ends up with a sprained wrist (from holding down the Matt-suit so Brian could to his magic thing) and another ruined pair of jeans (from both the werewolves getting far too fucking close for Bob’s comfort and Ray’s attempts to pull Bob off of the Matt-Suit), but at least he isn’t dead.
“I’m confused,” Gerard repeats.
They’re back at the house, spread out in front of the fireplace recapping the evening. Brian’s explained everything twice now, and Bob is itching for a shower, some more food, and a full nine hours of sleep. He isn’t sure he can handle Brian going through it again.
Apparently neither can Brian because he just sums it up as, “Matt was killed by that Hilinp demon you fought a few months ago. It’s spent the time since then sucking you dry of any and all of your positive energies and then feeding off of the resulting negative ones. We couldn’t cast the spell to kill it before it showed its true colors, because the magic doesn’t work if the people in attendance animatedly believe the demon isn’t a demon - no, I can’t explain it any better than that.”
“So, what you’re saying is if that werewolf hadn’t bitten Matt, we’d still be dealing with a demon,” Ray says.
Bob shrugs. “It was that or shoot him with the crossbow.”
“Bob was gunning for the crossbow,” Brian says.
Frank snorts. He’s laying on the floor in front of the couch Brian and Bob are sharing. “Dude, I would have let him. Matt’s been an asshole for too fucking long.” He pauses. “Okay, not Matt. Whatever.” He waves his hand in the air.
“How’d you know about the spell?” Mikey asks. Bob thinks that the first thing the guy has said since that first night in the clearing. “And what was it going to do with all that energy?”
“It was probably trying to open a portal to one of the further hell dimensions so others could follow it here. A couple friends of ours fought another Hilinp a couple of years ago, that was that one’s MO so we’re assuming that it’s the same for this one,” Brian explains. He groans and tries to stretch, pulling up short when the movement tugs at his shoulder - the Matt-suit had slammed him around pretty hard before they’d managed to pin it long enough to pour the potion down its throat.
“Okay, I’m done. I’m taking a fucking shower and sleeping for the next twelve hours,” Brian announces as he climbs gingerly to his feet. “I’ll kill anyone who bothers me before then.” With that he steps over Frank and disappears upstairs.
“He serious?” Ray asks Bob.
Bob just nods tiredly. “You have no idea.” He sighs. Might as well get something to eat, because he isn’t going to have the chance to shower anytime soon. He just has to keep from collapsing until Brian actually falls asleep, because once Brian’s out, he’s out, and then a fucking concert could play in there, and Brian wouldn’t know the difference.
“I’m making some more sandwiches, anyone want some?” He asks as he walks to the kitchen. He can totally keep from falling asleep until Brian is. Totally.
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After calling and talking to Andy, they decide to hang out at the lodge for a couple more weeks as a precaution. Andy couldn’t tell them how long the demon’s energy suckage is likely to keep affecting them, and it isn’t like they all could use a bit of a break. So they all hang out and get to know each other, and nothing too interesting happens.
Well, until fucking demon-bird shows up five days after the full moon, just appears in the middle of breakfast, sitting at the head of the table and fucking preening.
It uses the same old ‘stop shit in mid-air’ trick it used on Andy when Frank, Ray, and, surprisingly, Mikey, throw knives at it as soon as they hear the POP! “That wasn’t very nice, Frank Anthony Iero Jr, Raymond Manuel Toro-Ortiz, Michael James Way. You should exercise your manners, as I know all of your mothers taught you better.”
Bob and Brian just continue to eat, ignoring Kilky as much as it is possible to ignore an arrogant peacock-demon.
“Um, guys? This a friend of yours?” Ray asks after a minute.
Bob shakes his head. “Nope. Just a peacock-demon.” He takes a bite of his toast.
“Ignore him, and he’ll go away in a minute,” Brian adds, popping a blueberry into his mouth.
“I am not amused, Robert Nathaniel Cory Bryar, Brian Adam Schechter,” Kilky snaps. “You do not just ignore the messenger of the gods!”
“Did I forget to mention that it’s delusional, too?” Bob asks. He takes a long sip of his coffee. “Sorry about that: it’s delusional.”
Kilky puffs itself up and lets out a loud shriek that forces everyone to cover their ears. Once everyone is glaring at it, it settles down, tucking the tentacles back under its feathers. “Now that I have your attention, I’ll continue with my task.”
Bob waves him off. “Fuck off, bird-brain. We did what you wanted, now go the fuck away.”
“Did we forget to mention that Cortez taught us his little spell for banishing you?” Brian adds. He sketches a pattern out into the air as he talks. “I’d be more than happy to demonstrate.”
“You two are complete insufferable,” Kilky snaps. “You may believe you’ve accomplished all the tasks my masters, the gods, have put forth for you, Robert Nathaniel Cory Bryar, but you would be wrong. They congratulate you on a task well done, but you’ve only just started down this path.”
“Oh, fuck off, Kilky! Both you and your ‘masters’ can sit on a jagged stump and rotate until the world ends for all I care,” Bob snaps. He goes back to his breakfast, downing the last of his coffee to keep from trying to kill the thing. As much as he would like to, that would probably just cause more problems than it would be worth. “Brian, if you would get rid of the trash?”
Brian grins evilly. “Sure thing, Bob.” He finishes the last section of the pattern and snaps his fingers, and Kilky disappears with a loud squawk. “There, the trash is taken care of. Can you pass the butter, Gerard?”
Gerard passes the butter to Brian with his head cocked quizzically. “Do we ask?”
“It isn’t really worth it.” Brian shakes his head. “As far as we can figure it out, the thing is pretty much harmless.”
“Oh,” Gerard says. He reaches over and picks a feather out of Brian’s hair. “So it’s just the feathers, then?”
Bob scowls down at his plate, which is covered in feathers. “Yep.”
“Something about it seemed familiar,” Ray murmurs.
“What was that, Ray?” Brian asks.
Ray shakes his head. “Nothing, man. Bob, do you want another plate? I think Mikey might have left something behind.”
“Oh, fuck you, Toro,” Mikey growls.
So, yeah. Nothing interesting happens. Bob spends most of his time hanging out with Mikey and Frank, because Brian takes to spending all of his time with Gerard and Ray.
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Bob can’t figure out what’s up with Brian. He’s fucking following Gerard and Ray around like a little puppy dog, and it isn’t because Brian’s in mother-hen-manager mode. No, this is something completely different, and Bob is having the hardest time pining down just what that something is. So when Frank isn’t distracting him by being a spastic fucking monkey-man and when Mikey isn’t accidentally lighting shit on fire or almost slicing his hands off, Bob is watching Brian with Gerard and Ray.
It finally comes to Bob at the tail end of their two weeks at the house. Bob and Brian are hanging out in the living room while the others are wandering around the grounds. Bob is just thinking that Ray must be on some sort of business call out on the porch when he realizes that he knows what the way Brian is staring at Ray, how Brian’s been staring at Ray and Gerard for the last week, what all that means.
“You’ve got a fucking crush!” Bob laughs as it finally clicks.
“Shut up, asshole,” Brian snaps, his head whipping around to glare at Bob, but he can’t hide the blush creeping up over his cheeks from Bob.
“Holy shit! You do!” Bob grabs at Brian’s shoulder, ignoring Brian’s attempts to swat him away. “You haven’t had a crush on anyone in fucking years. Which one is it?”
“Christ, Bryar, what are we? Twelve-year-old girls at a slumber party?” Brian snaps. But he doesn’t deny what Bob is saying.
Bob just about dies at that. “Both of them? That’s just fucking priceless, Cupcake. Can I call your mother and let her know about your upcoming nuptials?”
Brian growls at him, but that just makes Bob laugh harder. Finally Brian just tackles him to the floor and tries to beat him into silence.
That’s how Ray and the rest find them twenty minutes later. Brian has Bob pinned on his stomach and is punching him repeatedly in the shoulders, muttering, “Shut up! Shut up! I swear I will kill you, asshole, shut up!” Bob is still laughing, though he’s gone from loud belly laughs to giggles.
“Should we leave you guys alone?” Ray asks.
“No, no,” Brian says quickly. He jumps to his feet as he’s saying that, which just sets Bob off again. Brian kicks him hard in the ribs; Bob rolls away from him. “Ignore him, he’s being an idiot.”
“Right,” Ray says, drawing the word out several extra syllables. He’s watching both Brian and Bob closely.
“You’re pretty vicious, dude,” Gerard comments.
“Only when needed,” Brian clarifies. “What’d you need?”
“Oh!” Ray shakes his head, snapping out of his thoughts. “I was just talking to me and Gee’s, um, employers? I guess that’s what you can call them. Anyway, I think I know what’s up with the peacock.”
Bob takes a deep breath, rolling to his feet. He’s smirking at Brian when he asks, “Really?”
Ray rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. See, technically Gee and I work for this group called the Watcher’s Council. Mostly they deal with the Slayer and anything else that deals with her, but seeing as she’s only one person, they fund people like us to go around and hunt the shit she’ll never be able to get at.”
Brian blinks but nods once he’s processed the information. “Okay, you’re getting paid to do this shit, understood.”
“That’s great for you, really,” Bob adds. “But I’m more interested in what you know about Kilky.”
“You’re an impatient fucker, aren’t you?” Frank snorts. He flops down onto one of the couches next to Mikey and ignores Bob’s glare.
“Right, I was getting to that,” Ray says. “Well, there was this whole big thing a couple of years ago and a bunch of the Watchers split from the main group.”
“These guys are seriously insane,” Gerard adds. “And about twice as arrogant as the rest of the Watchers, which is seriously arrogant, you have no idea. I mean, they’re, like, uber upper crust old British guys.”
“Right,” Ray repeats. “Anyway, our...supervisor? Yeah, that works. Anyway, our supervisor still talks with some of the others from this rogue group, and he thinks they might be calling up demons to do their bidding.”
“And Kilky might just be one of those demons,” Brian finishes. He and Bob share a long look before Brian sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How the hell did they latch onto Bob then?”
“One of them is a Seer,” Ray explains. He shrugs. “He probably Saw something and is using it as an excuse.”
Something tells Bob that there’s definitely more to it, but he’s not going to prod that particular can of worms. He’s done what the prophecy asked, and he’s going to leave it at that for now. “Good to know. Where do I send a letter of complaint?”
“You might want to hold off on that, Bryar,” Frank says. He’s grinning widely.
Bob doesn’t think he’s going to like this. Still, he has to ask, “Why’s that, Iero?”
Ray rubs the back of his neck again. “They want to offer you guys a job.”
“They spend months harassing us, and now they want us to work for them?” Brian asks, incredulous. Bob just settles for rolling his eyes and plopping down on the couch across from Frank and Mikey. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.” Gerard nods. “Well, not like they’ll kill you if you don’t work for them, but totally serious. They can be assholes to work for at times, but they offer a great benefit plan.”
“Mostly, they let us do our own thing, and they pay for it,” Ray says.
“We do a lot of freelance, too,” Mikey puts in. “‘Cause I don’t work for them.”
“Neither do I,” Frank admits. “But I’m sort of grandfathered in. So I have to deal with them as much as I’d like not to.”
“You aren’t British,” Bob points out.
“Nope, but my grandmother’s sister was a Slayer. My family’s been dealing with the WC ever since,” Frank explains. Then he shrugs. “There are worse gigs.”
“They’ve sent an arrogant, psychotic peacock-demon to harass us for months,” Brian repeats.
“Technically, that was the rogue group, not the main Watcher’s Council,” Ray points out. “They’re offering me and Gee a spot on the Hellmouth in Arizona.”
“Well, we’ve sort of demanded it, but that works, too,” Gerard says. He looks at Brian. “Mikey’s coming with us. We’re extending the offer to you guys.”
Brian looks at Bob, who shrugs. “What’s a Hellmouth?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. A mouth of hell. Really nasty shit crops up around them, and occasionally something really evil tries to crawl out of it,” Ray explains. “We’ll be the first wave team, keeping back the forces of evil, yadda yadda yadda.”
“It’s better than wandering around the country, hoping to find a motel that isn’t going to cringe at the blood and slime stains,” Gerard points out. Then he ducks his head. “Plus, I’m still a little...off since Matt, you know? It’ll be easier to recover stationed in one spot.”
Brian nods at that. “Point.”
He looks at Bob who shakes his head. He doesn’t want to deal with the denizens of hell when the small time cases are already enough. Also watching Brian moon over Ray and Gerard might be funny for the first week or so, but then it’d get really old, really fast.
“Go ahead, Cupcake. I don’t mind being on the road, but I know how much you like your luxuries,” Bob leers, his eyes flicking over to Ray and Gerard momentarily before settling on Brian again.
Brian glares. “Don’t fucking start, asshole.”
“So, does that mean you’re interested?” Gerard asks. “Because we can totally do a trial run if that’ll get you interested.”
Bob snorts. “Oh, he’s interested, trust me.”
“Awesome!” Gerard even claps in his excitement. “And Bob can go with Frankie, because Frank doesn’t like staying in one place either! The Watcher’s Council already has a house in Snowflake, furnished and everything from the last agent out there, so we just have to drive down and settle in.”
Bob snorts. “Snowflake?”
“Perfect name for a Hellmouth, don’t you think?” Frank laughs.
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The nightmare hasn’t changed. The sun is still hot, the ground is still dusty, the wind is still blowing, and the dead bodies are still dead bodies. Bob takes a small measure of comfort from the lack of the feathers. That probably means he isn’t going to have to deal with Kilky anymore. Hopefully anyway.
Bob doesn’t move any closer to the bodies, but he can now make out who the bodies belong to further out. Ray and Gerard are draped over a large flat rock next to each other while Mikey’s body covers a smaller one that looks female, but Bob can’t make anything else out. He’s sure he doesn’t want to.
He stares for a little while longer, taking in as many details as he can, then he turns back to the van.
Just a nightmare. He’s sure of that now.
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Snowflake, Arizona is small town, southwestern USA at its finest. It is quant, cute, and nothing lends itself to the thought that Snowflake is actually a Hellmouth teeming with enough supernatural mumbo-jumbo to bring about the next great apocalypse.
Bob would be killing someone within a week from boredom if he had to stay, seriously.
“Oh, shut up, Bryar,” Brian snaps when Bob voices this opinion one too many times.
He, Ray, Gerard, and Mikey have moved into the two storey, three bedroom house on the outskirts of town without much of an issue. Bob wasn’t surprised to see Ray and Gerard taking the master bedroom as their own, and Bob, Frank, and Mikey have already made bets on how long it’ll take before Brian moves in there, too.
“Seriously, you’re going to be stuck in a van with Frank Iero. I’m not exactly sure you have the better end of the deal,” Brian continues. Then he smirks. “I bet that’s exactly how you want it, isn’t it? The space and privacy to make your move.”
Bob throws a pair of (unfortunately) clean socks at Brian. “Yeah, that’s why I’ve signed on for this. I mean, I’m not playing house or anything...”
“Oh, fuck you, Bryar!” Brian snaps. He’s laughing as he throws the socks back at Bob though, and Bob just puts them into his duffle.
He’s almost completely repacked. He and Frank are heading out in the morning for Oklahoma to check out that Trickster rumor. Bob’s pretty sure that it’ll turn out to be nothing more than a hoax to draw in the tourists, but that’ll make it an even better choice to start out with Frank.
“You still worrying about those dreams?” Brian asks. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Bob pack, all traces of amusement gone.
Bob shakes his head. “As cheesy as it is, whatever will be will be. I’ll keep an eye on Frank, you keep an eye on the rest of them, and we’ll try not to die.” He shrugs. “What else is there to do?”
Brian cocks his head to the side. “Well, you could go back to doing sound fulltime. I’m sure Fall Out Boy would take you back. Cork Tree is really taking off, and I think they’re supposed to be headlining their next tour.”
Bob rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause I’m going to trade Frank in for Wentz. Right.”
“Aha! You admit it!”
“Admit what? Did you hit your head again?” Bob demands. Brian has been pushing Bob for the last week about his feelings for Frank, which Bob insists are more similar to his feelings for Pete than Brian’s are for Ray and Gerard, but then Brian points out that Bob is willingly going out on the road with Frank alone. Bob usually tells Brian to shut up right about then.
“You can’t still be denying it,” Brian sighs.
“Cupcake, seriously, there is nothing to confirm or deny. I do not have a crush on Frank Iero,” Bob repeats for the thirtieth time.
Brian shakes his head again. “We’ll see about that, Bryar. We shall see.”
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It doesn’t take the two of them long to fall into an easy friendship. Frank can be an annoying ass but, for the most part, he knows when to back off. It also helps that he takes the hunting thing more serious than even Bob does. Bob asks him about his work ethic after a couple of weeks on the road, and Frank just shrugs.
“I grew up around this stuff,” he explains. “I mean, my dad’s aunt was a Slayer, so the hunting bit is in my veins. My mom did her best to give me a normal childhood, but normal is relative, you know? Plus, one of my dad’s friends fucked up royally on this hunt once, just because he wasn’t paying attention. It was supposed to be an easy hunt, and it almost killed my dad. It did leave him with this huge scar down his side.”
Frank shrugs again, taking a long pull of his beer. The light from the bar reflexes in his eyes, and for a second he looks impossibly old. Then he smiles, and the moment passes. “So I put a hundred and ten into the hunting. I’m not about to let my partner die on me.”
Bob snorts, but he smiles back. “Good to hear, Iero.” He tilts his beer toward Frank and they toast to each other, and to their continued health.
Frank, Bob decides, isn’t Brian, but that’s okay. There’s pretty much no one else Bob would want to be out on the road with. And Bob isn’t sure he wants to be admitting to that, no matter that it is the truth, because he knows Brian is laughing somewhere in Snowflake now at Bob’s expense, even though Brian has no idea why.
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Bob curses loudly when he finally sees the damage done to his shirt and jeans. There are horizontal tears across the back of the pant legs from the back pocket to down past the knees, and the left shoulder on the shirt is literally hanging on by a thread while the right has been torn to shreds. Those tiny, nasty, little bastards certainly did a number to his clothes, and if he wasn't so pissed, he'd be delirious with happiness that the corresponding portions of his body didn't match the clothes.
"What, man?" Frank asks from where he's hopping around the tiny handicap bathroom, half-in, half-out of his own torn and tattered jeans. "Those your favorites or something?"
"No," Bob scowls. He scowls so he won't do something completely out of character, like pout. Fuck, he's been spending too much time with Frank. "These were my last decent pair. I'm going to look like some wanna-be rent boy until I can buy some more."
Frank stops hopping around so that he can stare at Bob. Frank only has one leg free, the material from that half of the pants pools around his feet while the other leg is still wrapped tightly around Frank's knee. Bob wants to call him on how ridiculous he looks, but Bob also realizes that he's standing around in a clean t-shirt, threadbare boxers, and filthy socks, and he’s commenting on how he looks like a rent boy - not so much room to talk.
"What?" Bob grumbles when it becomes apparent that Frank is just going to continue his imitation of a half-dressed statue.
"Dude," Frank says. His eyes are wide enough that Bob's half-tempted to liken him to a hobbit from the Lord of the Rings movies. Bob refrains mostly because he doesn't want to find out that hobbits actually exist and aren't fun, food loving creatures, but little terrifying monsters who like to eat children. "Don't you know how to repair clothing?"
Bob shrugs. "It hasn't really been something I've had to worry too much about."
Frank rolls his eyes and goes back to taking off his clothes. Bob does not watch. Really. "Seriously, dude, you are an idiot. Just sew up the holes."
"Right." Bob makes sure to put the full breadth of his skepticism into his voice.
"Seriously. I do it all the time." Frank jerks his thumb over his shoulder once he finishes pulling on another pair of jeans. Jeans with holes in the knees but not anywhere else. Bob isn’t disappointed at all. That Brian voice in his head really needs to shut the fuck up. "There's a sewing kit in my bag. Have at it."
|-|
Frank drives that night to the first motel they find in the next state over. Bob spends the trip in the back of the van with one of the Joe Specials, sewing his little heart out and cursing every time he stabs himself with the needle.
Frank spends most of the trip laughing while Bob blushes and bleeds.
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"Okay. You really haven't done this before," Frank says the next morning after Bob tries on his newly sewn jeans. He eyes the pants with something close to suspicion but even closer to distain. The left leg is two inches shorter than the right, and the right leg is hanging three inches above Bob's ankle. "You seriously, seriously suck at this. Seriously."
Bob blushes. "Shut up."
"No, really," Frank giggles. "So bad."
"No, really," Bob mocks. "Shut up." He turns away from Frank as he takes off the pants, which he then tries to stuff back into his duffle.
Tries being the operative word as Frank grabs them from Bob just as Bob is stuffing them into the duffle.
"Wait. Wait, man. I can fix this, seriously. No worries."
"Really," Bob says, again unable - unwilling - to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He finds himself doing that more than he'd expected.
Frank nods, jeans wrapped around his forearm. He bounces up and down as he says, "Here, I'll make a deal with you. I'll take care of mending shit, if you take care of making sure that the van and shit stays in tip-top shape."
Bob raises an eyebrow at Frank. "I already do that."
Frank shrugs. "Okay. Well, at least now you're getting something out of the deal!"
"Because knowing that the van isn't going to break down on some deserted road so that we end up eaten by crazed supernatural creatures or knowing that we'll have the proper supplies to take care of slash recover from that or a similar issue when it does happen, because it will, isn't enough?" Bob deadpans.
Frank nods enthusiastically. "Exactly."
Bob throws his arms up in the air. “Fine. Whatever. Fix them; I don’t care.” He turns back to his duffle to search for another pair of jeans that isn’t too destroyed for him to wear. Standing around in his boxers isn’t embarrassing enough, no. He has to be fucking mocked while standing around half-naked. Awesome.
“Just wait, dude! This will turn out awesome. My grandma taught me how to sew when I was little,” Frank giggles. “I also do an awesome cross-stitch!”
|-|
Frank does do an awesome cross-stitch. Bob just wishes he hadn’t decided to demonstrate on Bob’s favorite pair of jeans. With butterflies. If the guy wasn’t so fucking Frank, which Bob has unfortunately developed a deep, deep weakness for, Bob would kill him. Really.
Yeah, Bob doesn’t believe that either. Which is sort of the problem.
|-|
They’re holed up in a crypt waiting for sunrise. Bob had never though he’d be locked up in a crypt with zombie-vampires lurking outside, trying their damnedest to find a way in to eat his brains. Or drink his blood. It’s probably both. Bob honestly isn’t too sure. And arguing semantics, especially in his own head where the only participants are himself and himself, doesn’t make any sense. Because he’d be very much dead with any of the possible options.
“Gee is going to have a field day with this!” Frank exclaims for the fifth time in ten minutes. He’s just as excited by the prospect as he was the first time he’d said it, judging by the way he’s bouncing on the edge of the tomb he’s declared his seat for the duration. “Hybrids! Between zombies and vampires! Zompires! So cool!”
Bob might even agree with him, except for how he’s bleeding through the makeshift bandage from where one of the fuckers managed to grab him before he and Frank made it inside the crypt. Bob rolls his eyes, and goes back to sharpening his knife. Not that the knife needs it. Bob just needs to have something to do with his hands, because the fucking zompires are screeching and moaning like some kind of demented demon orgy, and it’s driving Bob slowly insane. Bob doesn’t quite trust himself to deal with the creatures outside and Frank inside without something else to focus on.
“Yeah, cool,” he mutters in his driest tone. They’ve been hunting long enough now that Bob doesn’t have to look up from his hands to know that Frank is glaring at him.
“It is cool, don’t even try to deny it,” Frank scowls. Well, Bob can’t see if Frank’s scowling because he’s still watching his hands, but Frank’s voice drops a little and goes sort of gravelly when he scowls.
Bob could just stab himself for actually knowing that. Sure it’s helpful to know what Frank sounds like in any given situation, so that Bob can track him without his eyes if the need arises, but Bob knows better than that. He really, really needs to get over this stupid fucking crush. Seriously.
“I wonder how it happened anyway,” Frank continues. He’s kicking his heels against the side of the tomb, making a cloud of dust that tickles Bob’s nose. “I can’t see a vamp actually snacking on a zombie. I mean, they’re creatures of evil and all that, but there has to be a line somewhere, ya know?”
“Maybe a vampire was bitten by a zombie,” Bob suggests idly, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand. He holds up the blade to the faint moonlight coming in the barred windows near the roof of the crypt, too small for anything but light and small rodents to come through, and nods at what he sees. Then he puts the knife back in its sheath, and the whetstone back into its carrying bag.
Frank hums. “I can see that. But wouldn’t the fact that vampires are technically dead stop the zombie virus from spreading?”
Bob looks at Frank for a moment, overcome again that this is his fucking life now. “Dude. Really? Who cares?” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the creatures they can’t see because of a foot and a half of stone and a couple of solid wrought iron doors. “They’re trying to eat us.”
Frank frowns. “Knowing the particulars of how the creatures came about is an excellent way of coming to an understanding in how to best extract and eradicate them.”
Bob blinks. He hates it when Frank starts acting like a Watcher. Granted, Bob’s only met the one that tried to convince him of ‘joining the good fight’ or whatever, but Bob’s pretty sure that the rest of the Council is just as starchy. Frank acting like that guy is just plain annoying. And creepy. Really, really fucking creepy. “Whatever, man. They explode when you stake or behead them. Hopefully the sun rising will do the same to them that it does to regular old vampires. That’s all I need to know.”
“What, and preventing this from happening again isn’t a priority?” Frank snaps. He’s definitely scowling now.
“You suddenly have the urge to make up pamphlets and go crypt to crypt making sure vampires avoid zombies?” Bob asks, eyebrow raised. “Isn’t that more Gerard’s gig?”
Frank rolls his eyes. He flops backwards on the tomb, staring at the ceiling and kicking his feet harder against its side. “Whatever.”
Bob watches him for a few minutes before he rolls his own eyes. Frank’s been cranky the entire week, but considering that week has included not only the present zompires, but two poltergeists and a creepy ass gypsy caravan, Frank being cranky isn’t a surprise. Bob’s cranky, too. They need a fucking vacation.
“We need a fucking vacation, man,” Frank sighs.
Bob blinks but shrugs. It isn’t like he doesn’t agree. “Yeah. We could head back to Snowflake after this case. Andy’s mentioned something about a case up in Canada, but he doesn’t have any concrete details yet.”
“Not Vancouver. Vancouver is seriously the supernatural pits,” Frank says. He pushes himself up onto one elbow. “Weird shit happens in Vancouver; you totally aren’t ready for Vancouver.”
Bob snorts. “You just like saying Vancouver.”
Frank smirks, but doesn’t agree or disagree. Then he grimaces when a particularly sharp shriek pierces the air. “Fuck, can’t they at least do that in key?”
“They’re the undead, Iero,” Bob points out. “Everything they are is supposed to make us mere humans uneasy.”
Frank grumbles, rubbing at his ear. “You know what I miss?” he asks after a few minutes.
“Um. Your mom?”
“Fuck you, Bryar. Leave my mother out of this,” Frank flips him off. “No, I miss going to shows. Fuck, I miss being part of the shows. Playing, man. This job fucking sucks.”
Bob doesn’t really know what to say to that. Sure he agrees, but. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing for that.”
Frank flips him off again. “What, you trying to tell me that you don’t miss going out for the night and not having to worry about anything worse than a couple of drunks bothering you?”
Bob shrugs. “Not really, no.”
Frank stares at him for a long moment then rolls his eyes. “Right. I forgot. Bob Bryar is the world’s biggest badass. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Bob crosses his arms over his chest and scowls at the floor. “It isn’t like that.”
“Then what’s it like, man,” Frank demands. “You know this strong and silent routine of yours sucks, right? I practically spill my entire life story to you, and all I know about you is that you grew up in Chicago, you did sound for awhile, and now you hunt.”
Bob rolls his eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“Oh, you’re just going to start talking now? What the fuck, Bryar?”
“It isn’t like you’ve bothered to ask before now,” Bob points out. Which is true, to a point. Frank is really good at talking about nothing for long periods of time. Bob’s just really good at doing the opposite.
Frank frowns. Then he nods. “Right. You might have a point there, Bryar, but don’t think that gives you the upper hand here.”
“Yeah,” Bob draws out. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Fucker,” Frank quips. “So. You don’t miss going to shows?”
“Not really,” Bob admits. If he’s being completely honest, Bob hasn’t for a while, even before that night in Detroit. “It was a job, it paid the bills, and most of the time it sucked.”
“You started doing sound for all that?” Frank couldn’t sound more skeptical if he tried. Bob doesn’t really blame him.
He shrugs again. “No, actually I wanted to play. Drums, I mean. Working the board was just the easiest way of making money and staying in the scene. I just never found a band I wanted to drum with enough to stop doing sound. I mean, I like eating.”
“Huh,” Frank says. He stares at Bob for a couple of minutes without saying anything. Bob would be squirming under the scrutiny except for how this is something Frank has been doing since Bob met him. Frank stares for a while (the longest being the two hours through Massachusetts after the imps but before the third set of vampires), he comes to whatever conclusion he comes to, then he does something stupid like jumping on Bob or running his underwear up a flagpole, and then Bob has to try to kill him.
This time Frank stares for so long that Bob gives up staring back and closes his eyes. He knows there’s no chance in hell that he’ll be able to catch any sleep with the zompires howling outside, but he can rest for a while.
|-|
Frank is still staring three hours later when the sun starts to rise. The shrieks and howls grow louder as if the creatures outside are starting to panic, and ten minutes after the first bright ray of sun shines on the metal bars in the crypt windows, there’s silence. Granted, those ten minutes after full of the sound of zompires going POOF! like so many vampires, though the sound is more squishy than the usual dusty POOF!
“You owe me money, Iero,” Bob says. He’s standing over the two-inch pile of dust outside of the crypt. The dust is all that’s left of the zompires, and it’s spread over a two foot ring around the crypt. Frank hasn’t won a single bet against Bob yet.
Frank scowls at Bob. “Fucker,” he mutters. But he reaches for his wallet all the same.
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Part 3 - Part 5