Crime and Passion 5/10
Chapter Five
Over a month had passed since the attempt on Brendon’s life and since Audrey’s death. She was long since buried, Cassie was long since gone, and most of Brendon’s aches and pains had faded away. He’d always been a quick healer physically. Psychologically he was having problems. Brendon had never studied psychology but Audrey had and as he sat in his (well, Ross’, really) bed, staring at the glow from the digital clock’s display screen on the opposite wall, he heard her voice in his ear.
“You’d make a good case study, Brendon, seriously. Do you ever deal with your problems or do you always just pretend they don’t exist?”
The truth was, Brendon didn’t pretend they didn’t exist, he just pretended they didn’t matter. He’d known about most of his issues long before Audrey came along and played Junior Psychologist with him, it was just that now he had names for all of it. Brendon knew he was a little fucked up, knew he could probably trace it back to a number of things: his shitty high school experience, being raised in a strict and religious household, not being hugged enough as a child, whatever. He just didn’t ever deal with it because what was the point? He was fine, he really was.
Only now he was trying to tell himself it was fine that Audrey was dead and that he was on a fucking mafia hit list and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working because he was living in an apartment with three FBI agents sent to protect him and it wasn’t working because his own apartment had been torched and it wasn’t working because this wasn’t the sort of stuff that could just be written off.
“It’s okay to cry, you know,” Audrey probably would have said. “It’s a first step.”
And for a second it was like she was there with him and Brendon wanted to give in. He couldn’t let himself, though. Not because he had weird ideas of what it meant to be manly that involved not crying, but because he was pretty sure if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop. There was just too much going on in his life, piling higher and higher and if he tried to face it, it would just fall on him. Crush him into a thousand pieces or maybe just smash him flat, like a pancake. He didn’t know, he just knew he had to be strong.
He hugged his knees to his chest and bit his lip. It was early in the morning. He’d only slept for three hours before a nightmare had woken him up and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. His eyes were dry from exhaustion, his limbs heavy and his brain a throbbing mass of pain inside his skull. The sensations weren’t foreign; Brendon’s headaches were growing in frequency and intensity. That didn’t make them any easier to deal with and he threw himself out of bed, the need to move, to get out of the room too much to deny.
Ross liked to keep the apartment pretty dark now that his hours had gone from whatever they’d been before to what they were now. The first thing he’d done when Brendon had informed him that sleep happened during the morning and early afternoon was to find a set of dark curtains to blot out the sun. It was, Brendon mused as he made his way out into the living room, like waking up in a hotel room at four in the afternoon in the middle of July to a room that was as dark as the deepest hours of morning. He might have liked it if he’d been in a better frame of mind, would have gone back to the bed and curled up and slept again.
Instead he hesitated briefly before settling next to Ross’ couch. He felt a little weird about it. It probably wasn’t normal for him to feel more comfortable sleeping on a floor next to a complete stranger than to sleep in an actual bed, but Brendon took one look at the lump on the soft sofa and felt at least a little more relaxed. He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and settled, head against the cushion nearest Ryan’s hand, and closed his eyes.
There was a rustle of movement and fingers brushed his scalp.
“Are you for real?” Ross grumbled, voice thick with sleep.
Brendon cracked his eyes open and said, “Could you shut up? I’m trying to sleep.”
Ross huffed out a snort but didn’t say anything else and that was something. When Brendon shifted a few hours later to stretch out the kink in his neck, Ross’ fingers were tangled in his hair and that? Was something else.
_._
The ringing of Ross’ cellphone jerked Brendon out of a fitful sleep two days later. It was the fourth time in a row that Brendon had fallen asleep in the living room instead of his own bed, but this time he woke up on the couch instead of the floor. He cracked his eyes open, mildly curious as to when and how that had happened without him noticing. The phone rang again from it’s place on the coffee table and a moment later a damp arm snaked it’s way into Brendon’s line of sight to answer it.
“Yeah?” Ross said in greeting.
Brendon looked up at him and blinked. Ross usually grabbed the first shower which was only fair since it was his apartment they were all crashing in, and apparently that’s what he’d just finished doing. But instead of coming out of the bathroom damp but fully dressed, he was dripping a little on the floor with a towel wrapped loosely around his waist.
“Wait, repeat that?” Ross said, pushing his wet hair out of his face.
Brendon’s eyes caught on a droplet of water that was skating its way over the sharp line of Ross’ hipbone and he swallowed.
“Are you- yeah okay. No, I’ll let Wheeler and Ritter know. Yeah. Huh?” Ross looked at Brendon who glanced up, face flushed (totally busted), and smirked just a little. “He’s doing all right.”
Brendon rolled over and buried his face in the couch cushions. It wasn’t even like Ross was that attractive. And okay, yeah, that was a lie, but Brendon wasn’t really in a place to be thinking about him as attractive. He was kind of busy dealing with more important shit than that.
“Okay. Uh-huh. Shut up, Wentz, I’ll see you in half an hour. Yup. Bye.”
There was a beat of silence after that and then a hand ghosted over his back. “Get up and get dressed, we’re going down to the precinct.”
Brendon pushed himself up on his elbows and made a face. “Again?”
Ross nodded. “Yeah. They think they might have found Cassie.”
That prompted Brendon to sit up and ask eagerly, “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I don’t have the details yet but Pete says she just walked into the department early this morning. She asked about you.”
Brendon frowned. That didn’t sound right. Why the hell hadn’t she just skipped town? If she’d been in Vegas the whole time, why hadn’t Way gotten to her yet?
“What?” Ross asked, and Brendon realized he was glaring at nothing.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” he said honestly. “Why’s she even here? I’d have been in the heart of Mexico by now if I were her, maybe farther away than that.”
“Well,” Ross said, cocking his head to the side. “We’re gonna find out soon. Get dressed.”
And then he was gone, disappearing into the bathroom while Brendon chewed on his thumbnail and stared at the line of his retreating back, torn between being excited to see Cassie and worried about what it meant that she was in Vegas in the first place.
Ross told Nick and Tyson about it while Brendon squirmed into a pair of jeans and zipped up an old hoodie that he’d shared with Audrey a few times. Brendon could hear their voices through the closed door of Ross’ bedroom and wondered if they were as concerned as he was, or if maybe he was just crazy. The ride to the precinct was shorter than usual. Brendon sat next to Tyson in the backseat, trying to pay attention to whatever he was talking about but mostly staring out of the window and feeling sick.
It wasn’t just because of all the questions he had either, and Brendon knew it. It was because of the memories that he associated with Cassie, the good ones and the more recent bad ones. And it was because he was tired of police stations and fucking police officers and their invasive questions and gruff manners. It was bad enough dealing with Ross all the time, Brendon hated it when he had to deal with Pete and Patrick when they were on the job, too.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Ross said as they walked into the building.
Brendon nearly tripped over his own feet at the nicety. The other man had been acting a bit different the last couple of nights which was part of the reason Brendon wasn’t in any hurry to move from the floor back to his bed. Not quite friendly, Brendon wasn’t sure that Ryan Ross was capable of friendly, but . . . warmer. Less like a stranger being put upon and more like someone who maybe gave a fuck. It was one thing, though, for Ross to have stopped looking straight through Brendon as if he didn’t exist. It was another thing for him to actively offer some kind of comfort.
It was, in fact, downright freaky.
“Yeah,” Brendon said dubiously, looking sideways at Ross.
They walked into a room, the same room that Brendon was usually questioned in, and Cassie must have seen him before he saw her because the next thing he knew there was a loud cry and his arms were full of trembling blonde hooker.
“Brendon!” Cassie said, Brendon’s neck muffling her words. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Brendon.”
And really, Brendon hadn’t realized how much he’d needed this, just a fucking hug, until he got one. He especially hadn’t realized how much he needed to see Cassie alive and well. It was bittersweet but there was some sense of relief that accompanied it and Brendon wrapped his arms tight around her waist and pressed his face to her hair.
“It’s okay,” he lied. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
“No, no. It’s my fault. It is, it’s my fault and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me, please.”
Brendon didn’t know what to say so he just held on, heard Pete whisper to Ryan that Cassie had been barely holding it together ever since she’d walked in.
“Hey,” Brendon said, pulling away and holding Cassie out at arm’s length. “Are you okay?”
She looked fine. Cassie always looked put together, hair combed and makeup carefully applied. She didn’t look any different than she usually did. More pale, maybe, and sans makeup. Her shoulders felt thinner beneath Brendon’s palms but maybe that was his imagination. Maybe she was alright. But her bottom lip trembled when Brendon asked and even though she covered it quickly, he knew that something was wrong.
“Fine, I’m good,” she said. “I took off, you know. I headed straight for friends in Chicago and they took care of me. Didn’t ask any questions but I kept up with the news here and Brendon, I heard about your apartment and I thought maybe you’d been in it. I got scared. So I came back.”
Brendon frowned at her. “You’re kind of an idiot,” he mumbled.
She smiled at him, small and brittle. “You kind of love it,” she said, the same way she always did, the same way Audrey always did.
Her face crumpled a little and she leaned forward, pressed her forehead to Brendon’s shoulder for a minute before pulling away.
“They want to put me into protective custody,” she said.
Brendon looked wildly over at Pete, Patrick and Ryan. Pete nodded.
“I’ve already got Saporta and Asher coming in later,” he said, sounding unhappy about the fact. “You’ll be fine, Cassie.”
“Is that . . . I mean, what’ll happen to her?” Brendon asked.
Cassie tugged on his hand and when he looked at her, her eyes were glinting with something hard and steely. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted.
Brendon frowned but nodded, choosing to believe her instead of succumbing to doubt. She smiled slightly and reached out to squeeze his hand. They lingered in the room a little longer. Cassie seemed to pull herself even further together with every passing minute, something that Brendon had seen her do a few times before. She stayed close to his side and eyed Pete and Patrick warily while they spoke to Ryan about her and their next course of action in hushed voices.
“Hey,” Cassie finally said after a while. “Since I’m going into protective custody in a few hours do you think I could . . .” She trailed off and slanted a glance up at Brendon. “Could I spend some time with Brendon? Alone, maybe. If you want,” she added and Brendon, who hadn’t spent a single minute outside of the watchful eyes of Ryan Ross and the other agents unless he was showering and getting dressed, nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
Patrick and Pete shared a look and then Pete said, “They can sit in our office for a while. I’ll stay outside.”
Ross opened his mouth, probably to argue, before snapping his jaw shut and shrugging. “Fine. Stump and I can go over Cassie’s statement in the meantime.”
Brendon caught Ross’ eye and smiled a little. He couldn’t help but think the other man was doing him a favor, letting him spend some time with Cassie before she went away. He appreciated it. Ross looked blandly back, but Brendon was sure his lips quirked upward a little. Cassie didn’t bother to hide her smile and she slid her hand into Brendon’s, her palm warm and damp against his as they walked toward Pete’s office. He ushered them inside and closed the door, leaving them alone.
Brendon had been in the office a couple of times before and sat down in the nearest and most comfortable chair while Cassie perched on the edge of Pete’s desk and kicked her legs restlessly.
“So,” she said, looking down at her knees and scraping a fingernail over a fading patch of denim.
“Yeah,” Brendon said, watching her carefully like she might disappear again at any minute.
This was surprisingly accurate, actually. In just a few hours Saporta and Asher would be around to whisk her away, probably into witness protection. She’d get a new name, a new life, and Brendon wouldn’t see her again until the Ways had been caught. He felt something pull tight in his chest at the thought because she felt like Brendon’s last link to Audrey. They’d been close, closer than Audrey had gotten with most of the rest of the staff at Vegas Flowers, practically joined at the hip, and Brendon knew that as soon as Cassie left his line of sight he’d be forced to acknowledge the fact that Audrey was gone forever and that his life as he’d known it had changed.
He wasn’t eager to face the facts.
“Brendon?” Cassie asked, looking up and tucking a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “Can I tell you something?”
He nodded and she said, “Something bad’s gonna happen but you have to trust me, okay? Do you trust me?”
Brendon’s stomach iced over. “Cassie, what are you talking about?”
The office door opened and Brendon made to look but Cassie distracted him, hopping off the desk and asking it again, more urgently this time. “Do you trust me?”
Brendon didn’t get the chance to answer. He felt a flash of pain at the back of his head and for a moment he clung stubbornly to consciousness, but it didn’t last. His vision faded and blurred, the image of Cassie biting her lip and watching him the last thing he saw before he passed out.
_._
It had gotten to the point where Brendon had passed straight through feeling numb to feeling fine again. And fine was a relative term but he’d woken up in a goddamn warehouse or something, maybe a basement, maybe some storage bin with bloodstained floors and this was after he’d gotten involved with diamond smuggling and the mafia, after being run off the road and shot, after having a friend die in his arms and gaining an uncaring federal agent as a bodyguard, after having his apartment burned down, his life turned inside out. He’d just been kidnaped and that was the cherry on top, really.
Wherever he was and however he’d landed in a horrible crime movie, it was dark. Brendon could see exactly jack shit. All he knew was that he was on a concrete floor and he wasn’t bound but he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. It was so ridiculously like something he might’ve read in a novel as a kid that Brendon wanted to laugh. He might’ve, too, but his head hurt so bad his eyes were starting to water every time he blinked. There was a certain edge of panic to everything because Brendon was dealing with the unknown, but at the same time he was content to tuck his knees under his chin and wait it out.
Between the time that Brendon woke up and the time that a door off to his right creaked open, Brendon did a lot of thinking. He hadn’t let himself actually consider things in a while. Most of the time thoughts raced around his mind wanting to gain substance while he did his best to keep them from doing so. He didn’t know for sure if he was going to live to see the end of the week or even his twenty-second birthday and there was no one around so really, taken hostage and locked in a strange room seemed like the best time to think about things.
Brendon thought, first, about coming out to his parents as bisexual. About the months he spent trying to make it work living with them while they spent that time trying to turn him away from his wicked ways. He thought about making the decision to take off, about making the decision to not go very far at all. He thought about his job at Vegas Flowers, about meeting Brandon and Maja and Audrey along with the others who worked there: Travis the bartender and Greta and Keltie, the other two cocktail waitresses who dressed the part at night and were just your average girl during the day. They were kind of like family, were, in fact, more of a family to Brendon than his own blood relatives. He thought about how much he was going to miss them if something happened to him.
He was thinking about his entire fucked up situation, about the trouble Audrey and Cassie had gotten into and about Ross and Pete and Patrick and just everything when the door opened. A dull shaft of light slid across the floor and when Brendon looked up, there were figures silhouetted in the doorway. There was a beat of silence and then a voice that sounded mildly curious and amused said, “Aren’t you going to ask where you are?”
Brendon squinted and then closed his eyes against the pain in his skull. “Are you gonna answer me honestly?”
“No,” the same voice said, amusement winning out over curiosity.
“Then I don’t think I’m going to ask.”
The next voice that spoke was Cassie’s. She said his name and he watched her petite figure hesitate before one of the others nodded and she rushed into the room. She fell to her knees next to him and when he looked at her, her lip was trapped between her teeth and there was a bruise blooming over her left eye.
“Hey,” Brendon said, tensing up and ready to fly at whoever had hit her. “Who the fuck did that to you?”
“Brendon!” she said, resting a hand on his arm and shaking her head. “It’s fine. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“They hit you,” he hissed, tired of her bullshit, not sure what the hell was going on but wanting to hit something or someone just to get it all out, all of his anger over what had happened and was still happening to him and to Cassie.
“I’ve dealt with worse,” she reminded him.
Brendon frowned at her and she smiled and moved her hand to his head, running her fingers through his hair.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Cassie, what’s going on?”
Her eyes flashed with something but in the lack of light it was hard to tell what. Her hand tightened in his hair and then she was releasing him and standing up. “I’ll tell you. I promise. But you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t fight back. That’s all. You’ll be fine if you don’t. Promise me?”
Brendon barely had time to nod, confused as to what she meant and not in any real condition to fight back anyway, before one of the men behind her said, “Okay, that’s enough. Cassie, get out of here. If he cooperates, you can talk to him later.”
Brendon watched Cassie go and as soon as she left, the figures in the doorway stepped into the room, flipped a light switch and closed the door behind them. Brendon winced. There was nothing quite like going from mostly pitch-black to harsh fluorescent lighting with no warning. His head throbbed and he dug his fingertips into his forehead.
“Getting our hands on you was a bitch and a half, Urie,” one of the men said, the first one who’d spoken.
Brendon cracked his eyes open and barely managed to swallow an embarrassing gasp. The man who had spoken was looking at him with a smirk tilting his mouth. He was good looking with a face nearly as recognizable as the one belonging to the man next to him. Mikey Way was staring at Brendon with no expression on his face at all. He looked like he always did on tv, quiet and unassuming. He had a weird presence about him though, one that hinted at someone who wasn’t easy to piss off but who probably wasn’t very rational when it happened.
The other man was Frank Iero. He was almost as notorious as the Ways themselves because of his intimate ties to the family. There was all sorts of speculation as to who he was, where he’d come from and why he never strayed far from either Mikey or Gerard’s sides, but beyond all the rumors there was the sheer fact of the matter: you didn’t mess with Frank. He was small, shorter than Brendon thought he’d be, but it had been all over the news a few months back when he’d beaten some asshole almost to death in a casino. Nobody’d pressed charges because it had allegedly been an obvious case of self-defense, but there had been similar incidents over the last few years. Frank had a reputation.
He didn’t look as strong as all the press behind him would say, though, Brendon mused. He had narrow hips and slightly broader shoulders, all of it offset by how short he was. His face was strong, though, his eyes hard and implacable even when a flash of humor lightened them. Like in that moment. Iero was staring at Brendon who just stared back and his smirk widened.
“In fact,” he said, sounding almost gleeful. “You wouldn’t believe the strings we had to pull to get you away from your guardians. That Ross, man, he’s a pain in the ass. And the other two.” Iero whistled low. “That around-the-clock protection was a little annoying to be honest.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate knowing that their efforts didn’t go unnoticed,” Brendon muttered.
Iero laughed and it was a pretty girlish laugh for the right-hand of the mafia. Brendon stared up at him incredulously, but Iero didn’t seem to notice.
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” he said. “Kids like you are always good for a laugh. Anyway, here’s the thing Urie. What the feds think you know? You don’t know.”
Brendon blinked and Iero nodded, fishing a pack of cigarette’s out of his suit jacket and choosing one.
“Yeah,” Iero said. “Pretty crazy, huh? Because the feds think you can name the Ways as the ones smuggling the diamonds and killing loudmouthed little girls. I bet that’s what you thought too. Am I right?”
Brendon watched as Iero lit the cigarette and then nodded, wondering where they were going with this and if they were going to torture him before they killed him.
“That’s not how the story goes though,” Iero said, and now his voice had dropped any hint of good humor and was downright cold. “Because the real story is that your cunt of a boss tried to fuck us over. Your girls got in the middle and that’s real sad because they’re good kids, they really are. And it’s sad for you that you got dragged into it but that’s not my problem and it’s not Mikey’s problem and it sure as fuck isn’t Gerard’s problem.”
The headache was suddenly even more of a liability than it had been before. Brendon was having trouble keeping up, wasn’t sure if he was hearing what he thought he was hearing.
“What? Are you saying Brandon set you up? That’s fucking- have you met Brandon?” Brendon asked.
Frank’s smirk was edged with ice and he shared a glance with Mikey.
“He’s a boring bastard, zen and shit, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have ideas in his head about taking us out.”
“He’s trying to stage a coup,” Mikey said, speaking for the first time in the last couple of minutes.
“He’s a dumb shit,” Frank said.
“You’re going to help us get rid of him,” Mikey told Brendon.
Brendon swallowed and said, “I’m not gonna help out a couple of gangsters.”
Mikey shrugged and Frank took a placid hit off his cigarette.
“We’ll let you think about it,” Mikey told him.
Frank nodded and the pair of them turned to leave. They opened the door and Brendon froze when the familiar figures of Ways’ thugs walked in. Frank offered Brendon an ironic smile and Brendon’s body hit the floor before the door had clicked shut.
Chapter Six