MCR RPS: Through the Longest Hours (Part 3)

[nilyn]

Master Post
Part 1
Part 2

"So, you think Ray will be working there today?" Gerard asks, shutting the door behind them. Mikey pulls his hoodie tighter around himself and watches him fiddle with the lock. It's cold in the hallway, colder than he was expecting. He can't make himself stop fidgeting, nervous twitches that betray his calm exterior. Gerard can't quite manage to get the key to turn, and he's almost dropped it more than once.

He's nervous too, but Mikey can't very well blame him for that.

"Don't know," he answers, shifting from one foot to the other and then back again. "It looked like a small store, so he might be the only one who works there. Guess we'll find out, right?"

Gerard makes a face. "I'd rather not."

He finally manages to lock the door, turning back towards Mikey with a triumphant grin as he slips the key into his pocket. He nods to Mikey and the two of them set off towards the stairs, shoes squeaking against the tile.

"I know," Mikey tells him as they open the door to the stairs. "But it's not like we can do anything about it if he's there."

"We could scream and run," Gerard suggests hopefully, taking the stairs two at a time. "I'd like that."

Mikey rolls his eyes, following behind him. "That's basically what I did last time."

"Nothing wrong with doing it again. We could be the crazy brothers who come in and stare at the guy working there and scream a lot."

"Well, I didn't actually scream."

Gerard shrugs, waiting on the step for Mikey to catch up. "I could scream then. For some variation."

"Rather you didn't."

The sky is clear when they make it out onto the street, and Mikey breathes in the fresh air, stepping in the fresh puddles on the sidewalk, wetness soaking through his boots. He's glad to have Gerard along, and he runs ahead and waits for Gerard to follow, glad to not be alone. There are still bright red scratches on his arm from their fight. He doesn't much care, and when Gerard gets close again, he reaches out a hand.
"For when we cross the street," he says, and takes Gerard's hand.

"How long until we have to?" Gerard asks, eyebrows raising, but he squeezes Mikey's hand anyhow.

"A while." Mikey smiles because it feels almost necessary, with how things have been lately. If he forgets, he'll be even more fucked up. The sun is out and he's not alone, and if he sees Ray, he sees Ray. He at least knows what to expect this time.

"You're all perky. Should I let you beat me up more often?"

Mikey feels a twinge of guilt at that, but doesn't bother dwelling on it overmuch. "I think I'll be fine."

Gerard shrugs. "If it works… Which way?"

Mikey points down the street, and the two of them set off together, hand in hand. He can hear people whisper as he passes, knows what they think, but he doesn't care. The crowd pushes past, and only a few look up, the rest concentrating on other things. They trudge through the puddles, staring at the ground, splashing him as they walk, and he closes his eyes for a moment to take in the sounds. Everything seems too loud, now that he's out in it. It's been a while.

"Hey, shit, you're gonna get yourself knocked over, open your eyes," Gerard says under his breath, squeezing his hand.

"I'm fine," Mikey says peacefully, leading Gerard on down the cracked sidewalk. "We're almost to the bus stop, anyway."

"You know, I know your eyes are bad, but you don’t have to pretend to be blind," Gerard tells him, grabbing onto his arm. Mikey opens his eyes. They're standing at an intersection, and the light's green.

"Thanks," he offers sheepishly.

Gerard smiles a little. "This the stop?" He points to the sign across the street and Mikey nods. "Try not to walk into traffic again."

"Yeah, yeah."

***

By the time they get to the repair shop, Mikey is a ball of nerves. His hands are shaking, and his gut twists when he sees the sign. "You sure I have to go in with you?" he asks, trying to keep his voice from quivering. He feels ridiculous, being afraid of this, but he can't stop the way he's reacting.

"C'mon. For some moral support." Gerard motions for him to follow, taking a deep breath. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen? Maybe he'll-I don't know, recognize you, and ask if you're around somewhere else, or start hitting on you, or realize what he is and then-"

"Hey. Gee. Breathe."

"I'm breathing, I'm breathing."

"Are not."

Gerard doesn't argue, but he makes Mikey open the door. The bell jangles and Mikey stares at the ground as he walks in, praying please don't let it be him please don't let it be him.

"Fuck," Gerard says, under his breath, and his hand squeezes painfully tight around Mikey's. Mikey doesn't need to look up. He knows what he'll see.

"Oh, you're back," Ray says, looking up from the counter, and Mikey forces himself to look Ray in the eyes, even if it makes him feel like he wants to be sick. He didn't want to come along, but Gerard doesn't look much better, and someone had to. "Got it working. You should have come back sooner, I had it done in a day or two."

"Sorry," Mikey mumbles. "Got kind of caught up in something. Gee, can you pay?"

He lets go of Gerard's hand and walks out, whispering a "sorry" under his breath. He can't deal with this. Not right now.

He leans against the outside of the store, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. It doesn't help to calm him down, only worsening the nausea curling inside him. Deep breaths just make him cough. He hopes Gerard comes out soon.

"Come on," Gerard says shakily. "Fuck. Let's get out of here." He has the laptop under one arm, and he rests the other on Mikey's shoulder, rubbing soothing circles. "I am never fucking coming back to this place again if I can help it. It's. Come on."

Mikey nods, and they set off down the street together. "Worse than you thought?" he asks, rubbing at his temples as he walks.

"Yeah. Definitely. Are you sure we're not dreaming?"

"Pinch me."

Gerard does.

"Shit, ow, cut your nails. Yeah, we're awake."

"Thought so." Gerard sighs, staring down at the ground.

They walk on in silence, and Mikey counts the cracks in the sidewalk under their feet just to give his mind something to do. Gerard takes his hand and guides him and he follows mechanically, trying to calm his thudding heart. The cars rush by and one kicks up the water pooling at the sides of the street, soaking his jeans, and he doesn't react.

"We never have to go back," Gerard reminds him, and he nods shallowly. As far as he's concerned, he'd very much like to hole up in the studio and never come out. The sooner they get back, the better.

He isn't aware of much on the bus ride back, just the purr of the engine and a vague recognition of the chattering going on around him, picking up the speech but not the words. He stares out the window, mindlessly taking in a blur of streets and houses and people walking by. The bus screeches to a halt and he snaps out of his daze. In that instant, he sees it.

There's a familiar face in the crowd going by. The man himself isn't what Mikey notices first; he has nearly two dozen dogs with him, and he's leading them all down the sidewalk, or more correctly, they're leading him, dragging him along behind them.

Mikey blinks twice, pinches himself, and yet he can't deny that he sees it.

Frank.

"Fuck," he mutters, glaring at nothing in particular. Frank is standing on the sidewalk outside of the bus, and Mikey can't make him go away, no matter how much he wills it. His dogs pay no notice to the people around him, and Mikey has one brief, frightened second where he thinks that no one else knows that they're there. Like he's the guy in A Beautiful Mind and he has people in his head that don't exist, walking around in everyday life like they belong there.

He frowns. He knows what Frank's dogs look like. He knows every one of them, and one of them looks almost out of place. A quick count, and he freezes. There aren't eighteen anymore; there are nineteen.

"Hey, dude, come on, this is our stop," Gerard says, shaking him. Mikey turns to face him and when he looks back, Frank is gone.

He gets up numbly and doesn't say a word until he gets back to the apartment, stubbornly repeating I'm not crazy to himself the whole way, like if he says it enough it'll make it true.

"Guess who I saw?" he says as soon as Gerard closes the door.

"Who?"

Mikey laughs a little, a hollow, humorless sound. "Frank."

"You-what?" Gerard asks, settling down on the couch with a thump. "Are you sure?"

"Completely. Um. Gee?"

"Yeah?"

"… How many dogs does Frank have, now?"

"Nineteen, why?"

"How many did he have when you saw him?" Mikey asks, and the color begins to drain from Gerard's face like he's starting to catch on to what that means.

"Eighteen."

"And we changed that in the comic, right? Used to be eighteen?"

"… Yeah. We made it nineteen, because we added a new one last week when he-oh. Oh shit. Shit." Gerard stares at Mikey with wide eyes. "Tell me he didn't-he doesn't-"

Mikey nods. "He's got nineteen now. In real life. Could be just coincidence, but-"

He doesn't need to finish. Gerard knows what it's implying. The thought is terrifying, makes Mikey feel crazier than he already does just for thinking it.

What they're writing is actually happening.

"So if we. Mikey, that doesn't make sense. You can't just-reality doesn't work like that."

"They're our characters," Mikey reminds him. "Maybe we can control what they do, what happens to them, since we created them."

"At least if it's just them," Gerard mutters, and then he goes pale. "Wait. Fuck. Mikey. Mikey, what if it isn't just Frank and Ray?"

"I don't think Bob's gonna be that much of a problem," Mikey mutters. "Just don't make out with him when you meet him. I'm still not sure if they're real or not, you might destroy the world by doing it."

Gerard shakes his head furiously. "Mikey. We're writing about Bob hunting down a demon and what we're writing about is happening. Think about it."

"… Oh, fuck." Mikey looks around the room like he's expecting a demon to be lurking in the corners. "Good point."

He sits down on the couch beside Gerard, knees tucked to his chest, still glancing around worriedly. He knows if there was something he would have noticed already, but he can't help feeling unsettled, not with the thought that if Frank and Ray are real now, so is what they're hunting.

"You know," he says, frowning, "if the demon was real, wouldn't we have noticed?"

"I don't know, would we?" Gerard questions, pausing to think. "There would be-in the comic we had signs and that's how they noticed."

"Little things," Mikey recites, closing his eyes. "Things you wouldn't notice at first. Freak storms, things Bob sees that he shouldn't, omens." He knows that clear as day, because he's had a piece of paper next to him the whole time he's been writing, saying just that. "Visions. That kind of thing."

"I haven't been seeing any visions," Gerard offers, and Mikey lets himself nod for a moment, but then-

The dream comes rushing back to him all at once, storms and blood and chaos, walking down a dark street only illuminated by lightning splitting the sky, the mind-numbing panic of I can't find Gerard, coming face to face with something else entirely, something with bright, glowing eyes and a body so twisted, so contorted-

"What about nightmares?" he asks quietly, and he can feel Gerard freeze. He's been having them, and so has Gerard, ever since they started, and they both know it.

"You think those-" Gerard asks, staring at him. "Ours both started when we started writing this one. Fuck. Oh, fuck."

"Shit, Gerard, if you've been having nightmares this whole time too, the least you could have done was tell me so. Don't you think it's weird?"

"It's not coincidence," Mikey manages, nodding. He's torn between wanting to hide in the corner and wanting to scream, because none of this is right. "And we've had freak storms, too. Earlier, when it was raining every day."

"It pretty much has." Mikey looks out at the sky, still dark and foreboding, and he shivers. The storm has made things cold, and even his bones feel chilled. "Freak storm. Guess that's August for you, though."

"And," he continues, because he can't even stop the words from coming out anymore, "and I saw something else too. The time I told you I ran home because a cat was going to attack me. It wasn't the cat. Something was following me. I couldn't get a glimpse of it because it was moving too fast, but it scared the cat away and I know whatever it was, it wasn't a person, and-" His head is buzzing, and he curls further into himself, fear winding its way through him.

It's as he turns around to go back the way he came that he sees it. Just out of the corner of his eye, something moving past him, fast enough to be nothing but a dark blur. His head whips around, but there is nothing there, and he swallows hard, staring at the empty street.

Gerard's right.

They have a demon on their hands and they're the ones who summoned it.

***

The next day is a haze. They bolt the door and prop a chair in front of it and Mikey turns off his phone and takes out the battery, just to be safe. If there were curtains, he'd pull them shut. They don't write. They don't draw.

And they definitely, definitely don't turn on the laptop. Mikey isn't even sure they can, isn't sure if Ray actually fixed it or not. He doesn't much care. The deadlines will catch up with them eventually, but the longer they can put off writing more, changing what's already happened, the better.

He lays on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to music. His bones are starting to ache from staying in the same position so long, but he doesn't want to move and get up. Gerard has just been pacing back and forth, smoking, and the whole room reeks of it. The air is hazy.

"Brian's going to be pissed at us," he says quietly, picking at the dirt under his nails. He isn't even sure Gerard will hear him; he's thinking out loud more than anything else, like he'll forget how to speak if he doesn't.

"I know," Gerard says, pitching it louder to be heard over Mikey's music. "Don't care."

"This isn't gonna go away."

"I know." Gerard resumes his pacing, having paused for a moment to speak. It's raining outside again, drops spattering against the glass, and Mikey wishes the heat wasn't broken. He shivers, pulling the blankets over himself, and lets himself close his eyes for a little while. His eyelids are heavy, and he drifts in and out of consciousness, not sleeping but not aware of anything that's happening around him. It's day, then night, then day again, and Gerard goes from pacing to sleeping by his side to pacing again.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a few hours later, he notices that Gerard tries to turn the laptop on, and he forces himself to sit up and watch. "Is it working?" he asks, watching Gerard scowl at the power button.

Gerard shakes his head and presses it again. This time, it lights up, and he breathes out a sigh of relief. "Guess he fixed it after all. Good thing you write him to be smart, right?"

"Something like that," Mikey mutters.

"We've got… wow." Gerard stares at the screen, and Mikey doesn't bother getting out of bed, because he has a feeling he already knows what's coming. "Brian's emailed us ten times already."

Mikey shakes his head. "Ignore it. I'm going back to sleep."

He drifts out of consciousness again.

***

Sometime later that day, or maybe the next, there's a knock at the door.

Mikey sits bolt upright, staring. His heart's thudding in his chest and Gerard is standing stock-still by the window, staring at the door like he's expecting it to attack them. Neither of them make a move to answer it.

Another knock.

There's a pause, and then they hear, "Guys, seriously, open up. It's me. You're not dead, right?" It sounds like Pete, but Mikey's not about to take his chances. For all he knows, it could be the demon masquerading as Pete.

He knows how insane that sounds. It doesn't matter.

"Mikey, you should at least answer your phone. Come on, dude, it's not funny anymore. If I fucked up or something, you've gotta tell me, just don't leave me hanging like this. You're okay, right?"

Mikey hears the sound of him trying to turn the lock, but the bolt is in and the chair's up against the door, and it doesn't budge. He's glad of it.

"Jesus Christ, you guys," Pete mutters. "I'll come back when you're done playing dead."

His retreating steps are obvious in the silence, and Mikey lets out a sigh of relief, lying back down onto the pillows.

"Um." Gerard gives him a look, eyebrows raised, and Mikey resists the urge to remind him he wasn't about to open the door either.

"Could have been the demon," he points out, a little shaky, and he closes his eyes. "I was just being safe."

Gerard nods and keeps pacing, over and over until Mikey is dizzy from watching him. Mikey's stomach growls and he curls in on himself, trying to fight the feeling. They're already out of food, even if he did get up to get some, and he doesn't want to get up.

"We have to stop doing this," he says finally. "I don't want to work either, but doing nothing and hiding in here isn't going to do much good."

"You're the one who won't even let Pete in because you think he's a demon," Gerard points out.

"I know. But-later. Let's go out, get some food at least. I just didn't want to let it in here."

Gerard hesitates. "Um." A long pause, and then finally, "Okay. Later."

***

Later turns out to be a day and a half later.

They haven't done anything. Mikey is still in bed, and Gerard's still pacing back and forth, and by the time either of them get up, night has already fallen and a chill has settled into the air. Mikey searches under the bed for his hoodie, pulling it tight to him to ward off the sudden shock of cold air as he gets up from under the covers. "Where do you want to go?" he asks, fighting with the zipper.

"Don't care." Gerard shrugs. "Somewhere close, I guess? We'll probably be safer that way."

They haven't talked about it since Pete left, but nothing needs to be said; Mikey knows that they're not safe every time they venture outside the studio, and probably not while they're in it, either. Sticking together and staying close is the only thing they can do. That is, other than what they've already done-there's an awkward cross, burned into the back of the door with Gerard's lighter, and maybe it won't do anything, but it's better than just hoping they won't get possessed.

"There's a new bar down the street, I think," Mikey says, tugging on his boots. "It's better than nothing, and it probably has food."

"Good. I'm starved." Gerard glances at the door warily, lighting another cigarette. He holds his hands away from Mikey, but Mikey knows they're shaking.

"Me too. And you've been walking back and forth for the past three days, it's not like that's helping you any."

Gerard nods. "I know, but it helps." He finally searches for his own shoes, taking so long Mikey's afraid he's going to suggest Mikey should go out alone.

"Whatever works, I guess. Come on."

"I don't want to go," Gerard says quietly, looking down at the ground and his half-tied laces. "Can't we-I don't know. Pete could bring us food, right?"

"Not after we didn't let him in," Mikey points out, walking over to Gerard. He rests a hand on Gerard's shoulder, not meeting his eyes when he looks up. "We've gotta go unless you want to die in here, and I know I don't."

Gerard shakes his head. "I don't. Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"I don't either. We're not-anything could happen, but if we stay, we're gonna starve to death."

"Alright. I'll go."

"Thanks," Mikey murmurs. "If I went alone, you wouldn't get me back in one piece. At least we can be pieces together if something happens."

"That's comforting," Gerard says shakily, but he pulls himself to his feet. "Should we-maybe we should call Momma. Make sure she's okay."

Mikey hesitates, glancing at his phone at the other side of the room. It's still off and the battery is still out, and he doesn't know what to expect when he turns it back on. He doesn't want to face up to the responsibilities they're ignoring right now. Not yet. He's not ready yet. Right now, he just needs to go have a damn drink and forget about it. It's not the healthiest response. He doesn't care.

"Are you sure it wouldn't put her in more danger?" he asks, frowning.

"We could die out there. We would die and she would never know. I can't-we can't do that."

"We're not safe in here either."

"Safer."

Gerard is looking at him with pleading eyes, and Mikey finally breaks. "Okay," he mumbles, crossing the room to turn his phone back on. He ignores the texts from Pete, the ones from Brian (how the guy ever got his number in the first place is a mystery to him, but he doesn't question that Brian can have freaky powers at times), the ones from every other person he talks to. He hands the phone to Gerard without another word.

A long pause, and then the sound of the dial. Gerard frowns, and Mikey can tell he's gotten the answering machine. He's a little glad of it. The last thing he wants to deal with right now is explaining what's happening to them.

"Hey, Momma?" Gerard begins, shifting from one foot to the other. "It's Gerard. Mikey and I are-I can't really talk about it, and it wouldn't make any sense, but we're ok for now, and we love you, alright? Mikey, come here." He motions Mikey over.

"Yeah," Mikey adds, swallowing hard because his mouth is suddenly bone-dry, "we're ok. Love you. Don't burn down the house or anything. And tell Dad that too. That we love him. Don't forget, ok? Um. Bye."

Gerard closes the phone and the sound is oddly loud in the silence. He looks at Mikey, opening his mouth, but no words come out, and Mikey just nods. He takes the phone and taps out a message to Pete before he can convince himself it's a bad idea: "ok for now. Stay gold."

Neither of them mention that it feels like they're saying goodbye for good. Mikey hopes he isn't.

***

They run all the way to the bar, pushing through the crowds on the sidewalk, and by the time they make it, they're panting for breath. The bar's small, just a hole-in-the wall place with dim lighting and only a few tables. They sit down at the end of the bar, as far away from the door as possible. It's not any safer, but it's warm and a little hazy inside, like the studio, and it's comforting.

"What can I get you guys?" the bartender asks, and Mikey looks up.

He stares, and beside him, he can feel Gerard freeze up as he looks up, too.

"Shit," he mutters, because if there was anything he didn't need, it was to see anyone else that was a familiar face. Too familiar.

Bob's face, to be specific.

"Um." He opens his mouth to order something, some food at least, but the words won't come out. "Gerard, can you order something for me? I'll be in the bathroom."

Gerard watches him desperately as he leaves, but he can't go back just yet. He closes the bathroom door with a thud, bracing himself against the sink because he doesn't think he can stand up otherwise. His reflection in the mirror is wild, eyes bloodshot and dark-circled. He feels like he's going to be sick again, and this time he is, can't stop himself from heaving. He can't do this.

There's food waiting for him when he comes back, and even the sight of it turns his stomach. "Eat," Gerard says quietly as he settles back onto the stool, squeezing his hand. "It's helping. Just. Don't think about it."

He leaves then, too, and Mikey knows he's doing no better. He gulps down his drink so fast it makes his throat burn, not even registering what it is because Bob's still standing at the counter like he belongs there, watching him with curious eyes. He and Gerard are the only ones in the bar so there's nothing else for him to focus on, and he wishes Gerard would get back already.

"You look like hell," Bob tells him, taking his glass. Mikey nods in its general direction and he refills it, and Mikey is grateful to have Bob's eyes off him for the moment. "You and him both."

"I know," Mikey says quietly, resisting the urge he can feel in every muscle in his body, the one telling him to run. He barely tastes the food he's putting into his mouth, bringing it to his mouth mechanically until he hears the sound of the bathroom door closing and Gerard comes back. His glass is empty again and he's almost startled by it, not even remembering drinking it.

"You wanna go?" Gerard says into his ear, and Mikey nods, grateful to have Gerard there.

"Yeah," he agrees, nodding. "Let's go."

He doesn't remember leaving, either, or Gerard paying, but he knows both must have happened, because the next thing he's aware of is standing in the street as raindrops start to fall again. They run through the drops, boots kicking up the water of the puddles, and by the time they get back to the studio they're both soaked through to the skin.

They don't notice anything's wrong until they open the door.

***
The window is broken, shattered into a thousand tiny shards of glass scattered across the floor. The cold outside wind is blowing in, and the raindrops spatter against the curling wallpaper. There's no tree branch, no stone left from someone throwing one, nothing to explain what happened.

"Did-" Gerard just stares, frozen in the doorway. Leaving didn't work, but neither will staying. The cross on the door did nothing, and the window is broken, and Mikey doesn't even feel safe in the studio anymore. He isn't sure where is safe, even.

"We can't stay here," he says helplessly, staring at the shards of glass.

Gerard nods his agreement. "What. Shit, what do we do?" He takes a step backwards like he wants to just leave, but there's nowhere to go.

"I don't know," Mikey admits.

"We have to think of something. Ignoring it-you were right. Ignoring it isn't gonna make everything go away. Fuck. We should-let's just go back to the apartment. It's still safe there."

"And then it'll come to the apartment," Mikey points out. "It'll be us, not the windows. I. What if-" He hesitates, not sure if what he's saying even makes any sense.

"What?"

"Gee, if what's happening with what we write actually happens, then we have to finish writing it. We have to write the ending or it'll keep going on for us too."

"How does it end?" Gerard asks quietly, glancing over at him.

"I don't know. I hadn't-I haven't figured that out yet," Mikey admits, staring at the ground.

"We're fucked," Gerard groans. "So, so fucked," and all Mikey can do is nod. Gerard's right. If they don't end this, there's nothing they can do to escape it anymore. It knows where they work. It knows where they sleep.

They have to do this.

***

The best they can do for the time being is sweep up the glass and try to block the windows. They don't have anything to do it with, but the shower curtain at least blocks the rain that's still pounding down. It takes an hour, and then Gerard looks up at Mikey and nods, tossing him the first pen he sees.

"Get writing. We're gonna figure this out."

Mikey nods. Gerard is taking care of what he needs to, scanning in everything so they can move on, and he has a job to do. It's going to save them both, if he's betting right, and he writes furiously, barely-readable scribbles on the paper in front of him. He barely even stops to breathe.

"So, okay," he says to Gerard, not looking up, not stopping the frantic movements of his pen, "Bob figures it out because Ray's been following the news and he has to trace it back, we've got that, he finds out that it's some kids that summoned it by accident because they were playing with a spell book and trying to be cool and shit, at some bonfire they were having, I've got that. And we've gotta tell Brian that the words we sent him for that have to change, because that's-"

"You really think we actually summoned the demon with that?" Gerard asks, staring at the computer screen. "I mean, the site I got the words from looked really fucking sketchy, but still."

"Had to be," Mikey says, nodding. "Doesn't make sense any other way."

"Yeah. Probably. Okay, dude, so then he has to go find the demon somehow, probably by tracking down who all the dead kids are and going from there, and exorcise it. Do you want me to go to the site and see if I can find out how to reverse it? I mean, if one half works, I'm guessing the other will too. Let's just hope they have the words for it."

"Yeah. I don't know if it'll work if it's out of order with the writing, like, if we, I don’t know, wrote it out on a piece of paper right now, I don't think it would do anything, but I'm almost to there, so we're good."

Gerard still has the site from last time bookmarked, and he frowns as he looks at the page. "This thing actually summoned a fucking demon? I mean, really? It doesn’t look that impressive. It's all pixilated and shit. Just our luck to find the one place that has a working spell, right?"

"Luck, yeah," Mikey snorts.

"I know, I know," Gerard mutters, clicking. "Think I found something. What do you think?" He motions Mikey over and Mikey peers over his shoulder at the screen. There are words there that say they're for reversing a summoning, and Mikey just hopes they're right. They look ok, but he knows nothing about it; he wouldn't bet his life on it and he has to.

"It'll work," he says finally, nodding. "Write down what it says for me?"

"Alright. How's Bob going to find the demon?" Gerard asks, looking between the scrap of paper in front of him and the screen. "Not like he's just going to walk in and find it at a bar."

One side of Mikey's mouth quirks up. "What, like we did with him?" The shock of that is still new, and it's strange to be joking about it already, but if he's right, if Gerard's right, once they finish this will all be over and seeing Bob won't mean anything at all.

Gerard shrugs. "Yeah. So-maybe he could summon it, or go to some place where he knew it would be, or-"

"I don’t really know," Mikey admits. "Probably goes to the place where it is. Follows the trail, like. I don't know, dude, maybe there's a place where all the dead kids went, something shared that he can go to, right?"

"Yeah, maybe." Gerard hands him the scrap of paper and starts sorting through the rest of the pages he has drawn and inked already. They have to go faster, and it's a race to the finish line, a finish line they're praying Brian isn't going to hold them back on. He has to be there so they don't have to wait. Has to, because if the broken glass shards still glittering on the carpet are any indication, they're not safe here and the longer they have to stay, the more risk there is of something happening.

Mikey's okay with that, in a detached, 'oh god we're going to die if we don't hurry up' sort of way. It feels a little like the week before final exams at school.

"Yeah. I'll go with that." His pen moves furiously down the page, scribbling out what he's sure is the worst script he's ever written, but it doesn't matter right now. "And then he summons it, or calls it out, or whatever, I don't know what to call it exactly, and traps it, and all of that."

"And exorcises it," Gerard reminds him, not looking over. "If you forget to have him exorcise it so we still have to deal with it I am kicking your ass."

"If you do I'm getting Momma to beat you up for me," Mikey says peacefully, and hands him a page to type out. "I'm going to, don't worry."

Gerard nods at him, taking the page. He's not a fast typer, but he's better than Mikey, even if he has to stare down at the keys to not make it full of typos. It has to be at least decent, if Brian's going to be looking at it.

Mikey pauses. Brian.

He takes out his phone and taps his way over to contacts. Brian doesn't pick up his phone right away, and Mikey crosses the fingers of his other hand, but then there's a hesitant "… hello?" and the sound of breathing on the other side.

"It's your team," Mikey says dryly.

"You mean the one that's going to be dead meat if you keep ignoring my calls?" Brian asks, voice a little too pleasant for comfort, and Mikey fidgets in his chair.

"… Um. About that. Yeah. No, we're working on it right now. We're trying to finish it all in one go, but we kind of need you to be editing as we go if we're gonna do that."

"Yeah, fine," Brian says, and Mikey can practically hear his eyebrows raising. "Have you guys been dead or what, anyway? Not answering any calls, any emails, I was about to come and knock down your goddamn door to see if you had anything done or if you'd gotten arrested or something."

"What would we get arrested for?"

Mikey barely catches a snip of Brian's words, muttered under his breath, '-your smell-' and then Brian says, louder, "I don't know, something. Either way. So you need me to save your ass because you've been procrastinating?"

"I can't really explain it," Mikey says, going back to writing as he talks. "Long story. But we need to finish it as soon as possible and it'd be in before the deadline, if you helped us out with that." He knows Brian will go for it, especially with the promise of having things in early for once, because that happens roughly as often as the sky rains kittens.

"Fine, send me what you've got," Brian says, and hangs up without another word. Mikey grins, setting the phone down. It doesn't take him long before he finishes the second page, handing it to Gerard. Gerard has the first one propped up against the screen, frowning at it as he tries to type out the words as fast as he can, alternating between using both hands and getting the letters wrong and picking out the letters with two fingers.

"Slowpoke," Mikey teases.

"You'd only be able to do it if you could type on here with your thumbs, texting boy," Gerard mutters, face inches from the screen.

"I should try it sometime. So, okay, what happens once he exorcises it, anyway?"

"He goes and does stuff?" Gerard shrugs. "I mean, do we have to have a deep and meaningful ending? Make him talk to one of the kids that survived and call them idiots or something, but in a more subtle way. People like that shit."

"Moral of the story: don't read weird shit you find in books," Mikey informs no one in particular, and then glances over at Gerard. "Or on shady websites."

"It was so not my fault that I accidentally found a site with shit that worked, fucker, don't give me that look."

Mikey quirks an eyebrow at him. "Sure, sure," he says under his breath. "Suuuure."

***

It takes them exactly-and Mikey times it-nine hours to finish the whole thing. By the time he finishes scrawling out the last page, his wrists hurt and his vision is blurry. His back aches from sitting at the desk the entire time, his feet are asleep, and if he has to think about anything else involving Bob for the next week or three, he is probably going to scream.

He doesn't have to, and he's glad of it. Gerard scans the last page with a grin, emailing it off to the colorist, Shawn, and when the message sends Mikey can't resist doing victory fingers.

"I am going to sleep," Gerard declares, rubbing his ink-stained hands together. "We just finished about a month ahead of schedule for the last bit, I am taking a goddamn nap. For a month."

"Have fun, coma boy," Mikey says, waving him off. He leans back in his chair, sighing deeply. He doesn't know if anything's going to change, but he's hoping so. If he has to go around with a cross around his neck he can do it, but things feel different. The air feels lighter. He picks up his phone, finally checking the messages for the first time in what seems like days.

The first (and second, and third, and fourth, and so on) is from Pete. They're progressively more worried, going from "i'm not ponyboy" to "you dont sound very ok" to "mikeyway please dont be dead" to "you never told me what i should do for your funeral" to "I miss you already come back I wouldnt mind if you were a zombie i promise."

Mikey glances over at Gerard. He's sleeping already, snoring softly, and his arms are wrapped around Mikey's pillow. It's too late to call, so all he can do is send Pete a message: 'not dead. You should come by in the morning though in case G's snoring kills me in the night though just saying. things are ok.'

With that, he snaps his phone shut and crawls into bed beside Gerard, tugging his pillow back from the clutch of Gerard's arms. He makes a face and gives it a good yank and Gerard finally lets it go, making a muffled, vaguely protesting sound in his sleep.

Mikey hits the pillow with a satisfied sigh, eyes closing the minute he lays his head down. He's done. They're done. Everything they can do to fix what's been happening, they've done.

He doesn't think anything will happen in the night, or at least, he's hoping so. He wants to be in one piece when Pete comes by in the morning and he closes his eyes, waiting for sleep to take him.

***

The first thing he realizes in the morning is that he's alive. He's in one piece. And-most of all, he didn't wake up during the night, and he didn't have a nightmare. He lets that sink in for a moment and then grins, starting small and ending up so wide it hurts. "Gerard," he says, shaking Gerard awake. "Hey. Wake up. Come on."

"Whazzit?" Gerard mumbles, cracking one eye open.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Mikey asks, and he can feel Gerard physically stop and think about it.

"… no," Gerard says, after a moment's hesitation, eyes wide. "Oh, shit, no. You're right." He grins too and then yanks Mikey against him for a hug. Mikey's startled by it but doesn't protest, still grinning like a fool.

"Does that mean we did it?" he asks, hoping upon hope it does.

"Think so?" Gerard says hesitantly. "I mean, probably. I hope so. I mean, fuck, if that's all it took-"

Just as he says that, they hear the sound of the key turning in the lock. This time, the door isn't bolted, and there's no chair there, so the door swings open, and Pete walks in.

"Um," he says, staring at the two of them, and Mikey is suddenly very, very aware that they happen to be hugging while in bed. In the same bed.

"Not a word," he mutters, letting Gerard go and getting up. "It's not-well, you already know that, shut up."

"I know," Pete says cheerily. "I just wanted to see you get all red." He grabs Mikey around the waist and squeezes, and Mikey is starting to wonder why everyone is deciding to spontaneously hug him today, but he doesn't protest. Much.

"You're alive," Pete tells him, sounding almost reverent, and Mikey blinks.

"Uh, yeah, I'm not rotting or anything, pretty sure I'm alive. Unless you're hugging a corpse and that's creepy, dude, for real."

"You told me to stay gold and then didn't answer your phone for almost a week," Pete points out, making a face at him. "What was I supposed to think? I thought your crazy not-sleeping made you jump off a building or something. I kept watching the news waiting for someone to talk about the Mikeyway pancake."

"Here and alive," Mikey assures him. "Not squashed to death on the pavement somewhere, or eaten by zombies, or drowned, or anything. And I got some sleep."

"Good." Pete grins again. "You're still a stick, though, will your crazy editor dude come gut me if I take you out for some food? And I guess I could bring along that one crazy dude you hang around with, what's his name again?"

"I have sharp pens," Gerard calls from the bed. "Don't even."

"Crazy and armed. Definitely bringing him along so he doesn't kill me for not," Pete says, nodding and keeping a watchful eye out on Gerard out of the corner of his eye. "But seriously, is it gonna be an issue?"

"No?" Mikey shrugs. "We're actually, um. A month ahead of schedule. Want to just go to that one place down the street? New one."

Pete frowns. "There's no new place down the street."

"Nice one, dude, but no, seriously. Little bar? Called the Dirty Dog?"

"I'm not joking," Pete says, looking at him oddly. "I've never heard of that place and I haven't heard anybody talking about it, either."

Mikey glances at Gerard, frowning, and then back to Pete. "You sure?"

"Positive."

Mikey flounders for a moment, unsure of just about everything, and finally offers, "Let's just order something for here. Pizza maybe."

"Sounds good," Pete says agreeably, but he's still giving Mikey a strange look out of the corner of his eye as he gets out his phone.

***

Gerard and Mikey don't talk about it until Pete's safely left and they're sure he's out of earshot. They shoot each other glances the entire time, but glances can only say so much, and when Pete closes the door behind him, Gerard lets out a sigh of relief.

"Do you think he's bullshitting?" he asks, finally, and Mikey frowns.

"Maybe? I don't think he'd lie about something like that. He seemed kind of freaked that we thought there was something there."

"No way it got closed down since the last time we went there, " Gerard points out. "We were there what, three days ago?"

Mikey nods and then goes still. "Unless it never existed to begin with," he says under his breath, knowing it sounds crazy, but he doesn't know what else to think, because nothing else makes any sense.

Gerard hesitates. "We went in there, and we ate in there, and we drank in there, Mikey, that's not something you can make up with your mind and have it be real enough. Like when you're dreaming, you can't taste the food you're eating. Doesn't work like that."

"No," Mikey agrees, and then hesitates again. "You know, the computer was being weird for me earlier. We should take it back to Ray, see if he can do anything with it." It's partly true, and partly because Mikey wants to test a little. Just to see what's changed.

"Okay," Gerard says finally. "Get your boots on, we've got a trip to make."

***

Mikey's heart pounds the entire bus ride. He doesn't know what's going to happen or what he's going to see. While it's a little easier to deal with when the sun is out and it's bright and warm, when the chatter of the people around him doesn't drill into his skull, when things are-or should be-back to normal, there's still a low curl of worry in his gut. There's doubt at the back of his mind, telling him that things aren't over, and as soon as he gets back to the studio, it's gong to be gone.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Gerard says quietly, watching him and looking out the window at the same time. He squeezes Mikey's hand and presses his cheek against the glass, soaking up the sunlight, and when he pulls away, there's a white mark on the window. He grins and writes a 'hi' on it, like he and Mikey used to do when they were kids. Mikey grins and leans over him to breathe on the window so he can write a 'dork' beside it.

They go back and forth and Mikey's caught off-guard when the bus finally screeches to a halt and announces their stop. He gets up with shaky legs, the nervousness intensifying. Once he's out of the bus for a moment, he just stops and stands on the sidewalk, eyes closed, not wanting to move.

"This is gonna be okay, right?" he asks Gerard, and Gerard nods, taking his hand and leading him on, like before.

"It's ok. We're gonna do this."

Mikey stares at the pavement, counting the cracks in it as he walks. He tries not to step on them, just in case. He needs all the good luck he can get right now.

"Hey," Gerard says after a moment, coming to a stop, "wasn't it over here?"

Mikey looks up. They're standing in front of what should be a familiar shape, but it's not a computer repair shop. The shop doesn't look like it's been used for months, a boarded-up convenience store with bars over the windows and scattered debris and trash at the steps. One of the windows is smashed in, and Mikey stares at it, letting go of Gerard's hand to walk towards it, step by step.

"This is the place," he says, absolutely sure of what he's saying.

"But-"

Mikey turns to face him. "I'm sure. Trust me."

They both stare at it in silence, and Mikey looks in the window, just to be sure. It's dark and dingy inside, and the shelves are empty, long -since cleaned out. There are a few newspapers on the floor, newspapers and candy wrappers, and among the debris, something catches Mikey's eye. The bright pages of a comic with too-familiar characters are printed on it, and in the panel he sees a man with curly hair, standing behind a computer with an intent expression on his face. He has a tool kit sitting on the counter beside him, and Mikey recognizes Gerard's handiwork in every inch of it.

"Hey," Mikey says quietly, motioning Gerard over. "Guess what? I found Ray."

"What?" Gerard hurries over and looks in, looks where Mikey is pointing. "But that's-" He turns and stares at Mikey.

Mikey smiles. "I know."

"Does that mean-"

A quick nod, and Mikey takes Gerard's hand again, leading him on down the street. Neither of them look back at the store behind them or the desolation of it. They walk back the way they came, facing the bright morning sun, and Mikey lets out a deep, calming breath.

"Yeah. It's over."

They've won.

fin