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It’s funny, how whenever GIs “need a break” (that’s what they call traumatized in these neck of the woods), they’re carted off to a safehouse or a hotel and told to get some R&R as if a couple hours sleep in a real bed and food that doesn’t come from a can will make everything they’ve been through just magically go away. Well. Frank isn’t sure about anyone else, but taking a hot bath for the first time in a month might kill that perpetual chill that’s been clinging to him since shipping out, but it sure as hell ain’t gonna bring Mikey back.
And that’s where they are, in a nice hotel somewhere in London with instructions to get some rest.
Frank dunks his head under the water and stays there until his lungs start screaming. He really wishes he had a cigarette, but he lost his pack on the beach; he’ll have to ask Gerard if he’s got some of his ration left.
That’s what eventually gets Frank out of the bath, because he’s nothing if not a slave to nicotine (nothing’ll make all this shit just go away, but a good smoke comes damn close). He climbs out of the clawfoot bathtub and watches the dirty water swirl down the drain while he dries himself off with one of the white towels that had been stacked on the white toilet. Everything in this place is so white. It almost hurts his eyes, after his entire world for the last however many fucking months has been variations of shit brown and puke green. The only time they see white is when they see bone.
He really needs a fucking smoke.
Out in the main room of the suite they’ve got for the weekend, there’s a wheeled cart stacked with fancy silver trays of food like in the movies, and the pile of clothes he’d left in the hallway is gone. So is Ray. And Gerard.
“Fellas?”
“Out here.”
The voice comes from the open balcony doors, and Frank goes out in just his towel to find Ray leaning against the railing looking out over the city. A cigarette hangs from one hand, and his other is clenched tightly in a fist.
“Hey,” Frank greets. “Thought you don’t smoke.”
Ray takes a drag from the cigarette, then holds it out to him between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, well. You know.”
Frank does.
Even in the dark he can see the blood still beneath Ray’s nails. He takes the cigarette and sucks on it like his life depends on it. Or maybe his sanity.
Eventually Ray notices Frank’s in a towel and snorts out a laugh. “Are you planning on flashing London?”
Frank runs a hand through his wet hair and shrugs. “Maybe that’ll scare the Nazis off. Show ‘em Americans got bigger cocks than ‘em.”
Ray gives another weak sort of laugh. He finally opens up his fist, and there in his palm is a dog tag on a chain. Frank doesn’t have to see the name to know it’s Mikey’s. The other one’s probably in his mouth, where he’s decomposing on that fucking beach in Normandy.
“The other is between his teeth,” Ray tells him. When you know someone long enough, you can read each other’s minds, apparently. “His mouth was already open, so it wasn’t hard to stick it in there.”
“Goddamnit.”
Frank tosses the cigarette away and puts his head in his hands, resting his elbows on the balcony railing. What’s messed up is that he doesn’t even know how the invasion went after their shift was over, and he doesn’t care to learn. They did what they had to do and got the hell out of there, and he doesn’t give a damn how it went because Mikey died. What does the liberation of fucking France mean to him when he watched someone who might as well have been his brother get blown away?
Which —
He picks his head up. “Where’s Gerard?”
Ray has another cigarette in his mouth, and the dog tag is nowhere to be seen. He scratches at the back of his neck with his dirty nails. “I haven’t seen him since you went to wash up. He just dropped his bags at the door and left.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Take a guess, Frankie.”
“Goddamnit,” he says again.
Frank knows how this goes. He’s seen enough men lose family and friends and lovers to this war to know that Gerard is going to try and lose himself too. And Frank ain’t gonna let that fucking happen.
“Are you good up here by yourself, man?”
Ray looks at him like he’s grown a second head, but then he nods, blowing smoke out of his nose. Even in the aftermath of tragedy, Ray Toro can’t find it in himself to be a dick.
“I’ll put on the radio and take one of those hors d’oeuvre trays into the bath with me. I’ll feel just like Vivien Leigh.”
Frank slaps him on the shoulder and turns to leave. “That’s the spirit. Save some of that champagne for me, huh?”
“But you don’t drink.”
“And you don’t smoke!”
There’s a set of clean fatigues waiting for him on the fancy bed in the fancy bedroom he was told was his, and he puts them on like it’s reveille. With a city as big as this one, there are about a million places Gerard could be hiding, doing God-knows-what, and considering he was in the bath for the better part of an hour, he’s sort of screwed at this point.
He starts by asking around, guys he knows and guys he’s never seen before, and he’s eventually pointed to a pub a block away from the hotel. But when he gets there, Gerard isn’t anywhere to be found. The bartender, with his loud cockney accent that would be funny under other circumstances, tells him his friend ordered a pint and left without drinking it, but he’s not sure where he’s gone. Frank leaves the pub with his hands shoved in his pockets and his stomach in a sailor’s knot. London’s safe for the time being — hopefully — so how much trouble could the guy really get himself into?
Stupid question, Iero.
Gerard’s been quiet since they got picked up from the beach yesterday, in a state of shock (they all were, really), but where there’s shock, and trauma, there’s always the blowup. The after. And it could look like anything.
After walking a few more blocks, giving salutes in the dark and flashing smiles at pretty British girls that straighten their hats when he passes them by, Frank eventually hears the beat of a drum in the distance. At first he thinks it’s artillery and his heart jumps straight into his throat, but it’s just music.
And Gerard likes music.
Frank picks up his pace and follows the sound to a dance hall situated at the end of a strip of shops. He walks straight into “Sing, Sing, Sing” and is pulled into a dance with a blonde dame in a little red dress. Taken by surprise, he lets her lead and she prances him around the room like he’s her fella. While he’s being spun and dipped and the girl is trying and failing to do some sorta Lindy move with him, he looks over the sea of dancing bodies in the hopes of spotting Gerard, but he’s moving too fast and the music’s too loud, so he breaks away from the girl when she’s trying to limbo between his legs and makes his way to the outside of the dance floor where the tables are.
He finds Gerard by the restrooms, and though his back is to the crowd, Frank knows it’s him.
“Can I bum a smoke?”
Gerard turns, cigarette between his fingers, and he looks awful. He looks lost, like he’s not sure how he even got to this dance hall. He’s paler than usual and his eyes are wide like they were on the beach when —
“Frank?”
And he’s got dirt on his neck still. If he wasn’t in uniform, they probably wouldn’t have even let him in. Damn, he looks like hell.
“Hey, Ger. Everything okay?”
Gerard stares at him, letting the cigarette burn up and drip ash onto the sticky-looking floor. Frank can barely stand to look at him.
“Hey, Frankie,” he finally says, when “Sing, Sing, Sing” transitions smoothly into “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”, which is a pretty bold choice, all things considered.
Frank gets closer like he’s trying to rally up a feral cat, slow and steady with his hands held out. “Are you drunk?” he says carefully.
Gerard scrunches up his nose in the way they all used to make fun of him for. “Step in something, Way?” they’d ask. He taps the cigarette and brings it to his mouth like he’s gonna take a drag, but then he flicks the thing away entirely. Frank watches it land dangerously close to some girl’s long skirt.
“Sober as a priest,” is all he says. Then: “For now, at least. I just left a bar because some guy there looked like — ” His eyes go impossibly wider, and he hurriedly lights another cigarette with shaking hands.
“Not sure how much better this place is,” Frank suggests, because they were at a dance hall just like this one a couple days before the drop, singing and dancing and spilling drinks and telling each other, “It’ll all be OK!”
He grabs the pack of cigarettes out of Gerard’s hands before he can put them away and takes two; one goes in his mouth and the other behind his ear. Gerard looks at it and puts one behind his ear as well before tucking the box back in his pocket. He lights them both with his beat-up Zippo.
“I really don’t know why I’m here,” Gerard says after they both have taken a few drags. He’s staring at the floor and Frank is staring at him. “They were playing “Stardust” and I almost ralphed on some guy in a three-piece.”
“Stardust” was one of Mikey’s favorite songs. Frank kind of feels like puking now too.
“Then let’s go,” he says, bordering on pleading. “The hotel’s got real hot water.”
Gerard starts shaking his head before the whole thing is even out of Frank’s mouth, and he keeps shaking his head while he sucks on his cigarette. “I don’t wanna. Can’t.”
He sounds so far away, like he’s sleep-talking. Frank really wishes this was all just some fucked-up dream.
Frank tries to inch himself closer, sliding his boots on the floor. “Where do you wanna go, then? Wanna grab a bite to eat? I think we get everything for free while we’re here. We don’t even gotta show IDs.”
Gerard looks somewhere over Frank’s head and blows smoke towards the ceiling. He starts tapping his foot, but not to the beat of the song, and does this thing with his jaw that makes Frank think he might start crying.
“I wanna go home, Frankie.” He shrugs helplessly, shaking, smoking, looking anywhere but at Frank’s face.
Gerard is the kind of guy who cries a lot, but he rarely lets anyone see him, so Frank isn’t sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing at the moment. Considering everything that’s happened, he’d probably go with the latter.
“But I can’t.”
Frank dunks his half-smoked butt into a passing guy’s drink and grabs Gerard’s shoulder. This close, he smells awful; he smells like sweat and seawater and the specific stench of grief.
“You can. Schechter told you you can, G.”
There he goes shaking his head again — if he doesn’t stop he’ll be giving himself whiplash soon. Frank wants him to say more, needs him to, but Gerard doesn’t. He just pats Frank’s cheek with a clammy hand and slips past him, disappearing into the crowd of dancing bodies. Frank stands there bewildered and not able to move, like Gerard’s touch turned him to stone. His legs are frozen to the floor, and he still feels like crying.
He stays in that spot by the restrooms for two more songs until the feeling finally goes away. He smokes his second cigarette, takes a shot of something dark that’s shoved into his hand by a kid who thanks him for his service, and then he leaves, sucking on his teeth. He really hates drinking.
On his way back to the hotel he keeps his eyes peeled for Gerard but doesn’t find him again. Gerard’s a big boy, though, with a good head on his shoulders. He’ll be fine. He won’t do anything stupid.
But the thought doesn’t leave Frank’s head the rest of the night, all through his and Ray’s late dinner and a comedy hour on some British radio station, and by the time he bids Ray goodnight and retires to his room, he decides he still doesn’t believe it. It must’ve been the shot talking. Having a good head on your shoulders means jack when your kid brother gets wasted by Krauts three yards in front of your face.
So he climbs out of bed — which was so comfortable to the point he was uncomfortable — after staring at the ceiling for a while, and puts a white shirt on and khakis over his skivvies. Out in the main room Ray is asleep on the floor by the fireplace with an empty wineglass next to his hand and a book on his chest. Frank strikes a match on the underside of the mantle and throws it in to rekindle the fire before quietly leaving the suite.
His watch is telling him it’s almost two, but the streets aren’t any less crowded. He guesses it’s probably hard to sleep when your nice city is full of good-looking GIs willing to lose their heads for a while after participating in what is probably the biggest invasion of their military careers. At least he guesses most of the guys he’s coming across are from Overlord; it must’ve been a successful drop after all if all the COs let their men fuck around for the weekend. And here Frank thought the three of them were just special.
A pretty girl with a button nose and cheeks like a Kewpie doll pulls Frank into an alley between two buildings and tries to get her hand in his pants before he kisses her on the mouth and tells her, “Go find another, sweetheart, I’m busy,” and skirts away.
He pokes his head into the pub he’d checked out earlier, but it’s small enough that all he has to do is a quick sweep with his eyes to know Gerard isn’t there once again, and the dance hall at the end of the block is finally closed for the night, so Frank’s not really sure where he was expecting to go. Again, this is a damn big city, and Gerard’s always been good at disappearing.
“Hey, Private!” he calls to a guy he thinks he knows, waving at him over a group of teenagers listening to records on the stoop of a dark shop.
The guy raises his bottle of beer and comes over, a redhead following behind him and holding onto his belt like a little girl.
“Iero, right?”
“Yeah, yeah — have you seen Gerard Way?”
The guy takes a swig from the bottle and throws his arm around the girl’s shoulders. They both seem thoroughly sauced, and probably not the best people to ask, but what other option does Frank have?
“About yea high? Black hair? Face like a dame’s?”
The last part throws him off, but — “Yeah, him. Seen him?”
Harry, he thinks the guy’s name is, looks around, then shrugs. “He seemed kinda … dunno. Didn’t his kid brother eat it yesterday?”
“Oh, my!” says the redhead in her pretty accent.
“Don’t you worry, sugar, I’ll protect you.”
Frank swallows down a sick feeling and shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t sock Harry in the jaw. He doesn’t have time for this malarkey. “Did you see him, though?”
“Uh, yeah.” Harry points vaguely across the street. “Think he went that way.”
Frank rolls his eyes. “Great. Thanks.”
“No problem!”
Across the street is a park, littered with picnic blankets and radios overlapping and his fellow soldiers necking with British girls like horny teenagers under the trees. Gerard was never one for public displays of affection, but Frank checks them all over just in case; it’s a strange time for everyone. But he’s nowhere to be found, until a guy named Jim whose company trained with Frank’s gets his attention from where he’s laid out on a bench with a cigarette in his hand. Frank navigates his way around a couple sleeping in the grass surrounded by boxes of chocolate and makes his way to the bench.
Jim sits up when he gets close. “You lookin’ for Way?” he asks.
Well that was unexpected. Is he that obvious? “Yeah, I am. Tell me you’ve seen him.”
Jim nods while taking a drag from what Frank’s surprised to see is a reefer. “He came over from the dance hall with a bottle o’ champagne, I think, and laid in the grass for a while.”
“And?”
Jim shrugs. “Bottle was empty, so he left. I think he was headed towards the river. The Thames. That way.”
Frank follows his finger, and his stomach starts doing the jitterbug. “Thanks,” he says vaguely, and heads in the direction of the River Thames.
He prays the whole way there, one hand clutching the crucifix around his neck and the other pressed to his breast pocket where he keeps pictures of his ma and Saint Michael. He’s scared of what he’ll find when he gets there, or, even more awful to think, what he won’t.
There aren’t many people hanging around the river, a couple of GIs here, a few young girls there, and Frank has practically worked himself up into a fit by the time he gets over to the railing and looks down into the water. Gerard isn’t here, though. Of course he’s not. He’s about to just say screw it and go back to the hotel when —
Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. There’s the fucking champagne bottle — empty, standing up on the edge beneath the railing, sparkling like an emerald under the streetlamps.
“Shit.”
He picks it up and looks at it. Looks around. Looks down into the water.
“I told Private Way not to leave that here, but he did anyway.”
Frank spins on his heel, pebbles screeching under his boots. He has no idea the name of this guy that’s leaning against the railing a little ways away shuffling a deck of old cards, but he’s seen him around, shared a can of beans with him once, he thinks. Maybe even prayed the rosary with him a couple times, too.
“Where’d he go?” Frank asks him, feeling light, feeling like this is the millionth time he’s asked that question tonight. But at this point he’s not really sure he even wants to hear the answer.
The guy comes over with his cards and takes the empty champagne bottle from him. He carries it to a trash can and throws it in. Frank braces himself for the explosion of shattered glass, but none comes.
“He asked where they might have good drinks. I told him kindly that I don’t drink, but everyone seems to be headed towards Trafalgar Tavern across the river.”
Frank squints across the Thames and finds a big manila-colored building with all their lights on. It seems like the only place awake over there.
“Would you care for a game of Gin Rummy, Private? The light of the moon is quite refreshing.”
Frank looks down at the ancient deck of cards, frowning. “No thanks.”
It takes him nearly a quarter of an hour to get around the river, and by the time he reaches the huge Victorian tavern, he’s soaked with sweat and his knees feel like Jell-O.
There’s a group of GIs drunkenly singing a Sinatra tune out by the front doors, and Frank has to squeeze his way through to get inside. He walks into a sort of foyer, with paintings overlapping on the walls and chandeliers as big as Jeeps hanging from the ceiling. He’s staring at the fancy wainscoting, transfixed and trying to remember the last time he saw something so lavish, when a waitress acting as the maître d' appears out of nowhere.
“Good evening, sir, and thank you for your service. How may I help you tonight?” She barely looks seventeen, but the bruises beneath her bloodshot eyes tell him she’s probably aged a couple decades tonight.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
She looks surprised at the formality. And Mikey said he was raised in a barn … “Oh! Um, of course. What does he look like? Have you a photograph?”
A photograph. He does, actually, and he slips his left boot off to get it. It’s a shot of him and Gerard, just the two of them, arms around each other and cheesing for the camera. Some journalist who may or may not have been Hemingway’s wife came to camp one day last spring, and he and Gerard promised to give her insider information if she took their picture. She’d obliged, but all she got in return was their white asses mooning her. And though she’d kicked them both over into the dirt with her heels and stomped away, they still got a copy of the photo in their mail the next week.
The waitress frowns when he shows her the picture, wrinkling her little freckled nose at it. Frank points to Gerard’s smiling face and the frown turns into another look of surprise. “He had a girl with him! They asked for a room.”
Got him.
“Can you tell me which room?” he asks her, tucking the photograph back into his boot and balancing himself on her podium.
The girl flips through her book with quick fingers. “Room … 8A. Our lift is broken, so you’ll have to take the stairs, I’m afraid.”
He’s already heading towards the staircase. “No problem. Thanks, sweetheart!”
Frank takes the stairs two at a time, heart hammering in his chest like a caged animal. The hallway he comes out into is hazy with smoke, the patterned carpet littered with cigarette butts and shoes and panties. No wonder the poor girl downstairs looked like she was a hairsbreadth away from calling it quits.
Room 8A is at the end of the hall, and when Frank presses his ear to the door, he hears laughter. He knocks, and the laughter stops. A second later the door opens a crack, and a green eye looks out beneath the chain lock.
“Have you got them, then?”
Frank frowns at the eye. “Huh?”
The door slams shut, then opens wider a second later. A woman in a slip and garters, her hair a rat’s nest and her makeup like a clown’s, fills the doorway. She’s looking at him expectantly.
“Who is it?” says a voice in the room behind her — Gerard’s voice.
Frank gets up on his toes and finds the man in question spread eagle on the four-poster bed, his uniform open at the chest and a reefer hanging from his lips. Where the hell is everyone getting that shit?
“Have you got the stuff or not?”
Frank looks back at the girl, who’s getting impatient. “Do I have what?”
She rolls her eyes and tries to shut the door in his face, but he puts his foot in the way.
“Oi, what’s the big idea?”
He pushes the half-naked girl aside and barges into the room, going right over to the bed. He looms over Gerard with his hands on his hips like a mother, waiting for him to notice. And then he does; his eyes flutter open, glazed and unfocused, and eventually they land on Frank.
“Frankie? You here for a threesome? Maggie’s … great.”
“You two know each other?” asks Maggie.
Frank ignores her. “I’m here to make sure you’re alright.”
Gerard ignores him, shifting the reefer from the corner of his mouth with his tongue so he can take a drag without lifting his hand. He blows the smoke in Frank’s face.
“Well?”
“Well what?” His eyes close again.
“Are you okay.”
“Aces, pal.”
Frank lets out a breath through his nose like an angry bull. He turns to Maggie, who’s now drinking from a bottle of wine. “I think you should leave," he tells her.
“What?”
Frank picks up a dress from the floor and chucks it at her. She barely catches it, looking shocked. “Now.”
“M’not leaving!” Even as she screams it like a bird, she’s putting her shoes on.
“Did he promise to pay you? Do you want money?”
She straightens suddenly, swaying only a bit. “M’ not that kind of girl, mister.”
“Then leave!”
She huffs and puffs and leaves the room with her clothes and her wine, slamming the door behind her.
Frank looks back down at Gerard, who seems to have fallen asleep, the reefer wilting dangerously from his lips. Frank reaches down and takes the white stick and stubs it out in an overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. Gerard wakes with a start, looking wildly around the room before his eyes land again on Frank.
“Oh. Hey, Frank. What’re you doing here?”
Frank shakes his head. The guy’s not dead, but he’s not sure how much better this is. “You’re a mess.” And it’s true; he hasn’t bathed in days, and the grime on his neck and chest is well on its way to becoming permanent. His uniform is leaving stains on the nice sheets.
“What can I say? Marge likes it dirty.”
“Maggie.”
“Who’s that?”
Frank sits down on the edge of the bed. “Are you drunk, or just high?”
Gerard’s eyes roll beneath their lids and he opens them wide and stares at him. “A little bit of both, I think. Not much. Marge was supposed to have a fella come by with … I dunno. Something fun, I hope.” He sits up suddenly. “Hey, where’s Marge?”
“How much did you drink, G?”
Gerard looks at him with that haunted look in his eyes, like he did back at the dance hall. The same look he had on the beach when Frank was holding him back so he didn’t throw himself into the crossfire. He could see the gunfire and the explosions in the reflection of his eyes, and he watched that instead of Ray and Mikey. He watched Gerard watch his brother die at the hands of their best friend. God, this whole thing is fucked. He looks away.
“Just some champagne,” he says quietly. Champagne never affected him, so he’s not drunk. Just a little high and a lot grieving.
Before he knows it Gerard’s head is dropping onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and good Lord he smells like shit.
“Why don’t we head back to the hotel?”
“Hot water, right. You said.”
Frank smiles. “C’mon, pal. You won’t believe the beds — they’re shit. I’d rather sleep on the floor like Ray is.”
Something happens then, at the mention of Ray’s. Gerard picks his head up and gets off the bed on the opposite side and starts for the door.
“Hey — where are you going?”
Gerard presses his hands to his face, and when he takes them away he’s smiling. But it’s a scary fucking smile. It’s empty. “I’m gonna go find Marge and see if she wants to finish what we started.”
Frank gets up from the bed too. “What? Gerard, we’re going back to the hotel. Do you know how long I spent looking for you? I thought you threw yourself into the fucking Thames!”
Gerard flinches a little, but doesn’t stop smiling like a wooden puppet. He bends to put his boots on, which are still caked with mud and ruining the carpet. “Sorry for the trouble, pal. I’m gonna go have my own sort of R&R — I&I! Intercourse and intoxication,” he says in an awful British accent. “How’s that sound?”
And then he’s gone, but Frank doesn’t stand there like a useless bastard like he did back at the dance hall. He runs out of the room after him and grabs hold of his shoulder before he can reach the stairs.
The minute Frank touches him Gerard whirls on him, his dog tags swinging at his neck, and pushes him up against the wall; Frank’s head collides with it painfully. Gerard gets close enough their noses almost touch, and his breath is rancid. He looks terrifying, but Frank isn’t scared of him. He could never be scared of him.
“Don’t follow me, Iero,” he says, low and deadly. “I’m not letting you hold me back again.”
Frank shoves him away, then shoves him again for good measure. “Again?” There’s a sudden lump in his throat, and he feels like he’s got magma running through his veins. “You mean when I didn’t let you run out blind and get yourself killed like Mikey?”
Gerard punches him in the nose so hard he hits the wall again. The blood comes fast, and some gets in his mouth before Frank can staunch it with his hand. They stand there in the middle of the hallway staring at each other, their chests heaving in tandem.
“Fuck you,” Gerard eventually says, and there’s still all the venom behind it. Frank spits blood into his face on reflex, and Gerard doesn’t even look surprised when he wipes it off with the sleeve of his dirty jacket. “You should’ve let me go, goddamnit. You should’ve let me go to him!”
He lunges at Frank like a wild animal, and Frank grabs his shoulders with his bloody hands. “And let your ma get two flags on her doorstep?!” he screams into his face, his nose a beacon of pain, throbbing in time with the erratic beating of his heart. “Is that what you want?”
Gerard beats at his chest uselessly, and Frank lets him. He wouldn’t do more than break his nose, he knows he won’t. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair — why didn’t you let me go to him?”
He’s crying now, with those huge hazel eyes like a terrified kid’s, pounding his shaking fists against Frank’s chest.
“What the hell could you have done, G?” he says, only raising his voice so Gerard can hear him over his own gasping. “Ray had him.”
“He died!”
“And Ray did everything he could’ve done! You know he did.”
“No he didn’t,” he sobs.
Frank might not have watched after Mikey got shot down, he was too busy listening to Gerard scream his brother’s name until he went hoarse and making sure he didn’t do something stupid, but he knows Ray did all he could to help him. Not just as a medic, but as their best friend. Their brother-in-arms. And he knows Gerard knows it too, if not right now.
Gerard wilts suddenly like all the fight’s gone out of him at once, and Frank holds him up by the arms. His head is pressing against Frank’s chest now, his knees buckled and almost touching the floor. There are sounds coming from his mouth that Frank’s never heard before, raw, heartbreaking sounds. Like an animal. Like someone who’s had a piece of him torn out and is begging God to give it back because he can’t stand to live without it.
“It’s not fair,” Gerard cries, sounding like an old wino now, slurring his words and slobbering all over himself. But Frank knows it’s not that. He told him he only drank that bottle of bubbly, and he believes him. Frank wishes he were just drunk and that Mikey is back at the hotel singing England’s worst rendition of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and trying to get Ray to do Ginger Rogers’ parts. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair, Frankie. Why him? Why not me?”
Frank can feel his throat getting all thick and his eyes getting hot. Neither of them have cried yet over this, so they might as well get it over with together. He grabs the back of Gerard’s neck and squeezes. Gerard slips further to the floor until his knees thump against the carpet, and he presses his face into Frank’s hip. He can feel his khakis getting damp there as he cries and cries and cries.
“Mikey enlisted,” Frank tells him when he’s able to speak again; his lip is quivering dangerously. “He knew what he was getting himself into.”
Gerard moans, and the sound goes straight through Frank. It dislodges something in him, and suddenly the floodgates open and he’s finally crying too, hands roaming to Gerard’s head, his fingers tangling in his hair that’s tacky with sweat and days-old Brylcreem, face wet with tears and the blood that’s slowly drying over his mouth.
“What the fuck is this?”
Frank looks up, but Gerard doesn’t move. Frank’s not sure he can.
Bob Bryar, who’s in their company and was cowering at Gerard’s other side during the invasion when Mikey was hit, is standing a few doors down, tucking his undershirt into his pants with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Frank wipes his face with a hand that smells like Gerard.
“Private Way, what would your brother say if he saw you like this?”
Frank’s insides turn to ice, and he feels like he’s standing outside his own body when Gerard suddenly goes stiff. He watches him get back on his feet mechanically, like a robot in one of those old science fiction pulps they used to read. His face is red and blotchy, and he barely glances at Frank when he turns to face Bryar.
“This ain’t that kinda tavern, Private.” Bryar takes the cigarette from his mouth and crosses his arms over his broad chest. He looks smug, and Frank knows something real bad is about to happen.
And then it does: Gerard winds his arm back like he’s a fucking pitcher for the Dodgers and punches Bryar in the teeth, who goes down like a sack of bricks. As much as this shouldn’t be happening, Frank can’t help the swell of pride that goes through him at the sight of Bryar moaning and groaning on the floor, warming him back to life. Bryar’s had it coming to him for months now, and it’s about time someone put him in his place.
“What the fuck,” Bryar spits, hands over his face. He’s still holding that damn cigarette somehow. “What the fuck? Crazy fuckin’ pervert.”
Gerard drops himself on Bryar’s chest, his knees on either side of him, and he looks crazy, like something out of a Hitchcock picture. Bryar takes his hands away and stares up in surprise, and Gerard leans over and kisses him right on his bloody mouth, a big, loud smack, and in the moment after he pulls back and before Bryar can start complaining, Gerard punches him again, this time in the nose. And then he punches him again, and again, and again —
Frank swears and grabs Gerard by the back of his jacket and hauls him off. Gerard’s damn near growling, and Bryar’s out cold, and they’ve gotta get the hell out of here before someone catches them. He gets Gerard on his feet, and he’s shaking with adrenaline. He’s shaking and his mouth is red with Bryar’s blood and his chest is heaving.
“Let’s go, man.”
“No.” Gerard tries to go back for a second round, but Frank grabs him around the waist drags him over to the stairs. “Frank!” he screams. “Fuck you, let go of me! I'm not finished with — ”
Frank slaps his other hand over Gerard’s mouth to shut him up. “If I have to hold you back so you don’t get yourself fucking killed then so be it,” he says dangerously into his ear. “Be pissed at me all you want, Gerard. You’ll be thanking me when you don’t get a dishonorable fuckin’ discharge.”
This fight doesn’t last long, either. Gerard is in tears again now, and he goes limp like a ragdoll. Frank takes his hand off his mouth. “I don’t care,” he cries, and Frank knows that he didn’t just beat the tar out of Bryar like that because he’d called him a pervert. He did it because he couldn’t do it to Frank. “They can kick me out all they want, but I’m never going home. I’m never going home, Frankie.”
Frank’s heart doesn’t break this time. This time he’s pissed to hell, and turns Gerard around and grabs him by the shoulders harder than necessary. Gerard looks so defeated; he can barely even meet Frank’s eye.
“You really wanna do this? Huh? Killing yourself isn’t only disrespectful to your country — ” he gets real close to Gerard’s face again so he knows he’s as serious as a cancer, “ — but to your brother.”
Gerard lets out a sob like it was torn straight from his throat. Frank gets his arm around his shoulders and he drags him down the stairs to the first floor. The maître d' isn’t at her podium, so they slip out of the tavern unnoticed.
Gerard starts carrying some of his weight halfway around the River Thames, but he doesn’t stop his crying. Neither does Frank. He’s not angry anymore. He can never be angry at Gerard for very long. They just cry and hold onto each other and let the late night city noises distract them from the daggers lodged in their chests.
Eventually, when he’s gone into that quiet corpse-like state he’d slipped into after the invasion, Gerard says, “You don’t survive a war, Frank. No one does.”
Frank squeezes his side, and Gerard flinches like it hurts. “I think we should try. Because I ain’t leaving here without you.”
Gerard laughs and shakes his head a little, but there’s no humor in any of it. “You’ll be leaving without me anyway. I died on that beach with — with him. I’m never going home.”
And he knows he’s talking about his father, then, who’s been shell-shocked since before Gerard was born. Who’s a stranger in his own home, to his own family. Frank thinks about that sometimes, what it would be like to go home as someone else. He’s not sure if that’s better than not going home at all.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.
Ray’s still fast asleep on the floor when they get up to their suite, and the fire’s dead again but Frank can’t bother to get it back going. He’s not sure why they had it lit in the middle of the summer in the first place. He guides Gerard straight into the bathroom and shuts the door behind them, where he lets Frank take his clothes off. He takes Gerard apart piece by piece, and he’s so damn dirty Frank doesn’t even notice the blood at first, staining the skin over his hip.
“Christ, what the hell did you do to yourself?”
Gerard looks down, his hair falling into his eyes. “Happened on the beach, I think. Dunno. It doesn’t hurt, though.”
“Yeah, anymore. Jesus, Ger, why didn’t you say anything?”
He sits Gerard down on the toilet in his underpants and socks and rummages around under the sink where he finds a fresh first-aid kit.
“I didn’t notice.” Yeah, because everything else hurts. Frank gets it.
He opens the white box. There’s a bottle of peroxide and he takes it out and uncaps it. “This is gonna sting,” he warns, but Gerard doesn’t react when he pours it over the cut, or when Frank uses his fingers to wipe away some of the blood and grime. At the last second he remembers the punches he'd thrown and pours some over Gerard’s knuckles too, swollen and split like he beat the holy hell out of a punching bag without any tape.
They’re used to this, to patching each other up, but this time is different. Everything’s probably gonna be different now.
There’s a few clean towels left on the sink, and Frank kicks the first-aid kit aside and grabs one of the washcloths. He turns the water on in the bathtub and holds the cloth under the tap until it’s soaked through, then rings it out. He wipes at Gerard’s face like a mother might wipe her child’s, and Gerard holds onto his belt loops the whole time.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe Frank is the one who’s almost five years younger.
When Gerard’s face is clean and the cloth is no longer white, Frank finally manages a smile and says, “There he is.”
Gerard looks at the filling bathtub, then up at Frank. “You can leave if you want. You’re prob’ly tired.”
Frank shakes his head and pulls him to his feet. “I ain’t sleeping until you are. Now c’mon, before the water gets cold.”
He helps him out of his underpants, and they’re thrown along with the dirty washcloth into the growing pile in the corner. He shuts the tap off and holds Gerard’s hand as he steps into the bath, and doesn’t let go until he’s sitting in the steaming water and letting out a deep sigh.
“Nice, huh?” Frank reaches over to grab the last clean washcloth and tosses it to Gerard. He sits down with his legs crossed on the floor next to the tub.
“Yeah.” Gerard sits hunched over his knees, clutching the washcloth in one hand and his ankle in the other. He’s staring at the water dripping from the tap. Just staring. Not moving. Eyes wide and haunted.
Frank’s not sure how they’re gonna go back out into the field after this weekend.
He picks up the bar of soap he'd left on the floor after his own bath and holds it out to Gerard. He doesn’t take it — he doesn’t even look at it — so Frank takes the washcloth from him and scrubs the soap onto it. He drags it over Gerard’s pale, dirty back, feeling the bumps in his spine through the soft fabric. He’s so thin now, he’s practically skin and bones. It breaks Frank’s heart in a different way; Gerard’s always had a little meat on his bones, but this war is whittling them all down to nothing.
He’s crying before he realizes it, and so is Gerard, and just like the walk back from the tavern, they cry together.
Frank scrubs at his back and his shoulders, drags the washcloth down his arms and pushes him back against the tub so he can get at his front. Gerard closes his eyes and stretches out his legs until his feet are pressed up under the tap. With gentle hands Frank pushes his dog tags aside and scrubs at his dirty chest.
“Your hand’s gonna hurt like a sonofabitch, but that cut doesn’t seem too bad,” he comments, clearing his throat, looking through the dirty water at the angry spot on Gerard’s hip.
Gerard hums but doesn’t open his eyes. They’ve both stopped crying, and Frank realizes grief is a weird thing. It comes in bouts, like food poisoning.
“Must’ve been shrapnel,” he continues, mostly to himself.
He washes every inch of Gerard that he can reach, using the bar of soap up until it’s the size of a half dollar. Gerard is practically asleep by the time Frank wants to do his hair, and he’d rather eat his gun than tell him he has to sit up. But he does, and Gerard obliges, pulling his legs back up to his chest and resting his forehead on his freshly-scrubbed knees. Frank pours some of the sweet-scented shampoo onto his head from the bottle. Frank never used any fancy shampoos before shipping out, and definitely not after (it’s a miracle if he even gets the chance to get his hair wet, let alone shampooed), always prefered to use some good old Ivory, but it’s free, and it smells nice. It makes him forget everything for a few seconds while he scratches at Gerard’s scalp, which is what this reprieve was all for, anyway.
Frank pulls the plug on the drain when he’s done, and before all the water runs out completely he cups some in his hands and rinses the shampoo out of Gerard’s hair. Then he turns the tap back on, letting the bathtub fill up with clean water.
“Alright,” he says, holding out the sad excuse for soap and the washcloth and getting up off the floor. “I’ll go see if they left us anything to sleep in. I think Ray was wearing his fatigues when he went to bed. Everything’s just too soft here, you know?”
Gerard doesn’t stir. Frank lays his hand on his naked shoulder.
“G?”
Finally, with what seems like all the strength left in him, Gerard picks his head up and looks at Frank with his bruised and bloodshot eyes. “I’m so tired, Frankie. I feel like I’m a million years old.”
Without thinking, Frank starts running his fingers through his wet hair. “I know, pal. Me too.”
And then, still not thinking, Frank gets on his knees and pulls Gerard in for a hug. They don’t hug enough anymore, and after everything that had happened yesterday, it’s the fucking least Frank could do for him. He holds Gerard’s head in the crook between his neck and shoulder, letting himself get wet, damn it all to hell, and wraps his other arm around him; he can feel his ribs against his hand.
“I miss him,” Gerard says thickly. “I don’t know what — I feel — ”
“I know.”
“He’s my little brother. I told Mom I’d watch out for him.”
“I know, G.”
They stay there like that for seconds or minutes or hours, and even when his knees start to hurt Frank doesn’t dare get up off the floor. The only thing that matters right now is Gerard.
“I’m sorry. For tonight,” Gerard eventually says, small and meek.
Frank holds him a little tighter, fingers digging into his paper-thin skin. “Don’t you apologize. You scared the hell outta me, but I get it. I do.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you, Frankie.” His voice gets all high, and he clears his throat. “I just wanted — ,” he sighs, like he’s giving up all pretenses. “I wanted to die.”
“I know. I know.”
Taking a bayonet to the jugular would probably hurt less than hearing him say that. Frank rubs his hand against Gerard’s side, and goddamnit he’s skinny. It’d probably look strange to anyone else, him on the floor holding his best friend who's buck-ass nude, but they’re all well past getting hot ears around each other.
“But I don’t want you to,” Frank says. “I’m not sorry for holding you back, Gerard. I’ll never be sorry for that. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
No hot ears.
“You’re the only thing getting me through this damn war.”
Gerard takes his arms out of the bathtub and wraps them, dripping, around Frank. Frank lets himself be squeezed and squeezes right back.
“I ain’t gonna let you get yourself killed, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna let you go home only half a man like your father. I need you here — all of you. And when Hitler finally eats a bullet and we all get to go home, you’re going back to Jersey a hundred percent Gerard Way.”
Gerard doesn’t say anything, but Frank isn’t expecting him to. He just had to tell him that. He had to let him know how he feels, even if that’s not all of it. But Frank’s not sure how to get it all out without sounding like a dope. So he just holds him.
Frank presses his nose into Gerard’s wet shoulder and hisses when his face lights up with pain. They pull apart, and the front of his shirt is soaked.
“God, Frank,” Gerard says, sounding for the first time a little more like himself — if he swallowed a handful of glass. “I’m so fucking sorry for hitting you like that.”
Frank shakes his head, and regrets it immediately when the pain makes him feel like he’s gonna toss his guts. “Stop apologizing, huh? I don’t think it’s broken.”
Gerard huffs something that might be a laugh and dips his hands in the water so he can try and clean off Frank’s face for him. He forgot he’s probably covered in blood too; pink water is trailing down Gerard’s arm from where he had his face against his shoulder.
His touch is gentle, his fingers wiping featherlight under his nose and around his mouth. Frank watches his face the whole time, the wrinkle between his eyebrows, the way his mouth is pulled down at the corners. He’s so damn beautiful, even after going through the worst shit of his life.
“You’re the only thing getting me through this too, you know,” Gerard says quietly, still not meeting his eye. “And … thanks. For keeping me straight. If I got myself killed being a dumbass, Dad would find a way to bring me back just so he could kill me himself.”
Frank smiles. He feels the same way.
“And besides, I promised Schechter I’d write Mom myself. I don’t want her to find out from anyone else. So thank you. For holding me back.”
Gerard really does have a good head on his shoulders, damnit.
Frank sighs and puts his hand on Gerard’s white cheek. He 's not sure what he was going to say, but he definitely isn't expecting to put his other hand on Gerard’s other cheek and kiss him on the mouth.
It’s a quick kiss, as quick as the stupid one Gerard laid on Bryar at the tavern, but when he pulls back with an apology on his tongue, Gerard’s going back in and kissing him again.
And ain’t this better than any amount of R&R they could’ve gotten?
Frank breaks off when his nose starts throbbing like a beating heart, but he doesn’t move his hands from Gerard’s face. Gerard’s finally looking at him, and his eyes are the same colors as their uniforms, as the trenches, a perfect encapsulation of this war and everything Frank hates most, but somehow they’re the prettiest shade he’s ever seen.
“Frank,” he says breathlessly, looking at him like he’s in shock again. “You’ve got a girl back home. You’re practically married.”
Frank wants to touch Gerard more, in all the ways he’s thought about since they were little kids kicking cans down the street and pissing off their neighbors. He brushes his fingers over his lips, his eyebrows, down the bridge of his nose, and now that he's started he can’t stop. He touches him all over, and delicately, like he’s one of those marble busts at the art museums Gerard used to drag them to. Frank touches him like he needs to be savored.
“I know,” he says eventually, and Gerard’s eyes are closed again, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows as he wilts into Frank’s touch is bigger than the Grand Canyon. But it’s not in pain, nor in anger, but in something deeper. More heartbreaking. Like this is exactly what he'd needed. “Jamia wanted to put the wedding off until I get back because — because she knows stuff like this happens sometimes.”
Gerard lets out a snort of surprised laughter and opens his eyes. “Swell gal.”
“You’re telling me.”
Frank leans in and kisses him again, just once. When he pulls back, Gerard says, “We’re like Greeks out here, I guess.”
Frank tips his head to the side in consideration. “Except the Greeks didn’t get court-martialed for necking.”
“It was encouraged.”
“They had it easier than us.”
“Mm. Probably not.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
And God, they’re kissing again, and Frank doesn’t even feel bad about it; this is exactly what he'd needed too.
He’s always known he was a little bit queer, and so did Jamia (why else would she postpone the wedding?), and being friends with Gerard for so long had given him his suspicions, but he hadn't known it’d all come out like this. And at such a damn time.
Women are most definitely always right.
Gerard pulls back with an explosive sigh that fans over Frank’s face like a gust of summer wind. His breath still smells like something died, but he really just can’t find it in him to care. His mouth might as well be as sweet as the Hershey’s bars they get in their rations.
And then there’s a knock at the door, and the moment is broken.
“You guys okay in there?” Ray calls.
Gerard looks at Frank, then down at himself, like Ray has X-ray vision and can see his dick through the door. “We’ll be out in a jiff!”
“Good, because that high society food they gave us is going right through me.”
Gerard snorts and puts his face in his hands. Frank kisses the top of his damp head, just because he can. Because they won’t get many moments like these, even if Ray couldn’t give a rat’s ass.
“We’ll sleep like babies tonight, I’m sure,” Frank says into his hair. “Even if the beds feel like a big marshmallow.”
“Man, I don’t even remember the last time I slept. I think it was '42.”
Frank stands and every inch of him pops like a barrage of gunfire. He helps Gerard up and out of the bath. “Wanna bunk with me?” he asks.
Gerard grabs the last towel off the sink and wraps it around his waist. “I don’t think I could sleep on my own.”
Another bout of that pesky grief tries to work its way up Frank’s throat, but he swallows it down and kisses Gerard on the temple. “Me neither,” he says honestly.
Ray is leaning against the wall when Frank opens the door to the bathroom, arms crossed, hair an absolute tragedy. He looks just as wrecked as they feel.
“Hey.” He pushes off the wall. Without waiting for a response he pulls Gerard into a hug, cradling the back of his wet head and swaying gently side to side. Frank has to look at the floor so he doesn’t start blubbering again. “Love you.”
It takes a couple tries for Gerard to say, “Love you too, Toro.”
And then Ray’s pulling back and pressing something into Gerard’s hand and slipping past them into the bathroom. When they look down at his hand, they find a fresh pack of smokes and Mikey’s dog tag. Frank has to hold Gerard up so he doesn’t fall to the floor.
He walks Gerard to his room and sits him on the bed. There’s fresh clothes in the dresser, and he gives a pair of clean underpants to Gerard, who’s gone frozen again. He helps him into the underpants, throwing the towel somewhere he can’t see, and sits down next to Gerard.
Silently, Gerard hands the pack of smokes to Frank and works at getting the dog tag onto the chain around his neck, right next to his own. He presses his hand to the three pieces of engraved metal and closes his eyes like he might be saying a prayer, then pulls his legs up onto the bed and lays back. Frank crawls next to him, and they lay side by side holding hands and chain-smoking until the sun comes up.
The next day is better, somehow. A little easier. They eat a full English breakfast, put on their dress greens, and head to Mass, considering it’s Sunday and all.
Frank doesn’t remember the last time he'd stepped foot in a church, but when they’re shuffled to the front up by the altar next to a bunch of other GIs, it kind of feels like he never even left. Gerard and Ray aren’t very religious fellas, but losing someone does funny things to a guy. They sing along and say their prayers and when they’re wishing the peace of the Lord be with each other, Frank kisses Gerard’s cheek and lets himself linger there. He’s sure God won’t mind.
Afterwards, when everyone’s filing out of the church into the warm, early afternoon, some quiet and worrying their rosaries between their fingers, some chatting and already smoking, the three of them head to a pub called The Mayflower and find an empty booth towards the back. Gerard goes to the bar to order, and comes back with a tray of ale and a basket of fish and chips balanced in his hands. They leave the spot next to Gerard empty and put one of the glasses of beer on the table there — for Mikey.
When they’re all digging in, Gerard takes out a pencil and a wad of paper from his pocket, and they spend the better part of the afternoon getting pleasantly buzzed and writing a letter to Gerard’s parents with greasy fingers and teary eyes. When it’s finished — and three whole pages long, back and front — they put it in an envelope and bring it outside to one of the mailboxes. Anything they send out has to go through V-mail, but they’re sure Schechter won’t care. He’s not as big a bastard as the other COs.
When Gerard opens the mailbox, Ray says, “Wait,” and takes out Mikey’s glasses from his pocket. He hands them to Gerard, who looks devastated when he takes them with careful fingers. The lenses are cracked, and the wire frames bent, and, Christ, there’s even blood on them.
Gerard, who’s trying so hard not to start crying again and is whimpering low in his throat with the effort, tucks the specs into the envelope, licks it shut, kisses it, and throws it in like he can’t get it out of his hands fast enough. Then he breaks down, draping himself over the mailbox, and Frank and Ray share a look and pile on top of him.
After that they spend the rest of the day in the park. They drink lemonade that pretty British girls bring them and talk about everything and nothing and they talk about Mikey. It’s nice. Frank feels better, and he knows Ray and Gerard do too. Maybe this R&R isn’t complete bullshit after all.
But the weekend comes to an end, and they’re back into the thick of it. Schechter gives them something easy, and that means heading to a little village back across the Channel that’s currently being occupied by Nazis. They’re dropped off at an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of the village with a well out back and a thatched roof and ceilings that are barely taller than Ray, but it’s cozier than the hotel they were put up in in London, and they manage to catch a couple hours of shut eye on the living room floor.
They set out in the morning, and the empty space in their group is the elephant in the room, but they don’t talk about it. They walk side by side with their guns held out and do their job.
The village is small, but the damage is huge; businesses are completely destroyed, homes ruined. If they didn’t know any better, Frank would think the place was a ghost town. There’s a woman who’s trying and failing to clean up the debris in front of her shop who tells them there are a total of six Krauts there, and that they’re off patrolling, and “Thank you, God bless you, oh my.”
They split up and promise to meet back up later.
Frank finds the first Nazi eating from a tin of peaches a couple of storefronts down. He takes him out with a headshot and steals the peaches, giving them to a kid that was an unfortunate witness to the execution. The second is manhandling a teen girl over where his tank is parked, and he grabs the guy by the back of his uniform and pulls him around the corner into an alley where he slits his throat quick and sort-of clean. Then he kills the guy in the tank quietly and decommissions the hunk of metal and accepts the kiss on the cheek the girl gives him.
Frank was never really one for violence (if back alley brawls back home don’t count), but he’d be lying if he didn’t say this feels kind of good. Killing Nazi fucks is always a good thing, but it’s even better-feeling after what they did to Mikey.
Ray catches up with him when Frank’s on his way back to their rendezvous spot after scouting the area some more and coming up empty-handed, and they duck into a butcher’s shop together.
“All clear?” Ray asks, wiping at a smudge of blood on his cheek.
“I wasted three,” Frank tells him, wandering behind the counter while Ray keeps watch. There’s nothing here, though, not even a piece of jerky. Frank wouldn’t steal from Allies anyway. “You?”
“I found two. One of them was taking a piss.”
“Nice. You see Gerard?”
They both jump a mile into the air when there’s a shout outside, but it’s just a kid chasing a dog down the cobblestone street. Ray lets out a huff and turns to Frank. “No, not yet.”
As if on cue, Gerard sneaks through the back door behind the counter, flushed and breathing heavy, but he seems okay. They’re all okay. “I thought I heard a couple of Yankees,” he jokes, and it makes Frank feel all light and airy like whipped cream. “Are we clear?”
“I think so,” Ray says, slapping Gerard on the back. “I’ll radio for backup when we get to the cottage. I don’t think they knew how bad off the village was.”
“Alright.” Frank steps out from behind the counter with Gerard at his heels. “Let’s head out, then.”
They leave the way they came to a chorus of thank-yous and kisses and handshakes, and they’re all blushing like a bunch of schoolgirls by the time they’re back out onto the dirt road.
“That was probably the easiest mission we’ve ever had,” Ray comments, wiping at his face with a handkerchief.
“It’s a shame they’re not all like that,” says Gerard. He’s staring at the ground, the butt of his rifle thumping against his thigh as he walks. Frank throws his arm around his shoulders, and Ray does too, and they continue on like the Three fucking Musketeers.
“I’m tired of this fellas,” Gerard eventually says, and Frank’s heart sinks. He shares a look with Ray over the top of his head. “For the last — what? Two years? Two and a half?”
“Two years and three months,” Ray says solemnly.
“For the last two years and three fucking months we’ve had Krauts so far up our asses we might as well be bratwurst. And I’m beat, you know? Especially now.”
“There have been whispers that the Germans are getting weaker,” Ray says. “And Overlord is going well, so I really don’t think we’ll be out here for much longer.”
Gerard makes a frustrated noise and shakes his head. “That’s what makes this even worse. We were so close to getting out of here, but Mikey’s stupid ass had to go and get himself shot up.”
Ray makes a face like he might be sick and looks away. What Frank keeps forgetting is that Mikey died in his hands. He had his blood under his fingernails still! And Gerard had to watch his own brother die under the hands of his best friend and not be able to do anything about it. Now that Frank thinks about it, he’s probably the most privileged guy here. But that doesn’t make him feel any better.
When the lump in Frank’s throat goes away, he says, “I think I’m gonna get a buncha tattoos when we get home. Like an old sailor.”
“Oh, God,” Ray laughs wetly and sniffs.
“I’m serious!”
“I hate needles,” Gerard says, almost shyly, and Frank shakes him a little.
“You almost got your ear sliced off last winter and you’re still scared of some measly needles? C’mon, Ger, the army was supposed to make a man outta you.”
Finally, finally Gerard laughs, and it almost sounds like a real one. “Fine. I’ll get one of a ship and I’ll tell everyone I was in the Navy.”
“That’s the spirit. What about you, Toro? Gotta use that pension responsibly.”
Ray smiles that sad, sweet smile of his. “I think I’ll get my wife’s name. I Love Christa, right across my chest.”
“Sappy motherfucker.” Frank reaches over and smacks the back of his head, and they all laugh a little. “So we’re all gonna get some ink on us like a couple Coney Island freaks, and then I think we should grow our hair back out and get real good and fat like a buncha lazy housecats. Ray, you can make films like you always wanted, be the next Lubitsch and whatnot, and Gerard can be the next big name in comic books. And we’re just gonna do the best we goddamn can.”
“Yeah,” Gerard sighs. “That sounds kinda nice. And I do miss Ray’s hair.”
“You?” Ray squawks like a bird. “What about me? I haven’t been this bald since the day I was born! My mother’s gonna kill me when I get off the boat.”
Frank’s about to say something, but Gerard stops short, and he and Ray stop too, since they’re all tangled up in each other. They pull away and look back at Gerard, who’s staring at nothing, gripping his rifle with white knuckles. The hair on the back of Frank’s neck stands on end, and the fun, lighthearted atmosphere evaporates.
“What — ”
The word is barely out of his mouth before Gerard is throwing himself at Frank. They both go down in a heap, and Frank’s head hits the dusty ground hard enough he sees fireworks and the wind is knocked out of him. When he opens his eyes Gerard is on top of him, and his eyes are wide with surprise like he’s not sure what the hell just happened. Frank doesn’t know either, but he doesn’t have enough air in him yet to ask.
“What the hell was that?” Ray whispers, and Frank can see him looming over them in his peripheral, eyes wide and frantic.
Finally, when Frank doesn’t feel like his stomach is trying to swallow his lungs, he shoves at Gerard, trying to push him off, but he doesn’t budge. Gerard looks down at himself, and Frank follows his line of sight, and —
And the front of Gerard’s uniform is dark with blood.
“Sniper,” is all he says before collapsing on top of Frank.
“Fuck.” He’s vaguely aware of Ray shooting his pistol blindly up into the trees, but Frank’s too busy trying not to have some sort of fit because Gerard isn’t moving — he’s deadweight. “Get the fuck up, Iero, I can’t see anything!”
Feeling like he’s moving in slow motion, Frank sits up, cradling Gerard against his chest, and he lays him down on his back as gentle as if he were a china doll. Their rifles are sitting a ways away from where they dropped them, and Frank crawls over to them on his knees. He picks his gun up and stands, gasping like he’s drowning, ears ringing and stuffed with cotton. He tries not to look at Gerard, whose uniform is getting wetter and wetter with blood. Christ Almighty, it was a gutshot. And they’re stuck out here in the middle of damn nowhere, too far from the beach, and that goddamned village probably doesn’t have anything to help them, and —
“Frank!” Ray yells, and there’s an explosion of bark from a tree way too close to his head.
Frank pumps his rifle and is about to take aim when he gets a bullet in the shoulder that wrenches him back a few steps. He drops the gun again and shouts, more out of surprise than pain (that’ll come later), and clamps his hand around his shoulder. Ray lets out a noise like a banshee and fires his pistol into the air until finally there’s the unmistakable sound of a body falling through the trees and hitting the forest floor. Fucking snipers.
“I’m sorry,” Frank says stupidly, already turning back to where Gerard is lying. He can feel warm blood spilling past his fingers where he’s gripping his shoulder.
“Jesus Christ,” Ray breathes, jogging up to him. “You don’t have to apologize. Are you okay? Let me see.”
“Look at him!” Frank points at Gerard and immediately regrets it when a shock of pain races down his arm.
Ray obliges and gets down on his knees and Frank may not have watched the other day on the beach, but he can assume this is what it was like when Mikey died. He knows how Gerard feels now.
Ray presses his steady fingers to the side of Gerard’s neck, then his ear to his chest, and looks up at Frank. His expression is unreadable, damn medics, and Frank lets out a strangled sort of noise.
“We have to get him back to the cottage, I can’t assess the damage out here. Are you okay to carry the rifles?”
Frank would carry Gerard if he didn’t think Ray would kick his ass for it. “Yeah, yeah.”
He unbuttons his jacket halfway and tucks his injured arm in carefully like a sling and hooks his and Gerard’s rifles with his hand slick with blood over his other shoulder. Ray picks Gerard up bridal-style and they continue on towards the house, this time quicker than before.
When they reach the little house with its thatched roof, Ray kicks in the door and hurries into the kitchen where he lays Gerard out gently on the old wooden table, shoving their breakfast tins and other shit to the floor in a clatter. Frank stands on the other side of the table, looking between Ray’s stoic face and Gerard’s, who looks so fucking pale all of a sudden, and his uniform is just getting darker.
“What can I do?” he asks breathlessly.
“Go pour some sulfa on your shoulder and wrap it. I’ll get the bullet out later. I’ve got it here.”
Frank doesn’t move. He doesn’t think he’s seen Gerard look so …
“Frank.”
Frank looks up.
Ray holds his eye. “I have him.”
He nods. “I know. I know you do.”
With a kiss to the forehead he knows Ray won’t mind being a witness to, Frank leaves the kitchen. He grabs his pack and brings it into the washroom, where he spends what feels like a quarter of an hour just getting his jacket and shirt off, and by the time he’s in his undershirt, which was all nice and clean when they left England but is now sweat-stained and bloody, he feels ready to keel over; his hands are shaking from the pain as he digs through his pack for the little packet of sulfa powder, and he tears it open with his teeth. It stings like a bastard, but who knows how long it’ll be until they can get the fucking bullet out, and Frank doesn’t trust to do it on his own.
He was fully prepared to wrap his shoulder up, but he can’t do it one-handed, and his hands won’t stop shaking and his eyes are stinging and blurry with tears so he just knocks back a couple shitty painkillers and presses a wad of gauze to his shoulder and calls it good enough for now.
The kitchen is a crime scene, and it takes everything in Frank not to toss his guts all over the floor at the sight. Ray’s got his sleeves rolled over his elbows and Gerard’s naked from the waist up and there’s blood everywhere.
“Holy hell.”
Ray doesn’t look up. He’s got his med kit on the table next to Gerard’s head and is bent over his bare stomach with his little silver instruments. “I radioed base, they’re sending a Jeep.”
“O-okay,” Frank says.
Ray looks up. He sweeps his eyes over Frank’s face and his shoulder and then back down to Gerard. “The bullet just missed an artery, but he’s pretty shredded. Can you hand me the iodine?”
Frank obliges, picking up the bottle with the hand holding the lump of bloody gauze and handing it to Ray over Gerard’s still body.
“Thank you. How’s your shoulder?”
Frank looks at his shoulder and shrugs it a little. “Hurts. S’not bleeding anymore, I don’t think. Is he … ,” he swallows, “is he gonna be alright?”
There must be something in his voice, because when Ray looks at him again, he doesn’t have his notorious poker face on. He looks sympathetic. No, no — empathetic; they all lost Mikey. “I hope so. He lost a lot of blood, but we’re not too far from a major city, so that’s good.”
“And you’ve got him,” Frank tells him, throat thick, but he’s mostly reassuring himself.
Ray cracks a smile, and it’s so wrong for this situation, with his hands bloody to the wrists and Gerard out cold on a stranger’s kitchen table between them. “I’ve got him.”
Gerard groans suddenly like he knew they were talking about him, and his eyes roll beneath their lids. Frank sucks in a sharp breath and grabs his sweating, pale face, dropping the gauze to the floor.
“Gerard? Ray.”
“I know, man,” Ray says steadily. Frank hates how collected he always is when he’s doing his medic thing. “He’s all numbed up, but you know the shit they give us never lasts long. Keep him calm while I stitch him back together.”
Calm. Right. Frank can do that.
“Gerard?” he says again, brushing his dark hair away from his white face. “Can you hear me?”
Gerard smacks his lips and tips his head towards Frank. And then he graces them with those eyes, and Frank knows everything’s gonna be okay. They’re gonna be fine, hell or high fucking water. “Huh?”
He knows it’s not the time nor the place, but Frank can’t help it: he laughs and kisses Gerard right on his chapped mouth. Ray doesn’t say anything, too focused on closing the hole in Gerard’s stomach.
“You stupid sonofabitch,” Frank says into Gerard’s face. His shoulder is on fire and his nose is starting to act up again but he doesn’t care.
Gerard’s eyes flutter a little like they might shut again, but then his face gets all scrunched and he says, “What?”
“It’s loose stitching so they can get it off easily when we get to the hospital,” Ray says, wiping Gerard off with a dish towel. The stench of blood and iodine is thick and it makes Frank’s nose tingle. “Don’t go running any marathons anytime soon, okay?”
Gerard scrunches his face up again and tips his head towards Ray, then he looks down at himself and a puff of air escapes his mouth. “Oh.”
Ray goes off to wash his hands, and Frank laughs again, this time a bit more disbelievingly. “Yeah, oh. I thought you weren’t gonna do anymore stupid shit, huh?”
Gerard looks at him, his eyes bright and clear even with beads of sweat rolling down his temples. The anesthetic must be wearing off; he’s gonna be in a hell of a lot of pain real soon. “What’re you talking about? That was the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
Frank shakes his head, brushing his dirty fingers over Gerard’s eyebrow. “You … you’re a crazy bastard, you know that?”
“I saved your life, Frankie, I think I at least deserve a thank-you,” he rasps, and even on the brink of fucking death Gerard Way has some smart alec thing to say. God, he loves him.
Frank leans down and kisses him again. “Thank you,” he whispers against his mouth. “You saved my miserable life.”
Ray comes back over and starts packing up his tools. “You’re not gonna be doing that when the Jeep comes, right? Because they’ll be taking you to the hospital and keeping you there.”
Frank pulls back, but keeps his hand on the top of Gerard’s head. “No, sir, Doc, sir.”
Ray rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. They’re all smiling, even Gerard, who’s looking greener by the second.
“You better thank the doc, G. He dug the bullet outta you. Next he’s gonna do mine. Maybe he’ll let us keep ‘em.”
Gerard looks up at him so fast Frank wouldn’t be surprised if he gave himself whiplash. He picks his hand up from the table in a vain attempt to touch Frank’s oozing shoulder. “Jesus, Frank.”
Frank grabs the hand and kisses his scabbed knuckles. “I’m all good. Because of you, pal.”
Gerard lets out a breath and flinches like an electrical current ran through him. Where the hell is that Jeep? “Thanks, Ray,” he says in a strained voice. “You’re a fine medic.”
Ray preens like a bird under the praise, going all pink and shy as he checks the adhesive on Gerard’s bandage. “I try my best. You know I do.”
“I know that.” Gerard clears his throat. “It wasn’t your fault that Mikey died.”
Ray looks up at him, surprised, and then his face crumbles and he squeezes Gerard’s shoulder silently.
They go quiet for a bit, Ray checking Gerard’s pulse every two seconds and shining a pen-sized light into his eyes and Frank saying a couple silent Hail Mary’s.
“Thanks, Mike,” Gerard says suddenly to himself, and Frank’s eyes fly open. He’s paler than death and shiny with sweat all over, and judging by the way his nose is wrinkled, he must be feeling that gutshot in all its glory now.
“Ger?”
“Oh, Jesus, he’s delusional,” Ray says, reaching for his tools again. “We should — ”
“No, I’m not.” They stare down at Gerard and he manages a smile that looks more like a grimace. “Just thanking my lucky stars. Wouldn’t have known that sniper was there if it wasn’t for him.”
Frank deflates and so does Ray. Frank starts petting Gerard’s hair like a nervous mother.
“You’re lucky to be alive, you know,” Ray tells him sternly, voice cracking only a little at the end.
“I know,” Gerard says, then he looks back up at Frank, and his eyes are so, so serious. “I know I am.”
A car horn blares outside the cottage.