Sing It for the World

“Are you aware that you were driving fifteen miles over the speed limit for a good thirty-five mile stretch, sir?”

Mikey’s breath stuck sharply in his throat, nearly causing him to go into a fit of dry coughs as he looked up at the policeman. It was just his luck that it was a highway patrol instead of just local county police, and he was nervous as all hell. He knew that they were within seconds of the man seeing Aurelia and Frank sleeping in the backseat, and that if that happened, they were all going to jail. He didn’t feel like being the one to fuck everything up, and he was really, really hoping the cop would just let them off with a speeding ticket.

“Uh, no. I’m used to driving in the city, and I had no idea I was driving that fast,” he muttered before looking up at the cop with a halfhearted smile, trying not to feel intimidated and frightened. His hands were holding on tight to the steering wheel; so tight, in fact, that his knuckles were paler than normal and sweat was beading up in the creases of his joints.

The policeman’s eyes couldn’t be read because of the aviator glasses over them, but Mikey had a feeling the man wasn’t amused by his word choice. He took a deep breath and told himself to relax, letting his hands loosen on the steering wheel.

“Do you have a license and registration?” The cop asked him, not bothering to reply to Mikey’s nervous words. He nodded frantically, reaching into his pocket to grab the wallet before Gerard handed him the registration packet from the glove box on his side of the car. Mikey watched as the policeman read over everything carefully, and then sighed in relief when they were handed back to him.

“Next time you’re driving on a road like this, make sure to keep it under fifty. I’ll let it pass this time since you’re from out of state, but you won’t be so lucky next time. Have a nice evening,” the highway patrolman told him before turning to walk back to his car. Mikey waited until the man had turned his lights off even though he wanted to drive away as fast as he possibly could, and then made absolute sure to stay under the fifty mile-per-hour speed limit that was on the stretch of road. After they’d started driving again, Gerard poked Frank, and then looked at him in the rearview without turning around since the cop was still driving behind them, obviously waiting for Mikey to fuck up again.

“Stay down, and keep ‘Rel with you. We just got pulled over because Nitwit over here thought it was a great idea to go sixty-five in a fifty mile-per-hour zone,” Gerard muttered under his breath.

Frank’s eyes widened, and in that instant, he knew how close he and Aurelia had just come to being caught by the police they’d been evading since they’d left New Jersey. Since she wasn’t eighteen just yet, there would have been nothing for the police to do but arrest him and take her into custody as well. He had no idea how the slighter Way brother had gotten out of getting a ticket, but he was eternally grateful that they hadn’t been arrested right then and there.

“It’s not my fault!” Mikey squeaked, shaking his head furiously as he kept his eyes responsibly on the road. “In New Jersey, roads like this have a sixty mile an hour limit. I thought I was driving legal!” He muttered under his breath.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just try to get back to Los Angeles without something like that happening again, alright?” Gerard teased his brother before chuckling again, reaching down to turn on the radio so that they weren’t left in silence. He smiled when the soothing sounds of The Cure started blasting through the car, and the red-headed man then leaned his head back to fall asleep, hoping that all the drama was over for this section of the drive.

Aurelia, in the meantime, was still blissfully asleep. She had no idea that they had just been pulled over, or that her dream could have been yanked out from underneath her before she had a chance to protest. Frank was grateful that she hadn’t been awake to know about it, and he, Mikey, and a barely-awake Gerard all decided it would be best not to tell her about it. Frank already thought she was fragile enough without having to deal with something that had already come to pass, and he didn’t want to scare her right now for no reason. Not when they were so close to reaching their destination, and most certainly not after he had wrecked the Trans Am with her in the car with him.

-x-

It was two days before they reached Los Angeles. It was the most beautiful thing that Aurelia ever thought she had seen in her life, even more so than Frank was. The buildings on the crisp blue skyline were amazing to her, especially since she had never seen something like that before. As they drove into the inner part of the city, towards the apartment complex that they had their apartments in, she could just barely see the ocean peeking out over the hilltops, and she felt her heart flutter at the sight.

She knew that she was now where she belonged. She had never known that she would feel so at home in a place like the second largest city in the United States; especially on a side of the country she had never been to before. But Los Angeles felt like home to her from the time they drove across the city limit marker, and she didn’t ever plan on leaving now that she was back.

She knew that it was going to be hard here. She knew that her relationship with Frank was going to be challenged, and that it wouldn’t be easy making her dreams come true. She would have to wait until she was eighteen to enroll in a veterinary college so that her parents wouldn’t be able to find out where she was and take her away, but she knew the wait was worth it.

“So, how are you holding up?” Frank murmured into her ear, pulling her out of her thoughts long enough for her to look up from the window she’d been looking out. She turned her head so that she could look at him, and then smiled before she pressed her lips against his before tightening her hold on his hand, giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“I love it here, Frank. I feel it. This is where we belong,” she whispered, her eyes shining bright as she smiled up at him. He returned her smile, reaching down to push her hair out of her eyes before she gave her a tight hug, lifting her off of the floor and spinning her around once before he returned her to her feet.

He felt it, too. He didn’t know what it was about Los Angeles, but he knew that Aurelia was like. They belonged here. This City of The Angels was going to make their dreams come true, no matter how hard it was to achieve them. It was going to be a long struggle, and he knew that, just the same way Aurelia did. But he, like his girlfriend, knew that it was worth it.

They might not have sung it for the world just yet, he thought with a small smile as he held her close, but they both had a song just waiting to escape them. And someday—someday soon, if he had any say in it—everyone would know them.