Hot Dogs and Scabies

Nobody could miss it.

Even if they hadn't spent two whole years living with the guy, knowing exactly which of his expressions meant that he was on an apathetic kick, that he was missing his family, that he was about to do something stupid, it was painfully obvious. Frank didn't bother asking, these things tended to just come spurting out of Gerard's mouth later on when he had the whole idea formulated, but he really wanted to. Instead, he watched Gerard until he lifted his head up to grin at Frank, eyes alight with what would surely promise to be one of his 'Save the world' plans.

You see, Gerard was a superhero without the costume. Well--there was that one time that Frank walked into their dorm and Gerard was skipping around the table in a cape, humming the scene to Zoids, but he had yet to witness any spandex--thank god or buddha or anyone else who probably deserved to have their name capitalized for that. Gerard wanted to save people. Not in the way that community workers and firemen and police officers did, he wanted everyone to know him, know that he is on the good side. It didn't count if you were being employeed to save lives, that was completely different to him.

Frank kind of thought that Gerard was just being a diva about it. But as much as he complained about Gerard and his weird little schemes to make the world a better place, they did work. In an off-course way.

Last week, Gerard had announced that he was going to end hunger in Brooklyn. He gathered up his minions--or sidekicks, since they were automatically on the good side--which meant that Frank had to lose a whole day of studying to follow Gerard and Spencer to a hot dog factory. It was really in a seedy part of Brooklyn, as much of an oxymoron as that was, situated inbetween two huge gray buildings spewing toxic fumes. Frank got picked on when he lifted the collar of his shirt up to cover his nose, but loser-label or not, he wasn't about to let his body be the host for lung cancer or whatever the fuck he could get from that poison. He'd really been too busy to look after Gerard properly like he did--always, since Gerard was nearly co-dependant on him, so he didn't notice when Gerard and Spencer snuck off into the factory to jam a shoe into one of the big metal deathy-looking machines, but he did notice when hot dogs began spewing out the windows of the building.

He also noticed when the homeless people gathered under the bridge stampeded to the factory and pushed and shoved at one another to get to the food.

It was on the news the next day, two teenage--ha, more like early twenties--boys snuck into the Oscar Mayer factory at roughly two-thirty yesterday afternoon and caused a riot. Which coincidentally caused the police to come and break up, which also caused them to take a good look at the homeless people and recognize that most of them had scabies, a treatable but highly contagious condition that many local New Yorkers had been mysteriously suffering from.

So, like that, Gerard had stopped a major outbreak of scabies. His smug smile didn't disappear for days.

But this time, Frank could feel something brewing behind Gerard's smile. This was big. Bigger than hunger and scabies, bigger than the ducks at the park that Gerard always wanted to feed, bigger than the countless amount of puppies he'd saved. It gave Frank's insides an uncomfortable little twist and made him fidgit in his chair.

Frank looked over to Spencer, who was blatantly trying not to look back, sticking his face into some book. Yeah, that way was useless. Spencer was very prone to the patented Gerard-pout, making him the best sidekick ever, or so Gerard liked to point out every five minutes. It was almost to the point where Frank was ready to blame Spencer for making Gerard feel like he could get away with anything. So far, he had. He didn't get arrested for shouting out 'Fire!' in the middle of a museum ("Which was, like, totally boring me to death," Gerard explained later, citing that as the reason he had to scare two classes of middle school students and the local elderly, both on field trips from their respective nursing home and schools).

But Frank knew that one day he was going to get the call. You know, the one from Gerard, who would be complaining first of all that the guy who claimed him as his bitch wasn't hot enough, and secondly that the food they were serving him wasn't kosher, and thirdly that as soon as he was out of there, he was saving all his new inmate friends.

Oh god, now Gerard was pacing. That was never good. That was the sign of heavy-duty thinking. Frank had only been a part of one of Gerard's heavy-duty schemes, and he ended up getting kicked out of his house for it. Apparently, most parents don't want their son and his two idiot friends to steal people's tires and burn them in the yard. For economical purposes, of course. Gerard claimed that cars were dragging America's economy into the ground and giving people a catalyst to remain fat. After that, Spencer sold his car and lost twenty pounds.

Gerard sighed loudly and dragged a hand through the spiky mound of dark hair on his head. It looked like his hair was just barely hanging on now, as much as he pulled at it. Frank really needed to remind him that if he kept doing it, all his hair would fall out.

"What's wrong, Gerard?" asked Spencer while flicking a page of the book in his lap.

Both of them were waiting for the novelty 'nothing' from Gerard which meant that everything was wrong.

"You'll think it's stupid." Gerard pouted and let his knees buckle out from under him, sending him sprawling gracefully to the floor. He propped himself up on his knees and ankles, picking idly at the shag carpet under him. It was a distress call. Not the 'Frankie, come comfort me' one, so he stayed in his seat, but Spencer set his book off to the side face down, and pushed himself off of the couch. Frank would have went, yeah, but he got the feeling that he really didn't need to just right now. Actually, if Gerard was finally figuring out that his ideas were stupid, Frank was happy to let him venture down that road.

He watched Spencer pull Gerard into his lap and smooth out his hair a little. "No we won't, Gerard. What is it?"

Gerard sniffled into Spencer's neck like the little kid he thought he still was, like it was still okay to wipe his nose on people's shirts when he was sad. "I want to save people."

"You do save people. You've saved alot of people. What, do you have another idea? Because you know Frank and I are right behind you on anything, right Frank?" Spencer looked over his shoulder at Frank, who sputtered for the words. Shit, why did he have to be dragged into this?

"Mhm," seemed like a non-commital answer to Frank, but apparently to Gerard, it was Frank's solemn word to help him in his next quest.

"I want to bring religion to the village," Gerard said timidly, glancing up at Spencer through his eyelashes and picking at the bottom of Spencer's shirt.

Frank winced. He was a devout nothing-ist, and he really didn't want to bring it up just in case Gerard was religious. He never thought that Gerard was religious, he was gay, for god's sake, but--this was Gerard. He just wanted everything to be good. Even if it contradicted everything else, and if this was something that could enduce a fight between him and one of his best friends--totally not worth it. Not to mention that any talk about religion made his stomach knot up and made him think that he was doing something wrong. That he was living his life the wrong way somehow, that he may be better off going back to his parents' house and begging for forgiveness and letting them drag him to church every Sunday bright and early.

"What village?"

"The, um, Green-witch village."

"Grenwich Village?" When Gerard nodded, Spencer shook his head. "You want to bring religion. To Grenwich Village. Um...Gerard..." Spencer looked back at Frank again, like he had some other-worldly excuse to hand Gerard to make him see what a bad idea this was.

Gerard's mouth flopped open like he'd been betrayed and he sat up. "I told you that you would think it's dumb! But this is big, Spencer! I--I have a really good plan. Please, guys. You're my best friends, you have to help me with this. You have no idea what can happen if this works."

If this works. That was new. As was the 'please'. Frank wasn't used to hearing please out of Gerard. Usually it was 'Frank, come on before I get bored and decide that your goldfish needs a manicure' or 'Hurry up, I think I hear the cops'.

*

Mikey really hated cold weather. It was so soppy, and when he went inside the cuffs of his pants trailed water up the hallway. Not to mention that it was supposedly the most depressing season of the year, which he agreed with. He hated seeing the trees outside his window gray and dead and weighed down by mounds of frozen water. Really, if he wanted to be super poetic--which he didn't, he got enough of that every day in his English class--he could easily compare his life to the snow, steadily dragging the helpless branches down until the less hearty ones snapped. No wait, that wasn't right, was it? He was a branch. The snow? His roommate who couldn't stop making eyes at Mikey all day and playing his band's demo tape morning until night? His mom, who refused to pay for college? His brother?

He loved his family, he really did, and his roommate Jon was one of the nicest guys he'd met in a really long time, but they didn't seem to notice that they were crushing him. He wasn't exactly...oh, what's the word...sociable? It's not like he was a hermit living in some basement in New Jersey--he was living in a dorm in New York. The mecca of people and places and parties. There was no way that he could avoid people. He just--he dealt with people he didn't know a lot better than he did people he saw all the time. He didn't feel the pressure to impress strangers, and that somehow had given him the cool vibe that everyone envied him for, but once he got around Gerard or Jon or his mom, he couldn't shut up about anything. And he had a nervous little laugh that he hated. Hated.

He dumped his school bag down on the dilapitated cushions of their couch and flopped down in the floor, deciding it was A, more sanitary, and B, more comfortable than the couch. Just as the floor started to actually suit him, he felt it start to shake and knew that Jon was about to be at the door.

"Mikeyway!" Jon exclaimed, throwing two newspapers off to the side and bouncing into the floor beside Mikey.

He didn't know when his name had started to run together, or why everyone thought it was such a hip endearment, but it really pissed him off. He was this close to making everyone start calling him Michael. Because Michaelway just didn't have the same ring to it and it seemed like less of a temptation.

"Hiya, Jon. How was your weekend in Canada?"

"It was good, eh," said Jon, immediately bursting into giggles like it was just the funniest joke on the planet and Mikey hadn't been completely expecting it. He nudged Mikey's shoulder with his own. "It was fine, Mikes. How was your weekend without me? Did you miss my scantily-clad posterior floating around here like a vision of sex?"

"The hell? Since when are you...any of those things? And who the hell has been teaching you big words?"

Jon groaned and stretched to grab one of the newspapers and ball it up to tap Mikey on the nose. "There's a word of the day in the school newspaper, dude. Today's was...umm..." He looked down. "Monacle."

Mikey thought he was being nice by not making fun of Jon for being in Journalism. It was rough not to crack jokes, but he was being a nice guy.

"And, you know that whole hot dog-scabies scandal?"

Mikey cringed. "That has got to be the worst-named scandal of all time."

"It is," Jon agreed solemnly, tilting his head to the side. "They got some pictures of the guys who might have done it. But, you know, since they helped stop an outbreak of scabies, no one's going to prosecute them. I never knew that our policemen and women had integrity, but apparently they do. I, personally, thank the hot dog vandals." Jon slapped a hand over the button-up shirt he had to wear when he was out taking photographs, the laminated press pass clinking underneath his fingers. "From the bottom of my healthy heart."

He pushed himself up off the floor, groaning for show, and reached into his back pocket to pull out two floppy pictures. He threw them onto Mikey's stomach and waited for him to look through them.

Mikey sat up and held the pictures at the edges, like he was always taught--a concept that Jon didn't seem to grasp despite being a photography major, by the looks of the thumbprints covering the luminescent surface--and flipped through the two. "Oh, shit."

"What, what?" Jon was immediately leaning over his shoulder, peering at the pictures like there was something he must have missed the first thousand times he looked through them.

Mikey ran a thumb over his brother's silhouette. "Um--that's Gerard."

"...I don't know any Gerards."

"My brother! It's my brother and that weird kid who always follows him and--" Mikey squinted down at the picture. He didn't know the last kid, the shorter one who didn't look at all like he was the type of follower Gerard warranted. In the picture he stood off to the side with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and his hip popped out to one side, face glued to the ground. The 'why the hell am I here' stance.

"And?" Jon prompted.

"And another kid that I don't know. But that's definitely Gerard and Spencer." He couldn't even say that he was surprised. This was exactly like Gerard. Saving the world.

"That's amazing, dude! You have to introduce me to your brother! Oh, tell him that I'm his biggest fan!" Jon made a little happy sound and bounced up on the balls of his feet.

Mikey felt the corners of his mouth tugging up without his permission. Suddenly, he found it a little easier to claim Gerard Way as his big brother.

*

Gerard frowned and put his chin in the web of his thumb and first finger, running his eyes over Spencer and Frank's costumes.

When Frank had asked where Gerard got two white robes ("really fuckin' expensive lookin' ones, you ass," as Frank had so eloquently put it), he simply shrugged innocently and walked over to where Spencer was busy trying to get the robe over his head without messing up his hair.

He smiled at his two friends, a little tingling feeling settling in between his ribs over the thought that his friends were willing to go this far to help him. It was almost enough to warrant him calling out 'group hug' and forcing them into it. Almost, but he knew that they really hated those 'touchy feely' moments when his bottom lip started to tremble.

"Geez, guys, this looks almost perfect," Gerard muttered, his smile reaching up towards his eyes.

"Almost?"

He nodded and reached into his back pocket to fish out some pipe cleaners. Yellow ones that he'd already wired together into some haphazard circles that got smushed sometime when he had sat down. He beckoned for Spencer, the more cooperative of his friends, to come closer and put a hand on his shoulder. "Okay, now you guys need halos. I didn't know how to make them glow or float over your heads, sorry, but hopefully our audience aren't perfectionists."

"Or sober," Frank added glumly, picking at the ends of his sleeves.

*

Mikey stood in front of Jon as he sat on the couch fiddling with a camera.

He was unusually nervous about asking Jon to come with him to Grenwich Village. He didn't want to go alone, and Jon had mentioned (a thousand times) that he wanted to meet Gerard, so Mikey thought it was a good enough time. But he just knew that it wasn't just a simple get-together that would make Gerard call him at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning, and he really didn't want Jon to meet his brother on the pretenses of--well, any of his major plans. And if he wanted Mikey to witness it, this one must be important.

Mikey was used to finding out about Gerard's antics over the phone or on the news or in the local newspaper. Only once had he seen firsthand what Gerard could really do for people, and it was really entertaining. He hoped that this would be another entertaining one instead of any of the ones he'd heard about, or--oh god, another hot dog-scabies one?

Jon broke the silence with, "Mikeyway, if you're not going to say anything, be useful and go get me a paper towel," pointing to the kitchen with a stained pillow.

"Uh, actually--"

"Talk and walk, Way."

Mikey scowled at Jon but treaded over to the kitchen, silently greatful that he had a little distraction. "Okay," he said over the buzzing of the flourescent kitchen lights. "Do you want to come meet my brother today?"

Mikey wished he had a camera to capture the look on Jon's face.