Chapter Text
Frank got home sometime around four-thirty. It’s a few hours earlier than usual — because Ray decided to close up early today, said something about “not enough customers,” but he had that sort of shitty aura about him that only hungover people had — and the house was glowing purple. And, that would be weird only if Frank didn’t have the neighborhood’s largest (and only, and probably most annoying) collection of grow lights, but he does.
The door to his grow room should be closed, though.
It should be, but it obviously isn’t.
The door had to be open, because the light seeping through had almost turned the little house into something scary; something about the otherworldly purple and the creaking wood of the floors, the cobwebby corners, the floral wallpaper Frank figures is older than he is.
And – yeah – the place is old, but he’s never had any problems with the door blowing open, at least not in the month he’s been here. Had it been a month? Or two? Time was sort of blurry to him, now, after touring.
There weren’t any pets to push it open, either, and the landlord can’t snoop ‘cause she lives in Oklahoma – or maybe it was Oregon, too many states start with an O and Frank’s been to none of them – and Ray’s obviously not there, because closing up the shop while he was hungover took him a half an hour longer than usual. His words, not Frank’s.
“Mikey?”
His voice, flat, almost too quiet, called down to Frank through the main hall. “I’m with your weed.”
“I can see that,” Frank yelled back, pulling off his boots. They hit the floor with a hollow thud, one falling on its side. “Any reason in particular?”
Mikey responded with silence.
Frank padded down the hallway, the old boards giving a little under his feet.
“Any reason you’re in here?” he asked again, quieter, standing in the doorway. Mikey was in the middle of the room, staring vaguely in the direction of the few plants Frank had growing, completely still. The waist tie of his work apron was still visible around his waist, a paper cup in hand.
“No,” he stated, and brought the cup to his lips.
Fair enough. “Cool. I’m gonna look around in here now. I’m worried my weed has thrips.” He replied, making his way to his oldest plants. They look great, for the most part – because he’s just fucking good like that – but there’s a little browning on the leaves that makes him wary of thrips. “Nice latte,” he adds, grabbing a leaf and bringing his face close to it. “Isn’t it a little late for that?”
Mikey looks at him blankly. “No. It’s not even five. Don’t tell me you have bugs in here.”
“There’s a centipede that lives in the living room. You’d notice if you were ever here. I named him.”
He’s fucking with Mikey at this point. Not about the centipede itself; that’s really there, a big one, too, but he hasn’t named it. He should, at this point, he thought. It’s in the house more than Mikey is. “The stuff I’m looking for on the plants is, like, barely visible to the naked eye. You can look if you want.”
“Named him.”
“Gotta have someone to keep me company here,” he teased, unhooking his carabiner from his belt. He brought his hand lens close to his eye and looked at a brown spot on a young leaf.
No flecking, no bug shit, no weird silvery cast. No thrips. Could be a calcium deficiency.
“So when are those. Like. Done. I guess.” Mikey’s voice was flat, his question more of a highly punctuated statement.
“I really don’t want to pry, but is there any particular reason you’ve finally decided to become interested in my plants? They’ve been here as long as I have.” Frank looked up, cocking an eyebrow. “You wanna smoke ‘em?” he added, amused.
“I mean. You’re growing weed in my home. Our home. Apartment. I can at least ask you questions about it.” He paused. Frank stared, because he knew something else was coming. Mikey rolled his eyes. “Yes, I want to smoke. Your weed is good.”
Frank’s known Mikey long enough to recognize that “good” is high praise from him.
“Probably another month, maybe two” Frank replied, looking away from another leaf to watch Mikey’s face in the purple light of the room. His expression does not change. “Plus time to dry, and to cure… I don’t know, we’re looking at two months, maybe more.” Mikey frowned, leaning against the door frame in silence, arms crossed, silent.
“I told you I want to smoke. I don’t actually give a shit about your plants.”
Frank decided the plants that Mikey apparently does not give a shit about are thrips-free enough for now (he’d have to look closer at that calcium deficiency) and stood back up from his crouched position, knees popping.
“Fucker, if you want to smoke, just ask to smoke.”
His roommate rolled his eyes. “I did. I was trying to be, I don’t know. Subtle. You always look at your plants when you get home from work. I saw you pull in. Thought I’d ask about them. Conversational segues. You have anything I can smoke, or not?”
“Hell of a day making lattes, yeah?”
“Fuck you. Like ordering records all day is any harder.”
“I have shit we can smoke,” Frank replied, making his way to the door that Mikey’s leaning all over. “Together. If you’d let me out of the room.”
Mikey slunk out of the doorframe and into the hall. Frank slid his hand against the wall and fumbled for the switch outside of the door, and the hall light begrudgingly kicked on with a loud hum, washing out the purple glow of the spare room. He stared at the cracked switch cover for a second, thinking.
“Order a pizza, while you’re at it.” Mikey stared at him, but he still reached for his phone in his pocket as Frank stepped into the hallway. “Fuck that, actually, go pick it up. I’m not fuckin’ paying delivery. They want $5 for that at Hugh’s. And a tip. Fuck that shit. We live six minutes away.”
To his point, Frank threw his keys to Mikey. “You want me to drive high? That’s illegal, Frank, you know I can’t – ow,” Frank’s fist found its way to Mikey’s shoulder, and he dug his knuckles in.
“I don’t want you to drive high. I’m like, not even sure I trust you enough to drive my car sober.”
Mikey rolled his eyes again.
“Large veggie, extra jalapenos. I’ll have you set when you get home.” He paused, scraping a crumb of potting mix out from under his thumbnail; Mikey gives him a look he places as somewhere between mildly displeased and maybe slightly amused, bordering on expressionless.
“Diet coke, too. Get a two liter. And fries.” he finishes, patting down his empty pockets.
“I don’t have my wallet. Oh well.”
Mikey’s eyes shifted, barely, sensing Frank’s insincerity. “Guess you’re paying. Hope everyone’s been tipping you at least, like, 110% this week.” He thought about bringing Pete into it – the broody one who never stops talking about his dissertation and always tips Mikey more than the cost of his drink – but he really wanted to eat tonight, and he was pretty sure the fridge was empty other than a jar of rooting hormone and a case of Heineken.
“You’ve got, like, a real job. And you sell. Pay for your own,” Mikey replied flatly.
Frank slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and pulled them out, empty. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Can’t,” he replied, grinning. “I’m pretty sure you make more than me with tips, anyways.”
“I definitely do not. No fries and we’re on.”
“Get me fries, and I’ll give you a full fucking Ball jar if you’re out of the house in the next thirty seconds. Two, if you’re back in under twenty.”
Mikey’s brows dipped a little as he turned towards the front of the house. “How much weed do you have?” he called, already halfway down the hall.
“You wouldn’t believe.“ He’s met with the sound of jingling keys and a slamming door in response.
Twenty-two minutes later, he’s got a bowl packed, a few joints rolled, and Carrie in the DVD player, and then he’s just reaching for his lighter – not that he was going to start without Mikey there, definitely not – when the screen door blew open hard enough to rattle the house, slamming into the chipped paint of the wall. “Dude, we’re fucking renting, try not to put a hole in the drywall,” he yelled, reaching for one of the joints out in front of him. “It’s already been over twenty, anyways.”
Mikey strode into the living room, boxes in hand, eyes widening a near-imperceptible amount at the spread on the table.
“One’s yours,” Frank stated, casually, using the joint he grabbed to gesture to the dozen or so quart-sized jars he lined up near the edge of the table. His roommate slid two stacked pizza boxes down onto the empty space of the corner of the coffee table, his eyes on the spread of jars. “I know you’re gonna ask, so, no, that’s not all of it. Just what I felt like grabbing. Pick what you want, smell them, try one of them out, whatever. You don’t like ‘em, I’ve got more.”
“You’ve lived with me for a month and a half and never showed me all of this?” Mikey asked; a real question this time, his voice actually lifting at the end of the sentence. He grabbed a jar, struggling to read the handwritten label on it, a slight squint to his eyes behind his glasses. “Never even offered?”
“That’s garlic sherbet. Also, you never asked,” Frank replies, bringing the joint to his mouth to light it. Apparently he’d been here a month and a half. That sounded right. “Did you remember my soda?”
“Garlic sherbet?”
“Names are fucking ridiculous. The one next to it is cheetah piss, I think. The plants you were looking at earlier are bio-Jesus.” Frank flicked his lighter absentmindedly as Mikey grabbed the jar labeled cheetah piss in Frank’s scrawl, mouthing the name to himself.
“My soda?”
“Shit, left it in the car. Need anything else?”
Mikey’s suddenly really fucking nice. “Cups, unless you wanna just drink out of the bottle with me. And, uh, I don’t really want to drink out of the bottle with you.”
“So cups.”
“And the soda,” Frank pointed at Mikey with his lighter.
Wordlessly, Mikey left the room. Frank, ever impatient, lit his joint while staring at the menu screen for Carrie.
Mikey came back into the room holding the two-liter of Diet Coke in one hand and, somehow, two glasses in the other. “Couldn’t wait for me,” Mikey stated, gesturing at the half-smoked joint in Frank’s hand. He placed the bottle and glasses down nosily.
“You smoke often?” Frank asked, exhaling. Mikey shook his head. “You’ll be higher than me in no time.”
The living room couch had seen better days – a curb pickup that he and Mikey had dragged home after the university kids moved out – and it sagged as Mikey sunk his weight into it, sighing.
“Long day,” he finally said.
“You run out of almond milk or something? Had to milk the almonds yourself?” Frank asks, giggling at his lame-ass joke.
“Nobody drinks almond anymore except you,” Mikey replies.
“Oat tastes like clay and coconut separates in my coffee. What am I supposed to do, fuckin’ drink soy?”
“It’s not the 90s anymore. Nobody drinks soy. They’ve got hemp milk now. I think that’s right up your alley.”
Mikey can be pretty fucking funny when he wants to be. Usually when he was insulting Frank.
“Fuck you. What happened at work?”
“Pete came by. He wants to take me on a date.” Mikey grabbed for the bong. “Got a light?”
Frank extends a tattooed hand to Mikey, who snatched the lighter from his pinky with slender fingers. His nails were painted pink.
“You gonna go?”
“No.”
“Then why is it a big deal?”
“It’s not, really.” A pause. “We should’ve invited Ray.”
“We can, still. He’s hungover as shit, but I’ll call him if you want to.” Frank looked over in time to see Mikey inhaling. “Is that all that happened at work?”
Mikey nodded, fighting off a cough before it spills out of him with a cloud of smoke.
“I just changed my mind. I think he’s got a thing for me too,” he replied, fighting his cough. “Fuck, give me some fucking soda. Anyways, it was just Pete.”
“And Pete was enough to ruin your day?” He decided to leave the Ray thing for later. He’s not terribly surprised by it anyways. He poured Mikey a glass, staring into the pale brown fizz of the soda.
“There’s more. Can we at least smoke first?”
Mikey’s still coughing, and he shook a little as he grabbed the cup from Frank, almost spilling it.
“You are smoking. Now, you say eat first, and you’ve got me. I’m fucking starving.”
“What, does Ray not let you take a lunch break?”
“No,” Frank quips back, barely realizing that Mikey isn’t being serious. “I don’t have any groceries. Unless I wanted to eat some auxin for dinner.”
“Auxin?”
“Makes plants root. It’s how I make clones.”
“You’re cloning shit?”
He’s almost incredulous.
“Are you high yet?”
“No.”
“Then smoke my freaky clone weed instead of just fuckin’ talking about it,” Frank concluded.
For a second, he contemplated telling Mikey that all of the weed he’s ever smoked was probably a clone of something at some point, but it’s not worth the debate. The two of them could go for hours. They don’t, though, and Frank’s thankful as all hell for it; Carrie plays on, the two of them passing the bong back and forth in a lazy, mutually-agreed-upon silence. It reminded Frank of college, just a little, barely eighteen and passing his pipe to Mikey, pulling his hands back through the slit of a barely-cracked dorm window, tilting his head to the side and letting his stupid shaggy hair fall in his eyes while he exhaled smoke through the gap.
Later, though he wasn’t sure how much later – all he knew was that almost all of his pizza was gone and his foot was asleep in a weird way he doesn’t quite mind – Mikey talked. “My sibling’s moving up here.”
Frank realized the movie was almost over. His eyes felt like marbles.
“Gerard?” he asked, a little startled. He’d sort of forgotten Mikey was even there. He reached for his pizza box, grabbing the last slice.
“Yeah, Gerard. Not like I have any other siblings.”
“Well –”
“Am I supposed to?”
“No.” Frank shook his head, chewing. “Just… I don’t know. Trying to have a fuckin’ conversation. Damn.”
Mikey reached for the bong in the center of the table, nearly knocking over the open bottle of Diet Coke on his way there. “You could’ve asked, like, why they’re moving here,” he replied, steadying the bottle. “Or when. You know where the cap for this thing is?”
“Why are they moving here?”
“That does nothing to help me find this cap.”
“It’s on the table. If you didn’t have tunnel vision for the fuckin’ bong, you’d see it. Why are they moving here?”
Mikey grabbed for the little gray piece of plastic on the glass tabletop and screwed it methodically onto the bottle.
“What?”
“The bottle’s empty. Whatever. Why is Gerard moving here? We live, like, almost in the middle of nowhere.”
Sighing, Mikey threw the bottle, now capped, onto the ground, and wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bong. “Office job was getting to them,” he started, before lowering his head to the mouthpiece of the glass in his hand.
“So they moved to Maine to quit their office job?”
Mikey, occupied with taking the largest hit he can conceivably manage, does not answer.
Frank didn’t know a lot about Gerard, but he knew they live in LA, and he knew they’re some kind of animator for some kind of production studio, and he was pretty sure they’re one of those real artsy types, based on what Mikey’s said, but that was about it. By the time Mikey had gotten into college, they’d permanently fucked off to California. Well, not permanently, not now because now they’re moving to Maine, but at the time it had been presented to him in that way.
While he waited for Mikey, he tried to imagine what they look like – mostly picturing his roommate, but older, and in the style of what Frank imagines someone from LA to look like, a fucked-up shag haircut and a septum piercing, maybe, wearing work pants that had never seen a day of labor – before he was interrupted by Mikey’s hacking coughs.
“Yeah, uh,” he started to reply, before cutting himself off to cough again. Smoke curled in faint, gray tendrils around his face. “They were tired of the monotony of it. Their words. Wanted a fresh start.”
“That’s cool. To do what, exactly? And, uh, can you hand me that?”
“Y’know that florists shop on… on… it’s downtown… can’t remember the street…” Mikey trailed off, handing the bong over to Frank. Frank’s brows knitted themselves into a tight furrow as he tried to picture it.
“The one that’s had a for-sale sign in the window since I got here?”
“Yeah. That’s… yeah. That’s why they’re here. The owner’s dead.”
“Because of the dead owner?”
“No – fucking – yeah. They’re here because they wanted to meet a dead florist.” Frank was high enough that he was really just nodding along, lifting the bong up to his mouth. For all he knew about Gerard – a whole lot of not-much – maybe they were coming here for the dead owner.
“They bought the shop.”
On screen, Carrie gives her classmates what was coming to them. Frank stares at the flames, then flicks his lighter, barely hearing the news.
Mikey’s voice manages to break back through as Carrie starts her descent down the stairs. “Hello? You wanted to know why they were here. They bought the florist shop.”
Frank exhales, mentally coming back to the living room. “I didn’t want to know why they were here. You’re the one that suggested I ask, actually. And, that’s cool, I guess. Are people still buying flowers these days? I’ve always thought of them as kind of a luxury. Like, one of those things people stop buying when the economy goes to shit. I guess the question is whether or not the economy is shit right now. I think it is, personally.”
At the end of Frank’s rant, Mikey spoke. “You could’ve not asked.”
There was an expectant silence.
“They’re coming tomorrow.” Mikey’s voice is characteristically flat.
“Well, that’s a little short notice.” He didn’t know what else to say. He’s not sure he had to.
Mikey sighed. “I know. They called me at work today to tell me.”
Frank knew he didn’t know Gerard, and he certainly didn’t know how Mikey felt about Gerard, but he knew that calling someone to say hey, I’m moving to your area in a day’s notice, hope that’s cool, was generally a shitty thing to do. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but found – or maybe he decided, he wasn’t quite sure which – he had nothing else to add.
It didn’t matter, because Mikey was talking again. “I’m gonna have to ask Pete to bring me to the airport. They’re at least landing after I’m done at work.”
“Come bat your eyelashes at Ray tomorrow morning and he’ll give me the afternoon off. We can go together. Do they have a place?”
“Old apartment above the florist’s. They haven’t even seen it yet.”
“So they have a place?”
“I’m willing to bet they don’t. Place has been closed for, like, three years. Can’t even imagine what it looks like up there.”
“How’d they even find out about it, anyways? Do you guys talk?”
“Sometimes. I mean, we aren’t…” he trailed off, letting himself finish the last of his soda. “I guess we aren’t as close as we used to be. I had kinda – I got mad at them. After they left for LA. The movie’s done.”
Frank considered the circumstances. Mikey looked tired, uncomfortable.
“Do you want to keep talking about it?”
Mikey got up, wavering a little. “I think I’m alright. I’m gonna go to bed now. I’m opening tomorrow. Just, leave my jar out, I’ll grab it tomorrow.”
“Can you at least put the pizza boxes in the kitchen before you go?”
Wordlessly, Mikey grabbed the boxes and softly padded out of the room.
“Come by the store when you get out tomorrow. I’ll tell Ray to let me off at two. Just text me what airport they’re landing at.”
The door slammed shut, leaving him alone in the living room.
He wasn’t really sure what to do, but he wanted to be nice, at least, so he grabbed for his grinder and papers and one of the jars Mikey had liked, and he sat on the couch until midnight — or maybe it was one, he’d lost track at some point — rolling joints, watching Carrie again.