InsaneJournal

FIC: Heroes and Happy Endings--BtVS/MCR- Gen
title: Heroes and Happy Endings
author: lisa roquin
rating: 15
fandom: BtVS/MCR
series/sequel: Jersey Boys and Curses
characters/pairings: Faith(/Robin), Brian Schechter, Matt Cortez, Bob Bryar, Gerard Way/Lyn Z, Frank Iero/Jamia Nestor, Ray Toro(/Christa)
disclaimer: all copyrighted characters and their "universes" belong to their respective authors, writers, creators, production companies, producers and long lists of people that are so very much not me. Quite simply, if you recognize it, it isn't mine. No profit made, no harm intended, just having fun.
summary: Real heroes take their happy endings where they can get them. They're hers.
warning: angst
author's note: for killing_rose for the birthday goodies giveaway
wordcount: 2924


Projekt Rev 2007


"Hey, Blondie, been staying away from open flames?"

Bob stared down at the woman who had sauntered up and wrapped an arm around his waist. He'd never seen her before in his life and he was probably seeing more than was polite at the moment because her tank top was skimpy and lowcut in front and he was almost looking straight down it.

"AAIIEEEEEEEEE!"

Bob braced himself recognizing Frank's piggy-back attack war cry, but the hyper, surprisingly heavy, body of Frank Iero didn't land on his back, it landed on the dark haired woman's.

"That's not a handle, Rabbit." She said drolly. Frank's hand was...right on her boob. His now-reflex hold for launching himself onto Bob's back without Bob threatening him over accidental clotheslining or strangulation, didn't quite work as well on a woman, especially not one the more or less same size as he was, obviously.

"Holy shit, Faith," Ray gasped as he joined them, he gave Frank a push off her back and grabbed her in a hug. "You need to call more than once every four or five months."

"It's totally been six, damn it!" Frank accused.

"Been busy," she said tiredly.

"Yeah, that's why we worry," Ray snorted.

"Mikey--"

"I saw Catnip," She said softly. "Just before I came here. He damn well grew up hot, and his wife's hotter than he is."

"You're still alive," Brian said by way of hello. "And where the hell are Gee, James, and Matt?"

"Yeah, I am, Bossman, got room for me to ride a while?"

"Yeah, sure, throw you in with one of the guys." Brian nodded and grabbed for her, hugged her tight.

"Seriously, you're riding? You're staying a while? The world isn't going to end or something?" Frank asked.

Bob wondered at the strange tone in Frank's, serious, scared, excited and a little nervous. The looks on Brian and Ray's faces weren't much better.

"Holy SHIT!"

Gerard who had been walking up, herded up by Worm along with Matt and James actually ran--Ran--the last twenty or so feet to get to the woman and hug her.

"Wow, you smell all soapy and shampoo-y. Whose pants are you trying to get into?"

Bob choked.

Brian snorted.

Frank nearly broke something trying not to giggle.

"You're--" Gerard glared. "God, you're mean sometimes."

"I'm a bitch, Gee," she grinned and grabbed him hugging him again and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You look good. Still doin' okay?"

Gerard nodded, and Bob kind of wondered if he was trying to break her ribs.

"Cool," She smiled. "Hey there, Cutie Pie, you too good for me now you're a rock star too or what?" she grinned when Gerard moved back and went to hug Matt.

"Ought to kick your ass, woman. It's been six months. We were worrying." Matt growled, and Bob kind of had to wonder how the guys hadn't made her flinch or break something because they all hugged hard enough to see the strain in their arms and shoulders with the force of it. Veins bulged and muscles trembled as Matt lifted her off the ground with this hug. Bob was pretty sure he'd be saying ow damn it if anyone hugged him that tight.

"Ah, even an old lady like me has a few good fights left," she said.

"So you're staying Faith?"

Bob nearly jumped out of his skin at the question that came from behind him and turned to look at the two men standing there. One had an eyepatch and was maybe just an inch shorter than Ray and maybe a touch broader. His tshirt showed three parallel scars across his forearm that looked like--scratches? Like from a lion or something even bigger with claws tried to have a go at him and he got lucky with just his arm getting it. And they were scars--even if they were ugly black-purple that at first glance made you think they were really huge blood-blisters or something. But they were...scars.

"You guys remember Boy Toy? And Geekboy there is the Andrew who makes the killer cookies. Yeah, yeah, X, I'm riding with the Jersey crew a while if that's--"

The guy with the eyepatch nodded.

The slender sandy haired guy who was maybe-maybe Gerard's height and bit slimmer closed his eyes a moment and looked like he was concentrating really hard, or maybe straining something for a moment. Bob had to wonder what could make the rather terrifying looking scar along the guy's jaw. Dark red-purple and angry looking. Like it hurt. "Your gear and the cookies are on the bus." he said when he opened his eyes again.

"Cookies?" Frank raised an eyebrow. "Oh dude, you know we kinda love you. Bob, James, you are in for a treat. Andrew Cookies the couple times we got them are like better than Girl Scout Cookies."

~

Brian eyed her critically while the guys were on stage. She swayed a little, as if she couldn't help it with the vibration of the music but she looked...tired, beaten. Her hair moved and he caught the edges of red-purple scars peeking from her tanktop's strap on the back of her neck and shoulder.

His blood ran cold.

Tell those Jersey boys I love 'em and they better not write any songs about me had been the parting shot of the drastically short phone call he'd gotten six months before. He'd been the only one to get a phone call. Which had happened once, not long after she left the guys. She'd stayed eight months on the road in that damn van with the guys. But usually everyone got a call within a span of a couple days every third month or so. That it had been six had them all wondering. Brian had been. And it showed in the guys relief to see her standing there next to Bob, even if he was pretty sure not a one of them had said a word of that worry any more than Brian had.

The two guys--Xander and Andrew had kind of wandered off and seemed to have vanished into thin air. They--might have vanished into thin air. Brian really didn't give a damn. He reached and touched the edge of one of the scars, the one poking just into view from the tanktop strap with a shaky finger.

The look she gave him was the kind of broken-weary that....hell when he finally hit bottom and cleaned up. When Gee had called out of his mind suicidal and rock bottom. Not even Mikey when he completely broke down recording the Black Parade... That combined probably didn't even touch the kind of broken-weary in her look.

She slid her arm around his waist and pressed tight to his side. Her neck probably aching a bit from the angle she bent it to rest on his shoulder, she wasn't really that much shorter than him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and mentally started rearranging his schedule to spend the most possible time with the guys.

He studied her closely, trying to match memory with the woman pressed to his side. She was thinner, almost painfully thin. Too athletic, too curvy to look sick, but she looked near painfully thin something, like very tiny bit of softness had been worn and burned away. Her face was thinner, and her nose was a little crooked, with a hint of a bump on the bridge of it he didn't really remember, like it had been broken sometime in the last almost four years. It probably had.

She looked so fucking tired, beyond that to a broken-weary, unless she got enough rest, got something with them, the next phone call after she left he got, wouldn't be from her, it would be about her funeral arrangements.

If her fingertips maybe left bruises on his hip where her hand rested, he didn't complain.

~

She has a broad smile for them when they get off the stage. Matt caught her around the waist and hauled her to his side. Ray pressed to her other side arm slung around her to rest on Matt's shoulder. She put her arms around both of their waists and Matt just knew she was holding on as tight to Ray as she was to him.

Lyn was there, had shown up during the set. Matt thought she looked a little uncertain as to who Faith was, how she belonged, and a bit nervy. They were four days into the tour, and three days into whatever the hell Gerard and Lyn were doing. Too new for Lyn to really be comfortable with someone who was looking at her as curious and assessing as Faith was.

Jamia...looked a little territorial as she slid into place at Frank's side. Too secure in Frank, in them, but still not too sure she knew what to think of the woman Brian had had plastered to his side during the set, who was now sandwiched tight between Ray and Matt. Frank bounced and muttered at the security. "C'mon c'mon! Don't they know we've got Andrew Cookies waiting."

"Andrew Cookies are the best. I'll share mine with you." Gerard grinned at Lyn.

"You damn right cause I'm eating all mine." Matt teased.

"Yeah, uh huh, you guys are only happy to see me cause I brought Andrew Cookies." Faith snorted with an indulgent smile.

"We already got beautiful women to look at these days, what else could we need you for but Andrew Cookies," Frank huffed.

"You guys are nuts," Faith shook her head.

"Says the woman who lived with us in a van for eight months," Ray smiled down at her.

"Faith was the second tech we ever had, and our security. She hauled all our butts out of trouble," Gerard grinned at Lyn. "And we didn't even have to pay her."

"Yeah right, you couldn't afford to pay me." she laughed.

"She fed us even! Like twice a week she bought actual meals," Ray said with a not-completely teasing note of worshipfulness in his voice.

Lyn, James and Bob got it a little more then. Especially Lyn and James because they'd been hungry in a van. Bob hadn't quite been, even if he'd been in a van plenty. He'd been getting paid for sure on bigger, at least lower mid-level tours, while in those vans. He'd might not have been able to afford much, but he'd always at least been able to grab a burrito or a sandwhich which wasn't necessarily a gaurentee when there was a tire that picked up a nail somewhere on the road and needed replaced now or things like that.

Matt thought Jamia had certainly heard of Faith before. Maybe not much, but she had to have heard something. A little, something when Faith had called from time to time.

"So, Robin? On or Off?" Gerard asked. "Is he going to show up and glare at us?"

"Dead." Faith said softly.

"Oh god," Gerard whispered looking sick.

"When, how?" Frank whispered and left Jamia standing there hugged Faith. "Fuck," Brian hissed and pressed against her back. Gerard ended up mostly pressed against Ray. The only thing that had ever impressed Matt, and really the rest of them, much about Robin was he was nuts about Faith, even if the two of them were as good at driving each other nuts as anything else. They'd only met him four times in the eight months she was with them and never saw him again after that. He'd generally glared and said very little. They'd all cut him a little slack though. He was absolutely nuts about Faith, even when he was a bit of an idiot and asshole about it. That could almost be excused too; his mother had been a Slayer, and one of the few that had seen twenty. A vampire had killed her when she was twenty and Robin had been all of four.

"When?" Frank demanded.

"Six months ago."

~

Bob watched as they almost crushed the woman in the middle of them. It was kind of weird that they were acting like she was the long lost sixth member of the band or their sister or something and they hadn't known her--boyfriend? whatever he was--had died.

Her line of "Hey, hey, the world didn't end. He's gotta be good with that where ever he is," which seemed to be meant to comfort the guys, was...the strangest fucking thing Bob had ever heard. And he'd pretty much lived on a bus, in a studio, on top of the Way brothers and Frank for almost three years, and a couple years of the Used before that. Really.

He had to kind of wonder at the three big black duffle bags, the huge purse and the back pack sitting on the couch of the bus' front lounge. And the freaking ten gallon STORAGE tubs filled with ziplocked bags of cookies. Names neatly written on each tub and a post it note on Frank's yes, they're vegan. James, Worm and he each had a tub as well.

"Jesus," Brian blinked.

"Andrew stress bakes. It's been busy." she shrugged and gave Frank a teasing smile. "Rabbit-food cookies are a crime you know."

Frank stuck his tongue out at her. "Heathen carnivore."

Bob had to admit the cookies were pretty damned amazing. He still didn't know what to make of the woman who was shifted between Ray, Matt and Brian's laps on the couch as Gerard babbled on and on about Umbrella Academy plans and Frank chimed in here and there about the dogs, and how Faith had to come ride with him and Jamia one night and hang out and play with the dogs.

It struck him later in his bunk, when she was tucked in with Matt for the night in his bunk, that not a single question had been asked as to what she had been up to lately or whatever.


~

They didn't let go.

If wasn't one, it was the next. They don't let go. Not for a minute. If it wasn't one of them at her side, on top of her, arm around her, grabbing her hand and tugging her to see this or that or telling her some embarassing story on the others, it was the next or the next.

At night she usually ended up with Matt or Brian, because Brian only deluded himself that the inch he has on her in height actually makes him much bigger and even if he's filled out and not so much a skinny ass as he used to be, Matt isn't that big either and she fits easily enough in with him.

Gerard claimed his turn to get her for the night and she poked at him and he was utterly ridiculous and sweet whispering about Lyn until almost dawn.

Ray snagged her and she ended up pretty much sleeping on top of him one night. It was almost as bad as the van in terms of being cramped and just kinda stupid. She almost fell out of the bunk giggling when Ray decided she needed to at least meet his Christa by phone and called her, forgetting all about time differences. Christa wasn't the most pleased woman in the world at being woken up at three in the morning on a Tuesday.

Frank dragged her to the little bus he and Jamia had, she crashed out about dawn on the couch with a dog on top of her. She got to spend most of the next day with Jamia at the Skeleton Crew booth with the guys all busy with interviews or something.

~

"Hey," Matt said softly as he crawled into the bed next to her. The first hotel night and she'd been with them all of a week now. The rooms were a bit off with her presence, and the fact Gerard had made stupid faces and begged Bob to crash elsewhere because he had a chance at a bed with Lyn, even if numbers should have been okay with Brian off dealing with another band--and he'd made her swear she'd be there when he got back in a week unless the world was ending.

Bob had popped a couple advil and a sominex and curled up passing out almost immediately once in the room, sunburnt, headachey and his wrists bothering him.

"Hey," she smiled and snuggled into him.

"So...the world's still here?"

"Yeah, it is." she agreed. "You freaking on me?"

Matt snorted. "Yeah, just a little, we all are. Those scars are nasty, woman." And they are, the red-purple claw scars down her back a scar on her thigh that had marks on both sides of her leg where she'd been impaled on something. Another on her side where she'd gotten gored by something. A burn scar on her hip that went all the way down to mid calf. All of them fresh, less than a year old Matt bet. They were too dark, too raw, too new, the tight of them caught her now and then where she wasn't completely used to the way her skin moved yet, or something.

"They come with the territory," she said simply.

"You know--you're kinda our hero. We like knowing you're out there. So could you stay out there?"

"Do my best."

"Sorry about Robin, I mean, you deserve a happy ending or whatever."

"Heroes don't get happy endings, they find em. You guys are mine." Faith murmured.