Chapter Text
Mikey comes home one autumn afternoon with a red polo shirt in his hand and news for their mom and that’s how Gerard can tell that the Staples ten minutes away has gotten truly desperate.
“How the fuck did you get them to hire you?” Gerard asks when Mikey sits down next to him on the couch later that day, after muting the shitty b-horror movie that he’s seen a million times so that he can actually hear what his brother has to say.
Mikey shrugs. “Who wouldn’t hire me?”
“Starbucks, for one.”
“They wanted me to be too nice.”
“I’m nice,” Gerard says, almost to himself.
“Staples doesn’t really have any staff,” Mikey replies. “I’m sure if the two of you both run out of all your options, you might make each other very happy.” He pats Gerard’s knee in a comfortingly mocking manner and unmutes the TV.
Gerard doesn’t want to work at Staples. However, he’s recently come to the conclusion that he is, in fact, disgustingly broke. It isn't that Gerard spends his money on that many things (art stuff, comic books, music, and cigarettes, mainly) but that fucking eats a hole in your pocket when you’re unemployed and furthering the chasm of your debt deeper and deeper with each passing day. Gerard is twenty-four and will have to start paying back the thousands of dollars that he borrowed to get himself a degree in fucking visual arts – a degree that has yet to land him a job, by the way – fucking imminently. It doesn’t help that the process of finding a job that is actually relevant to what Gerard went to school for seems near goddamn impossible, considering the job market is hell and despite his hopes none of his internships had turned into something more permanent and the positions he’s applied for are taking fucking forever to make a decision on whether or not they want him.
Gerard is looking down a long hallway of hopelessness in terms of his career prospects. At this point, he thinks he would give anything to not have to apply for a minimum wage position helping old people print shit, but things are starting to get pretty fucking grim. Though he is entirely fucking cognizant of his predicament, Gerard – and he’s unsure if he makes this decision based on laziness, a lingering hope that Cartoon fucking Network will finally deign to call him back, or the stubborn part of him that says I got a college degree I am resistant to the mere idea of working at an office supply store – decides to at least wait to apply to Staples.
This resolve lasts for all of two days. He runs out of cigarettes and his mom yells at him for trying to ‘borrow’ some of hers (“It’s not borrowing if you’re not giving it back, Gerard.”) so instead of doing anything productive like cleaning the basement or restructuring his resume or working on his portfolio, Gerard finds himself slouching his way into Staples to find Mikey and complain.
The store is almost hauntingly empty. There’s vague yet mind-numbing music playing faintly on the speakers somewhere high up in the store and the air conditioning is bitingly cold. For the life of him, Gerard can’t figure out why the fuck they even have the air conditioning on, it’s November.
The doors slide shut behind him, and Gerard gets on his tiptoes in an attempt to see as much of the store as he can and locate Mikey, tugging his jacket more tightly closed around his torso as he steps further into the store. Fuck, he thinks it’s colder in here than it was outside.
There’s a weird instance when Gerard has a moment of doubt that there’s a single person working or shopping in this store. He feels like he stepped into another dimension. Granted, it is around six o’clock on a Sunday evening, so he thinks the only people who may be rushing to a Staples at this hour would be the harried mom of a seventh grader who revealed that their book report on Lord of the Flies was due the next morning, but it’s still strange to feel like he’s the only person in existence.
That moment is interrupted when Gerard looks to his left after stepping, somewhat tentatively, far enough into the store to see the checkout area, and notices a guy around Mikey’s age sitting behind the counter on what looks like a stool that was stolen from another section of the store and picking at the chipped black nail polish on his right hand.
Gerard feels a weird, inordinate sense of relief at coming across another human being in this cold as fuck store, and heads over. “Hey,” he begins, and the guy looks up. “Do you work here?”
“Yeah,” he says somewhat flatly, the initial look of fake-customer-service interest fading immediately upon seeing Gerard, as though he can tell that Gerard won’t be demanding any pseudo-respect from the employees of Staples today. The guy points at his nametag, which reads Frank, as if to display it, giving Gerard a wide, insincere smile. After a sarcastic little waggle of his fingers, he continues, “Are you here to see Brian?”
“What?” Gerard asks. Frank raises his eyebrows. One of them is pierced. “No, actually, I’m here to see Mikey.”
Frank snorts. “Jesus, another one? I’ve been working with Mikey for two days and he’s already had more people coming here to see him than the dicks who used to deal out of the back ever did.”
Gerard blinks. “Wh – he’s my brother,” he manages, and Frank’s eyes widen slightly.
“Oh,” Frank says. He kicks his foot lightly against the bar between the legs of his stool and then hops down. He’s surprisingly short. “He’s training on the copy machines with Ray. I’ll take you.”
Gerard follows Frank through the store towards a section labeled Print and Marketing Services. Frank does not shut the fuck up the entire time that they’re walking.
“I’m supposed to be working back here,” he tells Gerard over his shoulder, swiping a finger along one of the shelves. “I got stuck up front today because Brian said he needed someone up there. I don’t know, they’re filling out the staff again, normally nights are slow, so they don’t need that many people, and I guess Brian thought today would be fine with just the three of us. Apparently, he didn’t remember that Mikey’s fucking training and so it’s basically just two, plus Mikey’s supposed to be in PMS with me, anyway.”
“PMS?” Gerard asks. Frank turns around to walk backwards so he can look at Gerard.
“Man, the jokes get old, you know.” Frank grins then, and Gerard points at him vaguely. “What?”
“Are you even allowed to have piercings in, dude?”
Frank shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out. Brian hasn’t said anything yet. HEY!” he shouts suddenly as they approach the PMS section, causing Gerard to jump and for two heads, both with extremely distinctive hair, to snap up behind the counter ahead.
“What the fuck, Frank,” says a person that Gerard recognizes as Ray Toro.
“Oh my god, hey,” Gerard says. “Ray Toro!”
Ray focuses on him then, a huge smile forming on his face. “Gerard Way!”
“Dude, your name is Gerard?” Frank asks. “That’s rough.”
“I don’t think you have room to talk, Frank.” They reach the counter just as Mikey presses a button on one of the giant machines behind the counter and it starts churning out copies of something upside-down and backwards that Gerard can’t read from his current position. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Mikey replies flatly. “Why are you here?”
“Can’t I come and see my favorite brother in his place of business?” Gerard asks, putting a hand to his chest as though he’s been deeply offended.
Mikey rolls his eyes. He doesn’t say I’m your only brother, despite Gerard setting it up for him, which Gerard finds slightly inconsiderate, but he brushes past it. “No, you can’t,” Mikey says. “Not without a reason.”
“Fine. The reason is that I was bored. Also, Mom yelled at me and I’m out of cigarettes.”
Mikey looks at Gerard flatly and lies, “I don’t smoke.”
“I do,” Frank interjects. Behind the counter, Ray lets out a little ha! of a laugh, which Gerard doesn’t understand, but Frank evidently does, because he cuts Ray a glare. “You can bum some of mine,” Frank continues.
“Oh, thanks,” Gerard replies, scuffing his foot against the floor.
Then there’s the dinging of the electronic bell rigged to go off when the front door slides open, and Frank says, “Shit, I’ll be back,” and starts to head back to the front of the store.
“Have fun,” Gerard calls after him. Frank flips him off without looking back.
When Gerard turns back to Mikey and Ray, Mikey is giving him a weird look.
“What?” Gerard asks.
Mikey doesn’t answer. Ray does that little laugh again and shakes his head, turning back to the copy machine to grab the stack of printed pages out of it. Now that Ray’s straightening out the papers, Gerard can see that they’re flyers, most likely to go on the windows of the stores in the shopping center. They read, Staples: WE’RE HIRING! Please come work for us. Reasonable pay. Flexible hours. Ask for Brian.
“Who wrote that?” Gerard asks, grabbing one of the flyers from Ray’s stack. “God, it’s horrible.”
“Pretty sure Brian typed this up on his computer’s word processor about two minutes ago,” Ray replies. “His excuse for making me make copies of it was that it’ll be good practice for Mikey, even though this is the least complicated flyer I’ve ever seen and could’ve just come out of the back-office printer.”
Gerard would agree with that sentiment. The paper literally has about four lines of text in Times New Roman. There isn't even a contact number on there, or an address of which Staples is hiring. “This sucks, no one’s gonna apply based on that.”
“Wow, thanks,” comes a new voice, and Gerard turns to see another guy standing there, arms crossed. Gerard can’t see anything aside from his truly impressive sideburns. “Do you want to do better?”
“I mean, yeah, it’s an office supply store, I probably could,” Gerard replies. Mikey lets out a long-suffering sigh at that, but Gerard ignores him. “I’m assuming you’re Brian.”
Brian looks between Gerard and Mikey, seeming to note their clear familial ties, and replies, “Yeah. You must be Gerard, Mikey said I should expect you.”
“Did he,” Gerard answers, looking over at Mikey, who shrugs, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a little smile. “How considerate of him.”
“Look, asshole, do you want a job or not?” Mikey interrupts. “You said yourself you were bored. I know you can’t afford cigarettes anymore. Until the millions of jobs you applied for decide to call you back, this is the best you got.”
Gerard grimaces.
“Besides,” Mikey continues after a beat, “you’d get to hang out with me. And Ray and Frank too, I guess. But at least you wouldn’t be loitering at my job instead of finding something else productive to do.”
Gerard looks at Mikey for a moment before groaning and tugging a hand through his hair. “Fine, you win. Brian, can I have an application?”
Much like Mikey two days previously, Gerard comes home that autumn evening with a red polo shirt in his hand and news for his mom and that’s how he can confirm that both he and the Staples ten minutes away have gotten truly desperate.