part 3: chapter 30

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"I'm not telling you, stop asking."

Frank sat back on his heels and used the back of his hand to wipe flecks of plaster and grouting and who the fuck knew what off his forehead. "Come on, Mikey, you have to tell me!"

"No." Mikey dug unenthusiastically at the tiles with his spatula. "It's too weird."

"You promised," Frank scowled. "You promised you would still tell me shit even though I know him, Mikey, and it's not like I'm asking for a diagram, all right? I just want to know if it's, you know, how we thought it was?"

Mikey frowned and tapped his spatula against the wall again, ignoring him.

Frank made his eyes as big as he could and injected just the right amount of hurt into his tone. "We're supposed to be best friends."

"Ugh." Mikey put his spatula down and crawled backwards a little, checking through the doorway to see if anyone was listening. Then he crawled back and leaned in close to Frank. "Bigger," he whispered.

"Really?" Frank yelped, cringing when Mikey glared and shushed him. "Sorry, sorry. Just - bigger? Really? How big?"

"You said you didn't want a diagram," Mikey reminded him, but he was totally grinning, Frank could tell.

"Bigger," Frank said reverently, attacking the tiles with renewed enthusiasm. "Wow."

"Just don't tell him I told you," Mikey hissed.

"Don't tell who you told him what?" said Ray, sticking his head (and all his hair) around the door.

Frank immediately collapsed into giggles, unable to stop even when Mikey sighed his most put-upon sigh.

Ray glowered at him. "Fine, have your secrets. I came to tell you Bob needs help with the sink."

"Thank God," said Mikey, dropping his spatula. "My hand is killing me."

"Yeah," Frank gave Mikey a hand up. "That one tile you took off was a doozy."

"You can't rush art," Mikey sniffed.

Frank shoved him out into the main room. Bob was lying underneath the sink Ray used to wash people's hair in, an impressive array of tools that Frank didn't even know what some of them were lying around him.

"Okay," he said, "Frank, can you get in on the other side of Ray and take the weight of the sink when I detach it down here?"

"What should I do?" Mikey asked

Bob pointed to a towel. "Hold that over my face and catch the water."

Frank got his hands under the sink. "Shouldn't we turn it off?"

"Wow, genius, I didn't think of that," said Bob. Frank kicked at him. "Brian turned it off already, it's just to make sure I don't get a faceful of drips."

"Where is he, anyway?" Ray wondered.

"Craig sent him some stuff over, I think he's looking at those, I don't know." Bob picked up one of the tools and clanked around with it under the sink for a while. "Okay, are you ready?"

"Ready," Frank and Ray confirmed. Mikey waved his towel like a flag.

"All right." Bob's arms corded with the effort of what he was doing, and he grunted, "On the count of three, okay? One, two, three!"

Frank nodded at Ray, and they both pulled as hard as they could - and the sink went flying up in the air and a stream of water came shooting out of the wall, soaking Bob, who yelled and rolled out of the way, and hitting Mikey square in the face.

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