Wasn't resentment, or anything. If it was, Joey'd be loathe to admit it. It was wanting to keep up, then impress. Meet the bar, show he could do tricks on it. He wanted to be Frank, not beat him. Loathe as he'd be to admit this, too, that was taking the whole package, too: the presumed-dead dad and the mom he had all of two memories of. The string of deadbeat homes, the cuts and broken bones from schoolyard and street brawls, the record of black marks and near-misses with the cops. From the outside, you got to see him wear them as a mix of battle scars and stories to be told. All part of the package of that seen-some-shit mystique and streetwise edge, and that charisma that turned the heads of drop-dead bad-girl dreamers like Julie.
There was a template for being Frank. The fact that the man fuckin' existed was evidence of that. There was no template for beating Frank. Hell, beating Frank sounded kind of like a myth, in Joey's book. You could have the odd dream about being the new king in town, bask in all that glow of you're-so-cool, you're-so-tough, you're-so-crafty, you're-so-funny.
It'd burn bright and then fizzle out like every other firecracker that set off in Joey's brain, and then he'd light five more.
The impulse to do as Frank would do. Do it first, show just how gangsta he was down to the letter, now. As if he was the Legion, down through the blood and bones. He knew how to force a door or window now. He shouted and whooped during shakedowns and thought of himself not as a bully, but as the bigger and heavier lifting to Frank's sly bitterness. He vaulted walls and rolled under gates with the kinda thrust you can only get out of gusto. He handled paint cans and crowbars and contraband with a flourish and a wink-and-nod to an audience of buddies. He had the get-around and getaway car.
Followed every guideline and still wound up a totally different animal to Frank goddamn Morrison. No matter how much he refined that gangster craft, there that bar stood, still as high as ever.
But it was more okay to him than he thought, sometimes. It kept him running. Kept him laughing in the heat of things, kept him still-boyishly proud of himself as it all spiraled away and turned into a game, a team sport. The model mutating with that simple fuse-fueled drive, no core kernel of Frank's ever-present anger to serve as its center of gravity.
Joey was the brick through the window.
Frank was the knife on the belt that gives you the grit to throw it.
You can be one.
Written for the r/FanFiction June Daily Prompt challenge. June 5th: "Brick".