Mikey had complacency down to an art, and for awhile she thought the way he approached their relationship was with that; she probably should have known better, in retrospect. He was comfortable.
She voiced the thought to him one night, sitting on the back steps of that show's venue.
He scrunched up his nose. "I don't think I could get used to it," he said.
"Explain?"
"It's just...I don't know. It's you, you know? I love you, you love me. That's a lot of things, but nothing I'm ever not going to appreciate."
It still felt weird, knowing that neither of them really thought this would end anytime soon. "Yeah. Me too."
He kissed her quickly. "This isn't exactly a shot in the dark, you know?"
She nodded. "We should go to bed."
"Fucking bunks."
"Fucking in the bunks." She touched the bruise she'd gotten on her temple just yesterday and winced. They were definitely not trying bunk oral again. "But no, sleeping. We need it."
They'd all been a little off lately; they weren't suffering from ennui, exactly, just still more changes. Mikey nodded. "Sleep."
It was gratifyingly easy to do.
||
They were slowing down, and everyone could feel it. The shows were still just as important, but they weren't quite as excited for them, weren't nearly as tense from day to day.
"I think," Frank said one morning, burping and scratching his ass, "I think we've had so many problems for so long that now it's over and we don't know what to do."
"You should shave," Gerard said from his spot on the couch. "And shower. You're gross."
"Your wife is gross," Frank shot back. "She really is."
"Yours would have to be awesome to put up with you."
"She likes my beard."
"Maybe she's just blind."
"Your mom."
"No, yours."
"I could create a problem," Bob said from the bunks, "by killing both of you. Would that work?"
They shut up.
||
Being a working band, a long-term success, was kind of bizarre. They still had interviews, magazine features, and of course shows, but she could feel them winding down. They spent more time together and less time out with other bands, picking reading over partying. It wasn't time to go back in the studio, not yet – she wasn't even sure they'd be able to come up with anything if they did. They were feeling their way around as much as they had been in the beginning.
"I don't really want to think this is the end," Mikey said when she brought it up. "Bamboozle and then what?"
"And then another record," she said firmly. "Maybe the last, sure, but we're not ready yet."
"We're old guys. Boring."
Frank had streaked on a dare yesterday, but a day before that they'd all been engrossed in Wal-Mart's selection of heating pads and muscle relaxants. She looked down, fiddling with her pick.
"We're new," she said finally. "Not old, exactly, just...changing. New."
She didn't think Mikey agreed, really, but he nodded and kissed her cheek.
||
"You're doing Bamboozle," Brian told them.
Gerard made a face. "That's a lot of time, though. We could fit a few shows in."
Rae nodded. "Maybe play clubs and stuff? Smaller places."
Brian looked on the verge of laughing, but it wasn't unusual enough when he dealt with them for any of them to comment. "A few clubs?"
"It's better than sitting around," Frank said.
Even if they hadn't been sleeping together for the better part of six months, Rae would've been able to read Mikey's expression easily. "It's a good idea," she said firmly. "Especially if we're taking time off."
"I have an idea," Mikey said, but he sat back and started texting instead of talking. Gerard raised his eyebrows, but let it drop.
Bob flexed his wrist. "I think this is what my doctor meant when she said we work too hard."
"You're already thinking of venues we could play at, aren't you?" Frank said.
Bob flipped him off, but he was nodding.
"I'll call Craig," Brian said.
||
"Mikey fucking Way."
He held up his hands. "I just called a few people, and they called Brian, is all."
" Mikey fucking Way," Gerard said again. He sounded ready to cry, which...okay, yeah. Rae was too.
"They think we might sell it out." Mikey's lips were upturned at the corners. "The label thinks I'm smart."
"Because you are, asshole." Gerard tackled him, wrapping all four limbs around him. "My brilliant fucking brother."
"Madison Square," Bob mouthed.
Frank fistpumped so hard he fell over.
||
A few weeks later, Rae almost irrecoverably wrinkled a picture lying in her bunk. It was the first and only time Gerard gave her a drawing without actually personally giving it to her.
He'd drawn the band in a comic book-y style, all exaggerated poses and weird jawlines. But instead of being in one of the many Gerard-centric poses they were used to for photoshoots, Rae was in the middle.
She was holding a guitar and Mikey was looking directly at her, and she looked very obviously female.
Being in a band with Gerard for so many years definitely hadn't left her with no impressions or idea of what it might mean. She got some tape from the lounge and put it on her wall, careful not to wrinkle it. When she was done, she texted him. i like it, you know.
He called back. "I wasn't sure."
"It makes sense. I'm not even sure what to say, you know?"
"It's been awhile. I just wanted you to know things had changed."
That made her laugh. "Yeah, I'd gotten the hint. But thanks."
Gerard hanging up on her didn't make much sense until he walked onto the bus.
He wasn't the same as he'd always been, of course; he looked a little shy, but definitely older and more aware. Mostly, though, he looked like her friend, as new and here and now as she herself was.
"It's awesome," she said, shrugging. "You know? It just is."
"So are you," he said, and started babbling about a Star Wars marathon before she had a chance to call him a sap.
||
With the end (of this leg, at any rate; Rae refused to think of it as the end, period, and refused to let anyone else call it that) approaching, she finally had to try to figure out a place to live that wasn't her parents'. Mikey had been talking about maybe getting an apartment together, but she wasn't completely sure about it yet; he was more stable, in a way better place, but she wanted to try living on her own. It was both the hardest and the easiest decision she ever had to make.
"Yeah, sure," Adam said over the phone. "I get it. I wouldn't want to live with him either, not right away. And it's a tiny place, kind of thing you could rent out in the blink of an eye."
"When did you turn into a realtor, anyway?"
"When you said you needed a house." She could hear the grin in his voice; Adam was the kind of guy who was kind of a shitty friend until you needed something, and then suddenly he wasn't. "It's nothing major, you know, I just called a dude who knew a lady."
"Sure." She turned the pick Frank had left out over in her fingers. "Thanks, then. I'll give them a call."
"Happy living." Adam hung up.
"Have you told him yet?"
Her head snapped up. Frank was standing with his hands dug in his pockets, watching her. He looked protective enough to remind her, sharply, just how close he was to Mikey. "I – no."
"Stop looking so nervous. I get why you're doing it." He sat next to her. "Just make sure he does, too."
"Will he understand?"
"A year ago I'd hit you for even asking. Or – okay, yeah, I wouldn't. But I'd want to." Frank shrugged. "It's different now. He should."
"Everything's different now." She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Frank's new tattoo caught her eye. "For all of us."
Frank's hand covered hers, taking the pick from her. "I used to believe this, you know," he said, tilting the side of the pick that said "FTW" towards her. "Not literally, but...yeah, I don't know. Punk aesthetic."
"And now you're all married and grown up."
"Married, at any rate." He tossed the pick on the bus floor and crawled over to her, situating himself in her lap. "I had a point, but fuck if I know what it was."
"I'm not allowed to explain wanting to live alone badly for fear of you gutting me to save Mikey's honor?"
"Something like that." Frank sneezed on her. "You should buy a beanbag chair for when I stay over."
"Oh, I should, should I?"
"Fuck yeah, you should. And a trampoline."
"It's an apartment, genius." She sat back, pulling him with her. "Get your own."
"Maybe," Frank said. "Hey, can I borrow your DS?"
He passed out on her not long after that. She took the video game over and texted Brian to pick up some DayQuil.
Frank had been bundled off to his bunk for almost an hour when Mikey made it back to the bus. "That CD store had, like, an entire tape collection. I was worried it was 1980 again."
"Definitely not," she said, waving him over.
He stuck his feet in her lap. "This is what the whole hiatus is going to be like," he said. "Off days. It's weird."
"Maybe." She massaged the bottoms of his feet half-heartedly. "Frank's sick again."
"Shocker. That's what you've been doing?"
"Frank? No." She clenched her teeth, forcing herself not to dance around the topic. "I was looking for apartments. Um, for one person."
Mikey blinked. "One person?"
She nodded. "I want to live with you, someday. It's not that I don't."
"No, yeah. I get it." He leaned back. Her stomach felt like it was in knots – but he didn't move away, really, and that was something. "Wait. I get it."
"You do?"
"I do." He looked completely bemused. "Living apart so we can figure each other out. And...huh. I wasn't expecting to really understand."
They were on the same wavelength; it was ridiculous and a bit perfect. She smiled. "Okay, then."
||
Their not-tour started and flew past. It hadn't hit Rae before how well she knew most of the venues, how many times the band had played in them; even Austin with its gravel pit, or St. Louis with its ridiculously muggy air, had memory after memory folding themselves through her head. "It's bizarre," she said one day, sitting with Bob. "How quick it's going."
He raised an eyebrow at her. They all had bags under their eyes, and had talked (quietly, out of earshot of even the techs) more than once about how nice a break would be. "Really."
"Well, okay, not so much. But – this is the last time, you know? For a while, at least. It's weird."
"Weird is one word for it." Bob shook his head. "Fucked if I know how you guys managed. You did this longer than I did."
She thought of the numbers of times he'd teched for them, helped them out when they were all, even Frank, completely new to the game they were trying to win. "Yeah, no."
"Rae, we've talked about this before."
"You were there almost from the beginning, in some way. Seriously, we're a family, it's not like you earn points for years touring or anything. Even if the band ends, we'll still be family, and you're part of that, and – what?"
Bob shook his head, smiling. "Nothing. Gerard didn't really rub off on any of you, did he?"
She knew what he was trying to say, and yeah, okay. It wasn't all Gerard – never had been, really. "Like you're any better," she said after a few seconds' thought.
"Shut the fuck up."
"Doing gigs for free, going to Europe." She grinned when he blushed bright red.
"Maybe all of you rubbed off on me."
"Or maybe you were that way to start with, just like the rest of us."
Bob rolled his eyes, but she was okay with it; she already had her answer. "You're going to hang with the rest of us, right? After the tour?"
"It hadn't occurred to me to do anything else."
"Good," she said, satisfied.
||
All the venues were awesome and Rae had a good time playing them again, but Madison Square Garden was fucking Madison Square Garden.
"You're making me feel underdressed," she said when she saw Brian's tie.
"They'd flip out if you went up there in a skirt," Brian said reasonably.
"Or they'd just be terrified." She leaned against the wall, watching Gerard and Mikey gibber at each other. "I can't believe..."
"You guys sold it out." He was actually bouncing on his heels, eyes darting from one member to another. "Fucking sold it out, Rae."
"I know, I know." Backstage wasn't actually that impressive, but she could hear the crowd yelling as Adam bullshitted at them, and she...fuck, she couldn't deal.
Madison fucking Square Garden. "I sound like Gerard in my head," she said nonsensically.
Brian laughed. "We all do sometimes."
Mikey wandered over; Gerard had planted his face in Bob's chest, alongside Frank. "Madison Square," he said with a goofy grin.
She pulled him into a hug, ignoring Cortez's joking whistle. "We did it," she said.
"Sort of," he said. "It's a beginning, remember?"
She didn't ask what could possibly come next, if this was the beginning. They both, they all, knew that wasn't the point. "Yeah."
"At some point you guys have to go onstage," Matt said.
Mikey flipped him off and kept clinging to her. They parted when Brian pushed them gently, ran onstage.
The crowd screaming almost floored her.
It was both easy and not to launch into the set – last, last, last, maybe not the last time playing but the last time playing like this, in their sixth year and still fucking amazing.
She glimpsed Brian a few times, beaming at them from backstage, but she couldn't remove her attention from the crowd for long. Gerard was hamming it up as much as she'd ever seen, and every time she glanced back at Bob he was beaming. Frank was being Frank as hard as she thought was humanly possible, and Mikey...
Mikey, Jesus. Mikey was five times the potential she thought any of them, even Gerard with his booze and pills and obsession with death and his brother, had seen in the beginning.
"If we never play another show," Gerard said, "keep yourselves alive."
The crowd's screams had as much meaning behind them as Rae had ever heard.
||
They all five clung together after the show standing in a small, smelly, sweaty knot. Rae pressed her side against Mikey's and said quietly, "We're fucking amazing. I told you we would be."
"Liar. That was my line," Frank said. They all smiled and pressed closer.
The five of them stayed in a huddle until the techs all but dragged them away.
||
It felt good in weird ways to walk away from the bus, box and duffel in hand and backpack full to bursting. She'd miss the guys, but she knew as well as anyone else that this break was needed, and in some ways it felt like the other half of what she'd started by getting up onstage in the first place.
Mikey called almost as soon as she got to her apartment. "Is this what being grown up feels like?"
"Grown up and on vacation, maybe," she said. "I have an electric bill. Crazy."
"I'll probably forget about mine."
"I miss you," she said. Her refrigerator was empty; after a moments' thought, she put the pudding that had been living in her backpack in it. She should probably buy some kind of soda, too. "Come over soon, okay?"
"I don't know, I might be too busy buying blinds. Or like, vacuuming." Mikey laughed into the phone. "Seriously, you couldn't actually keep me away."
"I know." She wandered into the bedroom, kicking the mattress she'd had delivered. "I'm going to go to bed. Talk to you tomorrow?"
"Love you," Mikey said.
"You too," she said, and hung up.
She'd slept on plenty of beds in the past six years, but not like this. She was half tempted to just crash with no blankets, pajamas, or anything, but that would be cheating – she'd be more comfortable in this place if she was as uncomfortable sleeping as she'd ever been. Instead, she put sheets on the mattress, changed, brushed her teeth, and turned the lights off.
It was equal parts weird and nice; the only thing that let her fall asleep as quickly as she did was sheer exhaustion.
||
Mikey stayed over at her apartment more days than he didn't. As weird as having her own place was, having it not be Mikey's place too was weirder; after two months of calling it her apartment, she gave up and called him.
"It's pretty big," she said. "And half your stuff's here anyway, so..."
They did not, contrary to Frank's accusations, spend the next week doing nothing but having sex. They just happened to be doing exactly that both times he barged in on them.
"I'm going to get you a cowbell," Mikey said from his spot on Rae's lap.
"You're disgusting," Frank said. "I wrote a guitar line. It's kickass."
"But not Leathermouth kickass?" Rae said. She and Mikey had both already mocked Frank for being completely incapable of not touring.
"Different kind of kickass." He balled it up and threw it at her head. "We've got a few more months before studio time, but if all of us don't have shit by then, I'll fuck a goat."
"Oh, and I'm disgusting?" Mikey said.
"I'm just hardcore." Frank struck a pose that was more or less completely ruined by his happy smile. "Whatever. I'll see you guys later, okay?"
They waved him out, then locked the door, sharing shamefaced grins.
||
"Give me a beat," she said.
Mikey just raised his eyebrows. She sighed. "Okay, give me a theme?"
"Gazelles," Mikey said.
She rolled her eyes – and went back to the music she'd been fiddling with and frustrated because of for almost a week.
He knew better than to try to stop her. "This is good," he said after awhile.
"No, it's not," she said, "it sounds all wrong, I'm going in completely the wrong direction. It sucks."
"You'll realize it's good when you decide you're done," Mikey said. "It, um."
"What?"
He bit his lip. "It doesn't sound like one of our songs."
The thought had crossed her mind more than once. "Yeah, it'll probably be nothing."
"I didn't say that."
That thought had crossed her mind, too. "It's too early to be thinking about anything else."
"I'm just saying." He grinned at her. "You could totally start your own side project. It would be kickass."
And she'd have the reputation to be able to pull it off. "Are you trying to tell me I should call Frank for advice?"
"Not yet," he said. "But maybe someday. It'd be fun, I could be a groupie again."
"Nah," she said, moving her stool closer so she could rest her feet on his while she played.
It was comfortable, and when two hours later she doubled the tempo and came up with something that actually worked, it was successful too.
||
In the end, it took them almost two years to get back in the studio. They all came back with different experiences: marriage, Frank's bands, Gerard's comic books. Rae knew she'd be bringing ideas and more technical knowledge to the table, but she didn't realize how much until Bob said, "Christ, Toro, you should leave us for a better band."
She took the compliment with a smile instead of any kind of denial.
The album wound up being about a lot of things, but through it all, Mikey wrote in their album release bulletin, it was about bravery. Bravery with other people, bravery with yourself.
"Be fucking brave," Gerard told the audience. "None of us settled, and you shouldn't have to, either."
Ray felt a hand on her arm. She turned and grinned at Mikey, raising her head and playing a riff for a crowd. It was as good – or better, even – than ever.
In the end, the album sold enough to go platinum. It felt amazing, knowing they'd had that kind of impact, knowing they were back and ready to stay for a long damn time.
They were happy. Their band, their message that lived stronger than ever every time they got onstage – those were the things that mattered, and Rae didn't think they'd ever really be gone, even if their next break was forever.
||
Interviews were the only thing more common than shows; she'd dragged herself to dozens, and they'd been boring and pivotal and everything in between.
This particular interview was a step towards Rae feeling less weird about being a visible, talkative part of the band as much as it was about any of the questions the woman asked. Still, she was glad to have Mikey along.
"So how do you answer when people ask you what you do? Do you mention your success in what's typically a very competitive, unrealistic career choice? You certainly have bragging rights, name recognition, all that."
Mikey shrugged. "I just say I'm a guy in a band," he said.
The interviewer turned to Rae. "It must be strange, being a girl in that kind of environment. What do you tell people?"
She was tempted to copy Mikey, but instead she leaned forward, meeting the interviewer's eyes. "I just say I'm a girl in a band."
It was a featured quote.
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