"I scored a merch girl." Frank leaped onto Rae's back. "And by scored, I mean - "
"We all know what you mean, Frank," Mikey said, sounding bored. "Now shut the fuck up about it. Jamia's tour clause didn't include anything about gloating."
"You could be getting laid too." Frank's foot dug into Rae's lower back as he craned to look at Mikey; she winced. "Aren't you?"
Mikey pursed his lips. "Maybe."
She knew that he was, now and pretty much always, because it was Mikey. She slapped Frank's leg anyway. "Down, boy."
Frank slid off her and went to bug Matt. It would end in a lot more blood than if he decided to mess with anyone else on tour, but Rae suspected that was the point. Frank and Matt liked being assholes to each other – and if it was for reasons less than benign on Frank's end, she did her damnedest to ignore it.
"Hey, Rae."
She turned to see Underoath's bassist Grant with a very, very drunk Gerard clinging to his waist.
"You're uncomfortable," Gerard said, too-loud. "Fuck you, man, you're uncomfortable as fuck. "
Fishing various band drunks out of unlikely places was another thing Rae hadn't expected so much of on tour, but Gerard definitely wasn't unique in that sense. "Way to be a dick, Gee," she said, grabbing him away from Grant with an apologetic eyeroll.
"Rae," Gerard slurred, burying his face in her chest. "You're comfortable, Rae, I fucking love you. Did you know that? You're the fucking bomb, or...something." He – laughed wasn't even the word, he was fucking tittering.
"You guys have water, right?" Grant looked ready to laugh; it was better than pissed, at least.
Their tastes tended towards beer, soda, beer, and sometimes vodka. Rae frowned. "Maybe?"
He tossed her a bottle, one of the big gas station brand ones. She caught it clumsily. "Hey," Gerard said, with the wounded voice that only the truly drunk could manage, "that hit my head." He squinted at the bottle, then at Grant. "Oh. Hey. "
She didn't know what it was supposed to mean or why Grant suddenly looked embarrassed. "Thanks," she said. "See you around?"
He nodded and left. Gerard giggled stupidly all the way back to the van.
||
She wasn't too surprised to find, when she walked off the bus the next morning, that Gerard had already been sick all over the place.
"Shut the fuck up and give me a fucking aspirin," Gerard said when she made an impressed noise.
Rae looked at the puke dripping down the tire. "We don't have any," she said.
"Shut the fuck up and buy me a fucking aspirin."
"We don't have any money, either." She patted his back.
Gerard whimpered pathetically. He kept whimpering pathetically through two states and three of them driving, until finally they got to the parking lot they'd be hanging out in 'till the venue let them in to set up.
"Bleurgh," Gerard said, and stumbled out into the sun.
Rae patted his back. "Any better?"
"A little." Gerard looked over her shoulder. "Hunh."
She turned to see Grant smiling at them. "I didn't know you were a fan," he said, nodding at Rae's shirt.
"I'm not, she said, tugging at the merch shirt, "but my last shirt kind of disintegrated – ow!"
Gerard pinched her again. Grant laughed, and she looked down.
Of course it was an Underoath shirt. Of course. "...I like your band?" she said.
"Sometimes I think we suck too," he said. The wink he followed it up with made it obvious he was joking, but Rae wanted to hide under the van anyway.
"Hey!" Gerard said. "Hey, can I borrow a few bucks for aspirin? I can pick up my check in the next town, so it'll just be a few days and I can pay you back."
Rae blinked, because if she'd known it was that bad, she probably would have gone begging for cash herself. "Gerard - "
"I'll do you one better. Make Aaron give you some of his, he's got a stash like it's weed or something."
"You're god," Gerard said fervently, and half-ran, half-staggered for their van.
"Does he do this often?"
"He's usually not such a wuss about it." Rae picked at the bottom of her shirt. "Thanks."
"You're a new band. It's like our duty." Grant moved to stand next to her, still grinning weirdly. "Also, we're going to suck up to you guys when you're famous."
Famous was a word tossed around on tour all the time. It was kind of an unspoken rule not to comment on the irony, knowing they all wanted it as much as they laughed at it. "Sure you will," she said, punching his arm.
"I'm not totally joking. You guys have potential. And Schechter."
"That's what Frank said – the potential part, I mean, before he joined the band. Brian's nice."
"That's one word for it." Grant glanced at his watch. "I'm going to get yelled at if I don't help unload."
She nodded. "Thanks again for helping with Gerard. He's..."
" That guy. I get it." He brushed a hand over her shoulder. "Anytime, seriously. Stop by later on and we'll share the wealth, okay?"
Even Rae could pick up on a hint that huge. She was never going to hear the end of it, but she nodded and waved anyway.
||
They never fucked, technically, even though she was pretty sure they'd all be in a nursing home someday and Mikey still wouldn't believe her. Grant was cute and liked gaming and was a dude in a band with members that didn't look at her funny when she showed up and started salivating over their gear; if the tour had gone differently, she probably would have slept with him.
As it was, they got drunk together and wound up leaning against the trailer, Grant kissing her and pushing up her shirt. "This is okay, right?" he whispered, and she nodded and wiggled against him.
He pushed her shirt up and moved down to kiss her collarbone, skimming his lips down and working a hand into her pants. It was an awkward angle and the back of the trailer was cold as fuck, but Rae reached for him anyway, tugging at his fly as he brushed a finger over her clit.
"Hang on, you can do me in a minute." He moved her until she had to grab at his shoulders to stay up, muffling moans in his neck when he rubbed her harder.
She came against him, shaking, opening her eyes sluggishly when she was done and staring blankly at Mikey over Grant's shoulder as she tugged his pants down.
Wait. Mikey?
She blinked and made eye contact. Mikey's expression didn't change as he backed off silently, disappearing behind another van. She wanted to yell after him, figure out what the fuck was going on, but Grant was whispering endearments in her ear and thrusting into her hand, and she wasn't about to leave. "Come on," she said, jerking him off hard until he came all over her hand.
"Jesus," he said, gasping and slumping against her. She held him up automatically, mind moving between watching his face as he tried to get his breath back and wanting to go find Mikey and demand to know his opinion.
He finally stepped back, kissing her lightly. "That was fun."
She nodded. "I have to go, but...yeah. Thanks."
"To you, too." He tugged her hair playfully and waved her off.
Mikey was a skilled enough avoider that Gerard had threatened to put a GPS collar on him a few times. It was completely bizarre, then, to see him sitting on a lawn chair next to their van, clearly waiting.
"Hi," she said, blushing so hard she could feel the heat all over her face.
"Hey," he said. She couldn't even tell if the casual tone was faked; and what the fuck, because she could always tell. "Sorry about that."
Rae forced herself to shrug. "We were in public," she said. Semi-public, really, since it was dark and most people were already in drunken stupors, but she wasn't going to split hairs when Mikey was acting weird and there wasn't even enough light to see his face right.
"I still walked in on you." Mikey paused and Rae fidgeted, completely blanking on anything to say to fill the silence. "He's a good guy," Mikey said quietly.
"But prone to one-night stands? I know." She scratched the back of her neck. "It's kind of...it was fun. And he really is nice."
"I'm not pissed," Mikey said.
"I know." She did, because this wasn't pissed at all. She just had no fucking clue what it might be. "Are we okay?"
"A hundred percent." His teeth glinted in the shitty parking lot light. "Now go to bed. You can't play lazy like bassists do when we're tired."
She rolled her eyes and smacked his head lightly, crawling into the van and poking Frank until he yielded floor space.
||
The tour finished, so they went on another one, ignoring both logic and the big-time record executives constantly coming out of the woodwork to offer them a deal. "Fucking fake assholes," Frank would say, kicking the nearest inanimate object, "wanting to sign us just 'cause we're from fucking Jersey."
Rae just hoped Gerard would listen to Brian when he told them to say yes. He'd been writing and drawing more lately, both drunken ramblings that reminded her of jotting the last bits of a song on the way to Geoff's and better shit that made her double take when she read it, think of how she could shape a song around it. She didn't know which part of him would win; she could only give him pep talks when he was willing to listen. He'd gotten into the habit of slumping over her when he was lucid enough to feel really fucking depressed, burying his face in her boobs or thighs. By this point, even techs didn't look twice.
Then Brian called them and said, "There's a band I want to put you on tour with," and everything changed.
||
"Hi," Rae said, holding out her hand.
"Hi!" The lead singer reached up and shook her hand. He was shorter than she'd expected, and – she sniffed – high on something that definitely didn't smell like weed. "I'm Bert. You're a girl."
"She's a girl named Rae," Mikey said from over her shoulder.
Rae leaned back hard on his toes. "It's nice to meet you," she said.
"Motherfucker!" Frank yelled, and tackled the dude with the most tattoos.
"Hey," Gerard slurred from behind her, "can I bum a cigarette?"
Rae turned her head to see him staring at Bert.
"Sure, man." Bert was leering when he handed it to Gerard.
A big blond guy yelled at Frank and Tattooed to separate. Rae stepped back, looking over Mikey's shoulder at his Sidekick screen. "Adam?"
Mikey sent the text and nodded. "I think he's kind of trashed."
The room suddenly felt too small. She'd shared vodka with Adam just a few days ago, gotten so drunk she fell asleep with her face in Gerard's armpit, but everything felt stupidly close all the same. "Tell him I said hi."
Mikey smiled a little. "Duh," he said.
Tattooed's name was actually Jepha, and by the time Brian ordered them to get the hell out of his house, he and Frank were friends. They all hit it off, actually; even Bert endeared himself to Rae through the simple act of making Gerard smile like an idiot. "This tour's gonna fucking rock," Frank said, kicking Matt in the shins gleefully.
"Just keep playing," Brian said. He rolled his eyes at Rae.
She couldn't quite make herself roll her eyes back, but she did smile and pinch Gerard's arm. "Like hell could we stop."
||
Hell summed it up well, she thought two days later.
Gerard flopped down on top of her, eyes huge in her face. "What's wrong?" he slurred, hand scrabbling at the grass.
"It's hot, sticky, dirty, our van is seconds away from breaking down again, and I'm pretty sure my hair's going to get a life of its own if I don't wash it soon." Rae glared. "That enough for you?"
Gerard nodded, but he was already distracted, picking at the edge of her shirt. "Bert likes me."
He sounded small when he said it, like he thought it was still high school, like he didn't realize most of the people he met liked him just by virtue of him being completely endearingly weird. "You like him?"
"He's nice." Gerard giggled. "Gets me high."
"If I'd known that was the way to your heart I wouldn't have bothered writing music with you. That was a joke," she added when Gerard shrank against her.
"I like writing music with you." Gerard patted her hair. "We need to do it again. Since you didn't let me quit."
"Yeah, sure." She glanced at her watch. An hour and a half to the show, which meant she could drink a bit and be just tipsy enough to play. She was starting to trust this crew more; it helped that Frank kind of followed her around when they were both trashed. "We should get shitfaced tonight, though."
"Waaay ahead of you. Way." Gerard rolled off her, laughing. She flipped him off and went to find the nearest cooler.
||
She was the designated the night they stopped in Salt Lake City. She hadn't seen or heard from Gerard for hours, but whatever else could be said about Bert, he kept Gerard alive and relatively safe.
Frank was tearing up the bar in the way only Frank could; she sat back and watched him almost get thrown out half a dozen times, nursing a beer and half-thinking about a chord progression she'd started writing earlier.
"Jeez, Toro, party a little harder."
She patted Matt on the arm. "Not all of us are booze hounds tonight."
"You'd be drunk as fuck if you weren't driving." He burped and surveyed the crowd. "Think being a dude in a band's enough to get me laid?"
Not liking Matt was almost a hobby at this point, something she paid as much attention to as the duct-taped holes in her shoes or the assholes yelling at her to show her tits. "As long as you don't do it in the van, I don't give a fuck," she said.
"You should try it sometime," Matt said. He wavered when he stood. "Unknot your panties long enough to see the fucking obvious, or whatever."
She didn't have time to demand to know what he was talking about before he fell back into the crowd.
They crashed at the friend of a relative of Frank's that night. She wound up next to Frank, his face smushed against her shoulder.
"Craig called again," he said quietly, a few seconds after Rae heard the first few breathy snores that meant Mikey was asleep. "He's hounding us across the fucking country."
"There are a lot of Jersey bands." She curled up closer, ignoring the smell of alcohol in favor of the full-body hug Frank was offering. "What did you tell him?"
"I asked him to wait. Figured we'd talk to Brian."
"You think we should consider it?"
She felt him nod against her shoulder. "Gerard's got pages and pages of new shit," he said. "We can't stay on Eyeball forever."
"If the label fucks us over, though..."
"Then we'll be back in Jersey." Frank laughed a little. "Christ, Rae, it's get big or get fucked at this point."
"We'll talk about it in the morning, then," Rae said. "Us, I mean. The band."
Frank yawned. "You're a good guy," he said, patting her shoulder. "Or – you know. Whatever."
She snorted and closed her eyes. Falling asleep was easy.
||
"I have stuff," Gerard said. "Lyrics. A little."
Mikey stared at his knees.
"Craig's a fucking geek, though." Matt tapped his drumsticks on his knees. "Do we want some fancy fucking label telling us what to do?"
"Not really," Frank said. "But there's the money to consider, security..."
"Marketing." Gerard looked up, eyes flicking from Frank to Ray. "I want it to be fucking huge. If we're gonna do this, we have to do it."
Mikey was still staring at his knees. "What about you?" Rae asked, looking at him.
He looked surprised when he finally raised his head. "It's a good idea. Um. I don't know, we'll still be a band."
What he wasn't saying that Rae figured everyone knew was that Mikey would follow Gerard no matter how bad an idea he thought it was. "I guess Gerard can call Brian, then."
They all nodded in tandem.
He didn't do it in private, of course; the only things they bothered doing alone anymore were fucking and shitting, and sometimes not even then. "Please," Brian said, voice crackling on the shitty speakerphone, "don't tell me you wrecked the van."
"We want to say yes to Craig," Gerard said.
"How do you make that sound dirty?"
"It's not a bad idea." That was Mikey, elbowing Gerard in the ribs and leaning forward. "Right?"
"No, it's a good idea. A really good one, if you guys think you can handle the pressure."
"We can." Rae pressed into Mikey's side, making sure Brian heard her. "It'll be a lot of work, we know that, but we're ready."
She didn't have to see him to know Brian was nodding. "I'll call him, then. See you in a few days."
When Brian hung up, Rae didn't think twice about slumping back into Mikey. It was reflexive at this point, touching the nearest band member, getting as much comfort as possible from them. "Jesus fucking Christ," she said.
Mikey hugged her. "More or less."
||
Sleepless nights and shitty shows collided with semi-nervous breakdowns and band group hugs until they finally signed the deal. "Signing our souls away," Mikey muttered. Rae pointedly ignored him and didn't think about how many manifestos about the evils of major labels Mikey had probably seen or heard.
Five days after they signed it, back in the Ways' basement, Gerard wrote a song around Rae's music.
They usually wrote together, but Rae had been aimlessly working on a song for awhile now, following notes instead of Gerard's words like she normally did.
"You didn't tell me about this," Gerard said, flipping through the notebook that it was generally understood he had full access to.
Rae shrugged. "It wasn't finished. And anyway, you don't usually - "
"I know, but." Gerard tapped the paper. "I could fit something to this, I think."
He shrank into himself after that. It was weirdly lonely, watching him match words to the tune, and eventually Rae wandered up to the kitchen.
Mikey offered her coffee. "Thanks," she said, taking it.
"Is Gee..." Mikey picked at the flaking veneer on the cabinet. "Is he, you know. Okay?"
"As much as he ever is. He's writing," Rae said. "It's...weird."
"I can't believe we're signed. We're corporate now. Geoff's going to kick our asses so much."
"It feels like we're out of chances." Rae sat down at the table, leaning her head in a hand. "We could have broken up and played with other bands, but now? This is it. A deal like that only comes around once."
"So we can't fuck it up," Mikey said.
Rae nodded.
They sat silently for as long as it took for Mikey to finish his coffee. When his mug was empty, he stood. "I'm not sure I could, you know?" he said abruptly. He shoved his glasses up, blinking at Rae. "Play in another band. I'm just...I'm not sure."
"I think I could. Maybe." She glanced at the basement door. "Without Gerard, though...maybe not."
Mikey laughed harshly. She looked over at him, surprised. "Nothing," he said in response to the look. "I couldn't either."
She didn't see him again that day, even when she took a walk before dinner.
||
They had a recording date and a producer and all their metaphorical ducks in a row.
Then Elena died, and suddenly Rae didn't know which way was up.
Gerard crashed so thoroughly that no one could reach him. Rae wanted to leave the task to Mikey, thought he was doing okay, until the day Frank called her up and said "Get your ass over here, Toro, I can only handle one of them at a time."
Gerard's door was closed and Mikey was lying on the couch. "Fuck," Rae said, because she'd never seen him like this, completely broken up inside.
"Gerard threw stuff at me," Mikey said. "I kind of deserved it, I guess."
Rae sat down next to him carefully. "No, you didn't. He's upset, he - "
"I should have expected it." Mikey's voice was too loud, too raw. His hands were shaking. "She was old, I should have – we could've –"
It wasn't at all surprising to see him break down, face crumbling, hands scratching at the couch, tugging the fabric uselessly. "Mikey," Rae said, hugging him; he fought her, but she knew better than to let go, and he was twiggy enough that he couldn't even begin to break her hold. "Jesus, Mikey, it's okay." She hadn't cried since getting the news and she couldn't let herself now, but she wanted to, feeling him shaking and sobbing. "It's going to be. It's - "
"Shut up," Mikey somehow forced out, pinching her hard. "Just...shut up."
He cried until a fist-sized spot on her shirt was wet, snuffling and smearing tears and snot like he didn't care – and he probably didn't, she thought, because she knew the Ways well enough to know they anchored their justification for living in people around them, and they'd loved Elena more than anyone. She usually hated Mikey's calculated expressionlessness, but right now she would have given anything to see it again, to get the grief as far away from him as she could.
But she couldn't. She couldn't even talk. All she could do was hold on to him, tightening her grip when he yawned and tried to wiggle away, leaning back against the arm of the couch and making herself as comfortable as she could. It paid off when Mikey finally slept, fingers digging into her like he'd forgotten his escape attempt.
When she was sure he was asleep, she let herself whisper everything she'd been biting her lip to keep in: "It'll be okay, I love you, we'll get through this, it's okay, you've got the band, it's okay."
The upside of him being asleep was that he didn't ask her who she was trying to convince.
||
"They've got until after the funeral, then they need to man the fuck up and deal."
Frank snarled and leaped for Matt. Rae reached out to grab him, but Bob was already there, holding him back with a carefully bored expression on his face.
"Motherfucker, how about I break your fucking head open and then we'll see whose job it is to suck it up and deal," Frank yelled.
"Calm down, Frank," Rae said, looking at Matt. "We both know he's a dick."
"Bitch," Matt said.
It was a word she was starting to suspect she heard more often than "and" or "the"; she was inured enough to it to simply shrug.
"They have as much time as they need, asshole," Frank said.
"If only that were true," Brian said. "But the label has you guys on a schedule. They can't stay holed up forever."
Rae hadn't asked Frank what Gerard had said the night he found out about Elena. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. They'd swapped brothers for a reason; she was too close to Gerard to deal, and he was too close to Mikey. "I could talk to him," she said finally.
"You should." Mikey stared fixedly at some point near Brian's shoulder. "Give him something to do with what he's been writing."
"I thought you hadn't talked to him," Brian said.
Mikey looked up at Rae. "I haven't."
Rae had never been good at breaking awkward silences, and now was no different. She sat on the edge of her chair, fighting nauseating nervousness, until Bob said gruffly, "Damn it, Iero, stop pinching me."
Mikey's giggle sounded sick. "Lay off, Frank, he's the only guy who'll tech for us for so cheap."
"For so free," Bob said, but it didn't sound pissed. If anything, it was comforting.
"So," Rae said, "I'm going to talk to him. And then we'll record the album."
Brian raised his eyebrows. "You're sure? You've never done a major studio recording before. It can be...stressful."
Less stressful than waiting around for Gerard or Mikey to take the self-harm plunge, she thought. "I'm sure."
She looked at the others, but Matt just shrugged and Frank nodded; musically, she knew he'd follow her longer than even she thought he should. "Okay, then," she said. "I'll call you in a few, Brian."
Knocking on Gerard's door didn't yield a response, so she cracked it open slowly, bracing herself. Gerard wasn't a throwing heavy objects type, but she wouldn't put it past him to booby trap the door.
What she'd forgotten, of course, was that when Gerard was down, he was too far down to even bother with self-defense. "Jesus, Gee," she said, sitting down next to the lump of blankets on the bed.
The lump didn't stir. She swallowed hard. "We missed you."
"I miss her," Gerard said, soft but completely understandable. "I'll always miss her. More than any of you -"
"Don't say that about Mikey," Rae cut in, feeling herself flush. Don't say that about the band, she wanted to add, but she knew what the response to that would be.
"I'm done, though. Will he miss me even though I'm done?"
Don't ask, she told herself, don't ask don't - "Done with what?"
The answer was both completely predictable and completely horrible. "The band."
"Mikey will miss you no matter what. He'll follow you no matter what. But the band...why?"
The bit of movement might have been a shrug. "You told me not to quit, but what the hell am I supposed to say, Rae? I can't...she was...I have to be done now. I can't not."
She wasn't Gerard's brother and she didn't have Mikey's known-him-for-forever instincts, but she also wasn't stupid. "Are you trying to tell me we couldn't make what you wrote into a song?"
He was still for a long time, the kind of not-breathing still that made her hold her own breath and hope it had worked. Finally, she watched the lump move as he rolled. A few seconds later, he tugged the blankets down.
"Oh god, Gerard," she couldn't stop herself from saying. His face was wrecked, pale and red, chapped where he'd rubbed tears off on the sheets.
Gerard smiled wanly. It wasn't the worst thing she'd ever seen, but it was close. "Still think we can?"
She forced herself to nod. "Always."
He sat up, staring at the bed. "Okay," he said finally. His voice was tiny; he didn't look at her when he nudged the notebook with his foot.
||
Five hours later, Rae came out with lyrics, a rough melody, and a tired but showered Gerard.
The band was waiting on the couch. "Gerard," Mikey said, standing.
They hugged until even Rae had to fidget. When they finally broke apart, Matt said loudly, "I'm going to get trashed. Anyone with me?"
Frank rolled his eyes. "We've got shit to do tomorrow, Pelissier, don't you think you should -"
"I'm in," Gerard said.
Frank gaped.
Gerard shrugged. "I'll be here tomorrow," he said. "But hey, why not take the edge off?"
Frank clenched his jaw. It was obvious, in that second, that he'd heard the reasoning before; Rae flashed back to Pencey and the infighting Frank had barely talked about and swallowed hard.
But Frank backed down. "Just be here tomorrow," he said, sitting down close to Mikey.
"We will," Gerard said.
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