"But -"
"Okay, you can have him back!" Alicia pushed Mikey off the stool.
Mikey blinked at Rae. "Um."
"Don't worry about it." She made herself smile, because it was Mikey, and he was so obviously here to have fun with Pete. "See you later."
"So I've got a bet going with Tom," Alicia said as soon as Mikey left, nodding to the tech walking up to them. "You're not a lightweight, right?"
||
Rae wasn't a lightweight. She also wasn't a loud drunk, fortunately; Alicia helped her up the steps and she fell asleep curled up on the couch, the five bucks she got for drinking six beers and saying the alphabet backwards tucked in her back pocket.
She woke up to Frank sitting on her stomach. "Oh, man," he said gleefully, looking down at her. "Mikey's going to be pissed."
"What'd I do?" She sat up, pushing Frank on the ground. "Jesus, my head hurts."
He peered at her from between his legs. "Did you hook up?"
"Oh my god," she said, standing. Apparently it was too loud, because Bob grunted from his bunk in the threatening way Rae knew meant they'd be getting yelled at either. She grabbed a soda and sat back down. "No, I didn't hook up. Why's Mikey going to be mad? He was out fucking around with Pete."
Frank patted her knee. "You need a seeing eye dog."
Rae made a mental note to call Jamia and get her to fly out. Too much time without getting laid apparently made Frank completely crazy. "Do we know when we get Brian back?"
"Grnalgh," Gerard said, lurching past and fumbling with the coffee machine.
"Hey, Mikey!" Frank yelled. "Gerard's gonna drink all the – wait a second. Hey, motherfucker!"
Rae watched them tussle, content to drink her soda and wait for her head to stop feeling like a construction site.
"Morning," Mikey said quietly, sitting next to her. "Any Red Bull left?"
"You know I don't drink that shit."
Mikey widened his eyes at her. "Frank and Gerard are loud, and I got drunker than you did."
"How do you know how drunk I – okay, okay, Jesus."
Mikey stopped pouting the second she handed the drink to him. "You're the best."
She settled back into the pillows, side pressing against him comfortably. "I wasn't expecting to see you here, actually."
"Sleeping with Pete is one thing. Sleeping with him's another."
"I wouldn't sleep with Pete," Frank said from his position on Gerard's head. "He looks like the kicking type – ow, motherfucker!"
The last was yelled. Mikey grinned and ducked his head when Bob thumped out of bed and stomped out to Frank and Gerard.
"We're not buying two coffee machines," he said, "and I'm not giving up sleep because you idiots love caffeine like Cortez loves anal."
"With girls, to be fair," Gerard said, voice muffled by Frank's ass.
"You know what the solution to this is?" Frank leaped up.
Bob actually took a step back. "No."
"Hey, Bryar, you started it."
" No, Frank."
"Starbucks!" Frank yelled, and took a flying leap, tackling Bob down.
"He's going to have bruises," Mikey said.
"Gerard will have more." Rae nodded to Gerard guzzling the coffee. "But hey, his funeral."
Mikey moved a little closer, resting his head on her shoulder. "Even if Pete wasn't annoying to sleep with, I'd probably stick around here," he said. "You know?"
And yeah, okay. She wasn't Mikey, but she wasn't a nun, either. "Yeah. It's nice."
Frank bit Bob's shoulder; Bob yelled so loud she knew they'd be catching shit for it later in the day. "Nice might not be the word."
"Well, it's a word," Mikey said. "Maybe not the, but – oh. Hey."
He pulled out his Sidekick, leaning away to flip the screen up and read the text. Assuming it was Pete wasn't even really a guess, and it was confirmed when he grinned sheepishly and wandered off the bus, the kind of fake-casual that meant everyone stopped to watch him go.
She could admit to herself that she'd been feeling something close to jealous for most of the summer, but it was easier today than it had been in a long time, even – maybe especially – when Frank jumped on the couch and hid his face in her lower back, begging her to protect him from the wrath of Bryar.
She held him still while Bob gave him a noogie, of course.
||
Brian flew out two days later. It was an unspoken rule that they all stay in the night he arrived; they caught shit from everyone, but they were a family.
"Seriously, you're all a bunch of lameass geeks," Brian said, settling down between Gerard and Mikey.
"We're okay with it." Rae paused Yoshi in mid-air. "So? You've got news."
"You always have news," Frank said before Brian could ask how they knew.
"And you usually wear those sneakers when you tell it." Bob leaned forward. "So?"
Brian shook his head. "The label's plans went through. This fall, you're headlining."
Rae froze, hand still raised to play with her bra strap. "Jesus."
"Don't look so shocked," Brian said. His smile was as smug as Rae had ever seen it. "I told you it'd happen."
"That's fucking soon, though." Gerard glanced at Mikey. "We could -"
"It's good," Mikey said quickly. "It's really good."
"Damn right it is." Brian nodded. "It's settled, then."
"Adam's going to flip." Gerard's grin looked close to splitting his face. "Mikey, gimme your phone."
"In a second." Mikey's fingers were moving freakishly quickly over the keys. "Okay, there."
Rae managed to convince Gerard to put them on speakerphone. They spent a solid hour fucking around with Adam before Gerard took them off again, going off on a tangent as soon as he held the phone up to his ear.
She got up and went outside, sitting down on the step below the one Brian was occupying. "Things are going to change, you know," Brian said. "Fucking everything. It's not just record sales, you're a big deal."
"I know." She leaned back, forcing herself to let go of the slouch she tended to hold her shoulders in. "We should be okay, though."
Brian snorted. "You're just saying that because Bob's as anal about performances as you are."
Which, okay. Point. "You knew it when you suggested him."
"The thing none of you are egotistical enough to realize is that I don't actually chase most bands around, begging them to let me sign them." Brian tugged her hair gently. "None of you cornered the market on investment in yourselves."
"That barely makes sense," she said, but she half-hugged his ankle anyway, because she knew exactly what he meant.
"So don't fuck up, Toro. Not now, not ever."
"Screw you, Schechter."
They'd reached a mutual understanding. When Brian pulled out a cigarette, Rae bummed one and thought about their names plastered all over a tour.
||
Mikey moped, of course. Sometimes he had company; Patrick and Bob had bonded over musical talent and willingness to punch heads, and Bob mentioned how distracted Patrick was. Apparently Wentzian inner turmoil was just as bad as a Way on a bender. Rae shrugged and took care of Mikey along with the other four.
Alicia still called her, and still told her when she called Mikey, too; Rae didn't ask for details. But slowly, the Pete Thing became more of a memory than a constant frown-punctuated Mikey issue, and when the tour started, Rae let herself hang out near the bus and fiddle with chords instead of checking on Mikey obsessively.
"Go up a step. Or maybe a half step, if you don't mind fiddling with sharps."
"Gerard's best key is D minor." She tilted her head and changed the notes; James nodded.
"That's good," he said. "Christ, you guys've come a long way."
They'd been touring for long enough that she should have been able to stop herself from blushing so easily, but of course she couldn't. "Sobriety works wonders."
"I didn't just mean Gerard." James grinned. "Though you're right. I wouldn't try to stick him in a bear suit anymore."
She set her guitar aside, motioning for him to sit down. "It'd get reported somewhere. It's so fucking weird."
"You mean awesome?"
"You're opening for us."
He shrugged. "It happens to some people, it doesn't happen to others. I'm not going to obsess over it, if that's what you think."
"You should be the famous one. Fucking Zen master."
"Nah." He looked directly at her, expression serious enough to give her pause. "You guys deserve it. And there are people who'd say you're better than me, making it in a shitty scene for girls."
She thought about not saying anything, but of all their casual friends, James was one who'd get it. "I didn't make it in the scene, I just came along for the ride. The last band I was in had me behind a kit even though I was so shitty it would give Bob rage spasms and writing their guitar parts anyway, is how not making it I was."
"And yet you still helped the band get to the top and ignored people catcalling and being shitty. Seriously, would you sit there and tell Gerard he didn't make it, just because he got suicidal before he asked for help?"
She frowned. "That's different."
"Because it's Gerard?"
"Because – yes."
He didn't bat an eye. "You know how stupid that sounds."
She looked at her hands. After a few minutes James let it drop, grabbing the guitar. "Check out what I've been working on."
They swapped song ideas until Mikey texted Rae. flirtings awesome bt dont forget soundcheck
She frowned and called him, rolling her eyes when she heard his ringtone making its way out the bus windows.
"See you later?" James said.
"Definitely." She waved goodbye and ducked into the bus.
"I wasn't flirting," she said to Mikey's bunk curtain.
She heard him move. "I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it."
"It's James. That's just weird."
"Don't tell me it's just that he's in a band. You and whatshisname -"
Mikey didn't sound pissed, which was the only thing keeping her from getting irrational. "His name was Grant, and you and Pete, asshole, don't start."
"I'm being one. An asshole, I mean. Ignore me."
He sounded sulky more than anything else, which in the end was what made her pull back the curtain.
"It really would be weird with him," she said, sitting at the foot of the bed.
Mikey kept tapping at his Sidekick. "He's smart, though. Good at music. You guys could be hermits together."
"That's unfair," she said. Mikey knew as well as anyone else how glad she was to be able to love being holed up like that.
"Probably." He turned to look at her. His eyes were bloodshot, the bags under them looking like bruises.
"What the hell," she said, and leaned down, hugging him. "And I'm the one who's been hiding?"
"It's no big deal. You know I have problems."
"I've known you too long to think they're not a big deal." She poked his glasses, pushing them up on his nose.
He frowned at her and leaned his head down, resting against her neck. "Maybe I liked Pete because he left me alone."
"Pete's not your band. He's not me."
"The band baby brother, I know."
And there it was again, the subtle little note in his voice she knew he'd deny if she asked him about it. "My friend," she said, hugging him closer.
She wasn't even a little surprised when he wrapped his arms around her, pressing close. "It's okay," she said, drawing on years of being the same kind of comfort to Gerard. "We love you."
He shuddered, letting out tiny, miserable sounding half-laughs against her neck. "Most days kind of suck now."
"Because of Pete?"
Mikey shook his head. "We text. Things are just...are they getting worse?"
She couldn't help but stare. "Not that I know of."
His glasses frames dug into her shoulder when he moved again. "It feels like they might be."
They'd had this talk a million times in a million different ways, but one thing that stayed constant was how completely incapable she was of helping him. "You know I'm here."
He sighed. "Sure."
They stayed like that until Frank came onto the bus, yelling, "Hey, soundcheck got moved up, we have to – oh."
"Fuck off, Iero, like you don't use her for a pillow too." Mikey wiggled over her and rolled out of his bunk.
Frank's eyebrows were competing with his hairline. "Mikey..."
"Hey, we're in a rush, right?" Mikey's voice was too high, and he almost tripped over a stray shoe on his way out.
"Go," Rae said immediately. Frank left without a backwards glance.
She waited a few minutes before following, hoping Frank hadn't decided to have a heart-to-heart she'd be interrupting. When she got to the venue and still hadn't seen them she figured she was in the clear, until she went into the girl's bathroom and saw them standing against the farthest wall.
"Fuck if I know," Mikey was saying. "You know how it is with her."
She couldn't move. Frank pulled Mikey into a hug and she still couldn't move, right up until Frank looked to Mikey's side and saw her.
It was pretty easy to back out of the bathroom without making any noise. She went through the motions that night telling herself not to think about it, because what was the point? Whoever, whatever, Mikey had been talking about, it wasn't something he wanted to tell her. They'd stayed together as a band for this long as much by knowing when to fuck off and leave each other alone as when to sit down and refuse to go away.
"Jesus, Toro, what's going on?"
She looked up, startled. The band was moving into their huddle, and Bob was waiting for her with eyebrows raised.
"Sorry," she said, moving in next to Frank. He poked her side and smiled at her, the corners of his mouth twitching. It was obvious he was trying to tell her something, but she'd never been as well-versed in Frank-ese as the others. She shrugged and moved a little closer into the band huddle.
Soundcheck went by pretty quickly. Frank ran off right away, probably to bum a cigarette before the show; Rae knew she shouldn't mess around this close to playing onstage, but she did anyway, starting off slow but speeding up almost embarrassingly quickly. She felt close to something, fingers moving furiously, head banging almost automatically.
The bass line started quiet, not quite where it should be; she slowed down a little, trying to get him to find the rhythm. He did, matching her again, and she let herself speed up, the music twisting in her head, pushing them both.
Mikey's fingers slipped and the spell broke. "Shit," he said loudly. She stopped playing.
"You were doing well," she said. "Like...seriously. A few years ago you couldn't play at all."
She couldn't have read the expression on his face if both their lives depended on it. "Not good enough, though."
"Is this your way of asking for a vacation? We need our bassist, Mikey."
He blinked at her, shoving his glasses up on his nose. "It's true, dude."
Now she felt just as unsettled as he looked. "Well. It's not something we're going to put in an album, anyway."
"Sure." He put his bass down too hard and walked away. Rae winced and set her guitar down next to it, resolutely keeping her mind on the set list, the crowd, their job and pretty much the only thing she ever wanted to do.
||
"We are fucking off tonight," Gerard told the crowd. He turned back to look at Rae. "Don't we feel fucking off? We are really, pathetically, FUCKING OFF."
She wanted to throttle him, not because of the way the crowd was laughing and screaming, but because for once, it was completely true.
Frank ran up to Gerard and elbowed his side; Gerard choked and spluttered theatrically, spat out some shit about Pegasus, and they launched into "I'm Not Okay".
It was easy for her to play, easy for Gerard to sing; a crowd-pleaser they'd been half-bullied into putting onto the CD more than anything else. She bobbed her head and tore through her solo, adding a few frills but mostly just concentrating on listening for the others.
The crowd got louder when Frank kissed Gerard, of course, rubbing up against him and generally acting like an idiot. It was loud enough that Rae finally looked up, shaking her head at them – and then glancing to the side, watching Mikey inch his way across the stage.
No one was paying attention when he stood to face her, playing the bass line as steadily as he ever had. He wasn't wavering a bit – he was drunk, she knew, because he was always drunk onstage, but it was a little better today. His mouth was set and his fingers were steady, if not flying.
"Thumbs up, Mikeyway," she yelled when the song ended.
He half-smiled, bobbing his head, and made his way back across the stage.
||
That night Gerard was jittery and unsettled, moving from his sketchbook to the coffee machine and right back to his sketchbook. He insisted on following Mikey back to his bunk; "Tucking him in," Frank said, rolling his eyes and throwing his pants in a corner.
"Keep it in your bunk, Iero," Bob said without looking up.
Gerard came back out frowning, hands twitching. Mikey'd had a few since getting off the stage. Rae paused her DS and waited, but he just sat down, sketching frantically enough that she knew it would be mostly meaningless scribbling.
She forced herself to stay awake, finally giving up and getting a mug of coffee. Bob raised his eyebrows but dragged Frank back before she'd even half finished it.
"I'm that obvious, huh?"
"It was harder to tell when you were drunk and mumbling," she admitted. "Mikey?"
"Partly." Gerard tapped his pencil on the table. They'd long since given up on trying to wean him off the habit. "I've got too many ideas lately."
"Another album?"
"It's around that time, isn't it?"
Given a choice, she'd do nothing but alternate between writing and performing. She shrugged. "The label will like it. Are you going to tell the others?"
He shook his head. "I figured I'd tie them up and leave them in the studio till they got it."
Sarcasm didn't work on him any more than it did on her. "Funny."
"I thought so."
But he moved to sit with her when he extended her arm. "We'll make it better this time."
"I know. But sober -"
"You're better sober," she said firmly.
"You don't know that. Not with writing."
She was too aware of how long Gerard had been sober, how fucking careful he always was now, to lie to him. "Then show me."
He handed her his sketchbook, angling his head so his eyes were pressed into her arm. She flipped through it till she came to words scrawled around one of the sparsely drawn cartoon vampires.
"We could hire one of those guys," Gerard mumbled. "From fucking Sweden or something. Like Britney Spears did."
She recognized the meandering and imagery, but the words were different – more coherent. Better, though she knew everyone would take turns poking at them, fixing what she didn't see. "No matter how much you like singing 'Hit Me Baby' in the shower, I'm not playing that stuff onstage," she said. "Gerard, it's good."
He opened an eye to look at her, almost comic. "Yeah?"
She nodded. "Definitely."
"Because it feels weird, I'm just making shit up instead of thinking it's true when I write it, and -"
"And it's good," she said firmly. "It's better. Don't think for a second it's not."
"Okay," Gerard said, as obviously doubtful as she'd ever heard him.
He'd been passed out half on her lap for an hour when Mikey crept out to the lounge. "Fuck," he said. "You two are fucking – what, exactly?"
She held up a finger. He shut up while she extricated herself from Gerard, propping his head up with a pillow and dragging Mikey to the farthest end of the bus.
"We're not fucking anything except friends."
Mikey crossed his arms. "Why?"
"Why do you think we are? Why can't we be?" She shook her head, biting back everything she wanted to say. "You're hung over."
"Gerard not drinking doesn't mean I have to, too. I'm his little brother, not his replicate."
She forced herself to whisper. "And me being a girl doesn't mean I have to want to fuck him, okay? I'm not that person."
"You're not."
It didn't take a genius to be able to tell he was being irrational, didn't take a psychologist to know he was lashing out. It hurt anyway. "No, I'm not. And you know it."
"Maybe. You'd still be good for him."
"I can't deal with this. You're wrong."
Mikey looked unimpressed. Rae couldn't keep herself from getting angry, no matter how much she reminded herself of Mikey's issues, of how very much Gerard's little brother he really was. "Just – God, Mikey, what the hell is wrong?"
"With me? Nothing."
Stop pushing, she told herself, stop pushing, stop - "That's a lie."
She didn't know if Mikey was as pissed as she was; in the end, it didn't really matter. He shrugged and went back to her bunk, and after a second of feeling like a complete failure, she went back to the couch to prop Gerard's head up.
Dozing off was a foregone conclusion. Frank waking her up by tugging at her wrist wasn't. "Outside," he said when she grunted at him.
She followed him out, scowling at the sun, even though she knew it was plenty less disruptive than an ignored Frank would have been.
"You upset Mikey," Frank said, crossing his arms.
She blinked. "Is that a joke?"
"You did. So I want to know why."
"He told me I should be sleeping with Gerard." It was even harder to gesture at her jeans, her loose shirt, than it had been to spit the words out. "Because I'm so clearly the type."
Frank laughed; she sighed and waited.
"Wait. You're serious?"
She nodded.
"We can get a stand-in bassist if I kill him, right? Awesome," Frank said, not bothering to wait for an answer. "Jesus, if it's not one of them it's the other."
"Hopefully it won't get as bad as it did with Gerard."
It was always disconcerting to watch Frank get serious; it was a more visible change than she'd ever seen on anyone else. "It's not going to," he said. "That was too fucking bad. It can't happen again."
What he didn't say, but she heard all the same, was that they wouldn't make it through another Japan. "Gerard's going to want your opinion on some writing he's been doing," she said instead.
He unfisted his hand from his hair. "Yeah?"
She nodded. "Studio time soon."
"This band's insane."
"You love it."
Frank didn't meet her eyes. "Sometimes."
"It might help him."
"Mikey? Hopefully."
Frank's phone went off before she could answer. He waggled his fingers and went back on the bus, already texting.
Looking back, there were a hundred different things that should have told them it was a bad idea to book the Paramour, starting with that day and stretching into the end of the tour. But Gerard had grandiose plans and Rae had pages of maybe-songs and they were all excited about recording with a new drummer – and a new singer, for that matter.
"Also," Mikey said, squinting up at the house, "ghosts aren't real. Probably."
"That too. Get off my foot," Bob said, and poked Frank.
Rae picked up her bags and pushed open the door. It was nice, of course; this was the big time, where everything that might get photographed was as shiny as possible. But it felt weird, too closed-in. When she got to her room she cracked a window and pulled out her guitar almost right away, playing old songs until she felt less nervous.
It worked. She took a deep breath and set her guitar aside, going down to join the others.
They'd be okay.
||
She was right, at least at first. They spent the first few days dicking around, less because they didn't want to write and more because they already had enough material to spend a few days just hanging. They went swimming, slept, just vegged, until the afternoon of the third day when Gerard walked into the living room, face pale.
"So," he said. "The door to the studio, the one with the lock? It's wide open."
"Huh," Bob said. "You'd think they'd be more careful, considering how much the label's paying for this place."
They dropped it, but after even Mikey caved and grabbed something to eat, they wandered into the studio together, Gerard just barely leading.
"Okay, so let's -" Frank cut himself off, shivering. "Jesus, this is a shitty mansion. No wonder actual people don't live here."
"Right, because we're all mannequins." Gerard hummed under his breath. "Actually -"
"Not right now," Bob said firmly. "No more new ideas yet."
"Hey," Mikey said mildly. "If he wants to, he can."
"We did come in here for a reason." She met Mikey's eyes calmly; this was the studio. She knew this, even if they were in a new place. "We need to stick to it for tonight."
Mikey blinked. "But."
"Bob's right."
She didn't miss the way Frank's eyes moved between them. He'd been like this before, too, watching each and every inter-band connection even as they deteriorated.
Mikey, luckily, backed down. "We'll talk about it later," he told Gerard, pulling out his bass.
The night went smoothly after that. Mikey inconspicuously followed Gerard up to his room, but he didn't glare at Bob and Bob seemed to have forgotten the whole thing, so Rae let herself relax.
"I always forget how tense it is," she said.
"Writing? Yeah." Frank leaned back, closing his eyes. "This fucking house, too."
"It's probably mostly in our heads."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Either way – Mikey and Bob? Talk about least likely to get into a bitchfight."
Mikey had been making use of the minibar, too. Rae took a deep breath. "It's probably mostly in our heads," she said again.
"That's supposed to be comforting?" Frank half-smiled, shaking his head and standing up. "I'm going to go crash with the ghosts. See you tomorrow."
Rae made herself be responsible and sleep in her room; it felt too empty and too cold for her to sleep well, though. She stumbled down just before seven to make coffee, drinking a cup and taking another with her to the studio.
Bob was already there. "What the hell?" she said, and flipped on the lights.
"Couldn't sleep." He tapped the practice pad. "This house is fucking creepy."
"That's what we were going for?"
"I know. I've seen The Shining too." He made a note on the pad of paper beside him. "And I get the aesthetic. It's just, I keep turning corners and expecting to get possessed by a fucking demon or something."
Дата добавления: 2015-10-21; просмотров: 35 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |