That thought stayed with her, keeping her awake through the night.
||
It wasn't the house, except maybe it was, because that morning Rae was nursing coffee and thinking desperately about sleep, and Mikey came down and said quietly, "I need to use the phone."
The four of them froze. "What?" Frank said finally, barely over a whisper.
"I can't," Mikey said. "Staying, it's not -" He bent his head, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I can't stay."
Gerard's mouth was working uselessly and Rae should say something, she knew she should, but she couldn't make a sound.
It was Bob who said, quietly and somehow more frantic than Rae had thought he'd ever be, "Mikey, wait. Think about this. Don't."
"I'm not leaving the band. That's why I have to go. I can't stay here." He looked up at them and Rae gripped her spoon tightly enough to hurt, because he looked as strung out as she'd ever seen. "It might not be haunted, but I can't be here either way. It's driving me insane."
"Okay," Frank said. He took a deep breath. "Okay, Mikey. You want us there when you call?"
Mikey shook his head. "I'm going to see if Brian will help me out. I can find another place to crash, it'll be okay."
Gerard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I want a drink," he said.
"Don't joke."
He met Mikey's eyes. "I'm not."
Bob put a hand on Gerard's lower back. It probably wasn't holding him up, Rae thought, but she could tell that Gerard was leaning into it, harder when Mikey stood.
"I'll be back in a minute."
They didn't move or talk until Mikey came back. "Brian can't help," he said. "I'm going to stay with Stacey."
"You're sure?" Frank said.
He nodded. "They're gonna have someone come for my stuff. She told me to sit outside."
Frank stood and went over to Mikey, hugging him. "Okay."
"I just need some time." He looked at Rae. "Please. Just some time, that's all."
And just like that, she broke. "Time? Fucking time – we came here for a reason, Mikey." She knew she was being irrational, knew it was wrong, but she still couldn't stop herself from standing, yelling. "Do you even fucking care? Are you so stupid and self-centered that you're just going to walk away? Fuck you too, then. Fuck you."
"That's enough," Bob said, pushing her down. Gerard and Frank were both staring at her; Mikey'd taken enough steps back to be almost against the wall, eyes wide.
"I'm gonna go," Mikey said, and left. The others moved away from her, huddled together.
She wanted to move. She couldn't.
||
The rest of the day was a blur. She hadn't expected to fail like this, hadn't realized they'd fall apart this way. She couldn't stop thinking about Mikey and the music and everything, and no matter how many times she told herself it wasn't the end, she was sure it was anyway.
She didn't watch Mikey leave.
Going up to her room that night didn't even occur to her. She paced in the studio and then set off down the hallway, grabbing her guitar on the way.
Mikey, Mikey, MikeyMikeyMikey. She'd failed him and the band, and everything from her footsteps to the sound the light made when she turned it on reminded her.
She sat in a random empty room and played uselessly until she got too tired to hold her guitar up. A few hours after dozing off she woke up to the sun shining in her eyes, completely wrong against the background of the twisted, fucked up fucking house.
Two weeks passed and Mikey only called once. They didn't discuss him coming back, didn't talk about him at all; Rae left her guitar in the practice room more and more, playing her DS and sleeping and trying not to think about the album she was sure would never be finished. Gerard – Gerard was stronger than the rest of them, in some ways. He was as lost as they were, walking out to the pool and talking about drowning, wandering the basement and whispering to ghosts, but he never lost himself.
Frank did. "I should leave the band," he said quietly. Rae didn't turn around to look at him. "Is there a band to leave? I thought about it so much before, I should've just..."
She walked away.
||
She kept walking until her feet carried her to the practice room. There was the thinnest film of dust on her guitar, and she winced when she picked it up.
D minor was the key Gerard was best in and the key she had the most trouble playing in; it was fitting for tonight. She played aimlessly, letting her fingers and mind wander, feeling for something – anything – to make her stop thinking about Mikey and all the failure filling the place he'd left.
"Hey," Gerard said quietly.
She jumped. "Jesus. Don't."
He moved to sit down across from her. "It's not really haunted."
"Maybe." She kept her gaze down, so the papers pushed into her line of sight surprised her. "What's this?"
"Not a song. Not yet."
She skimmed it. "I...okay. Hang on."
Gerard moved away while she looked over it, her mind tentatively working along the old path, noting where the chorus would need tweaking, filling in the lyrical blanks as best as she could. "This is interesting," she said.
"It's the only thing I have anymore." Gerard strummed a chord, a little clumsy. "Feels like we're never gonna get out of here."
"Mikey wants us to stay together."
"You think we can? This worthless fucking band..."
She wanted to protest, but his fingers slipped and the chord that came out was – "Wait."
Gerard froze.
"You..." She played it on her own guitar. "I'm sorry." She played a second chord, humming. "I was wrong."
"Mikey'll come back. He has to." Gerard grabbed the paper. "Rae – if we..." he trailed a finger along it, humming. "Do you think -"
"Maybe." It was working. "Go down to F?"
"A chorus, yeah."
It was working.
||
Gerard fell asleep on the couch after a few hours, but Rae was nowhere near ready to be done. She took her guitar outside and sat by the pool, playing nonsense interspersed with the song they'd just been working on. It was already amazingly far along, and she couldn't stop herself from tweaking it, making it even better.
It was addictive. She'd been blocked for so long that playing her guitar, though she'd held it every day for God only knew how long, felt like finally coming home.
After awhile, she turned back to look up at the house. She'd been afraid of it for what felt like forever; even now, it gave her the creeps. But it wasn't the kind of thing she had to hide from or ignore. Not now.
She'd never tell anyone about it, because it both felt and sounded stupid, playing to a house. She doubted the house, whether or not it was actually haunted, cared about any of the defiant chords she came up with. This was about her, about playing again and feeling like she was actually saying something when she did.
When she finally got tired enough that she had to sit down in the grass, leaning against an old lawn chair, she didn't take her guitar out of her lap.
||
"That's an interesting look for you," Bob said the next morning. "Very poetic."
She cracked an eye open. "Huh?"
He nodded to the guitar. "The hell were you getting up to, Toro?"
"Oh, shit." She wiped it off, wincing at small collection of dew from where she'd slumped and let part of it touch the grass. "Just playing."
"Outside? In the middle of the night?"
"Yeah, it was stupid. Well, awesome." She strummed a bit, grinning at the look on Bob's face. "You know how it is."
"Not so much, lately. Gerard?"
"We jammed a bit last night." She yawned; her eyes didn't want to stay open right now. "Successfully. It was something else."
"Share with the class?" Bob asked.
She nodded. "Let's go inside. Frank'll want to see, too."
Frank bounded down to the practice room just as Gerard was starting to twitch on the couch and mutter threats at them. "What's going on?"
"We've got something, maybe," Rae said, handing their notes over.
"But – oh shit." Frank's eyes widened. Bob looked over his shoulder, making impressed noises. "You sure?"
Gerard grunted and nodded.
"And Mikey?" Bob said quietly.
Rae stared at her feet for a second before the memory of playing to the house came back. She looked up instead, meeting Bob's eyes. "Can play that bass part."
No one really initiated the hug; the four of them just moved closer until they were pressed together. "It's okay," Frank said, his nose poking Rae's boobs. "It's okay."
||
Mikey showed up on the doorstep of the house three days later. Rae hung back, still not looking at him, but she heard the grimace in his voice when he said, "This house."
"Not the greatest idea we ever had," Gerard said dryly. "Hey, Mikes."
She didn't realize he was hugging everyone until he touched her arm. "Rae?"
"I'm sorry," she said. "It was – I'm sorry."
He touched her chin, and she looked up at him. His eyes looked better, brighter.
"I'm seeing a shrink now," he said, half-smiling. "They're gonna put me on meds."
"That's good. That's really good."
"Yeah." He dropped his arms, tilting his head.
She gave up and moved in, hugging him tight. "We wrote a few things. A song, finished the others. The cancer one, it's good. But we're not sure."
"It can stay. Like me, hopefully."
She sighed, nodded. "Can't have a band without you. Without any of us."
"Right." Mikey stepped back. "So. The practice room?"
"The practice room," Gerard said.
||
Mikey left after an informal dinner. Rae removed herself to one of the less-used rooms, settling down in a chair to play Donkey Kong.
"Hey," Bob said, sitting down next to her.
She'd wanted to be alone, but there was no way she was going to say it right now. "Hey."
"You okay?"
"Mikey is. That's what's important."
Bob nodded. "It got bad for a while. I don't know what we're going to tell people."
"We could always just go on and on about how haunted it was. It would fit our theme."
That got a snort out of him. "You're sure we wouldn't be telling the truth?"
She looked up, surprised. He held her gaze calmly.
"You didn't seem too haunted," she said finally.
"It's different for me." Bob cleared his throat, looking down. "I'm not sure if I've got more or less to lose."
They'd had variants on this conversation a few times before. "The same amount. You're part of us."
"Not from the beginning, though. It's not like I want it to, but I know it matters."
"You were with us almost as long as Frank," Rae said. "You just didn't play drums."
It was obvious he didn't believe her, but he smiled a bit anyway. "The point is, I was fucking close to falling apart along with the rest of you."
She hunched her shoulders, an echo of the old overwhelming fear coming back. It was no wonder they'd almost broken, feeling that tense. "We're still a band, though. We did it."
"Not just yet."
But the house had been quieter, Gerard's dreams easier. They had a song Rae knew they all hummed bits of when closing their eyes and walking down too-long hallways. "Yeah. We did."
"You're an idealist," Bob said, but he sat with her anyway.
||
It was probably a good thing that they didn't find out about Brian going to rehab until leaving the house. Of course, Rae knew damn good and well that was why he hadn't told them. "You should punch him," she told Frank.
"Oh, right." Mikey pushed the glasses he'd told them he'd be ditching up on his nose. "He said no beating up. Group hugs are okay, though."
"Punching someone isn't beating them up, technically," Gerard said.
"Fucking Schechter." Bob shook his head. "We're flying him out, right?"
"Already bought a ticket," Mikey said. He touched his glasses again. "I'm going to miss these."
"They fit you," Rae said absently, distracted by the total absence of her phone in all her bags.
He blinked at her, lips curving up in a smile. "Thanks."
"Uh-huh. Found it!" She dialed Brian's number, matching Mikey's smile.
And really, every member of the band was a complete sap, so she didn't know why Frank was rolling his eyes.
"Don't start," Brian said in greeting. They piled on him instead, each of them jostling to hug him as tight as possible.
"I got you a producer," Brian mumbled at them. "And a studio date. While detoxing. Thank me."
"You're amazing," Mikey said, sounding what was still surprisingly happy.
"Good. You won't complain when I tell you it's tomorrow, then."
They all groaned in tandem, but Rae didn't doubt for a second that they were just as excited as she was.
||
"Rae Toro," Rae said, holding out her hand.
"Rob Cavallo." He looked her up and down. "You're the lead guitarist?"
Howard had done almost the same thing, but Rae had been younger then, less sure of herself – not just her position in the band, but her position as a person who'd helped make the band big. "Lead guitarist and primary composer."
He raised his eyebrows. She know that look of surprise, had seen it dozens of times over the past few years. Sometimes it was followed by mocking. Luckily, this time he settled easily, nodding at her. "Let's make a record."
||
It was easier than she'd thought it would be. She spent a little too much time worrying people would say they were trying to be Queen, but it was a solid record, and she was proud.
Gerard led them straight into the theatric lunacy. Dyed hair, uniforms – " Ugly uniforms," Frank muttered, but Rae thought they were okay – the whole nine yards.
The tangled mess that was the Paramour had almost made her forget how much she loved playing, both for the crowd and with her band. The new songs gave her a little more wiggle room, and she used it, tearing up the solos while Frank thrashed and Gerard pranced. They were making something big here, and it felt amazing.
Having Gerard chase after her with a makeup pad, however, felt less awesome. "Seriously, Gee, I'm not wearing your crazy face paint."
"We're going to be skulls! It's thematic!"
"It's crazy and will probably give me zits."
"It'll definitely give me zits," Mikey said mournfully.
"But it looks good on you. It's going to look shitty on me."
"Come on, Rae. Don't be a spoilsport."
She wasn't planning on giving in, but Gerard was actually pouting at her, and Mikey looked morose under the five tons of greasepaint. "Fine," she said grudgingly.
It made her look completely ridiculous, but Gerard was even more hilariously flamboyant than usual and the crowd loved it, so Rae just kept her head down and played as best as she could. She saw Mikey looking over at her a few times, face paint making his expression unreadable.
The show wound up being more than okay. Gerard helped her get the paint off afterwards, grinning giddily. "Not that I want to do it every night, but that was fun."
"At least you didn't stick me in a skirt or anything," Rae said without thinking.
Gerard went still. "I didn't – shit. But I made everyone dress weird. Tell me it wasn't like that. Was it?"
She shook her head. "If it was, you wouldn't be asking right now."
He hugged her briefly before going to attack everyone else with cold crème.
"There you are," Mikey said, not even a minute later.
She blinked up at him. "Um. Yes?"
He touched her nose. "I meant, you now. Hi to your skin."
Restraining her laughter was a near-heroic effort. "Hi to yours."
"Yours is nicer," Mikey said, but there was none of the old self-deprecation in his tone. Neither the pills nor the Lasik had completely fixed him, but they'd gone a long way towards turning him into the Mikey Rae suspected he didn't know his band had seen all along anyway.
"Thanks, Rico Suave." She rolled her eyes playfully. "Hey, have you heard from Alicia lately?"
"She's touring with Avenged Sevenfold."
"It's really too bad her taste in music sucks so hard. I would've let her court you, otherwise."
The blush was pure Old Mikey. "Yeah, well. Apparently she's having fun being a label hellion. She's got more status now."
"Tell her to come back on tour and bully us. Or actually, I will, I've got her number."
"She told me to bug you about it. You're bad at phones."
"She should know by now. I'm estranged from half of Jersey."
"That's Jersey's fault, not yours," Mikey said, bumping his shoulder into hers. "But you'll keep in touch with me, right?"
"If we ever get off time."
Mikey looked down. "Um. Right, yeah. That."
Except not, clearly. "Mikey? What aren't you telling me?"
"I just figured Gerard would've said." He lifted his head, but focused more on her shoulder than her face. "I'm thinking about taking a break."
No. "No."
"Not permanently. Not even semi. Just a few months." He finally looked up; this wasn't new or old Mikey, but just Mikey, the one who remembered the Paramour and was trying by his own admission to fix himself. "Cortez said he'd sub. I just need a little time."
He looked too nervous, like he thought she'd really say no if he needed something. "You'd better call."
The corner of his mouth quirked. "You, too."
||
They went out the next night. Nothing major, just dinner at a local place that didn't mind a band cramming into one of their booths and ordering the huge sampler platters. It was one of the luxuries they'd dreamed about back in the van days, and Rae never really got tired of it.
She was squashed next to Mikey this time, with Frank half on her lap. Frank was over-enthusiastically telling a story about Jamia and a roadside carnival while Mikey made long-suffering faces.
"And then we rode the Ferris wheel and I groped her! It was awesome. Oh god."
"Oh yum," Rae corrected, picking up her burger.
Frank scrambled against the wall. "Your life decisions are invalid," he said, pushing hard.
She always forgot what a strong little asshole he was. He slid down, Mikey slid up, and suddenly Rae was trying to eat with a Way straddling her thigh.
"You're going to get beat up some day, Frank," Mikey said, and stole the pickles off Rae's plate.
And it wasn't anything, really. It never was. Rae had gone from being the ugly kid in high school to the slightly less ugly (if too muscled to be pretty) guitarist, and she was attracted to people all the time, she just didn't think about it much.
Just, Mikey was on her thigh and he was sucking pickle juice off a finger, and Rae stared and her thoughts slipped, and suddenly she couldn't stop blushing.
"What?" Mikey said. He was almost as red as she was. "I like pickles."
"You also like dead animals," Frank said, face still pressed against the wall. "Heathen."
"Hey, pass the salt."
Rae looked up, startled. Gerard and Bob were on the other side; Bob was doing the weird thing where he hunched over his plate like he thought one of them would Bogart his fries, but Gerard was looking straight at her. She knew he'd seen.
She handed the salt over wordlessly, bracing herself for the lecture she knew would come later that night.
||
"Rae motherfucking Toro, you're hiding from me."
"If I was hiding, I'd do it someplace less obvious," she said, leaning back against a bus wheel. "The bus is just smellier than usual."
"Uh-huh." He moved to stand next to her. "You know, it'd almost be easier to say this onstage."
"Please don't."
"My brother's a hotass," Gerard said easily. "It's better if it's you than someone who's not you."
She hadn't realized till right then how much she didn't want to have this conversation. "Right, well. You've seen who he goes for."
Gerard frowned. "It's you. "
"And it's Mikey. Gerard, come on, it's not going to happen. Just stop, okay?"
She forgot sometimes how stubbornly Gerard clung to the idea that things had to be good for his friends – not even good, really, but how they wanted it to be. "But –"
"Gerard."
His shoulders slumped. "You'd be good for him."
Yeah, probably. She winced. "Look, not that I don't love you guys, but taking care of someone isn't really my ideal romantic relationship, you know? And breaking up would suck."
"He'd be good for you, too."
She couldn't argue that, both because she knew it was true and because the knowledge ate at her. "Knowing you this well can get annoying, you know."
He didn't answer, just moved closer and leaned his head on her shoulder. If he had answered, he'd have called her a liar, and they both knew it.
||
She'd always thought about getting a tattoo, in the quiet maybe-someday kind of way she figured a lot of people did. Realistically, though, she was the very opposite of people like Frank: she always thought about it, but never took any steps towards actually getting one.
The impetus both was and wasn't Mikey going away. Frank had taken breaks before when he got sick, but none of them had ever actually taken a hiatus before, and scared though part of her was that Mikey's hiatus would somehow turn permanent, she was mostly just proud that they'd gotten to the point where they were smart enough and enough of a band to take breaks instead of just falling apart.
"But needles," Gerard said when she told them.
She rolled her eyes. "Not all of us have your terror, Gerard. And it'll be an experience."
"I know a guy, I think," Frank said. He frowned. "What state are we in?"
"We're in Denver, dumbass," Bob said.
Frank snapped his fingers. "Fuck you, Bryar, because I really do know a guy. Or girl, actually. I can't remember."
"Do I want to know?"
"His name's Leslie. Her name? I wasn't drunk, though, he doesn't do drunk people. He's quality."
"It's not going to be big enough to really matter," Rae said.
"You say that now. Ten bucks says you wind up with a sleeve someday."
"Freak," Gerard said, rubbing an unmarked arm and shuddering.
"Highly unlikely," Rae told Frank.
Mikey's tendency to lurk was something they were all used to, so no one was startled when he said, "We're coming with you, right?"
She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it. "Obviously. If I cry you don't get to make fun of me, though."
"If you cry I'll lose all respect for you as a person." Frank tugged her hair. "What are you getting?"
She shrugged to give herself time to come up with something that wasn't an outright lie; she didn't want to tell them yet. "I'm not completely sure. Something that means something."
"I'll call Leslie," Frank said, and did.
A few hours later the group had dwindled down to Rae and Mikey. "Where's it going to be?" Mikey said.
She'd thought about that almost more than what the tattoo itself would be. "My arm."
"That makes sense." He leaned against her. "Not really a girly place, but you have nice arms."
"What is a girly place, your shoulder? That's stupid." Mikey wasn't like Gerard, he'd never put his head on her boobs when he was awake and sober, but she shifted so they were both a little more comfortable anyway. "And I have muscular arms, they're only nice to some people."
"They're nice to me." Mikey pinched her. "So there."
She wasn't the asshole who fished for compliments by pretending low self esteem, so she let it drop.
||
"Are you sure a guy who tattoos band people at midnight is really respectable?" Rae said as Frank led them down the street.
He gave her a blank look. "You can sanitize tools at midnight."
"It's useless trying to argue," Bob said. "He's completely delusional about tattooing."
"My tattoos are fucking gorgeous and meaningful, and I'll fuck you up, Bryar."
"Just remember, if she gets an infection Brian will shoot you," Gerard said cheerfully.
"Brian doesn't have a gun," Rae said, and they all ducked into the shop.
Leslie was a guy, it turned out, but between the name and the jarringly feminine face, Rae couldn't really blame Frank for not remembering. "What do you want?"
"I want it to say 'SL'," she said, pointing to her arm. She was facing away from the rest of the band, so she couldn't see their reactions; Leslie, though, rolled his eyes and looked over her shoulder. "I thought you said she wasn't that kind of dumbass."
"She's not," Frank said.
"Stage left," she said quickly, before any of the others tried to explain it for her. "It's where I stand onstage."
Leslie raised his eyebrows. "Huh. Okay." He reached back, grabbing a stapled-together pack of papers. "There's some fonts in there."
She turned back to the band and started looking over the front page. She hadn't even flipped the page over before Mikey said, "Um. That's a big deal."
Turning red was almost a reflex, at this point. "It is."
"Why?"
"Mikes," Gerard said quietly.
But Rae looked up, meeting Mikey's eyes. "This band," she said as honestly as she could. "It's important, and where we are now...it just feels like time."
Mikey's lips quirked and he bobbed his head. Gerard leaned forward to hug her.
"Okay, fonts," she said, hunching her shoulders a little and going back to them.
There were a lot of pretty ones, all thin lines and curlicues; she'd known walking in that she wouldn't want anything like that, so she flipped straight through them. The blockier fonts were harder, because they all looked just different enough for her to get hung up on, frowning and flicking her eyes from one to the other.
Leslie seemed surprised by the font she finally chose. "Pretty plain," he said. "You sure?"
She nodded. "Shaded in would be too much, but I want it big enough to read."
"Arm out, then," he said.
It hurt, but not enough for her to even think about crying. When it was done, she couldn't help but stare, because there it was, with no double meaning and no elaboration. SL. Her place.
"It's nice," Frank said. His voice was suspiciously tight, and after she'd paid, gotten instructions, and led them all out, he set his face on collision course with her chest.
"Fucking band," he muttered, hugging her almost comically tightly.
She didn't have to ask the others to know they more or less shared the sentiment.
||
Two weeks before Mikey's hiatus, Rae did an interview. It wasn't too unusual; sometimes guitar magazines want to do blurbs on her, and sometimes it was just her turn to put up with the same boring questions. She liked them better than group interviews, if only because when the "who in the band would you date" question came up she could just brush it off and not have to placate the other four in the process.
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