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1.
Musically, Ray understands the need for a second guitarist. Logically, he understands the need for that guitarist to be Frank, who has all the skill and energy they're looking for and who's at all their shows and a hell of a lot of their rehearsals anyway. And chemically, he understands the need to have someone around who almost always has good weed and is very happy to share it.
Selfishly, though, there's a part of him that's more than a little freaked out that adding someone new to the band—even someone awesome, someone Ray likes and admires and truly enjoys smoking up with—is going to destroy the balance of this new, precarious thing they've got going. Even great friends can make bad bandmates, and if all this goes to shit, Ray's gonna lose both before he even really gets the chance to get started.
"You okay?" he asks Frank, who's pacing around the basement-cum-studio (which is how they've all agreed to refer to it, for obvious reasons) and shaking out his hands every few seconds.
Frank stops, with visible effort, and gives Ray a wide grin that's a little shaky at the edges. "Sure, man, of course." He starts bouncing up and down on his toes.
"We can just, you know, ease into it. Don't worry." Which Ray knows is bullshit even as he says it, because there's no part of asking a dude to join your band a week before you go into the studio that constitutes easing into it. But he's got to say something.
Frank looks at him with big, solemn eyes. "Be gentle with me. It's my first time," he says breathily, then spins away laughing when Ray aims a swat at his shoulder.
"Oh, I'll be gentle, motherfucker," Ray promises, and that's more or less why, when Gerard walks in a few minutes later, Ray is kneeling on the floor with his hand in Frank's armpit and Frank's fingers in both of his nostrils.
"Only naked wrestling in the Cum Studio!" Gerard announces, gesturing grandly with the beer can in his hand. It sounds like it's not his first.
"You first," Frank shoots back as he pokes harder at Ray's nose.
Ray has to lean back to get out of range, though it would serve Frank right if he sneezed all over him. "Ow. Fucker." Still snickering, he leans back further, enough to let Frank up.
Frank rolls away and pats his own hair carefully, which is a futile effort if Ray's ever seen one. "Oh, Toro, that was the best I've ever had."
"Goddamn right it was," Ray answers, and sits back on his heels. He does feel less twitchy, actually, and Frank's smile is more believable now, which makes Ray feel even better.
"Brought you something, Frankie," Gerard says.
Frank promptly snags the beer can out of his hand. "Thanks, Gee, you shouldn't have." He drains the rest of the can in a few long gulps.
"I backwashed in that like fifteen times," Gerard informs him. Frank just waggles his eyebrows, licks his lips, and belches.
"Anyway," Gerard continues, "this is what I actually brought you." He holds out a shiny disc to Frank. Ray crowds in over Frank's shoulder to see.
It's an adhesive-backed decal, maybe four inches in diameter, which Gerard has decorated with a full-color sketch of a blender. Whirling away inside the blender are the jagged pieces of guitars and neckties and books and chord notations, and it's all making an impressive fountain of blood out of the top.
Frank looks at it for a long minute, then looks back up at Gerard. "Seriously?"
Gerard's shoulders slump and he ducks his head. "Yeah, 'cause, you know. You're all…" He makes a spinning motion with one finger.
"Dude, that is fucking awesome," Frank breathes reverently. "Oh my God. Dude. It's awesome!" He traces one of the blood splashes with a careful finger.
"Cool." Gerard's attempt at nonchalance is so completely chalant—bright eyes and giant searchlight smile and all—that Ray has to bite his lip to keep from laughing, but Frank's right, the decal is fucking awesome.
In fact, "Badass," Ray pronounces, and Gerard's face gets even redder. Ray's going to suggest that Frank put it on his guitar case right then, but then Geoff comes in—trailed by Mikey, who's balancing his bass and a twelve-pack, his glasses slipping down his nose—and demands that they do some fucking rehearsing before they get to wasting his precious studio time. Ray feels like that threat would be scarier if Geoff wasn't beaming at them like they're a bunch of prize golden retrievers, but he goes for his guitar anyway.
By the time they're tuned and aligned in front of Geoff, who's sprawled out on the couch watching them expectantly, Ray's starting to feel nerves prickling under his skin again. They've all jammed together before, but never really for an audience, and when he looks over, Gerard's got a death-grip on the mic and is chewing on his lower lip, Mikey's looking at the ground while he silently practices chord progressions, and Frank's trying to roll a pick through his fingers like a quarter; as Ray watches, it drops to the floor, joining two or three more that are scattered around Frank's feet. Frank swears and scrambles to find another one in his pocket.
Ray takes a deep breath. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be—
"We'll start off easy. 'Vampires.' Hit it, motherfuckers," Geoff says, and they do.
Ray closes his eyes at first and just focuses on the familiar notes, the comforting hiss of the hi-hat behind him. Frank falters a little, then comes back strong, shadowing Ray's part, giving it depth. Ray smiles; it sounds like it's coming out of a cave, exactly what they'd hoped for.
When Gerard starts to sing, Ray's eyes snap open involuntarily, because that's what happens when Gerard sings: people fucking pay attention. Ray glances at Frank, who's got his eyes closed and his head tipped back, and even though he seems lost in his own world, he's clearly keyed into exactly what Gerard is doing, picking out a careful harmony. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray can see Mikey nod his head as Frank weaves the notes around Gerard's.
Ray grins. Yeah. Yeah, this might work.
Then they hit the second chorus, and Ray happens to be watching Frank again so he gets a front-row seat for the way the tension that's been building in him bursts like a trebuchet. Frank careens off Otter's kit and then off the wall, never missing a note, and Ray feels the concussion from the drums pounding against his back and then Gerard is screaming into the microphone, "SOMEONE PLEASE SAVE MY MOTHERFUCKING SOUL" and something tears loose in Ray's chest and he lets it go without a fight, lets it shred to pieces across aggression and euphoria and the sweet slide of his fingers on the frets.
He's a little fuzzy on what happens after that, but when he comes back down to earth, his chest is heaving and his fingers are buzzing pleasantly as the blood rushes by underneath his skin, just on the right side of pain. Gerard's hair is sweat-plastered to his forehead, Mikey's eyes are "I am about to violate your ears with my earbuds because you have to hear this new record" bright, and Frank looks like he just clawed his way out of a mosh pit, or somebody's bed, or possibly a mosh pit in somebody's bed, it's hard to tell.
Ray blinks, trying to get the sweat out of his eyes, and in between one shutter-snap of his eyelids and the next, he feels a solid impact on his chest. He oofs and looks down to see Frank wrapped around him like a limpet, both arms and most of a leg.
"That was the fucking jam," Frank says, beaming up at him. "Man, have I mentioned lately that you're my favorite guitarist? Because you are. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that."
The thing is, Ray grew up in a loving household. A loving household with two older brothers who were as likely to express that love with headlocks as with hugs, like most of the boys their age. Since then, of course, Ray's met Gerard and Mikey, which he'd thought had broken down any boundaries he might have had about physical or emotional space. But at the moment, Frank is making even Gerard look reserved in comparison, and in the face of it, Ray can't do anything but wrap his arms around Frank and hug him back.
"We're fucking awesome!" Gerard shouts, jumping over to get in on the hug, and Ray can feel him waving one hand to demand that Mikey and Otter join them, too. Which they do, and they all stumble around in a happy amoeba until Geoff reminds them that one song does not a record make and maybe they should stop congratulating themselves and try another one.
When they take a break a while later, Ray goes to get some new picks out of his guitar case and sees the blender decal stuck prominently to the front of it. Frank is slumped against the wall a few feet away.
"Frank!" Ray says, and Frank looks up from his beer with an angelic expression.
"Yeah?"
Ray taps the sticker. "Dude, Gee made that for you," he objects. He inspects the edges of it, but it's stuck tight; if he tries to pry it off the case now, he's just going to tear it.
"I know," Frank says cheerfully. "But if you keep that, then you gotta keep me, too, right?"
Ray narrows his eyes at him. Frank just shrugs.
"I was raised Catholic, man, I'm not afraid to use guilt."
"Frankie," Ray sighs, and Frank smiles, mischievous. "Like we were ever not going to keep you, you idiot. If people even could keep other people. Jesus, I can't believe we're even talking about this." He keeps his tone long-suffering, but it still makes his skin twitch, that Frank would even joke about this, that any part of his brain would think he needs a fucking insurance policy or something.
"Someday," Frank slurs, his chin jutting out, "I'll call upon you to do a service for me…."
Ray groans. "Just quit talking bullshit and come show me what you did for the second verse on 'Cubicles.'" He waits until Frank is settled next to him before adding, "And you're explaining to Gee why you gave away his present."
Frank looks up at him, eyes wide and hovering on the edge of laughter. "Shit. I didn't think about that."
"You'll learn," Ray says ponderously, which makes Frank snicker. Ray gives in to the urge to smack a quick kiss to the top of his head; he braces a little after he does it, but Frank only beams up at him again and snuggles closer.
"Keep you, Jesus," Ray says, shaking his head, and they get to work.
2.
They're sitting around in the lounge one night early on the tour, arguing about whether to watch Reservoir Dogs or Red Dawn, when Frank says,
"Where's Mikey fuckin' Way when we need him, huh? He always knows this shit."
There's a silence while they all look at each other with deer-in-the-headlights expressions, and then Cortez gets up off the couch, disappears into the main section of the bus, and comes back with one of Gerard's billion-and-counting drawings of Mikey. Which he proceeds to tack up on the wall in the lounge.
Ray can feel his face heat up; he doesn't want Cortez to feel like he's not welcome. But Cortez doesn't look mad, he just looks flushed and determined.
"It's okay if you guys miss him," he says doggedly, "I do, too," and then he sits back down on the couch. Frank drags him in for a hug, his chin digging into Cortez's head and his free hand tangled with Gerard's.
"And we're watching fucking Reservoir Dogs," Cortez insists, and they all laugh while Ray pops the case.
It helps a little to have it out in the open, but it still catches Ray off-guard all the time, the Mikey-shaped hole in their world. Part of it is that Frank is right—Mikey's like a human P2P network: he knows everybody, knows what they like, and usually knows how to get it for them. So suddenly being forced to actually decide on the perfect post-show movie for a warm night in Omaha, or remember the name of Placebo's merch guy's second cousin when he asks for an autograph, is kind of a rude awakening.
But there's also the glaring negative space next to Gerard that aches even to look at, the way Frank is suddenly attached at the thumbs to his phone half the time, the times when not even Frank can tease Bob out of a bad mood, the sudden jolt—like missing the bottom step of a staircase—when Ray looks over to share an eye-roll over Gerard's monologues or Frank's ranting or Bob's threats to Frank's person and meets only empty air. It sounds stupid even in Ray's head, because he's known for years that if Mikey decided he wanted a rock from Mars, Ray and the rest of the guys would build a fucking rocket ship and suit up and go get it for him, but somehow he still wasn't prepared for how much he just fucking misses having the kid around.
Then one tour stretches into two and it gets better and worse, like the year Ray spent living with a toothache that he couldn't afford to get checked out, chewing on the opposite side of his jaw until it throbbed.
holy shit dude what are you feeding him, Mikey emails him at one point during Projekt Rev, with a link to a YouTube clip of Gerard groping himself in a particularly detailed and heartfelt (or somewhere-felt) way.
Ray laughs, giddy with the unexpected thrill of seeing Mikey's name in his inbox. I'd say it's pon farr but he's getting laid way more than I am, so what the fuck, he sends back.
He gets an answer within seconds, and he can picture Mikey perfectly, slumped down somewhere with his Sidekick nestled in his hands: isn't everyone getting laid more than you?
Ray snorts. I wish I had a comeback for that, but it's sadly fucking true. He sends it, then thinks of a comeback: Wait, I mean: your mom is getting laid more than I am.
that's probably true, Mikey replies. so now I'm thinking about my mom having sex while I'm watching my brother feel himself up. you're kind of a fucked up dude, Toro.
You love it, Ray sends back.
course I do, is all Mikey says. Then, after a few seconds: Cortez is rocking it.
He's doing great. And we miss you like hell, Ray answers, as fast as he can type.
miss you guys too. Gee's new girl seems great, Mikey writes back. Just that, but Ray's used to reading between Mikey's lines, and somehow even the letters on the screen look small and sad. Ray's fingers itch to say something that will fix everything; an analogy, an apology, a joke, just something so he doesn't feel so fucking helpless. But it's there's not much funny about it, and Ray's chest is tight with the awareness that it's at least partially his fault that Mikey isn't here now, that he pushed and pushed them all and didn't see how close Mikey was to breaking. But apologizing now would just make it about him, pressure Mikey to tell him it's okay, and that's the last thing Ray wants to do. Especially through cyberspace, for fuck's sake. And it wouldn't fix anything anyway.
She is great. As soon as you're ready, you come see us, he types finally. Under the radar, just come hang, you and Alicia both. We'll get you plane tix.
thanks man, I will. soon. And while Ray's trying to figure out what to say next, another message comes in: chill, Toro. I can hear you worrying from here. I'm good. give everybody a hug for me, tell Gee he's scarred me for life, tell Frank it's a Springsteen night.
When is it not a Springsteen night? Ray types automatically, but then he thinks about it: they're in Florida, it's humid and washed out and nothing feels real, it fucking is a Springsteen night. Seriously, we're lost without you, dude. Our pre-show mix is all fucked up, Bob and Frank almost came to blows over it the other night.
hot, is Mikey's response.
Ray snorts out a laugh. Maybe me and Gee should sell tickets next time.
there ya go.
Ray would bet money on Mikey's expression, the solemn mouth with the giggly eyes, and he sends, We really fucking miss you, Mikes just as he gets another message:
g2g. love to everyone. don't let G worry please?
I promise. Take care of yourself, Ray answers, trying to beam love and support into his screen.
promise, Mikey sends back.
Put on some Springsteen for us. Five minutes, we'll all listen together, Ray sends in a last-minute flash of inspiration.
five minutes. freak :), Mikey answers, and Ray grins and goes in search of the rest of the guys.
They listen to Born To Run as loud as it will go, and Gerard's and Frank's eyes get shiny and Bob's face is contemplative and Ray's throat clogs and he imagines the sound vibrating the air all the way up the coast, crashing with Mikey's soundwaves somewhere around North Carolina. By the end of the third song, they're all smiling.
The drawing stays up in the lounge, all the way through Projekt Rev until they hit Camden at the end of August, and Ray goes straight from jamming with his brother into Gerard announcing Mikey, to cheers so loud Ray can feel them in every one of his ribs. The song goes by in a blur, with the occasional freeze-frame of clarity: Frank on his knees in front of a grinning Mikey, Gerard and Mikey back to back with their faces turned out toward the crowd, Gerard standing on a monitor with his arms outstretched and a brilliant smile that Ray can't help echoing until his cheeks ache. As the song ends, Ray bounces over to headbang with Mikey for the last few notes and the crowd is going insane and Ray wishes like hell the song wasn't over so he'd have somewhere to put the joy pushing underneath his skin, making his fingertips tingle.
They barely get offstage after the set before Gerard and Mikey rush each other like magnets snapping together, wrapped in a hug so tight that Ray seriously doubts either one of them can breathe. Frank barrels into them next, and then Bob, and then Cortez, and Dewees, and Ray wraps his arms as far as they'll go around the whole swaying, sweaty, laughing mass of them. They're all crying, and nobody seems to care.
Much later, while everyone is sprawled out among the bunks reminiscing about old times and all the funky smells that Mikey's missed on these two tours, Ray sneaks back to the lounge, pulls Mikey's picture off the wall, and slides it into one of his good notebooks. They don't need it anymore.
3.
Gerard is silhouetted against the setting sun, long golden light spilling over him where he's sitting on the hood of his new Trans Am, one arm hooked over his raised knee and his hair shadowing his face. He looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic anime film, and Ray's about ninety percent sure that Gerard had timed his phone call in order to calibrate Ray's arrival with these exact aesthetic conditions.
The thought makes him grin, and he's still grinning as he makes his way across the sand to lean against the hood next to Gerard. "Hey, Gee."
"Hey." Gerard smiles, fingers of one hand tapping against his leg. He takes a deep drag off his cigarette; Ray suspects there are corpses of several more in the Red Bull can next to him. "Thanks for coming."
Ray shades his eyes. The California desert still looks strange and stark to him, and part of him can't wait to get back east, to concrete, to trees with leaves. "Well, I have left Ferelden un-Wardened in my absence, but I figured this was more important. What's up?"
"Here." Gerard shoves a sheet of paper at him, torn out of one of his sketchpads.
It's pretty typical Gerard, words scrawled at odd angles and interspersed with sketches: in this case, what looks like a vampire mask, and stars, and guns shooting sparks. Ray looks closer at the words; the entire first section is just the word "na" written over and over again. He snorts a laugh, but when he looks sideways at Gerard, Gerard is just watching him, teeth sunk into his bottom lip. Ray looks back at the page, skipping down a little.
From mall security
To every enemy
We're on your property
Standing in V formation
He cocks his head at Gerard. "Did you write this today?"
"Yeah."
"Huh." Ray goes back to the beginning and reads it all the way through this time, feeling out the rhythm of it. It's still rough, but already he can hear the cheerful irreverence, all three-chord defiance with its tongue stuck out. It's completely different than anything they've been working on. "Are you thinking B-side?"
Gerard scratches his head vigorously, ruffling his hair up into hedgehog spikes. "I dunno what I'm thinking. I was just out here, and I was talking to Lindsey, and it… popped into my head." He's got that look in his eye, that vaguely manic mad scientist look that Ray hasn't seen in years. He feels a quick twist of adrenaline in his stomach.
"Me and Mikey have been working on this comic," Gerard goes on. "Like, dystopian future, you know? Pirate radio. Muscle cars. Mad Max shit." Gerard flips through the sketchbook as he's talking, and Ray can't catch details, but he sees bright colors, a grinning mouse head, a shootout with masked figures. When he looks back out at the desert, the color burn seems to hover in front of his eyes, filling in the landscape.
"Hang on," he says, and goes to get a guitar from his car.
The next thing Ray knows, the sun is fully set, Gerard's starting to shiver, and they've got the outline of a melody, though it's only a shadow of the full electric thrash that's pounding through Ray's head. He looks at Gerard in the flickering light of the cars speeding by on the highway.
"The album's done," Ray says. "We've picked singles. We did that fucking photo shoot." He really, really hates photo shoots.
"Yep." Gerard's watching him closely, barely-suppressed glee in his eyes, like a kid waiting at the door to go to Disneyland.
To Ray, it feels more like waiting to go bungee jumping, but they've been working on this record for months and not once has he felt his heart thudding like it is now. "This is a fucking great song, Gerard," he says, and it starts out as a conspiratorial whisper, only halfway through it his excitement breaks through and spirals his voice up half an octave or so.
Gerard's grin bursts across his face. "It really fucking is," he agrees happily. Then his eyes go wide and earnest. "But look, Ray, I trust you. If you think we should back-burner this, I'll go with that." In the shifting light, with his ratty leather jacket and his shaggy hair and his Queen t-shirt, he could be twenty-four again, restless enthusiasm pouring off of him, making the air around him crackle with possibility. Let's start a fucking band, Toro. Let's change the motherfucking world.
Ray sets his guitar aside, folds up the paper with deliberate care and slips it into his jacket pocket. "What I think," he says, "is that we should call the rest of the guys and do this shit," and when Gerard throws his arms around him, he laughs and squeezes back as hard as he can.
4.
"Yeah," Gerard is saying into the big puffy radio station mic, shoving an increasingly-red hand through his bright hair for the hundredth time, "it's kind of a departure for us, but you know, it was what felt the most honest, and we decided to just trust ourselves, and trust our fans, and go with it. It's…"
It's fucking early, is what it is, and on an off-day, too, and Ray has to swallow a yawn before it escapes into his own mic. Normally he kind of likes radio interviews, but in this case, it's eight in the morning and he'd been up dicking around with some new mixing software until almost four, so he's more than happy to let Gerard and his five cups of coffee monopolize the conversation. He does tune in briefly when the host refers to Frank as their rhythm guitarist—"Co-lead guitarist," Ray pipes up, and Frank makes a kissy-face at him from his chair next to Gerard's—but mostly he's just kind of drifting.
So he jumps a bit when the host—Joe, Ray thinks his name is, Joe of "Joe and Eddie In the Way Too Fucking Early In the Morning"—turns to him and says, "So, Ray. What's your story? If you don't mind my saying it, you don't really look like you belong in this band."
Ray laughs. It's not exactly an original observation, and yeah, part of him had been kind of ruefully pissed off when even Mikey had emerged from his many hilarious haircuts as some long-legged Britpop butterfly, while Ray still feels as much like a caterpillar as ever. But it's been years now, he's got more important shit to worry about.
"I mind you saying it," Frank says to Joe with a fuck-you smile, all teeth.
"Nah, I see what he means," Ray says quickly, with a much less aggressive smile of his own, because as much as he appreciates the gesture, it's not worth getting into it with the guy. Especially on the air. "I sound good, that's the important part."
"I'd totally do Ray," Mikey announces, not even looking up from examining his chipped nail polish.
That's enough to send Joe and the rest of the booth into over-hearty cackling, and Gerard fills whatever spaces are left: "See? See, Joe, don't be so closed-minded, that just hurts everybody," and then Joe's asking Ray about the "more radio-friendly" topic of his musical influences, and Ray's giving the same answers he's given a thousand times, and the interview goes on.
It's only a couple of blocks back to their hotel from the studio, so Gerard suggests they walk it in the interest of "fresh air," by which he of course means "smoking."
Frank jumps on Ray's back before they've gone half a block. "Man, that guy was a douche."
Ray staggers under his weight. "Like I give a fuck what he thinks," he manages as he shifts Frank to a more comfortable position with the ease of long practice.
"Total fucking douche," Gerard agrees in a burst of exhaled smoke.
"Douchimus Maximus," Mikey puts in, which makes Gerard bark out a laugh. Gerard's also watching Ray, though, and Ray winks at him, because he seriously, seriously could give a fuck. Seriously. Gerard smiles back, apparently satisfied, and Ray hitches Frank up higher on his back.
"Ow," Frank complains. "I'm getting too old for this shit—I think you broke my hip."
"You and me, both, kid," Ray grunts. "So maybe you should stop fucking jumping on people all the time."
Frank just throws his arms around Ray's neck. "Nah," he says. "But we value your feedback," and they stumble their way back to the hotel.
It keeps popping into Ray's head throughout the day, though: when he lays down to catch a quick nap, when he's doing a quick unplugged run-through with Frank in the afternoon, when he's watching Gerard and Mikey throw fries at each other over dinner.
It's not the implication that he's not as pretty as the rest of the band so much as the implication that he doesn't belong somehow. That he doesn't fit. And rationally, Ray's annoyed at himself for letting some random radio-show host get to him; Joe obviously doesn't know the first thing about who they are or what they really do. But this band is half the family that Ray's got in the world, and he spent his fair share of time in high school with basically no friends, and old ghosts die hard, even twenty years later. So in conjunction with all the nerves of a new tour, it's enough to keep the questions poking at him, despite his best attempts to shake them.
He wakes up too early the next morning, pulls on sweats and a t-shirt, and sneaks out of the room he's sharing with Frank, down to the equipment bus to get his battered traveling acoustic. It helps him think, helps him work through new songs, helps him get out of his head when he needs it, and of all the luxuries of touring on a bus, it's one of the ones that Ray appreciates most.
There's a small square of grass pretending to be a park not far away, so he brings his guitar over and sits down on the weathered bench, shivering a little in the early morning air. When he clicks open the case, there's a piece of paper tucked inside.
It's a black-and-white sketch, done in light pencil and then traced over in ink, the way Gerard does when he can take some time with something. There are three boats in the picture, bobbing on ragged shark-fin waves: Gerard is in one, slumped at the front with his chin on his hand and comedy/tragedy masks on the sail; Mikey's in another one, kicked back with his feet propped up on the prow, head tucked underneath his Sidekick-shaped sail; and the last one is a pirate ship with a Jolly Roger flag and Frank hanging by his knees upside-down from the mast, barely holding on to his guitar.
Ray is in the middle of the drawing, standing on a huge rock with musical staves winding all around it, a Les Paul in his hands and his hair flying out in the sea breeze. He's more detailed than the rest of them, and it's narcissistic as fuck but Ray leans closer to see the way Gerard sees him: the wide, warm grin, the solid stance. He looks fucking badass, honestly, and yet totally like himself, and he can feel the back of his neck and his ears heating up, but he can't stop looking. Each of the three boats is attached to the rock, and to each other, by a chain of twisted metal hearts.
When Ray's vision starts to blur, he sits back and shifts his focus to the sky. At the moment he can't even remember exactly where they are, but wherever it is, it's overcast, the rising sun staining the clouds orange and dark blue. He flips over the paper in his hands, ready to tuck it back in the case before it gets rained on, and he sees another pencil sketch on the back, in the corner: it's a bloody, dismembered corpse, with a name tag on it that says Joe. Underneath it, Gerard has scrawled This is also an option.
Ray laughs so hard he scares a squirrel.
After he's caught his breath, he places the sketch carefully in his guitar case, locks it shut, and heads back to find his band.
1.
Ray wakes to a crick in his neck that's in danger of becoming a full-fledged flood, the hum of the road underneath him, and the sound of a pencil scratching on paper.
His first priority is to try to adjust his neck without snapping it right off, and then he moves on to blinking blearily in the near-dark and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's Otter's turn to drive, Ray remembers that much. Frank's sacked out in the shotgun seat, his prize for some complicated road sign bingo game that he and Mikey have been playing for the past week or so. Which Ray strongly suspects Mikey of throwing, actually; Frank's been coughing again recently, and since any faint whiff of deference toward his puny asshole lungs tends to result in death glares and Frank being twice as hyper just to show them all how sick he's not, they usually have to resort to subterfuge to get him to get some fucking rest once in a while. And Mikey, with his innocent eyes and carefully vacant expressions, is awesome at subterfuge.
Gerard, of course, vehemently sucks at it, because if there's a job description that's the polar opposite of "ninja," it's got to be "frontman." He does, however, value both Mikey's gifts and Frank's health, so when they'd loaded up for this leg of the trip, he'd squished himself on the front bench seat as far from the door as possible, and insisted that Mikey stretch out as much as he could and use Gerard's leg as a pillow.
Which is the domino effect that led to Ray being in the back seat with what feels like approximately ten thousand amps cramming him against the window, and the head of Mikey's bass lodged securely between his third and fourth ribs. And the halo of Gerard's tiny book light winking at him over the back of the seat.
Gerard sees him looking and raises his fingers in a rippling wave, a pencil sticking out between them like a lone disobedient tentacle.
Ray puts a cautious hand to the stabbing pain in his neck, moves Mikey's bass out of his spleen, and leans forward. "Whatcha workin' on?" he whispers. It's usually too bumpy on the road for Gerard to draw, but Ray's pretty sure they're still in North Dakota, which is basically like driving through molasses, only without the flavor.
Gerard laughs a little and shifts his notebook so the light tips toward Ray. Ray's expecting to see zombies or wyverns or something, but at first it just looks like a rounded sort of rectangle with a dark blotch toward the top of it. When he looks closer, though, it hits him all at once, and he laughs, low in his throat so he doesn't wake Mikey. Because the rectangle is a bed—a king-sized one, from the look of it—and the dark blotch in it is obviously Gerard's head, the faint outlines of his limbs sprawled out underneath the sheets like a starfish, and Ray can't blame him one bit.
"Masochist," he says, grinning.
Gerard sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair, probably leaving a graphite mark on his scalp somewhere. "I know, man, it's just… it's like when you're really, really hungry, and you know you shouldn't, but all you can think about is, like, a huge fucking cheeseburger. All greasy and melty and warm."
Ray's stomach growls. "Oh, fuck you," he breathes, mouth watering. He hadn't even realized he was hungry.
Gerard laughs sheepishly. "Sorry."
"New topic," Ray demands.
"Okay," says Gerard. He clears his throat. "So. I saw this thing about pandas on the Discovery Channel a while ago. I guess pandas are only fertile for, like, a few days out of the year, and even when they get pregnant, it's really hard to tell they're pregnant. Also they mainly eat bamboo, which they can't really digest, so..."
He's still sketching as he's talking, notebook propped up awkwardly on the leg that Mikey isn't lying on, and his other hand drifting between Mikey's shoulder and random patterns in the air to illustrate the gestation periods of pandas, or whatever. Ray loses the thread of what he's saying and just focuses on the emerging sketch, which now includes the tousled shock of what looks a hell of a lot like Mikey's hair on the pillow next to Gerard's. Gerard erases the smudges of his own legs and arms and rearranges them to accommodate Mikey's skinnier ones. Then another dark blotch resolves itself into Frank's head—with a squiggle on his neck for the scorpion—on Mikey's other side, and then a series of frenetic scribbles that are clearly meant to be Ray's own hair, with the curve of his nose and his closed eyes and his half-open mouth on the pillow behind Gerard's head.
"… So it's clearly totally fucked up," Gerard is still rambling as he makes a few final adjustments to the fluffiness of the pillows, "but it's also kind of inspiring, you know? Like, they've got all this shit working against them, but they're still here, after hundreds of years, eating fucking bamboo and having babies, and fuck evolution. I mean, not that I'm not in favor of evolution, obviously, but. They're still pretty badass, in a furry, roly-poly kinda way."
"Mmm," Ray says in a tone of vague agreement, which is usually enough to keep Gerard going for quite a while. But instead, Gerard seems to register what he's drawing for the first time since he launched his Panda Retrospective, and huffs out a laugh.
"Huh," he says, sounding a little rueful. "Got kinda crowded, didn't it?" But he doesn't erase anything, just adds the outline of a nightstand next to the bed and draws Mikey's glasses on top of it.
"Looks nice," Ray says, and it actually does. It looks cozy, like the podium in some World Snuggling Championship. As much as they all bitch about the van—and as bitchworthy as it very often is—at this point in Ray's life, he can admit that it weirds him out to sleep in a room by himself. It's probably Stockholm Syndrome. He's okay with that.
Gerard's angling his head to look at his sketch some more. "It does look nice, doesn't it?" He draws a tiny smile on sketch-Gerard's face, then starts in on a design for the bedspread. And aha, there's the wyvern Ray was expecting.
Speaking of animals, "Hey, where's Otter?" he asks.
Gerard looks at him with a wicked grin, his eyes bright underneath the dark overhang of his hair. "He hooked up."
Ray laughs. "Nice."
"Yep. Frankie's gonna high-five him in the morning." Gerard draws Frank's hand on the pillow next to his face, ready for Otter's return.
"How long do you think it's gonna be till we get to sleep in actual beds again?" Ray asks wistfully. Normally he's got a pretty clear picture of the tour calendar in his head, but at the moment it's all buried under the fantasy of clean sheets. Or even dirty sheets. Just sheets. Somewhere. On a horizontal plane. And also cheeseburgers.
"Half past a monkey's ass and quarter to I'm gonna be fucking ninety," Gerard sighs.
Ray sighs back, then throws him exaggerated devil horns. "Rock 'n' roll."
"Fuck yeah." Gerard yawns and rubs a hand over his face, barely avoiding poking his own eye out with his pencil. "Okay. I'm gonna try to sleep now, I think."
Ray nods. "Good call." He snags Gerard's pencil and tucks it in his backpack for safekeeping, then settles back into his own seat.
"Thanks for taking the back," Gerard says, craning his neck to examine Ray's sleeping arrangements. "Wanna switch when we stop for gas?"
"Nah." Ray shoves carefully at the blanket covering an amp and wins himself approximately two more centimeters of space. Awesome. "I think I'm about to get to second base with Mikey's guitar, I don't want to give up now."
Gerard yawns again. "I don't want to hear about any relationship you've got with my brother's instrument, dude."
"Does this mean we don't have your blessing?" Ray asks sadly, stroking the bass' neck. "I would have thought if anyone would understand our non-traditional love, it would be you. This is how we end up being driven into the arms of a prog band, you know."
Gerard laughs into the back of the seat, a quick muffled machine-gun burst. "Motherfucker, you're so stuck with us," he scoffs, and switches off his book light with a flourish. After a few seconds, his voice comes out of the dark. "Fine. You have my blessing. But if you get jizz on anything, you have to clean it up. You know how Mikey gets about jizz on his stuff."
Ray giggles, half at the thought of Mikey's reaction and half at the knowledge that Gerard genuinely thinks that getting all bent out of shape about a little jizz on your stuff is a total overreaction. "No problem."
Gerard flaps his hand back over the seat, and Ray reaches forward to lace their fingers together, squeezing tight before letting go. He hears the squeak of Gerard snuggling deeper into the vinyl of the seat cover. "'Night, Toro." He sounds sleepy and satisfied.
Which is apparently catching, because that's exactly how Ray feels, too. "'Night, Gee."
The sketch has disappeared by the next afternoon, a casualty of living in a van with a bunch of dudes and a whole bunch of paper products. But that night, wedged up against a window with Frank drooling on his shoulder and Gerard tapping his pencil incessantly on a notebook over the sound of Mikey's snores, Ray looks around, smiles, and falls right to sleep.