Switchverse: Part I, or, How The Hell Do These Things Happen.
My Chemical Romance has four albums out, a tour halfway through, a new music video to shoot during a three-day break coming up, and enough fans to populate Sweden, when Gerard’s phone rings. Within seconds of each other, Frank’s, Mikey’s, Bob’s, and Ray’s start up, too.
They all hang up and look at each other, except Gerard, who’s dialing Brian and making airport-ho! hand signals to the driver.
Thirty-six hours later, the five of them huddle in a hospital room, cooing at a pink-swaddled ball of fleshy goo.
She half-yawns and her tiny, tiny tongue slobbers out, and Gerard curls his shoulders around her in his arms and looks at them and says, “Guys.”
And that’s how My Chemical Romance breaks up.
--
Her name is Audrey Celsius Way. She’s named for Audrey Hepburn and a comic book character, but Gerard always maintains, “Celsius isn’t just a comic book character, she’s. She can freeze things! And burn things! It’s kickass!”
(Lyn-Z clears her throat when her husband says this, and he stonily tacks on, “Except not really, because this is real life.”)
--
Gerard’s really guilty about MCR, because - if he thinks about it, he could have kept touring, he could have kept the band going, he didn’t need to be here for every second of every day of Audrey’s first year. But then he gets close enough to his daughter to see the light spin in her brown eyes and her thin-bow baby lips curl in a lopsided smile, and, okay.
Besides, five months after that Ray’s getting married to a woman who’s nice enough, and seven months after that Ray has a daughter, too.
Her name is Eliza. She has her dad’s hair, right from the start, and she goes right for the musical baby toys with a singular focus.
Meanwhile, Bob settles in Chicago, which was his hometown, it’s okay, and he gets married, too, to a tall blonde who smiles genuinely in every picture they take together and email over.
And then begins the year from hell.
Frank knocks Jamia up, and then Mikey does the same to Alicia, and then a month later Bob calls them and his blush is obvious from a thousand miles away when he says, “So. You guys’ll laugh.”
There follows a flurry of emails, pleas for help and commiseration and desperation all distilled into one word: baby.
Audrey’s two and a quarter when Theo Iero lands unceremoniously in her lap for picture time - and she knows to say cheese, she’s got the camera thing figured out, okay - and a couple weeks later her cousin Derek takes up residence, too. The whole gang flies to Illinois to crowd into the Bryar maternity room and wiggle fingers at little Jacqueline, but they leave just as quickly because the proud mother is also very exhausted and not up for the overload of company.
Everything’s busy for a while, juggling babysitting between the four households, and then four weeks into a tour Lyn-Z calls and announces that she’s, “got another bun in the oven. I thought we agreed it was your turn this time, Gee.” And then they have Robert, who is totally not named after any former members of any band. But to avoid a nickname like ‘Bob’, because that would get confusing, Frank calls him 2way - “The second kid of Gerard Way, it’s simple” - and Mikey takes it up and it sticks.
Bob never says it directly, but his wife doesn’t recover completely from a tough miscarriage a few years later, and her kidneys are shot, and then it’s cancer, and suddenly Bob’s a widower and moving out to Jersey. But he doesn’t like to talk about it, so mostly people don’t push.
And, when Audrey’s eleven and Eliza’s ten, Ray and his wife have twins mostly-on-accident-and-sort-of-in-case-it-fixes-things. It doesn’t fix things, and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named takes off. But Ray has Mary Jane and Christian, and they’re pretty destructive but also very sweet when they need to be.
And Frank keeps Skeleton Crew rolling into a major label, and Bob and Mikey scout and manage for him, and Ray sits in on recordings sometimes and teaches lessons, and Gerard keeps the comic books thing going.
That’s basically it.
--
Oh, and Audrey and Derek are sort of telepathic, but whatever.
They all hang up and look at each other, except Gerard, who’s dialing Brian and making airport-ho! hand signals to the driver.
Thirty-six hours later, the five of them huddle in a hospital room, cooing at a pink-swaddled ball of fleshy goo.
She half-yawns and her tiny, tiny tongue slobbers out, and Gerard curls his shoulders around her in his arms and looks at them and says, “Guys.”
And that’s how My Chemical Romance breaks up.
--
Her name is Audrey Celsius Way. She’s named for Audrey Hepburn and a comic book character, but Gerard always maintains, “Celsius isn’t just a comic book character, she’s. She can freeze things! And burn things! It’s kickass!”
(Lyn-Z clears her throat when her husband says this, and he stonily tacks on, “Except not really, because this is real life.”)
--
Gerard’s really guilty about MCR, because - if he thinks about it, he could have kept touring, he could have kept the band going, he didn’t need to be here for every second of every day of Audrey’s first year. But then he gets close enough to his daughter to see the light spin in her brown eyes and her thin-bow baby lips curl in a lopsided smile, and, okay.
Besides, five months after that Ray’s getting married to a woman who’s nice enough, and seven months after that Ray has a daughter, too.
Her name is Eliza. She has her dad’s hair, right from the start, and she goes right for the musical baby toys with a singular focus.
Meanwhile, Bob settles in Chicago, which was his hometown, it’s okay, and he gets married, too, to a tall blonde who smiles genuinely in every picture they take together and email over.
And then begins the year from hell.
Frank knocks Jamia up, and then Mikey does the same to Alicia, and then a month later Bob calls them and his blush is obvious from a thousand miles away when he says, “So. You guys’ll laugh.”
There follows a flurry of emails, pleas for help and commiseration and desperation all distilled into one word: baby.
Audrey’s two and a quarter when Theo Iero lands unceremoniously in her lap for picture time - and she knows to say cheese, she’s got the camera thing figured out, okay - and a couple weeks later her cousin Derek takes up residence, too. The whole gang flies to Illinois to crowd into the Bryar maternity room and wiggle fingers at little Jacqueline, but they leave just as quickly because the proud mother is also very exhausted and not up for the overload of company.
Everything’s busy for a while, juggling babysitting between the four households, and then four weeks into a tour Lyn-Z calls and announces that she’s, “got another bun in the oven. I thought we agreed it was your turn this time, Gee.” And then they have Robert, who is totally not named after any former members of any band. But to avoid a nickname like ‘Bob’, because that would get confusing, Frank calls him 2way - “The second kid of Gerard Way, it’s simple” - and Mikey takes it up and it sticks.
Bob never says it directly, but his wife doesn’t recover completely from a tough miscarriage a few years later, and her kidneys are shot, and then it’s cancer, and suddenly Bob’s a widower and moving out to Jersey. But he doesn’t like to talk about it, so mostly people don’t push.
And, when Audrey’s eleven and Eliza’s ten, Ray and his wife have twins mostly-on-accident-and-sort-of-in-case-it-fixes-things. It doesn’t fix things, and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named takes off. But Ray has Mary Jane and Christian, and they’re pretty destructive but also very sweet when they need to be.
And Frank keeps Skeleton Crew rolling into a major label, and Bob and Mikey scout and manage for him, and Ray sits in on recordings sometimes and teaches lessons, and Gerard keeps the comic books thing going.
That’s basically it.
--
Oh, and Audrey and Derek are sort of telepathic, but whatever.