Fic: "I Only Hide What I Know I Can't Keep" (Bob/Ray, NC-17) (2/2)
I Only Hide What I Know I Can't Keep
Master Post
Art Post
Part One
Bob wakes up from the sharp pain flaring up in his right wrist, his pulse throbbing against the tight confines of the braces. He curses silently, not wanting to wake Ray, and fights hard to control his breathing. These things were at their worst at night, and often the only remedy is to go back to sleep and hope they're gone when he wakes up. He's staring at the wall with his back to Ray, trying desperately to focus on something that'll let him ignore how much it hurts. The right wrist hasn't been giving him much trouble lately, but apparently it's playing catchup with a vengeance. Bob hasn't even played the drums in weeks, what the hell, and he has to bite his pillow to stop himself groaning when it happens again, and he must have made a lot more movement than he thought because he can hear Ray stirring beside him, the sheets rustling under their bodies.
"Bob?" he hears Ray's voice, scratchy from sleep. "You okay?"
Bob's still trying to breath normally when he feels Ray press up behind him, hair falling against Bob's shoulder. He seems to notice the way Bob's holding his right arm stiffly away from his body and immediately knows what's going on. "Where'd you left your meds?"
"Kitchen table," Bob chokes out painfully.
Ray's out of the bed in an instant, the noise of him padding around barefoot and groping for a light switch providing a welcome distraction as Bob lay there breathing laboriously through his mouth. When Ray comes back he helps Bob to prop himself up, letting Bob lean back against his chest while he slips the pills into Bob's left hand. Bob takes a deep breath before popping them into his mouth, and Ray holds the glass of water for him while drinks it down, his other hand rubbing soothing circles into Bob's shoulders. When Bob's done Ray lets him stay like that for a little while, waiting for the medication to take effect. Bob lets his right arm fall limp at his side and places the left one on Ray's knee, squeezing intermittently in silent gratitude.
"Take it easy," Ray says, kissing the shell of Bob's ear. "Just relax..."
Bob nods, the edges of his eyesight starting to blur with the strong sedatives.
Ray holds him, keeps him in place, tapping the rhythms of one of Gerard's unfinished songs against his chest. Bob falls asleep to it the same way Frank had at the Paramour, to a lullaby of unfulfilled promises. There are no ghosts in this house, just Bob and Ray, and he dreads waking up in the morning and feeling that it's never going to be enough.
---
Bob always knew Frank had a lot of pent-up shit in him, stuff he poured out into angry streams of words that would never find its way to a My Chemical Romance relase.
At the Paramour he vacillated between being lethargic with Gerard and Mikey's continued absence (one gone, the other shut off from the rest of them) and pacing about like a wounded animal, lashing out at the slightest agitation. Ray was wise enough to keep way from Frank at times like these but Bob wasn't, his back covered with the half-moon indents of Frank's fingernails and his bones sore from when Frank rode him without mercy, fucking himself stupid on Bob's cock with a fury he didn't have anyone else to fling at. Bob did all of it willingly, giving back just as hard when Frank asked for it, but he knew he could only take the edge of Frank's frustrations, that Frank needed more.
When Gerard emerged from his self-imposed exile, three weeks and a lifetime after Mikey left them, he had scraps of paper filled with the most painful things Bob had ever read, hastily scribbled lyrics and drawings of an otherworld populated by figures that hung in limbo, hollow-eyed and somber. "They're dead," Gerard said. "They're all dead."
Frank hovered close to Gerard, helping him arrange the sheets of paper on the floor, while Ray picked up his acoustic guitar. "Tell us..." Ray said. "Tell us, Gee."
And Gerard told them.
---
Ray finds Bob out on the backyard patio, sitting on Ray's kitschy rattan chair and smoking his way through a whole pack of Marlboros. Bob knows there are certain areas of the house where it's totally okay to smoke, but he's back on his pack-a-day habit and he doesn't want to stink up the whole house with tobacco. He's staring out into Ray's mostly barren backyard, landscaping being nowhere near the top of Ray's list of priorities right now. There was talk of installing some kind of pond and artificial stream, which struck Bob as kind of New Age-y, but in the backyard's current state he might as well get a rake and start drawing circles in all that sand, and maybe find Zen or some shit.
"Schechter called..." Ray says. "Same question,"
Bob curls his free hand into a fist, loosens it again. "Same answer,"
"Oh, Jesus Christ..." Ray says. "Bob, you need this surgery. You know that, we all know that. If I could, I'd be strapping you down in a gurney and wheeling you into operating room myself."
"Kinky," Bob retorts.
"Don't be a smartass," Ray snaps back. "Look, we both know you're not afraid of going under the knife. You've been through worse. Fuck, I've seen you play through fire and almost die because of it, for God's sake!"
Bob exhales, letting out a weak plume of white smoke. "What did you tell him?"
"That you're being a stubborn asshole, as usual." Ray says. "He's not buying the whole 'I need time to think about it' bullshit anymore than I am, Bob. You don't have time, for starters. You've seen our schedule, you know how it works."
"I still have two weeks to make up my mind," Bob contends.
"Yeah, you're smart enough to figure that out, aren't you?" Ray snaps. "So you're just gonna put it off until the last minute? Even knowing that the recovery time is just as estimate? That you might need longer?"
"Ray..."
"Don't--" Ray sounds desperate, hurt. "Don't do this to us."
Bob lets his cigarette drop, stamps it out with his foot and stands up. He feels heavy, weighed down, and he can't even look in Ray's eyes as he brushes past him on the way inside the house.
"Where are you going?" Ray calls out after him.
"Daisy," Bob says, already halfway towards the practice room, his hands shaking as it rests on the doorknob.
He doesn't know whether or not he should feel disappointed when Ray doesn't follow him.
---
There was this one song, the song, that didn't even have a name yet.
It was brutal, raw, and it turned Bob's insides on fire and his neck freezing cold every time he played it even though it was still in a rough shape. It had been written in Mikey's absence, and Gerard's final draft of the lyrics left no doubt in anyone's mind as to who it was meant for. You could argue about its applicability to any number of people, both real and fictional, or about its place in the narrative they were piecing together, but in Bob's mind it was clear as day. It wasn't finished though, not without Mikey, and somehow they seemed to know among themselves that Mikey held the last piece of the puzzle. So when they were finally out of the Paramour and reunited with Mikey in a studio in New York, looking like a different person entirely with his glasses gone and his hair cut short, there was a tense air of expectation when they began working on that song.
The first time Mikey heard the rough cut was through the studio's large speakers, with Rob Cavallo looking on expectantly from the mixing desk. Mikey had clutched Gerard's hand until both their knuckles were white, which was scary for a moment because Bob thought maybe it was too much, too raw and unpolished, Gerard's voice streaked with pain and longing and near-bereavement. Gerard himself looked shaken by the force of it, his brother alive and in the flesh and perhaps showing more naked emotion than he'd had in the last few months. When the song ended, Gerard looked about ready to keel over from the tension, but Mikey took two deep breaths as if struggling to find his voice.
"Let me get my bass," he said finally. "I know what I have to do."
The song came together rather quickly, Ray occasionally mouthing the chord changes at Mikey because nobody had bothered to write it down for him, they couldn't even wait that long. The repeating patterns made it easy for Mikey to pick up, but towards the end of the song he held up his hand and they all stopped playing.
"I think we should do it differently from this point...actually, I thought maybe I could do it differently," he said.
"Go on," Ray said.
"You know the slow part, where it's just Gee singing? Right now the chord progression's the same as the chorus, right?"
Ray nodded, his expression intent.
"I was thinking of changing it on the second part, and keeping it like that from that point on..." Mikey said hesitantly. "I don't know, just an idea."
"Let's just play it, then--see if it works," Frank said.
Bob counted them off and they started at the part where it's just Gerard singing to Ray's rhythmic strumming, and Bob thought he heard something different in Gerard's voice, a shakiness that had nothing to do with nerves or fatigue or lack of warmup. They hit the second part and Mikey played the new chord progression, hitting a lower sequence of notes, and Bob felt the hairs in the back of his neck stand on end. Gerard's voice struggled to sing the second I see you lying next to me, apparently feeling the same effect. Mikey's hands shook too but he played on, bringing them closer and closer to the moment where all the instruments were supposed to come crashing back in for the big finish.
"Keep going, Mikey..." Ray said over the building noise, Frank's fingers plucking out the melody he'd been toying around with, a series of defiant notes that worked perfectly with what Mikey was doing.
They hit the coda with Bob's sticks crashing onto his cymbals, and Mikey kept playing, repeating the sequence of notes, Gerard's voice finding strength as it bellowed I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone...
When the song ended, Gerard dropped his mic and went straight for his brother, tackling Mikey onto the floor. Mikey's bass was caught between them, feedback squealing out of the speakers as if in protest, but neither of the brothers seemed to care. They had their song. It was done. And they had Mikey. Bob stood up from his throne, his knees weak and his lips dry. He joined Ray and Frank where they stood just inches from where Gerard and Mikey were tangled on the floor, a heap of awkward limbs and weird hair, as they had been all their lives.
"Oh God, Mikey...." Gerard had his arms around Mikey's bony shoulders, tight tight tight, like he'd never let go again. "That was..that was fucking awesome!"
"Gee..." Mikey seemed at a loss for words, his hands splayed on Gerard's back. When he glanced up and saw the other three looking down at them, Bob realized for the first time just how much they looked like each other, Mikey and Gerard, the same big wide eyes, the same way their lips curled when they were fighting back tears. "Guys..." Mikey started, but his voice died halfway in his throat.
"We know, Mikeyway..." Ray said softly. "We know."
With that reassurance spoken, Mikey's face crumpled and he buried it into his brother's shaking shoulders.
---
If anyone's noticed Bob's increasing attachment to Daisy and found it a little strange or even unhealthy, they certainly didn't bother commenting on it.
The rest of his kit is packed up safely in a warehouse somewhere, ready to be re-assembled wherever the band chooses to make their next homebase, but Daisy goes where he goes. Bob's a light traveler, bringing only the change of clothes he needs and whatever toiletries he can grab off his sink, so the addition of Daisy to his luggage never made it a hassle. But it's not like there's a point in bringing a snare drum with you everywhere you go, not like a guitar or a sketchpad or a pair of lucky sticks, even. Daisy isn't there to serve a musical purpose in the traditional sense of the word, and Bob's never bothered to explain it to anyone who didn't already know. She's more like an emotional anchor, as fucked up as it sounds, something that keeps him grounded, keeps him just on the verge of sane.
Bob has her set up on her stand and he's sitting on one of Ray's chairs--the height isn't quite right but it's not like he's playing anything particularly complicated. He's simply beating out the same rhythm over and over again, the marching rhythm she's carried through the entire lifespan of The Black Parade. There's no piano to join in, no Gerard singing out 'when I was a young boy', no emaciated figures in hospital gowns, no desolate landscape with ash-grey snow. Just racks and racks of Ray's impressive guitar collection and the four paneled walls of the practice room, the dim lights from Ray's computer and a stack of classic rock vinyls in the corner, beside the languishing houseplant that's probably a few days overdue to be watered. Bob feels the same tightness in his chest growing, like the room is pressing in on him, but he has Daisy and the soothing monotone of his sticks hitting the snare, the resonance filling his ears.
He's well and truly lost now. It's almost a welcome feeling, after months of being half-tethered and not knowing which way to go.
Ray enters the room after Bob's been in there alone for roughly thirty minutes, quietly closing the door behind him. He looks tired, a little concerned, but he doesn't look as pissed as he did out in the backyard. Bob stops playing, resting his hands on his thighs.
"Talk to me..." Ray says. "I mean it, Bob. Talk to me."
"What do you want me to say?"
Ray leans against the wall near the door, arms folded in front of his chest. "Whatever you haven't told me," he says quietly.
Bob puts his sticks down, resting them across Daisy's mottled skin. "I never told you why I came here, did I? Why I didn't stay in Chicago before we hit the road."
"I wanted to ask," Ray says. "But you were too busy throwing up and passing out that first night and I kind of forgot in the morning."
Bob shakes his head. "You're always too nice."
"With you? Never." Ray pushes himself off the wall and pulls up a chair. "That doesn't mean you don't confuse me every now and then..."
"I didn't want to stay in Chicago," Bob says. "It's just...it stopped being home a long time ago, I just never stayed there long enough to notice." He can feel Ray's eyes on him, the sympathetic nod that signals him to continue. "I put all my stuff in the new apartment--everything that's worth keeping, you know, being sensible and all that shit. It's all paid for, it's in my name, but I can't even get a minute's sleep in my own bed."
"Did something happen?" Ray asks.
Bob looks up. "Don't tell the others."
Ray nods slowly. "I won't."
"I went back to Darien. Nothing special, just dinner at my parents' house. I ask how they're doing, Mom asks me to cut my hair, same old story," he waves a hand dismissively. "And then for some stupid fucking reason I asked them if I could go up and see my old room."
His chest tightens at the memory, the way his mother opened the door and told him I kept it clean for you and went back downstairs, leaving him there with his hands gripping white-knuckled at the doorknob.
"Was it bad?" Ray asks tentatively.
Bob's room was cleaner than he ever remembered it being, objects and possessions arranged in a way that he never would've allowed. The windowpanes he'd punched out in a fit of teenage anger had been replaced, textbooks from the high school he didn't even finish neatly lined up on a shelf over his desk, where there's an old picture of him in his marching band uniform, buttons gleaming in the sunlight and a startled look in his eyes.
The entire room felt like a museum diorama of altered history, thick with the air of things that didn't quite happen the way they were supposed to. It wasn't his room anymore, just a display of objects from his past that painted a false picture--but a false picture his parents could deal with.
It made him nauseous and angry, even though a part of him knew that his parents probably didn't realize what they'd done with the room, the same way they never realized that he'd long since outgrown the lie of their perfect little family.
He tells Ray all of this, breathing heavily by the time he's done. "I'm probably reading too much into it, but...I think they still wish I was something else. They'd never tell me that, of course, that's just not how the Bryar household rolls."
"Bob..."
"I didn't want to burst their bubble, you know? So I left. And then I got back to my empty apartment, got hammered on all that Jack, and then I looked around and I didn't even know who I was anymore...so I had to go somewhere I'll be reminded."
"So you came here," Ray finishes for him. "Jesus, Bob...you should've told me."
"It's not that I was afraid you wouldn't get it. I knew you would, it's just...I didn't even want to think about it for a while." Bob rubs the corners of his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. "I don't think they're disappointed, or anything. Just that I could be happier doing something else. That I'm still as fucked up and maladjusted as I was when I lived in that house."
"Do you think you could be happier doing something else?"
"Fuck, no." Bob shakes his head. "I should be happier doing this, though...and right now I just don't know."
Ray's lower lip twitches, formulating his next careful sentence. "When were you happiest with us?"
Bob doesn't answer, just breathes over the tight knot in his chest and picks up his sticks again. He stares down at the scratches on Daisy's skin, the dark stains on her wooden finish, thinks of the lost soldiers she sent on their way and never got the chance to welcome back.
---
Bob looked at himself in the mirror and could hardly believe the transformation. The makeup people had given them all the same pale, almost corpse-like look, accentuating the circles under their eyes and powdering almost all traces of color from their cheeks. The costume that had been designed for him consisted of a large-collared overcoat, with the cross of St. George embroidered into the left sleeve, the significance of which well and truly escaped him. The ensemble was predominantly black, with the golden shoulder epaulets and the stripes running across his chest being the only spots of color. They looked a little garish under the room lights but Gerard had said something about the photographs being "desaturated to hell and back again" so he assumed that they too, would turn out muted on the final product.
"You look like the lost little drummer boy of the Apocalypse," Frank said from the doorway.
Bob glanced over at him. "You look like a zebra's asscrack."
Frank laughed, glancing down at the black and white stripes encircling his arms. His jacket was close-cropped and for some reason he had a saber dangling from his waist. "I keep tripping over the damn thing,"
"You're only being photographed with it, not playing with it." Bob said.
Next to another mirror a production assistant was fussing with the gold buttons on Ray's jacket, while Gerard carefully pinned a cross-shaped medal to Mikey's right chest, the final touch of his costume.
"I feel like I just got a Purple Heart or something," Mikey says bemusedly. "Didn't I die in the other video?"
"Because Ray was a suck-ass medic?" Gerard grinned.
"Shut the fuck up," Ray said from where he stood.
Frank had moved up behind Bob, both of them staring at their reflections in the mirror. "You look good," Frank said earnestly, leaning his head against Bob's shoulder.
Bob took in Frank's heavily lined lids, the curl of dark hair just in front of his ears, and nodded. "You too, Frankie..."
---
"I think I should go back," Bob announces later that evening, when they're eating the pasta Ray made.
"To Chicago?"
"Yeah, just...you know, tell my parents about this whole surgery deal. See what they think about it."
Both Ray and Bob know that Bob has long stopped factoring his parents' opinions into the decisions he made for himself, but Ray seems disinclined to call him out on it and Bob is secretly glad. The tightness in his chest hasn't quite gone away, and he can barely look at Ray in the eyes any more. Whatever comfort anchored him to this place when he decided it was the best place to go when Chicago became too much for him last month, it has apparently run out.
Ray reaches over for his beer and takes a long gulp before helping himself to a second serving. "I'll tell Brian."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it...have you booked a flight? You're not thinking of driving there are you?"
"No, I'm not. And yeah, I've booked myself on a red-eye early next week."
"Okay,"
Bob wants to add I'm sorry, but there's a lump of unswallowed spaghetti in his mouth and he doesn't quite know what he's apologizing for, he only knows that it's there.
---
The last night at the Paramour, Bob and Frank fucked on the squeaky old leather sofa in the study, Frank riding Bob into a sweaty mess as his ass ground down on Bob's groin, taking more of Bob's dick into him. Bob held Frank loosely by the hips, content to let Frank dictate their pace, his eyes transfixed on the lines of ink weaving across Frank's skin and occasionally wandering up to meet his eyes, still dark and moody but with a glimmer of triumph now, like he was finally seeing the light at the end of the longest, darkest tunnel they'd ever dared to enter.
"Frankie..." Bob gasped out. "Frank, I..."
"I know," Frank said as he leaned down, a curtain of sweaty hair falling across Bob's face as he licked Bob's lips and kissed him. "I know."
---
His first night back in Chicago, Bob turns off his cellphone and disconnects the landline in his apartment, then sits alone on his stiff new couch with a bottle of Ketel One and all the lights turned off, staring at the blank grey wall in front of him. He's thinking about Gerard's proposed mural, tries to imagine it taking shape in front of him. Bob's not as visually intuitive as some of his bandmates, preferring to paint his landscapes with sounds, but in the silence of his apartment there's nothing to listen to, no levels to adjust and no feedback to reduce. He finds his fingers itching for the familiar knobs and sliders of a soundboard, twenty-four channels ripe with possibilities, something he knows better how to deal with, something tangible and measurable by frequency and wavelength.
He doesn't sleep that night, or the night after.
He calls his parents on the fourth day, the vodka gone and the ache in his wrists dulled into a low throbbing that travels up and down his arms.
"Is it dangerous?" his father asks.
"It's risky, but it's necessary," Bob says, repeating the words the doctor told him months ago. "The surgery I had last year was just a quick fix."
"Should we...is there anything you need from us? Paperwork or something?"
"The label will take care of everything," Bob says. "You don't need to do anything."
"Where will they do it?"
"New York, probably." Bob says, his tone even and neutral, honed by years of talking around hard truths. "I can recuperate in Jersey, they'll look after me."
"Hold on..." his father says. "Your mother wants to talk."
Bob holds his breath until he can hear his mother's voice saying, "Hello?"
"Hey, Mom."
"Why didn't you tell us about this before?"
"I'm sorry," Bob says. "It took us a while to realize how bad it's gotten, and I...I guess I didn't want to admit it at first."
"Robert, you need to start taking better care of yourself," she admonishes. "Is it true, what you told your father? That you might not be able to play again if you don't do this?"
"That's what they told me," Bob says. He can hear hear her heavy breathing at the other end of the line, the soft pause as she swallows with much difficulty.
"Then do it," she says, the firmness in her voice startling him. "Do it for us."
Bob's chest seizes up, realizing what she's just told him. Do it for us.
"Thank you, Mom..."
"Just let us know when you're doing it and have someone call us for you once it's done," she says quickly, and he can hear that her voice is on the verge of breaking.
"I will," Bob says. "I promise."
When his mother hangs up Bob gets off his couch and goes rummaging in the boxes he hasn't bothered to unpack since he moved in. They're labeled in an idiosyncratic manner that made little sense to Bob--Mikey had been in charge of categorizing the boxes when they helped him move and that was probably the second biggest mistake Bob's ever made in regards to this apartment, after actually buying it. When he finds what he's looking for, a zippered folder containing all kinds of things he'd collected over the last two years, small things that would've gotten lost or thrown out otherwise, he sits down on the floor and starts going through the items.
Some of Gerard's Paramour sketches and writings are there, one of them with the first few lines of 'The Sharpest Lives' in smudged ink, because Gerard had his notebook in his pocket during one of his floating reveries in the swimming pool. There were scraps of hotel stationery with chords written on them, Ray's methodically neat handwriting contrasting with the crude drawings of male genitalia Frank had added to the edges. There's a drawing of someone who looks suspiciously like one of Gerard's Umbrella Academy characters, and a cigarette-burnt Polaroid of Frank shoving some of his engagement cake into Ray's mouth.
Everything floods him then, the way Frank looked on his wedding day, squinting in the sunlight on an uncharacteristically sunny day as he prepared to read his vows.
The way Mikey stepped out on stage to retake his place, the first few bars of 'I'm Not Okay' drowned by the screams of the crowd.
The way Gerard held his pencil as he drew on his sketchpad, sloppily bitten fingernails smeared with graphite.
The way Ray spoke in halting Spanish to a group of fans outside the venue in Mexico, hands thrown about in wild gestures to illustrate his point.
The way all four of them loomed over Bob's hospital bed when Bob opened his eyes after the scare with the blood infection, Frank muttering something about what a stupid motherfucker Bob was while Gerard and Mikey wore matching expressions of wide-eyed concern. Ray just smiled knowingly and squeezed Bob's hand hard, a gesture Bob instantly understood as 'Do this again and I'll fucking kill you.'
The last item Bob finds in the folder is his most treasured keepsake--a pencil sketch of Daisy that Gerard had done not long after she arrived at the Paramour's doorstep. He'd drawn her just the way she was, with no embellishment, her every imperfection lovingly captured and preserved. Bob had woken up one morning with that sketch waiting for him under his bedroom door, Gerard having evidently slipped it through during the night.
He wants to get it framed, save it from any further decay and put it somewhere he can alway see it. But it can wait, because Bob has more important things in his mind.
He has to go home.
---
When Bob walks up Ray's driveway, the lights are on inside the house and he can hear the faint sound of an electric guitar being strummed in a loose, relaxed melody. His feet are shaky on the pavement and he makes his way to the door hastily, sending the text he's saved in a draft since hours go.
I'm back. Open the door.
Ray usually puts his phone on silent when he's jamming, but he always places it where he can see it vibrate or light up with an incoming message or call. True enough, it's not long before the sound of guitar stops and Bob can hear muffled footsteps from the other side of the door, the locks being undone quickly. About two seconds later he gets an eyeful of Ray, in his old Metallica t-shirt and mercifully loose jeans for a change, and he seems just as surprised as Bob is nervous.
"Hey..." Bob offers weakly.
Ray responds by pulling him inside and shutting the door behind him. Bob barely has a chance to say anything before Ray grabs him in a tight hug, nearly crushing the air right out of his lungs.
"Where the fuck have you been? Nobody's been able to reach you for days! I'm just about ready to drive there and check on you myself."
"I'm gonna do it, Ray..." Bob says before he can stop himself. "The surgery, I mean. I'm gonna do it."
"Yeah, well I was gonna hold you at gunpoint until you caved in anyway, but thanks for saving me the trouble.," Ray says as he pulls back, his one hand reaching up and pulling Bob's beanie off. "You look ridiculous. It's fucking summer already,"
"Old habits," Bob says as he shrugs out of his hoodie. He gets the sleeves stuck on his braces and Ray helps him, then pulls him further into the house. "Ray, I..."
"Beer," Ray says as he deposits Bob on the couch and heads to the kitchen. "Makes the conversation flow."
Bob snorts, but happily sags into the familiar cushions. The TV is off and the last bit of daylight is just fading from the sky visible through the door opening up to the backyard. Ray's added a few potted plants since Bob was last in the house but the overall it's the same space. The door to the practice room is open, and Bob can see one of Ray's Gibsons perched precariously on his chair. Daisy is still there also, and Bob quells the urge to go to her. She can wait. Ray returns with two bottles, pressing one of them into Bob's hand.
"Amstel?" Bob says curiously.
"I'm broadening my horizons." Ray says as he sits down beside Bob. "Drink,"
Bob does, relishing the cold wash on his tongue and feeling it starting to pool in his belly. "I have to tell you something."
"I figured as much," Ray says.
Bob closes his eyes. "I was in love with Frank," the words leave him in a rush, like a gust of wind, and he's almost afraid to open his eyes to see what Ray's face looks like.
"Huh," Ray replies, seemingly at a loss.
"I was...I didn't realize it at first," Bob continues. "And I'm not in love with him anymore, not since--well, I don't know exactly when but I don't feel that way about him anymore. It's not that I like him any less, it's just that he's--"
Changed. Married. Not the same. Someone else's husband.
Ray just looks at him, the look on his face unreadable.
"I wasn't fucking around with you," Bob says. "I don't know if you can believe that, but I wasn't--"
"Bob..." Ray says gently. "It's not like you came on to me with your ass in the air, asking for a pity fuck."
"Well..."
"Did it ever cross your mind how much I wanted it?" Ray sounds a little indignant. "That I would've taken whatever you were willing to give, for whatever reason?"
Bob nearly chokes on his beer. "I...I never knew-"
"Of course you didn't," Ray shakes his head mournfully. "We're still all-time champs at not letting each other know the whole truth, apparently."
"I wanted to tell you," Bob says, hating the plaintive note his voice has suddenly taken. "All those nights, I felt like such an asshole for not saying a damn word about it, and now that I've told you I feel like an even bigger asshole somehow. It's not even the stupid surgery that bothers me so much. I don't mind going under. I just...didn't want to know what'll be waiting for me when I wake up.
"Bob..."
"Remember all those things we said in interviews when we released the last one?" Bob says. "About how that fucking house dug into us, brought all the bad stuff out, tore us apart?"
Ray cocks his head to one side. "Yeah..."
"Sometimes I wonder if that's really true," Bob confesses. "Sure, it was probably the worst time of our lives and none of us would ever go back there again even if they paid us to, but..." he catches his breath, thinking of what he's going to say next. "I've never been surer, you know, never been surer about us as a band, as a fucking family, then when we were cooped up in there, tearing each other's throats out."
Ray seems to consider this statement for a while, circling his fingers along the rim of his bottle.
"I know...I know this is such an asshole thing to say, especially considering everything that happened there..."
Mikey's cold, dead eyes. The water. Gerard's waking nightmares and Frank's tantrums, the heavy rooms, the footsteps in the hallway, the grave by the hill..
"...but we had something there, and when Mikey came back we were whole again, and everything fell into place, and now we're living our lives and being happy and shit and I can't find a single fucking thing wrong with that and I'm so sick of myself feeling this way."
"You're afraid..." Ray says. "You're afraid that not having our backs against the wall means that whatever we make next won't be as good?"
Bob exhales, a sharp relief flooding his chest. "Yes," he says. "I don't want another Black Parade, you know? That'd be pretty fucking stupid. But I want something better. I want it as big and loud and fucking dangerous as we can make it,"
I want to be in love with you. I want it so fucking bad I can't even breathe thinking about it, because you deserve a lot more than anything I've been giving.
He feels Ray's hands on his cheeks, lifting his face up, and Ray's own face is inches away from him, smiling knowingly. "It'll happen. We'll make it happen."
Bob lets himself be kissed, Ray's cold lips against his own, and he breathes easy for the first time in months. He can already feel it happening.
---
Gerard is wearing his sunglasses indoors again, sitting in the production office in Los Angeles with a sketchpad balanced on one knee and a lit cigarette between the fingers of his left hand. Ray is outside talking to James, while Mikey and Frank haven't arrived yet. There's a healthy reddish flush to Gerard's cheeks, even as his hair seems greasy as ever and he's wearing a torn denim jacket that's seen better days.
"Are you drawing for a new story?" Bob asks.
"Nothing in particular..." Gerard says. "I've got a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head but I haven't nailed anything down yet."
"Oh..."
"What about you, Bob Bryar?" Gerard looks up, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Don't you have a story to tell?"
"Depends..." Bob smiles back, leaning forward in his seat. "Do you have space for it in the next record?"
"Oh, we'll make space." Gerard says as he tips his cigarette onto an ashtray. "We'll make as much space as we need."
~FIN~
"The greatest challenge for the band was to make a great record without being miserable." - Gerard Way, Alternative Press, September 2009
Master Post
Art Post
Part One
Bob wakes up from the sharp pain flaring up in his right wrist, his pulse throbbing against the tight confines of the braces. He curses silently, not wanting to wake Ray, and fights hard to control his breathing. These things were at their worst at night, and often the only remedy is to go back to sleep and hope they're gone when he wakes up. He's staring at the wall with his back to Ray, trying desperately to focus on something that'll let him ignore how much it hurts. The right wrist hasn't been giving him much trouble lately, but apparently it's playing catchup with a vengeance. Bob hasn't even played the drums in weeks, what the hell, and he has to bite his pillow to stop himself groaning when it happens again, and he must have made a lot more movement than he thought because he can hear Ray stirring beside him, the sheets rustling under their bodies.
"Bob?" he hears Ray's voice, scratchy from sleep. "You okay?"
Bob's still trying to breath normally when he feels Ray press up behind him, hair falling against Bob's shoulder. He seems to notice the way Bob's holding his right arm stiffly away from his body and immediately knows what's going on. "Where'd you left your meds?"
"Kitchen table," Bob chokes out painfully.
Ray's out of the bed in an instant, the noise of him padding around barefoot and groping for a light switch providing a welcome distraction as Bob lay there breathing laboriously through his mouth. When Ray comes back he helps Bob to prop himself up, letting Bob lean back against his chest while he slips the pills into Bob's left hand. Bob takes a deep breath before popping them into his mouth, and Ray holds the glass of water for him while drinks it down, his other hand rubbing soothing circles into Bob's shoulders. When Bob's done Ray lets him stay like that for a little while, waiting for the medication to take effect. Bob lets his right arm fall limp at his side and places the left one on Ray's knee, squeezing intermittently in silent gratitude.
"Take it easy," Ray says, kissing the shell of Bob's ear. "Just relax..."
Bob nods, the edges of his eyesight starting to blur with the strong sedatives.
Ray holds him, keeps him in place, tapping the rhythms of one of Gerard's unfinished songs against his chest. Bob falls asleep to it the same way Frank had at the Paramour, to a lullaby of unfulfilled promises. There are no ghosts in this house, just Bob and Ray, and he dreads waking up in the morning and feeling that it's never going to be enough.
---
Bob always knew Frank had a lot of pent-up shit in him, stuff he poured out into angry streams of words that would never find its way to a My Chemical Romance relase.
At the Paramour he vacillated between being lethargic with Gerard and Mikey's continued absence (one gone, the other shut off from the rest of them) and pacing about like a wounded animal, lashing out at the slightest agitation. Ray was wise enough to keep way from Frank at times like these but Bob wasn't, his back covered with the half-moon indents of Frank's fingernails and his bones sore from when Frank rode him without mercy, fucking himself stupid on Bob's cock with a fury he didn't have anyone else to fling at. Bob did all of it willingly, giving back just as hard when Frank asked for it, but he knew he could only take the edge of Frank's frustrations, that Frank needed more.
When Gerard emerged from his self-imposed exile, three weeks and a lifetime after Mikey left them, he had scraps of paper filled with the most painful things Bob had ever read, hastily scribbled lyrics and drawings of an otherworld populated by figures that hung in limbo, hollow-eyed and somber. "They're dead," Gerard said. "They're all dead."
Frank hovered close to Gerard, helping him arrange the sheets of paper on the floor, while Ray picked up his acoustic guitar. "Tell us..." Ray said. "Tell us, Gee."
And Gerard told them.
---
Ray finds Bob out on the backyard patio, sitting on Ray's kitschy rattan chair and smoking his way through a whole pack of Marlboros. Bob knows there are certain areas of the house where it's totally okay to smoke, but he's back on his pack-a-day habit and he doesn't want to stink up the whole house with tobacco. He's staring out into Ray's mostly barren backyard, landscaping being nowhere near the top of Ray's list of priorities right now. There was talk of installing some kind of pond and artificial stream, which struck Bob as kind of New Age-y, but in the backyard's current state he might as well get a rake and start drawing circles in all that sand, and maybe find Zen or some shit.
"Schechter called..." Ray says. "Same question,"
Bob curls his free hand into a fist, loosens it again. "Same answer,"
"Oh, Jesus Christ..." Ray says. "Bob, you need this surgery. You know that, we all know that. If I could, I'd be strapping you down in a gurney and wheeling you into operating room myself."
"Kinky," Bob retorts.
"Don't be a smartass," Ray snaps back. "Look, we both know you're not afraid of going under the knife. You've been through worse. Fuck, I've seen you play through fire and almost die because of it, for God's sake!"
Bob exhales, letting out a weak plume of white smoke. "What did you tell him?"
"That you're being a stubborn asshole, as usual." Ray says. "He's not buying the whole 'I need time to think about it' bullshit anymore than I am, Bob. You don't have time, for starters. You've seen our schedule, you know how it works."
"I still have two weeks to make up my mind," Bob contends.
"Yeah, you're smart enough to figure that out, aren't you?" Ray snaps. "So you're just gonna put it off until the last minute? Even knowing that the recovery time is just as estimate? That you might need longer?"
"Ray..."
"Don't--" Ray sounds desperate, hurt. "Don't do this to us."
Bob lets his cigarette drop, stamps it out with his foot and stands up. He feels heavy, weighed down, and he can't even look in Ray's eyes as he brushes past him on the way inside the house.
"Where are you going?" Ray calls out after him.
"Daisy," Bob says, already halfway towards the practice room, his hands shaking as it rests on the doorknob.
He doesn't know whether or not he should feel disappointed when Ray doesn't follow him.
---
There was this one song, the song, that didn't even have a name yet.
It was brutal, raw, and it turned Bob's insides on fire and his neck freezing cold every time he played it even though it was still in a rough shape. It had been written in Mikey's absence, and Gerard's final draft of the lyrics left no doubt in anyone's mind as to who it was meant for. You could argue about its applicability to any number of people, both real and fictional, or about its place in the narrative they were piecing together, but in Bob's mind it was clear as day. It wasn't finished though, not without Mikey, and somehow they seemed to know among themselves that Mikey held the last piece of the puzzle. So when they were finally out of the Paramour and reunited with Mikey in a studio in New York, looking like a different person entirely with his glasses gone and his hair cut short, there was a tense air of expectation when they began working on that song.
The first time Mikey heard the rough cut was through the studio's large speakers, with Rob Cavallo looking on expectantly from the mixing desk. Mikey had clutched Gerard's hand until both their knuckles were white, which was scary for a moment because Bob thought maybe it was too much, too raw and unpolished, Gerard's voice streaked with pain and longing and near-bereavement. Gerard himself looked shaken by the force of it, his brother alive and in the flesh and perhaps showing more naked emotion than he'd had in the last few months. When the song ended, Gerard looked about ready to keel over from the tension, but Mikey took two deep breaths as if struggling to find his voice.
"Let me get my bass," he said finally. "I know what I have to do."
The song came together rather quickly, Ray occasionally mouthing the chord changes at Mikey because nobody had bothered to write it down for him, they couldn't even wait that long. The repeating patterns made it easy for Mikey to pick up, but towards the end of the song he held up his hand and they all stopped playing.
"I think we should do it differently from this point...actually, I thought maybe I could do it differently," he said.
"Go on," Ray said.
"You know the slow part, where it's just Gee singing? Right now the chord progression's the same as the chorus, right?"
Ray nodded, his expression intent.
"I was thinking of changing it on the second part, and keeping it like that from that point on..." Mikey said hesitantly. "I don't know, just an idea."
"Let's just play it, then--see if it works," Frank said.
Bob counted them off and they started at the part where it's just Gerard singing to Ray's rhythmic strumming, and Bob thought he heard something different in Gerard's voice, a shakiness that had nothing to do with nerves or fatigue or lack of warmup. They hit the second part and Mikey played the new chord progression, hitting a lower sequence of notes, and Bob felt the hairs in the back of his neck stand on end. Gerard's voice struggled to sing the second I see you lying next to me, apparently feeling the same effect. Mikey's hands shook too but he played on, bringing them closer and closer to the moment where all the instruments were supposed to come crashing back in for the big finish.
"Keep going, Mikey..." Ray said over the building noise, Frank's fingers plucking out the melody he'd been toying around with, a series of defiant notes that worked perfectly with what Mikey was doing.
They hit the coda with Bob's sticks crashing onto his cymbals, and Mikey kept playing, repeating the sequence of notes, Gerard's voice finding strength as it bellowed I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone...
When the song ended, Gerard dropped his mic and went straight for his brother, tackling Mikey onto the floor. Mikey's bass was caught between them, feedback squealing out of the speakers as if in protest, but neither of the brothers seemed to care. They had their song. It was done. And they had Mikey. Bob stood up from his throne, his knees weak and his lips dry. He joined Ray and Frank where they stood just inches from where Gerard and Mikey were tangled on the floor, a heap of awkward limbs and weird hair, as they had been all their lives.
"Oh God, Mikey...." Gerard had his arms around Mikey's bony shoulders, tight tight tight, like he'd never let go again. "That was..that was fucking awesome!"
"Gee..." Mikey seemed at a loss for words, his hands splayed on Gerard's back. When he glanced up and saw the other three looking down at them, Bob realized for the first time just how much they looked like each other, Mikey and Gerard, the same big wide eyes, the same way their lips curled when they were fighting back tears. "Guys..." Mikey started, but his voice died halfway in his throat.
"We know, Mikeyway..." Ray said softly. "We know."
With that reassurance spoken, Mikey's face crumpled and he buried it into his brother's shaking shoulders.
---
If anyone's noticed Bob's increasing attachment to Daisy and found it a little strange or even unhealthy, they certainly didn't bother commenting on it.
The rest of his kit is packed up safely in a warehouse somewhere, ready to be re-assembled wherever the band chooses to make their next homebase, but Daisy goes where he goes. Bob's a light traveler, bringing only the change of clothes he needs and whatever toiletries he can grab off his sink, so the addition of Daisy to his luggage never made it a hassle. But it's not like there's a point in bringing a snare drum with you everywhere you go, not like a guitar or a sketchpad or a pair of lucky sticks, even. Daisy isn't there to serve a musical purpose in the traditional sense of the word, and Bob's never bothered to explain it to anyone who didn't already know. She's more like an emotional anchor, as fucked up as it sounds, something that keeps him grounded, keeps him just on the verge of sane.
Bob has her set up on her stand and he's sitting on one of Ray's chairs--the height isn't quite right but it's not like he's playing anything particularly complicated. He's simply beating out the same rhythm over and over again, the marching rhythm she's carried through the entire lifespan of The Black Parade. There's no piano to join in, no Gerard singing out 'when I was a young boy', no emaciated figures in hospital gowns, no desolate landscape with ash-grey snow. Just racks and racks of Ray's impressive guitar collection and the four paneled walls of the practice room, the dim lights from Ray's computer and a stack of classic rock vinyls in the corner, beside the languishing houseplant that's probably a few days overdue to be watered. Bob feels the same tightness in his chest growing, like the room is pressing in on him, but he has Daisy and the soothing monotone of his sticks hitting the snare, the resonance filling his ears.
He's well and truly lost now. It's almost a welcome feeling, after months of being half-tethered and not knowing which way to go.
Ray enters the room after Bob's been in there alone for roughly thirty minutes, quietly closing the door behind him. He looks tired, a little concerned, but he doesn't look as pissed as he did out in the backyard. Bob stops playing, resting his hands on his thighs.
"Talk to me..." Ray says. "I mean it, Bob. Talk to me."
"What do you want me to say?"
Ray leans against the wall near the door, arms folded in front of his chest. "Whatever you haven't told me," he says quietly.
Bob puts his sticks down, resting them across Daisy's mottled skin. "I never told you why I came here, did I? Why I didn't stay in Chicago before we hit the road."
"I wanted to ask," Ray says. "But you were too busy throwing up and passing out that first night and I kind of forgot in the morning."
Bob shakes his head. "You're always too nice."
"With you? Never." Ray pushes himself off the wall and pulls up a chair. "That doesn't mean you don't confuse me every now and then..."
"I didn't want to stay in Chicago," Bob says. "It's just...it stopped being home a long time ago, I just never stayed there long enough to notice." He can feel Ray's eyes on him, the sympathetic nod that signals him to continue. "I put all my stuff in the new apartment--everything that's worth keeping, you know, being sensible and all that shit. It's all paid for, it's in my name, but I can't even get a minute's sleep in my own bed."
"Did something happen?" Ray asks.
Bob looks up. "Don't tell the others."
Ray nods slowly. "I won't."
"I went back to Darien. Nothing special, just dinner at my parents' house. I ask how they're doing, Mom asks me to cut my hair, same old story," he waves a hand dismissively. "And then for some stupid fucking reason I asked them if I could go up and see my old room."
His chest tightens at the memory, the way his mother opened the door and told him I kept it clean for you and went back downstairs, leaving him there with his hands gripping white-knuckled at the doorknob.
"Was it bad?" Ray asks tentatively.
Bob's room was cleaner than he ever remembered it being, objects and possessions arranged in a way that he never would've allowed. The windowpanes he'd punched out in a fit of teenage anger had been replaced, textbooks from the high school he didn't even finish neatly lined up on a shelf over his desk, where there's an old picture of him in his marching band uniform, buttons gleaming in the sunlight and a startled look in his eyes.
The entire room felt like a museum diorama of altered history, thick with the air of things that didn't quite happen the way they were supposed to. It wasn't his room anymore, just a display of objects from his past that painted a false picture--but a false picture his parents could deal with.
It made him nauseous and angry, even though a part of him knew that his parents probably didn't realize what they'd done with the room, the same way they never realized that he'd long since outgrown the lie of their perfect little family.
He tells Ray all of this, breathing heavily by the time he's done. "I'm probably reading too much into it, but...I think they still wish I was something else. They'd never tell me that, of course, that's just not how the Bryar household rolls."
"Bob..."
"I didn't want to burst their bubble, you know? So I left. And then I got back to my empty apartment, got hammered on all that Jack, and then I looked around and I didn't even know who I was anymore...so I had to go somewhere I'll be reminded."
"So you came here," Ray finishes for him. "Jesus, Bob...you should've told me."
"It's not that I was afraid you wouldn't get it. I knew you would, it's just...I didn't even want to think about it for a while." Bob rubs the corners of his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. "I don't think they're disappointed, or anything. Just that I could be happier doing something else. That I'm still as fucked up and maladjusted as I was when I lived in that house."
"Do you think you could be happier doing something else?"
"Fuck, no." Bob shakes his head. "I should be happier doing this, though...and right now I just don't know."
Ray's lower lip twitches, formulating his next careful sentence. "When were you happiest with us?"
Bob doesn't answer, just breathes over the tight knot in his chest and picks up his sticks again. He stares down at the scratches on Daisy's skin, the dark stains on her wooden finish, thinks of the lost soldiers she sent on their way and never got the chance to welcome back.
---
Bob looked at himself in the mirror and could hardly believe the transformation. The makeup people had given them all the same pale, almost corpse-like look, accentuating the circles under their eyes and powdering almost all traces of color from their cheeks. The costume that had been designed for him consisted of a large-collared overcoat, with the cross of St. George embroidered into the left sleeve, the significance of which well and truly escaped him. The ensemble was predominantly black, with the golden shoulder epaulets and the stripes running across his chest being the only spots of color. They looked a little garish under the room lights but Gerard had said something about the photographs being "desaturated to hell and back again" so he assumed that they too, would turn out muted on the final product.
"You look like the lost little drummer boy of the Apocalypse," Frank said from the doorway.
Bob glanced over at him. "You look like a zebra's asscrack."
Frank laughed, glancing down at the black and white stripes encircling his arms. His jacket was close-cropped and for some reason he had a saber dangling from his waist. "I keep tripping over the damn thing,"
"You're only being photographed with it, not playing with it." Bob said.
Next to another mirror a production assistant was fussing with the gold buttons on Ray's jacket, while Gerard carefully pinned a cross-shaped medal to Mikey's right chest, the final touch of his costume.
"I feel like I just got a Purple Heart or something," Mikey says bemusedly. "Didn't I die in the other video?"
"Because Ray was a suck-ass medic?" Gerard grinned.
"Shut the fuck up," Ray said from where he stood.
Frank had moved up behind Bob, both of them staring at their reflections in the mirror. "You look good," Frank said earnestly, leaning his head against Bob's shoulder.
Bob took in Frank's heavily lined lids, the curl of dark hair just in front of his ears, and nodded. "You too, Frankie..."
---
"I think I should go back," Bob announces later that evening, when they're eating the pasta Ray made.
"To Chicago?"
"Yeah, just...you know, tell my parents about this whole surgery deal. See what they think about it."
Both Ray and Bob know that Bob has long stopped factoring his parents' opinions into the decisions he made for himself, but Ray seems disinclined to call him out on it and Bob is secretly glad. The tightness in his chest hasn't quite gone away, and he can barely look at Ray in the eyes any more. Whatever comfort anchored him to this place when he decided it was the best place to go when Chicago became too much for him last month, it has apparently run out.
Ray reaches over for his beer and takes a long gulp before helping himself to a second serving. "I'll tell Brian."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it...have you booked a flight? You're not thinking of driving there are you?"
"No, I'm not. And yeah, I've booked myself on a red-eye early next week."
"Okay,"
Bob wants to add I'm sorry, but there's a lump of unswallowed spaghetti in his mouth and he doesn't quite know what he's apologizing for, he only knows that it's there.
---
The last night at the Paramour, Bob and Frank fucked on the squeaky old leather sofa in the study, Frank riding Bob into a sweaty mess as his ass ground down on Bob's groin, taking more of Bob's dick into him. Bob held Frank loosely by the hips, content to let Frank dictate their pace, his eyes transfixed on the lines of ink weaving across Frank's skin and occasionally wandering up to meet his eyes, still dark and moody but with a glimmer of triumph now, like he was finally seeing the light at the end of the longest, darkest tunnel they'd ever dared to enter.
"Frankie..." Bob gasped out. "Frank, I..."
"I know," Frank said as he leaned down, a curtain of sweaty hair falling across Bob's face as he licked Bob's lips and kissed him. "I know."
---
His first night back in Chicago, Bob turns off his cellphone and disconnects the landline in his apartment, then sits alone on his stiff new couch with a bottle of Ketel One and all the lights turned off, staring at the blank grey wall in front of him. He's thinking about Gerard's proposed mural, tries to imagine it taking shape in front of him. Bob's not as visually intuitive as some of his bandmates, preferring to paint his landscapes with sounds, but in the silence of his apartment there's nothing to listen to, no levels to adjust and no feedback to reduce. He finds his fingers itching for the familiar knobs and sliders of a soundboard, twenty-four channels ripe with possibilities, something he knows better how to deal with, something tangible and measurable by frequency and wavelength.
He doesn't sleep that night, or the night after.
He calls his parents on the fourth day, the vodka gone and the ache in his wrists dulled into a low throbbing that travels up and down his arms.
"Is it dangerous?" his father asks.
"It's risky, but it's necessary," Bob says, repeating the words the doctor told him months ago. "The surgery I had last year was just a quick fix."
"Should we...is there anything you need from us? Paperwork or something?"
"The label will take care of everything," Bob says. "You don't need to do anything."
"Where will they do it?"
"New York, probably." Bob says, his tone even and neutral, honed by years of talking around hard truths. "I can recuperate in Jersey, they'll look after me."
"Hold on..." his father says. "Your mother wants to talk."
Bob holds his breath until he can hear his mother's voice saying, "Hello?"
"Hey, Mom."
"Why didn't you tell us about this before?"
"I'm sorry," Bob says. "It took us a while to realize how bad it's gotten, and I...I guess I didn't want to admit it at first."
"Robert, you need to start taking better care of yourself," she admonishes. "Is it true, what you told your father? That you might not be able to play again if you don't do this?"
"That's what they told me," Bob says. He can hear hear her heavy breathing at the other end of the line, the soft pause as she swallows with much difficulty.
"Then do it," she says, the firmness in her voice startling him. "Do it for us."
Bob's chest seizes up, realizing what she's just told him. Do it for us.
"Thank you, Mom..."
"Just let us know when you're doing it and have someone call us for you once it's done," she says quickly, and he can hear that her voice is on the verge of breaking.
"I will," Bob says. "I promise."
When his mother hangs up Bob gets off his couch and goes rummaging in the boxes he hasn't bothered to unpack since he moved in. They're labeled in an idiosyncratic manner that made little sense to Bob--Mikey had been in charge of categorizing the boxes when they helped him move and that was probably the second biggest mistake Bob's ever made in regards to this apartment, after actually buying it. When he finds what he's looking for, a zippered folder containing all kinds of things he'd collected over the last two years, small things that would've gotten lost or thrown out otherwise, he sits down on the floor and starts going through the items.
Some of Gerard's Paramour sketches and writings are there, one of them with the first few lines of 'The Sharpest Lives' in smudged ink, because Gerard had his notebook in his pocket during one of his floating reveries in the swimming pool. There were scraps of hotel stationery with chords written on them, Ray's methodically neat handwriting contrasting with the crude drawings of male genitalia Frank had added to the edges. There's a drawing of someone who looks suspiciously like one of Gerard's Umbrella Academy characters, and a cigarette-burnt Polaroid of Frank shoving some of his engagement cake into Ray's mouth.
Everything floods him then, the way Frank looked on his wedding day, squinting in the sunlight on an uncharacteristically sunny day as he prepared to read his vows.
The way Mikey stepped out on stage to retake his place, the first few bars of 'I'm Not Okay' drowned by the screams of the crowd.
The way Gerard held his pencil as he drew on his sketchpad, sloppily bitten fingernails smeared with graphite.
The way Ray spoke in halting Spanish to a group of fans outside the venue in Mexico, hands thrown about in wild gestures to illustrate his point.
The way all four of them loomed over Bob's hospital bed when Bob opened his eyes after the scare with the blood infection, Frank muttering something about what a stupid motherfucker Bob was while Gerard and Mikey wore matching expressions of wide-eyed concern. Ray just smiled knowingly and squeezed Bob's hand hard, a gesture Bob instantly understood as 'Do this again and I'll fucking kill you.'
The last item Bob finds in the folder is his most treasured keepsake--a pencil sketch of Daisy that Gerard had done not long after she arrived at the Paramour's doorstep. He'd drawn her just the way she was, with no embellishment, her every imperfection lovingly captured and preserved. Bob had woken up one morning with that sketch waiting for him under his bedroom door, Gerard having evidently slipped it through during the night.
He wants to get it framed, save it from any further decay and put it somewhere he can alway see it. But it can wait, because Bob has more important things in his mind.
He has to go home.
---
When Bob walks up Ray's driveway, the lights are on inside the house and he can hear the faint sound of an electric guitar being strummed in a loose, relaxed melody. His feet are shaky on the pavement and he makes his way to the door hastily, sending the text he's saved in a draft since hours go.
I'm back. Open the door.
Ray usually puts his phone on silent when he's jamming, but he always places it where he can see it vibrate or light up with an incoming message or call. True enough, it's not long before the sound of guitar stops and Bob can hear muffled footsteps from the other side of the door, the locks being undone quickly. About two seconds later he gets an eyeful of Ray, in his old Metallica t-shirt and mercifully loose jeans for a change, and he seems just as surprised as Bob is nervous.
"Hey..." Bob offers weakly.
Ray responds by pulling him inside and shutting the door behind him. Bob barely has a chance to say anything before Ray grabs him in a tight hug, nearly crushing the air right out of his lungs.
"Where the fuck have you been? Nobody's been able to reach you for days! I'm just about ready to drive there and check on you myself."
"I'm gonna do it, Ray..." Bob says before he can stop himself. "The surgery, I mean. I'm gonna do it."
"Yeah, well I was gonna hold you at gunpoint until you caved in anyway, but thanks for saving me the trouble.," Ray says as he pulls back, his one hand reaching up and pulling Bob's beanie off. "You look ridiculous. It's fucking summer already,"
"Old habits," Bob says as he shrugs out of his hoodie. He gets the sleeves stuck on his braces and Ray helps him, then pulls him further into the house. "Ray, I..."
"Beer," Ray says as he deposits Bob on the couch and heads to the kitchen. "Makes the conversation flow."
Bob snorts, but happily sags into the familiar cushions. The TV is off and the last bit of daylight is just fading from the sky visible through the door opening up to the backyard. Ray's added a few potted plants since Bob was last in the house but the overall it's the same space. The door to the practice room is open, and Bob can see one of Ray's Gibsons perched precariously on his chair. Daisy is still there also, and Bob quells the urge to go to her. She can wait. Ray returns with two bottles, pressing one of them into Bob's hand.
"Amstel?" Bob says curiously.
"I'm broadening my horizons." Ray says as he sits down beside Bob. "Drink,"
Bob does, relishing the cold wash on his tongue and feeling it starting to pool in his belly. "I have to tell you something."
"I figured as much," Ray says.
Bob closes his eyes. "I was in love with Frank," the words leave him in a rush, like a gust of wind, and he's almost afraid to open his eyes to see what Ray's face looks like.
"Huh," Ray replies, seemingly at a loss.
"I was...I didn't realize it at first," Bob continues. "And I'm not in love with him anymore, not since--well, I don't know exactly when but I don't feel that way about him anymore. It's not that I like him any less, it's just that he's--"
Changed. Married. Not the same. Someone else's husband.
Ray just looks at him, the look on his face unreadable.
"I wasn't fucking around with you," Bob says. "I don't know if you can believe that, but I wasn't--"
"Bob..." Ray says gently. "It's not like you came on to me with your ass in the air, asking for a pity fuck."
"Well..."
"Did it ever cross your mind how much I wanted it?" Ray sounds a little indignant. "That I would've taken whatever you were willing to give, for whatever reason?"
Bob nearly chokes on his beer. "I...I never knew-"
"Of course you didn't," Ray shakes his head mournfully. "We're still all-time champs at not letting each other know the whole truth, apparently."
"I wanted to tell you," Bob says, hating the plaintive note his voice has suddenly taken. "All those nights, I felt like such an asshole for not saying a damn word about it, and now that I've told you I feel like an even bigger asshole somehow. It's not even the stupid surgery that bothers me so much. I don't mind going under. I just...didn't want to know what'll be waiting for me when I wake up.
"Bob..."
"Remember all those things we said in interviews when we released the last one?" Bob says. "About how that fucking house dug into us, brought all the bad stuff out, tore us apart?"
Ray cocks his head to one side. "Yeah..."
"Sometimes I wonder if that's really true," Bob confesses. "Sure, it was probably the worst time of our lives and none of us would ever go back there again even if they paid us to, but..." he catches his breath, thinking of what he's going to say next. "I've never been surer, you know, never been surer about us as a band, as a fucking family, then when we were cooped up in there, tearing each other's throats out."
Ray seems to consider this statement for a while, circling his fingers along the rim of his bottle.
"I know...I know this is such an asshole thing to say, especially considering everything that happened there..."
Mikey's cold, dead eyes. The water. Gerard's waking nightmares and Frank's tantrums, the heavy rooms, the footsteps in the hallway, the grave by the hill..
"...but we had something there, and when Mikey came back we were whole again, and everything fell into place, and now we're living our lives and being happy and shit and I can't find a single fucking thing wrong with that and I'm so sick of myself feeling this way."
"You're afraid..." Ray says. "You're afraid that not having our backs against the wall means that whatever we make next won't be as good?"
Bob exhales, a sharp relief flooding his chest. "Yes," he says. "I don't want another Black Parade, you know? That'd be pretty fucking stupid. But I want something better. I want it as big and loud and fucking dangerous as we can make it,"
I want to be in love with you. I want it so fucking bad I can't even breathe thinking about it, because you deserve a lot more than anything I've been giving.
He feels Ray's hands on his cheeks, lifting his face up, and Ray's own face is inches away from him, smiling knowingly. "It'll happen. We'll make it happen."
Bob lets himself be kissed, Ray's cold lips against his own, and he breathes easy for the first time in months. He can already feel it happening.
---
Gerard is wearing his sunglasses indoors again, sitting in the production office in Los Angeles with a sketchpad balanced on one knee and a lit cigarette between the fingers of his left hand. Ray is outside talking to James, while Mikey and Frank haven't arrived yet. There's a healthy reddish flush to Gerard's cheeks, even as his hair seems greasy as ever and he's wearing a torn denim jacket that's seen better days.
"Are you drawing for a new story?" Bob asks.
"Nothing in particular..." Gerard says. "I've got a couple of ideas bouncing around in my head but I haven't nailed anything down yet."
"Oh..."
"What about you, Bob Bryar?" Gerard looks up, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Don't you have a story to tell?"
"Depends..." Bob smiles back, leaning forward in his seat. "Do you have space for it in the next record?"
"Oh, we'll make space." Gerard says as he tips his cigarette onto an ashtray. "We'll make as much space as we need."
~FIN~
"The greatest challenge for the band was to make a great record without being miserable." - Gerard Way, Alternative Press, September 2009