[fic] we also write Willard Price incest slash, be glad this got finished first.

[apiphile]

Title: Bat-And-Forth
Authors: apiphile & minervasolo
Fandom: MCR RPS
Word Count: 4,294
Rating: PG
Pairing: None really.
Warnings: This fic has literally no point whatsoever.
Disclaimer: Who knows, maybe this did happen? I doubt it, thought.
Notes: I was bored and angry on the internet, Nat distracted me with commentfic tag. All hail Nat. Also this has not been any kind of beta'd.

There's not a single green thing to be seen in the ocean of concrete. A heat haze distorts the city of buses and vans until it's hard to distinguish each from the next. Metal is lethally hot, rubber is unpleasantly sticky, and water split on the asphalt disappears in seconds. It's too hot to move, but there's nowhere cool enough to stay still in.

Bob is staring at the back of Ray's head. There's sweat running from beneath his hair and down his back, but that's not the object of Bob's attention. He's busy trying to calculate the last time they saw a park. A window box. A limp bouquet.

There's a fucking leaf in Ray's hair, and it looks fresh.

It's quite likely he's hallucinating. It's a million billion degrees in the van, and it's been a long time since it was cool enough for him to sleep without feeling like he's suffocating under the weight of dehydration nightmares.

He reaches out to remove the leaf, stops, and lets his hand drop back onto the seat again. This is a mistake; the pleather is hot enough to singe exposed skin, and he hisses as he snatches his hand back into his lap.

The leaf still appears to be there. He's not used to such persistence from hallucinations - or seeing things at all when he's largely free of taurine - and he reaches up to take it out. Stops again.

"I think I'm seeing things."

"I think I want to stop seeing you flapping your hands around. It's too hot for moving," Frank mumbles from behind him.

"Ray has big hands," Mikey observes. Bob knows him well enough now to see where that came from, but he's not sure where it's going.

"For fanning," Gerard finishes on his brother's behalf. "What are you seeing?"

Bob just shakes his head. If the others can't see the flash of bright green in Ray's hair, then it's heat-induced and he doesn't have to share it. They have an agreement. No heat-induced problems sharing. Not since Frankie... Not since then. Even if that is a really unfortunate place to get prickly heat.

"I want to die," Frank moans for about the million billionth time so far today. He flops hard against his seat, shaking all the other seats in the van, and makes more pathetic, whiny-child noises about his discomfort for a few more minutes.

"Frank," Gerard says warningly, and Bob groans internally. Not another lecture about 'don't make casual reference to suicide like that', please, not again. Not so soon.

Ray says, "My hands aren't that big."

"You have giant hands," Mikey corrects. "Giant fanning hands for fanning."

Bob tries to settle back on the seat without making his t-shirt stick to the sweat that's covering his entire back. It is an especially futile task, but for a second it takes his heat-exhausted mind off the leaf.

Frankie is bare-chested, of course. His tattoos are shiny with sweat, high contrast and reflective like bad transfers. Bob picks at his t-shirt, pulling it away from his skin. He has to use both hands to keep it from his body, and it's loose enough that areas still settle and stick against his skin.

At least it's black. Mikey's sporting that slightly cringe-worthy see through look, his white shirt plastered to him beneath his leather waistcoat. Bob wonders why he even bothered with the shirt. He looks like a waiter.

"Take it off," Frankie says. His voice is so quiet Bob's not sure anyone else heard it. "Off. Off."

Now the others can hear it.

"Off! Off! Off!"

Gerard takes up the chant in a tone that suggests he's not listening to what he's saying.

Bob really hopes they're talking to Mikey, because while he may not have been part of this band long, he has been around them for long enough for them to know how he feels about his own naked body and the possibility of another living breathing human being ever seeing it.

"Bob," Frank says, and Bob cringes internally, his wobbling stomach lurching away from the sweaty curtains of t-shirt. Frank does not mean him. Frank is not allowed to mean him. Bob will ... wait until it is dark and slightly cooler and then strangle him. "Bob, tell him."

"I'm not taking it off," Mikey says in that possibly-sarcastic monotone he so enjoys using. "My nipples aren't as exhibitionist as yours."

Bob thinks his own nipples are possibly agoraphobic, but he doesn't mention it.

"Oh, is that what we're yelling about?" Gerard stops chanting off and looks embarrassed. "Sorry, Mikey."

Mikey rolls his eyes. "But if it was Bob or Ray, you were fine with it?"

Gerard sinks deeper into his seat, skin squeaking against the material of the sofa.

"I'll take my pants off," Frankie volunteers.

There's a resounding and unexpectedly harmonised "no" from the rest of the band.

In the distance there's the sound of techs shouting something to each other. There's a muted crash and inaudible cursing.

"Sounded like a snare drum," Frankie says. Little shit-stirrer.

"I bet Pete has no pants on."

Mikey sounds like he's still on the previous page, but as his eyes slide past Bob's, just in time to watch Gerard's flinch, Bob swears he catches a wink. Well, a twitch.

Mikey's eyebrows knit as he continues surveying the room. "The fuck? A leaf?"

Bob starts upright, which is also a mistake. "You can see it as well?"

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Frank frowns, running his hand around the waistband of his pants - Bob looks away hastily when he starts unbuttoning the fly despite all the warnings not to.

"Demonstrating that too much caffeine rots the brain," Ray says, batting Mikey's hand away as he, too, reaches for the errant and apparently wholly solid and real leaf in his hair. "Quit that. Leave my hair alone. Jesus, you're worse than Frank."

"I never even touch your hair," Frank says sulkily, his hand still in his pants - Bob jerks his head back to look at Ray's 'fro instead. The leaf is there, tempting and green and twisted up like a candy wrapper on the hot asphalt.

"Not the hair on my head, no," Ray says with a shudder. Bob shudders in sympathy. Who here hasn't awoken with a panicky jump to find Frank Iero combing their happy trail and giggling?

The leaf remains out of Mikey's grasp, and he falls back with an exasperated grunt. He waves long fingers at Bob.

"You saw it first, you get it."

"Saw what?" Ray twists to face Bob, the leaf disappearing out of sight. Apparently it moves into Gerard's field of vision.

"Leaf," Gerard says. His fingers twitch, and he holds a hand out. Bob passes him his sketchpad and pen without a word. It's either lyrics or art, and Bob knows better than to get in the way of Gee's creative genius.

"Leaf it alone," Frank crows.

Bob hastily swallows a laugh, unable to believe that Frank actually managed to get him with that one.

He covers by waving at Ray's hair and asking, "Want me to get it?"

"NO DON'T MOVE IT," Gee squawks, flapping his spare hand hastily in Ray's general direction as he uncaps his pen with his teeth. "Don't move it."

There is an exchange of raised eyebrows around the bus that is so marked it's surprising the subject of it doesn't look up.

"So, Mikey," Frank says in a contemplative voice. "You've been Gerard's brother your entire life, right?"

"... right."

Bob wonders if Frank genuinely thinks that there might have been a period when Mikey was not, in fact, Gerard's brother, and his horrible heat-addled brain dives down some side avenue about sex-changes and he starts wishing he didn't own a brain at all.

"Tell me something," Frank continues, draping sweaty naked arms down the front of the seat Bob's sitting on, resting his chin on the top, like a dog or a muppet.

"Shoot."

"Has he always been this weird?" Frank rolls his cheek onto the pleather, apparently unconcerned about the sorching heat. Bob shifts away until he's pressed against the bus wall and only the oppressive gloopy air saves him from swatting at the little pest until he gets out of Bob's personal space.

Mikey rolls his eyes. He is very, very good at rolling his eyes. "What do you think?"

"Guys," Ray asks uncomfortably, "is there actually something in my hair or are you trying to fuck with my head?"

"Fucking with your head, fucking your brains out, Toro," Frankie says.

"Fuck off, Frankie. It's too hot to even talk about sex." Ray flips him off.

Frank slides even closer to Bob, holding him hostage with two sweat-slick fingers to Bob's temple. A bead of someone's sweat rolls down Bob's face.

"I've not been Mikey's brother my entire life," Gerard says. "And yes, there's actually a leaf, and if you move I'll actually hurt you, okay?"

The rest of the band paying no attention to them, Frankie cocks his fingers and fires, but his lips only form the bang, silence. Bob feels it ghost across the side of his face, Frank's breath smelling faintly of cheap beer.

Mikey peers over his brother's shoulder. "Yeah, you shouldn't move," he confirms.

Bob remembers Ray; remembers the rest of the guys and the bus and the tour and the outside world, and the leaf.

"You want me to ask if Mikey's always been this weird?" Frankie asks Gerard.

"I want you to shut up. I'm concentrating."

"I'm not weird," Mikey protests. Without any kind of inflection or gesture which is, now Bob thinks about it, kind of weird in its own way although not as weird as Frank and Frank's propensity for pretend-shooting people and Frank's exhibitionist nipples and well,Frank.

"Weirdness is relative," Ray agrees, still looking spooked and a little uncomfortable, like he wants to take the leaf out of his hair even though Gee told him not to, just to see what everyone's been staring at. His hair is starting to go flat in the heat. "And you will never be the weirdest person in this band."

"That's kind of like saying you'll never be the most disgusting cockroach," Gerard says absently, still scribbling.

"Gee, did you just call me a roach?" Mikey asks, evidently insulted as he wipes sweat from his face and flicks it at his brother - aiming to miss.

"My baby shot me down," Frank sings, right by Bob's ear.

"Get the fuck out of my ear," Bob complains, shoving him away at last. "It's too hot."

"Why would I call you a roach?" Gerard sounds confused, making scratching motions over the paper with the very tip of his pen, huge sweeps. It is an unfortunate gesture in that it very efficiently redistributes Way-B.O. "You're my brother, that would mean I was a roach too."

Ray snorts. "Don't bring logic into this."

"It's too hot for logic," Frank agrees, slumping back off Bob's seat and onto his own with a disconsolate whumpf of body-on-springs. "It's too hot for everything. Including pants. Guys, I have to take my pants off now or I will never be able to have kids."

"Why are your hypothetical children worth more than ours?" Mikey asks.

"You can take your pants off too." Frankie frowns at Mikey, genuinely confused.

"But if you take yours off, we'll all be too traumatised to ever have sex again," Ray informs him. "You could always take a shower."

"You weren't here when Brian came around?" Bob asks. "There's a burst main, so everyone's on short water rations 'til we reach the next venue. It's not desperate, but..."

"But."

Three pairs of eyes slide round to the Ways. Gerard is too busy to notice what's going on, but Mikey's expression is too carefully schooled. He edges closer to his brother.

One pair of eyes slide away, unnoticed by Bob and Ray.

Bob is trying to work out a solution that doesn't involve locking the Ways in an airtight room - there are no airtight rooms on a bus, after all - when he hears the unmistable rasp of a zipper. He spins in his seat, but it's too late. Frankie's pants are down. Frankie's pants are off and flying across the seating area.

Mikey dives out of the way; Gerard, who is still too engrossed in his art-out to notice anything else, fails to move and gets hit in the face with Frank's very sweaty pants.

"THAT ISN'T FUNNY," he shouts, and drops them to one side before scooping up his pen and carrying on like nothing happened.

"You had better be wearing underpants," Mikey says. His eyes are squeezed shut and he's rubbing them for good measure, under the steam-blotted lenses of his glasses.

"Fuck no, my balls were sweaty enough."

Bob does not want to hear about Frank's balls. They have talked about this. The whole band has called a moratorium (and then Gerard had to explain what one was and sulked because no one else seems to have the vocabulary necessary for these conversations) on discussion about the state of anyone's balls until after the next show. Frank is breaking rank in order to express discomfort about the state of his balls.

"You say that like no one else has a sweaty crotch," Ray says disapprovingly. "Frankie, put your pants back on before you give Mikey a heart-attack."

At this Mikey stumbles to his feet and out of the seating area. A minute later there's a thump of opening window and an owas, presumably, Mikey rediscovers the annoying fact that the windows do not open far enough for him to hang his head out. There's a groan.

"I hate ..." Frank stops. "Where are we?"

"Alabama," Ray says distantly.

"I hate Alabama."

Frank stomps towards the bunk. Bob wonders why he's bothering; with the water ration surely the last thing to do is get more clothes sweaty. Not that laundry ever seems to occur to anyone but him around here anyway.

There's a squeak from Mikey and a louder, more worrying squeak from the hinges on the bus window as he tries to force more of himself out of it. Ray kicks Frank's abandoned pants, his toes catching under the belt and lifting them just high enough for Bob to see quite how sweaty they are inside.

"Maybe he won't come back," Ray says hopefully.

"Maybe he'll come back wearing your pants, or mine." Frank has helped Bob discover whole wells of cynicism he hadn't known he'd possessed before.

"But... why?" Ray is so tense his hair is quivering. Gerard tuts at him under his breath, stopping Ray from leaping for the bunks after Frank.

"Bigger. Airier."

"Stop saying things like that," Gerard scolds him. "He keeps moving."

"He might wear your pants." Ray turns to Gerard, wheedling.

"He won't. I'm wearing them."

It's impeccable logic of the kind that makes Ray and Bob edge away from their lead singer. As Bob slides back on the pleather his arm brushes against bare skin. Thigh, his mind helpfully supplies. Naked, hairy thigh.

Frank drops into Gerard's seat, laying his head on Gerard's shoulder.

"Are you naked?" Gerard asks without looking up.

"No."

"Are you wearing someone else's pants? Ray, don't move your head!"

Frank snickers. Bob manages to unlock his eyes from their focus point somewhere several miles away, and manages to drag them over Frank in a way that will allow him to whip them back should they encounter anything that will blind him for life. Frank's lounging on the seat, one knee up to rest his arm on, which means his makeshift hand towel kilt is saving Bob's eyes from precisely nothing. At least it's keeping his butt from the sofa, Bob thinks.

A flash of horror later he recognises the hand towel and the scribbly ink mark on the hem and sighs, because it's too hot to get properly mad about the imposition. "You fucker," he says, sliding down the seat and putting his hands over his face, sweat squelching from his palms, "I dry my face with that fucking towel."

"And now you can use your t-shirt like everyone else," Frank says happily, wriggling his bare toes.

"When I'm done with this you have to let me paint your toenails," Gerard says absently.

"Kay."

"My t-shirt?" Bob is appalled. The sweat and the discomfort and the feeling of being cloaked in clammy funeral robes or something were not enough to overcome his dislike of being naked in front of other people, but the thought that Frank's been using his clothing to dry his face and, in all probability, other delicate areas, that's almost enough to do it. He squirms.

"... don't think you're using mine," Frank informs him with finger-wagging hypocrisy, and there's a thump from the bunk area and another ow.

"Mikey?" Gerard is still scratching away with the nib of his pen. It sounds like it's running out of ink but he doesn't seem to mind. "You okay back there?"

"Ow," Mikey confirms, sounding more aggrieved than pained. "Ow, ow, ow."

"What happened?" Ray asks from the corner of his mouth, his arms quivering with the suppressed urge to get up and find out for himself.

"I got my legs tangled," Mikey calls, supplying Bob with instant mental images of gangling foals trying to stand for the first time. Mikey brings that mental image up a lot, which is kind of cute in a weird way; it's an improvement on the mental and indeed right-there-in-front-of-him images that Frank provides.

Frank scratches his balls.

"Tangled in what?" Gerard looks like he's winding down on whatever it is he's doing with that pen.

"... ew."

"Tangled in what?" Ray adds.

"Oh that's gross," Mikey says, in case they're not convinced.

Bob finds his eyes drawn inexorably to Frankie, who is clearly enjoying having a good, proper scratch of his scrotum. It might be the word "gross" that's leading to suspicion, it might just be the fact that his expression of utter bliss while he jiggles his nutsack is magnetic as much as it is alarming, but he can't help looking.

"What?" Frank says in a voice that is too innocent to be innocent. "What? Why are you looking at me? Why is everyone looking at me?"

Bob grabs Frank's ankle and yanks his leg straight. Frank's head falls into Gerard's lap and they both yelp, but Bob's towel settles across Frank's thighs and the disturbing view - and thoughts - are gone again. Ray's caught enough of this out of the corner of his eye to snicker, but Gerard's frowning at him.

"Keep your fucking balls to yourself," Bob growls. Frank sticks his tongue out and resettles himself in Gerard's lap. Gerard balances his sketchpad across Frank's forehead and keeps drawing.

There's a loud thump from the bunks, and Mikey swears.

"It's safe to come back now," Gerard calls to him.

"I'm stuck!" It's a wail that's more than part whine, but it has no effect on Mikey's doting older brother.

"Bob, can you-"

Bob's already making his way down the bus. His shirt finds new and interesting places to stick to him and his jeans chafe like he's done something to offend them. He's got no intention of following Frank's mini-kilted lead, but he does see the appeal now. Maybe something ankle-length and volumnous.

No, the heat is sending him mad.

Mikey has his head and shoulders jammed out the window but his arms are still inside, hands slapping uselessly against the wall of the bus. One leg hangs in the air, a pair of Frank's dirty underpants hanging from it like a coat rack. The other is twisted at an awkward angle, foot jammed between the mattress and base of the nearest bunk on the other side of the bus. Frank's, Bob thinks.

"I think I have porn stuck to my toes," Mikey says miserably. "Please don't tell me what it is."

"How do you know it's porn?"

"It's under a mattress," Mikey points out. "Get it off!"

Bob's first instinct is to reach under the mattress and disentangle Mikey from his predicament, because he's generally a nice guy, and Mikey is Gee's little brother, and kindness costs nothing, and --

And it's Frank's bunk and Frank's porn and after being subjected to so much of Frank's balls recently Bob's not sure he can face seeing what he jerks off to. It's not like he doesn't already know, Mr. Iero is hardly reticent about his proclivities, but Bob thinks he can live without further confirmation. For the rest of his natural life.

"Bobobob," Mikey says, twitching his free foot so the dirty underpants hanging off it dance and flap like a flag, "help me. Please. You are my only hope."

"I'm not touching Frank's porn." Bob says it with all the vehemence the heat will allow him to muster. He is not touching Frank's porn. If he can help it, he's not looking at Frank's porn or acknowledging that it exists. He has his own damn porn, everyone has their own damn porn, and he's going to move it in a minute to make sure no one gets their foot stuck to it.

"You're heartless, Bobert," Mikey says, jiggling underpants at him with an expression of marginal regret. "Come the revolution you will be first against the wall."

"As long as that wall's nowhere near Frankie's porn stash I don't care."

Mikey just looks mournfully at him.

Bob sighs and lifts the mattress; Mikey squirms his foot out from under it and removes his leg, pornographic sock and all, from the painful and sticky position it has been occupying.

"It's his porn," Bob points out, "make him take it off."

This seems to be the sensible solution. Mikey limp-hops back to the seating area. Bob takes a moment to massage the sweat out of his eyes and - since no one is looking - scratch his own balls, which have become unaccountably itchy and tight in the last hour or so. The heat is trauma-inducing. His insides feel like they're cooking. Alabama is wrong.

When he returns Mikey is standing on one leg, using Ray's shoulder as a crutch, and waving his foot at Frank. Frank is protesting his innocence as unconvincingly as ever, and Gerard is frowning at his own work to see if anything needs adding.

Bob catches Ray's eye.

"Save yourself," Ray says glumly. Bob is very tempted to turn and bolt back to the bunks.

"Does anyone," Gerard says, smudging something with his thumb, "want coffee?"

"Gee," Ray observes, "it's nine hundred degrees."

"TAKE IT OFF MY FOOT," Mikey demands.

"So? Coffee is an all-weather beverage," Gerard says, laying his sketchpad carefully out of the way of his brother's flailing, spindly leg and Frank's horrifying mostly-naked colouring-book self.

"I'm not touching your foot!" Frank says in deep and heartfelt disgust, "I will never be clean again."

"I'm just saying," Ray says gravely, "it's already too hot to breathe in here, drinking hot coffee might make your internal organs break down or something."

"How do you think I feel?" Mikey clings to Ray's shoulder and waves his besmirched foot in Frank's face, or as close as he can get to Frank's face, which is unfortunately but appopriately enough, his groin. "I have your porn on my foot!"

"If you make coffee the bus will get hotter. We do not want a hotter bus. Please, Gee, for the love of-"

"Next time you jerk off it's going to smell of my foot!"

"How about iced coffee?"

"I need to buy more porn."

"What's wrong with Red Bull?"

Bob thinks Ray was right and he should have taken the opportunity to run when he could. Even if the only place to run to is the back of the bus, where, if anything, it's even hotter. He begins a kind of stagger backwards, but his legs don't want to waste energy in this heat.

"Can I move now?" Ray's question cuts through Mikey and Frank's bickering.

"Hm? Oh, yeah," Gerard says.

Ray reaches up and snatches the porn from Mikey's foot, dropping it over Frank's head. Frank screeches, and Gerard utters half a squeak and folds forwards, shoving Frankie's head out of his lap and away from his now bruised balls. Mikey loses his balance without Ray to lean on and falls on top of Frank, grabbing for Bob as he goes. Bob has time to see Frank's flailing hand get a chunk of Ray's hair - and think 'this is going to end really badly' - before his knees decide standing upright was far too much like hard work anyway.

He isn't sure what happens next, but Ray is swearing like a sailor and there's a knee too close to Bob's crotch for comfort. There's a very distinct Wayfunk near his nose that can't be Mikey because he's shouting about Ray's shoulder in his stomach somewhere near Bob's leg. A cold sweep against his cheek is collateral damage as Gerard rescues his pen, and somebody underneath him makes a concerted effort to move. Bob is forced onto his side, his t-shirt rucked up to his sticky flesh grates on the cheap carpet. Gerard moves again, and Bob's neck is angled awkwardly towards the ceiling.

A vivid spot of green gets gradually larger in his vision, until one eye is covered by a network of bright veins. He really hopes Gerard doesn't demand he stop moving and pose for a portrait, because he's pretty certain the feeling of flesh-on-flesh near his stomach involves Frankie somehow.