jae_w
in
popoffacork
Make The Call (Ray/Gerard)
Title: Make The Call
Recipient: pearl-o
Author: lovelypoet
Band: My Chemical Romance
Pairing: Ray/Gerard
Rating: PG
Summary: First steps.
The first band isn't even half way through their set, and Ray's already second guessing coming out for the night. He's got work in the morning and class all afternoon, and the thought of dragging his ass through the day with the weight of a hangover hovering over him is unappealing. He's just about to get up to leave, call it a night, when he sees Mikey wave and start to walk over in a hurry.
"My brother's starting a band with Otter," Mikey says. The words spill out fast and almost giddy as he sits down next to Ray in the booth, tapping his bottle against the neck of Ray's. Ray tries to remember how many drinks he's had so far because judging by what he thinks he just heard, it's clearly at least one too many.
"What? Are you high?"
"Yep." Mikey smiles and nods easily. “And drunk.”
"Okay." Ray says.
"But that's unrelated information. Immaterial. You could even say it's irrelevant. Because the important part is that first part I mentioned. He--Gee, Gerard--is starting a band, and he thinks you’d be fucking awesome in it." Mikey says it slower this time, emphatically, and it doesn't make any more sense to Ray the second time through. "You need to call him."
"You're brother. Gerard." Ray says, setting down his beer and blinking at Mikey. "The one who lives in the basement and barely talks to me anymore even when you can drag him into public? That brother Gerard?"
"I only have the one, and fuck you. He talks when he's got someone interesting to talk to. Maybe you just bore him." Mikey crosses his arms stiff over his chest and glares at Ray down the long line of his nose, his glasses perched at the tip. Ray resists the urge to push them back up. He's tried that before. Mikey hits pretty hard for somebody so skinny.
Ray tries to think about the last time he saw Gerard out. July, maybe August. It was definitely before... everything. And the last time Gerard said more than ten words in a row to him was at least six months ago. The week before Easter. They started out talking about Christianity’s creepy zombie thing and ended up groping on Gerard’s bed in the basement. As far as Ray knew, Mikey still didn’t know about that one. Hell, as far as he knew, Gerard didn’t even remember it. He was pretty drunk. They both were. Ray probably would have forgotten it, too, if he hadn’t been the one to wake up somewhere other than his own bed.
"So he won't talk to me because I'm boring, but he wants me to call him because he's starting a band and I’m awesome?" Ray lifts his bottle and takes a long swallow.
"Yup." Mikey sips from his drink. "I didn't think it was that complicated. Why do you keep repeating everything I say?"
"I just wanted to make sure. And what’s he going to do in this awesome band?"
"He sings," Mikey says, bumping against Ray's shoulder. "And he's really fucking good. And he can play the guitar a little bit, but he wants somebody who can really play. For real. That’s why he wants you to call him."
"You know I'm in a band already, right?" Ray asks.
"You're really not. That shit doesn’t count." Mikey shakes his head and pushes out of the booth, picking up his drink and wandering back toward the center of the crowd. "Call Gerard."
"Tell him to call me if he wants to talk to me so bad," Ray yells after him. Mikey just waves back over his shoulder, leaving Ray alone.
****
"You didn't call Gerard," Mikey says the next time he sees Ray. It's a week later and Ray's standing in the middle of the frozen food isle at Pathmark comparing the labels on generic non-dairy whipped topping for his mother. "Get the Lite. The Free tastes like shit."
"Jesus, Way." Ray breathes, shoving the green container back into the freezer. "Well, he didn't call me either."
"I told him you'd call him," Mikey says, his finger jabbing at the center of Ray's chest. "Why would he call you when I already told him you'd be calling? You're making me look like a liar, Toro."
"Are you going to keep sneaking up on me and yelling at me?" Ray's genuinely concerned about the possibility.
"Maybe." Mikey opens the freezer case and pulls out a half gallon of Moose Tracks. "It's just a fucking phone call, Ray. You want to tell him you’re not interested in the offer, tell him. But seriously, he's working on something fucking good. Don’t leave him hanging."
"And what about you? Are you in the band?" Ray asks.
“I’m busy. School. Internship at Eyeball. Raygun’s still going, sort of. Plus the ladies. You know, I’ve got lots of shit going on.” Mikey shrugs. "He hasn't asked me yet."
****
Three days after that, Ray wakes up at 2:45am to his phone bleating loud and shrill. It's stopped by the time he manages to grab it off the desk, but there's a message in his voice mail. Mikey's carefully measured words, "Call my brother, fucker. Not tonight. He's sleeeeping. Tomorrow afternoon. Or else I'll tell Gabe Saporta you’ve got herpes. He’ll tell everybody ‘n’ make sure you never get laid again, Toro. Make one phone call or spend a miserable life with just your hand for company. Your choice."
Ray falls back and buries his face in his pillow. It’s not that Mikey's a vindictive bastard, but for Gerard - he’d definitely be okay with destroying Ray’s hypothetical future sex life if he thought Ray had done something to hurt Gerard. Ray knows that much. He gets it, too. He has brothers.
****
"Mmph?"
"Gerard?" Ray cradles the phone against his shoulder. He's got an hour before practice. That's plenty of time to blow off Gerard and the whole thing, he figures.
"Hmm, yeah?" Gerard mutters. "Who's this? What time is it?"
"It's Ray. Toro. Mikey mentioned something about you wanting to talk to me about a band?"
"Shit, man. Ray. Yeah. Hi, how the fuck have you been? I feel like it’s been forever since we talked." Gerard says, suddenly alert, and Ray can hear paper rustling and crumpling over the line, the muffled thud of something falling. Ray hopes it wasn't Gerard. "You doing okay? Like, everything's good, you're family and everybody?"
"Good. Good. We're all good, Gerard. It's been busy. Working a lot. I’m trying to start saving so I can move out of my parents house once I’m done with school and have a real job."
Gerard hums something that Ray thinks is an attempt at understanding, and he can almost see Gerard's almost absent nod. The one that means he trying to pay attention but his boat’s drifted off on some other stream of consciousness.
"And I've got this band I've been playing with," Ray figures it's best to get it out there right now.
"Yeah? Fuck," Gerard sighs, breath crackling loud into Ray's ear. "I must be totally in the dark. Out of the loop. I thought Mikey told me you weren't playing guitar for anyone."
"I'm not," Ray says. "I wanted to try something new. I'm drumming."
"What? Oh come on, you're fucking with me." Gerard's laughing, loud and throaty and a lot harder than Ray thinks anything he's said deserves. "Seriously? But you’re…you. You’re Ray. You play guitar."
"I'm on my way to practice right now, actually. Everything's really starting to come together," Ray says when Gerard finally stops long enough for him to get a word in. And maybe he's lying a little bit or a lot. "So, what did you want to talk to me about?"
"It’s nothing…" Gerard trails off.
"Nothing?" Ray checks his watch. He was definitely right about an hour being plenty of time.
"Well. I mean, it's something. A big something, really. It’s just nothing I want to try to explain over the phone. Do you think we could meet up to talk, face to face?"
"Yeah. We can do that, I guess," Ray would rather not, if he's being honest.
"Great. Listen. I'm actually running late for work right now, and then I’ve got to get together with Otter for…not practice, really. Did I mention that in my message, that Otter’s already in the deal with me? Anyway, it’s not really practice yet because we don’t have much in the way of music, but we’ve just got some shit to deal with. Do you think I can call you and we can figure out when to get together? It's just kind of crazy here right now, and I don't want to set something up and then forget and leave you hanging and piss you off and make you ready to say no to me before you even hear what I'm talking about. So I can call you back, like, tonight?"
"You can call me," Ray says. "Whenever. If I don't answer, just leave a message."
"Will do, man. Shit, it was good to hear from you. Real good. I’ve missed you." Gerard says. "I'll see you soon.
"You too," Ray says, snapping his phone closed.
Later, Ray’s almost sorry he waited so long to call Gerard. There’s something about getting yelled at for three hours straight to “fucking catch up, Toro,” that makes Ray rethink this whole stupid experiment with percussion. And if Gerard’s got something - anything - that might be better than butching covers in Danny’s mother’s garage, Ray’s willing to listen to the pitch.
"You're off again, Ray," Danny yells over his shoulder, like Ray didn't already notice he'd slipped behind, his hands sloppy with sticks in a way they'd never been on a guitar. He tries to jump ahead, get with it. It just makes it worse, and he swears when he loses it entirely, his foot slipping off the pedal. He reaches out to silence his crash between his fingers.
“Sorry.” He sets his sticks down and shakes out his hands. “Can we just take five?”
Nobody argues, but Ray catches Danny rolling his eyes as he lifts his guitar strap over his head. Ray bites his tongue. He’s spent six months listening to Danny mangle parts that he could play drunk and hung upside down by his balls. The different between Ray and Danny, as far as Ray can tell, is that he knows he’s a shitty drummer and is trying to get better.
Ray ditches out the side door of the garage and digs his phone out of his pocket to check his messages. There are three.
The first one is three second long. From Mikey, “Hey, Toro. Gee told me you called. Thanks.”
And Ray was maybe expecting a little bit more in the way of gratitude from Mikey, like at least a promise not to go ahead and spread vicious rumors about the state of his junk regardless. But whatever. The second and third are both from Gerard. Really only one message, and Ray has to listen to them twice to parse out the actual message between tangents and digressions. He’s pretty sure he’s heard more from Gerard in the last twelve hours than all the rest of the years they’ve known each other combined. He’s not sure whether to be impressed or terrified.
He goes with terrified when he finally manages to decipher that the whole thing boils down to “can you come over to my house tomorrow?
Ray waits until after practice is done to call back and promise Gerard that he’ll be there.
****
Louie’s at the house when Ray gets home. He’s at the kitchen table eating a bowl full of Mom’s chili, the chili that Ray had been planning to have for dinner.
“Asshole,” he says, punching Louie between the shoulders.
“Raymond,” his mother says, only his first name though, so he knows he’s not really in trouble.
“He ate my dinner.” Ray says, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.
“Because I’m so known for letting my family starve that there’s no other food in the house?”
“There’s more chili I can have for dinner?” He asks, hopeful and trying to look at pathetic as possible.
“Are you going to honor us with your presence, then? No running off to see the next big thing?” She opens the freezer door and pulls out a plastic container and peels the top back, sliding it into the microwave.
“Not tonight. I’ve got a thing tomorrow.” Ray pulls a chair out from the table, spinning it around and settling down, swiping one of the thick slices of buttered Italian bread piled high on a napkin next to Louie. Before long the microwave is beeping, and Ray leaps at it, throwing the door open and hissing and yanking his hand back a split second after he grabs at the hot container.
“Moron,” Louie says, his spoon scraping the bottom of his bowl.
“Dickhead.” Ray mutters it low enough that he knows Mom won’t hear out in the living room. He gets the bowl back to the table cradled in a dish towel and digs in.
He heads upstairs finally after he’s finished eating and has kicked Louie’s ass at a couple rounds of Final Fantasy just for the fun of it. His guitar is buried at the back of his closet; it’s been there for a few months. He tunes and plays for as long as he can stand. His calluses gone and his fingers out of practice, he has to give up well before he wants to.
But he can still rip through Children of the Damned, or at least, he thinks, he can muddle through well enough for the first try.
****
Ray rings the bell three times before Mikey yanks the door open. He stands there shirtless, hair sticking straight up, blinking and bleary-eyed against the sun.
“Can Gerard come out and play?” Ray asks, hefting his guitar case up.
“Come on,” Mikey says. He leads Ray into the kitchen and stands at the top of the basement steps, shouts down. “Gee, Ray’s here!”
Mikey shuffles back up the stairs, leaving Ray standing there.
“Wow.” Ray says when Gerard emerges from the basement. “You look like shit.”
He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but there are dark circles under Gerard’s eyes, his hair is oily and matted, face patchy with stubble.
“Went out last night. You’re early.” Gerard frowns and checks the clock. “Or I’m late. Am I late?”
“Depends. You told me to be here at two. Did you mean to be wearing Hulk boxers when I got here?” Ray asks, glancing down.
Not particularly,” Gerard mutters. “I did have a plan. This wasn’t part of it.”
“You want to go back down and put some pants on and start this whole thing over?” Ray asks.
Gerard thinks about it for a second. Ray watches his fingers pluck nervously at the loose fabric at his thighs. He shakes his head. “Fuck it. Come on. Everything’s downstairs.”
The stairs creak under Ray’s feet, the bare bulb swinging over their head casting long shadows down against the concrete floor. It’s not something Ray noticed last time. “You ever think of letting anyone film a horror movie here?”
“I made one when we were kids.” Gerard says, kicking his way through a pile of laundry and through an open door. “We made it together, I mean. Me and Mikey. He taped over it with Steampipe Alley episodes after like a month. Sorry about the mess. The bed’s clean though. Elena left me fresh sheets yesterday. Sit.”
Ray picks his way across the floor, trying not to step on any of the piled clothes and papers, and sits cross-legged on the bed. He sets his guitar case down next to him and pops the latches.
“This is what you wanted, right?” Ray asks. “To talk to me about playing guitar for your band?”
“Don’t get ahead of me,” Gerard says as he bends down and grabs a pair of jeans off the floor, stepping awkwardly into them and tugging them up. He doesn’t bother with the fly. “I told you, I had a plan. I practiced this part. Or tried to.”
There’s a pile of papers on the edge of the desk, and Gerard picks them up and brings them with him toward the bed, but holds them close to his chest.
“What are these--“ Ray starts, reaching out for the papers, but Gerard holds his hand up and takes a deep breath.
“I’m just gonna say this, and please don’t interrupt or I’m going to get confused and start repeating myself and forgetting stuff. Ray, you’re one of the most amazing guitarists I’ve ever seen, and that shouldn’t be wasted, and it shouldn’t just be something that you set aside like it doesn’t matter. Because it does. It’s something important to you, vital. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired pretending that I’m happy with how thing are.. I’m so fucking tired of being unhappy and settling and just…stumbling through everything pretending that it’s all okay when I’m just doing whatever’s the most convenient thing because it’s convenient. It’s bullshit. It’s all been bullshit for so long, but it’s not too late to fix it. We can do something that’s real, something that actually has meaning. Are you happy? I mean, really happy. Does it feel like what you’re doing right now is what you’re supposed to be doing?”
Gerard pauses, long enough that Ray figures out he’s supposed to be answering.
“How the fuck should I know?” he says, and Gerard’s in motion at that, pacing back and forth. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life. What, do you?”
“Yeah, I think I do. And I think if you were doing what you wanted, if you were where you were supposed to be, you’d know. You’d feel it. Like puzzle pieces. How you can feel them lock together when they’re right even if you don’t have the whole picture and the parts you can see don’t make any sense yet. I feel like I’ve been trying to force myself into the wrong fucking puzzle, but I think I’ve got it right now. And I think - I think it’ll probably work okay even if you say no. I’ll find a way to make it work. But it won’t be as right without someone like you. It won’t be as good. I don’t want it to just be about a band, flash and noise and whatever. It’s got to be more than that. It’s got to be substance. We’ve got to back it up with something real. Like I said, it’s gotta be vital. And I want it to be you in it with me. If you want.”
Gerard holds the pages out then, and Ray takes them. Turns them slowly, one at a time. Half of them are pictures, the thick black and red markered lines of blood and bodies and, but the rest are words scrawled in Gerard’s handwriting, messy and half finished. Ray picks one that looks finished, or close enough.
“How does this go?” Ray asks, lifting his guitar into his lap, the strings digging against the soft pads of his fingers.
“Fucked if I know,” Gerard laughs, settling on the bed, his knees brushing against Ray’s. “That’s why I called you.”
Ray doesn’t argue the point.
Recipient: pearl-o
Author: lovelypoet
Band: My Chemical Romance
Pairing: Ray/Gerard
Rating: PG
Summary: First steps.
The first band isn't even half way through their set, and Ray's already second guessing coming out for the night. He's got work in the morning and class all afternoon, and the thought of dragging his ass through the day with the weight of a hangover hovering over him is unappealing. He's just about to get up to leave, call it a night, when he sees Mikey wave and start to walk over in a hurry.
"My brother's starting a band with Otter," Mikey says. The words spill out fast and almost giddy as he sits down next to Ray in the booth, tapping his bottle against the neck of Ray's. Ray tries to remember how many drinks he's had so far because judging by what he thinks he just heard, it's clearly at least one too many.
"What? Are you high?"
"Yep." Mikey smiles and nods easily. “And drunk.”
"Okay." Ray says.
"But that's unrelated information. Immaterial. You could even say it's irrelevant. Because the important part is that first part I mentioned. He--Gee, Gerard--is starting a band, and he thinks you’d be fucking awesome in it." Mikey says it slower this time, emphatically, and it doesn't make any more sense to Ray the second time through. "You need to call him."
"You're brother. Gerard." Ray says, setting down his beer and blinking at Mikey. "The one who lives in the basement and barely talks to me anymore even when you can drag him into public? That brother Gerard?"
"I only have the one, and fuck you. He talks when he's got someone interesting to talk to. Maybe you just bore him." Mikey crosses his arms stiff over his chest and glares at Ray down the long line of his nose, his glasses perched at the tip. Ray resists the urge to push them back up. He's tried that before. Mikey hits pretty hard for somebody so skinny.
Ray tries to think about the last time he saw Gerard out. July, maybe August. It was definitely before... everything. And the last time Gerard said more than ten words in a row to him was at least six months ago. The week before Easter. They started out talking about Christianity’s creepy zombie thing and ended up groping on Gerard’s bed in the basement. As far as Ray knew, Mikey still didn’t know about that one. Hell, as far as he knew, Gerard didn’t even remember it. He was pretty drunk. They both were. Ray probably would have forgotten it, too, if he hadn’t been the one to wake up somewhere other than his own bed.
"So he won't talk to me because I'm boring, but he wants me to call him because he's starting a band and I’m awesome?" Ray lifts his bottle and takes a long swallow.
"Yup." Mikey sips from his drink. "I didn't think it was that complicated. Why do you keep repeating everything I say?"
"I just wanted to make sure. And what’s he going to do in this awesome band?"
"He sings," Mikey says, bumping against Ray's shoulder. "And he's really fucking good. And he can play the guitar a little bit, but he wants somebody who can really play. For real. That’s why he wants you to call him."
"You know I'm in a band already, right?" Ray asks.
"You're really not. That shit doesn’t count." Mikey shakes his head and pushes out of the booth, picking up his drink and wandering back toward the center of the crowd. "Call Gerard."
"Tell him to call me if he wants to talk to me so bad," Ray yells after him. Mikey just waves back over his shoulder, leaving Ray alone.
****
"You didn't call Gerard," Mikey says the next time he sees Ray. It's a week later and Ray's standing in the middle of the frozen food isle at Pathmark comparing the labels on generic non-dairy whipped topping for his mother. "Get the Lite. The Free tastes like shit."
"Jesus, Way." Ray breathes, shoving the green container back into the freezer. "Well, he didn't call me either."
"I told him you'd call him," Mikey says, his finger jabbing at the center of Ray's chest. "Why would he call you when I already told him you'd be calling? You're making me look like a liar, Toro."
"Are you going to keep sneaking up on me and yelling at me?" Ray's genuinely concerned about the possibility.
"Maybe." Mikey opens the freezer case and pulls out a half gallon of Moose Tracks. "It's just a fucking phone call, Ray. You want to tell him you’re not interested in the offer, tell him. But seriously, he's working on something fucking good. Don’t leave him hanging."
"And what about you? Are you in the band?" Ray asks.
“I’m busy. School. Internship at Eyeball. Raygun’s still going, sort of. Plus the ladies. You know, I’ve got lots of shit going on.” Mikey shrugs. "He hasn't asked me yet."
****
Three days after that, Ray wakes up at 2:45am to his phone bleating loud and shrill. It's stopped by the time he manages to grab it off the desk, but there's a message in his voice mail. Mikey's carefully measured words, "Call my brother, fucker. Not tonight. He's sleeeeping. Tomorrow afternoon. Or else I'll tell Gabe Saporta you’ve got herpes. He’ll tell everybody ‘n’ make sure you never get laid again, Toro. Make one phone call or spend a miserable life with just your hand for company. Your choice."
Ray falls back and buries his face in his pillow. It’s not that Mikey's a vindictive bastard, but for Gerard - he’d definitely be okay with destroying Ray’s hypothetical future sex life if he thought Ray had done something to hurt Gerard. Ray knows that much. He gets it, too. He has brothers.
****
"Mmph?"
"Gerard?" Ray cradles the phone against his shoulder. He's got an hour before practice. That's plenty of time to blow off Gerard and the whole thing, he figures.
"Hmm, yeah?" Gerard mutters. "Who's this? What time is it?"
"It's Ray. Toro. Mikey mentioned something about you wanting to talk to me about a band?"
"Shit, man. Ray. Yeah. Hi, how the fuck have you been? I feel like it’s been forever since we talked." Gerard says, suddenly alert, and Ray can hear paper rustling and crumpling over the line, the muffled thud of something falling. Ray hopes it wasn't Gerard. "You doing okay? Like, everything's good, you're family and everybody?"
"Good. Good. We're all good, Gerard. It's been busy. Working a lot. I’m trying to start saving so I can move out of my parents house once I’m done with school and have a real job."
Gerard hums something that Ray thinks is an attempt at understanding, and he can almost see Gerard's almost absent nod. The one that means he trying to pay attention but his boat’s drifted off on some other stream of consciousness.
"And I've got this band I've been playing with," Ray figures it's best to get it out there right now.
"Yeah? Fuck," Gerard sighs, breath crackling loud into Ray's ear. "I must be totally in the dark. Out of the loop. I thought Mikey told me you weren't playing guitar for anyone."
"I'm not," Ray says. "I wanted to try something new. I'm drumming."
"What? Oh come on, you're fucking with me." Gerard's laughing, loud and throaty and a lot harder than Ray thinks anything he's said deserves. "Seriously? But you’re…you. You’re Ray. You play guitar."
"I'm on my way to practice right now, actually. Everything's really starting to come together," Ray says when Gerard finally stops long enough for him to get a word in. And maybe he's lying a little bit or a lot. "So, what did you want to talk to me about?"
"It’s nothing…" Gerard trails off.
"Nothing?" Ray checks his watch. He was definitely right about an hour being plenty of time.
"Well. I mean, it's something. A big something, really. It’s just nothing I want to try to explain over the phone. Do you think we could meet up to talk, face to face?"
"Yeah. We can do that, I guess," Ray would rather not, if he's being honest.
"Great. Listen. I'm actually running late for work right now, and then I’ve got to get together with Otter for…not practice, really. Did I mention that in my message, that Otter’s already in the deal with me? Anyway, it’s not really practice yet because we don’t have much in the way of music, but we’ve just got some shit to deal with. Do you think I can call you and we can figure out when to get together? It's just kind of crazy here right now, and I don't want to set something up and then forget and leave you hanging and piss you off and make you ready to say no to me before you even hear what I'm talking about. So I can call you back, like, tonight?"
"You can call me," Ray says. "Whenever. If I don't answer, just leave a message."
"Will do, man. Shit, it was good to hear from you. Real good. I’ve missed you." Gerard says. "I'll see you soon.
"You too," Ray says, snapping his phone closed.
Later, Ray’s almost sorry he waited so long to call Gerard. There’s something about getting yelled at for three hours straight to “fucking catch up, Toro,” that makes Ray rethink this whole stupid experiment with percussion. And if Gerard’s got something - anything - that might be better than butching covers in Danny’s mother’s garage, Ray’s willing to listen to the pitch.
"You're off again, Ray," Danny yells over his shoulder, like Ray didn't already notice he'd slipped behind, his hands sloppy with sticks in a way they'd never been on a guitar. He tries to jump ahead, get with it. It just makes it worse, and he swears when he loses it entirely, his foot slipping off the pedal. He reaches out to silence his crash between his fingers.
“Sorry.” He sets his sticks down and shakes out his hands. “Can we just take five?”
Nobody argues, but Ray catches Danny rolling his eyes as he lifts his guitar strap over his head. Ray bites his tongue. He’s spent six months listening to Danny mangle parts that he could play drunk and hung upside down by his balls. The different between Ray and Danny, as far as Ray can tell, is that he knows he’s a shitty drummer and is trying to get better.
Ray ditches out the side door of the garage and digs his phone out of his pocket to check his messages. There are three.
The first one is three second long. From Mikey, “Hey, Toro. Gee told me you called. Thanks.”
And Ray was maybe expecting a little bit more in the way of gratitude from Mikey, like at least a promise not to go ahead and spread vicious rumors about the state of his junk regardless. But whatever. The second and third are both from Gerard. Really only one message, and Ray has to listen to them twice to parse out the actual message between tangents and digressions. He’s pretty sure he’s heard more from Gerard in the last twelve hours than all the rest of the years they’ve known each other combined. He’s not sure whether to be impressed or terrified.
He goes with terrified when he finally manages to decipher that the whole thing boils down to “can you come over to my house tomorrow?
Ray waits until after practice is done to call back and promise Gerard that he’ll be there.
****
Louie’s at the house when Ray gets home. He’s at the kitchen table eating a bowl full of Mom’s chili, the chili that Ray had been planning to have for dinner.
“Asshole,” he says, punching Louie between the shoulders.
“Raymond,” his mother says, only his first name though, so he knows he’s not really in trouble.
“He ate my dinner.” Ray says, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek.
“Because I’m so known for letting my family starve that there’s no other food in the house?”
“There’s more chili I can have for dinner?” He asks, hopeful and trying to look at pathetic as possible.
“Are you going to honor us with your presence, then? No running off to see the next big thing?” She opens the freezer door and pulls out a plastic container and peels the top back, sliding it into the microwave.
“Not tonight. I’ve got a thing tomorrow.” Ray pulls a chair out from the table, spinning it around and settling down, swiping one of the thick slices of buttered Italian bread piled high on a napkin next to Louie. Before long the microwave is beeping, and Ray leaps at it, throwing the door open and hissing and yanking his hand back a split second after he grabs at the hot container.
“Moron,” Louie says, his spoon scraping the bottom of his bowl.
“Dickhead.” Ray mutters it low enough that he knows Mom won’t hear out in the living room. He gets the bowl back to the table cradled in a dish towel and digs in.
He heads upstairs finally after he’s finished eating and has kicked Louie’s ass at a couple rounds of Final Fantasy just for the fun of it. His guitar is buried at the back of his closet; it’s been there for a few months. He tunes and plays for as long as he can stand. His calluses gone and his fingers out of practice, he has to give up well before he wants to.
But he can still rip through Children of the Damned, or at least, he thinks, he can muddle through well enough for the first try.
****
Ray rings the bell three times before Mikey yanks the door open. He stands there shirtless, hair sticking straight up, blinking and bleary-eyed against the sun.
“Can Gerard come out and play?” Ray asks, hefting his guitar case up.
“Come on,” Mikey says. He leads Ray into the kitchen and stands at the top of the basement steps, shouts down. “Gee, Ray’s here!”
Mikey shuffles back up the stairs, leaving Ray standing there.
“Wow.” Ray says when Gerard emerges from the basement. “You look like shit.”
He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but there are dark circles under Gerard’s eyes, his hair is oily and matted, face patchy with stubble.
“Went out last night. You’re early.” Gerard frowns and checks the clock. “Or I’m late. Am I late?”
“Depends. You told me to be here at two. Did you mean to be wearing Hulk boxers when I got here?” Ray asks, glancing down.
Not particularly,” Gerard mutters. “I did have a plan. This wasn’t part of it.”
“You want to go back down and put some pants on and start this whole thing over?” Ray asks.
Gerard thinks about it for a second. Ray watches his fingers pluck nervously at the loose fabric at his thighs. He shakes his head. “Fuck it. Come on. Everything’s downstairs.”
The stairs creak under Ray’s feet, the bare bulb swinging over their head casting long shadows down against the concrete floor. It’s not something Ray noticed last time. “You ever think of letting anyone film a horror movie here?”
“I made one when we were kids.” Gerard says, kicking his way through a pile of laundry and through an open door. “We made it together, I mean. Me and Mikey. He taped over it with Steampipe Alley episodes after like a month. Sorry about the mess. The bed’s clean though. Elena left me fresh sheets yesterday. Sit.”
Ray picks his way across the floor, trying not to step on any of the piled clothes and papers, and sits cross-legged on the bed. He sets his guitar case down next to him and pops the latches.
“This is what you wanted, right?” Ray asks. “To talk to me about playing guitar for your band?”
“Don’t get ahead of me,” Gerard says as he bends down and grabs a pair of jeans off the floor, stepping awkwardly into them and tugging them up. He doesn’t bother with the fly. “I told you, I had a plan. I practiced this part. Or tried to.”
There’s a pile of papers on the edge of the desk, and Gerard picks them up and brings them with him toward the bed, but holds them close to his chest.
“What are these--“ Ray starts, reaching out for the papers, but Gerard holds his hand up and takes a deep breath.
“I’m just gonna say this, and please don’t interrupt or I’m going to get confused and start repeating myself and forgetting stuff. Ray, you’re one of the most amazing guitarists I’ve ever seen, and that shouldn’t be wasted, and it shouldn’t just be something that you set aside like it doesn’t matter. Because it does. It’s something important to you, vital. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired pretending that I’m happy with how thing are.. I’m so fucking tired of being unhappy and settling and just…stumbling through everything pretending that it’s all okay when I’m just doing whatever’s the most convenient thing because it’s convenient. It’s bullshit. It’s all been bullshit for so long, but it’s not too late to fix it. We can do something that’s real, something that actually has meaning. Are you happy? I mean, really happy. Does it feel like what you’re doing right now is what you’re supposed to be doing?”
Gerard pauses, long enough that Ray figures out he’s supposed to be answering.
“How the fuck should I know?” he says, and Gerard’s in motion at that, pacing back and forth. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life. What, do you?”
“Yeah, I think I do. And I think if you were doing what you wanted, if you were where you were supposed to be, you’d know. You’d feel it. Like puzzle pieces. How you can feel them lock together when they’re right even if you don’t have the whole picture and the parts you can see don’t make any sense yet. I feel like I’ve been trying to force myself into the wrong fucking puzzle, but I think I’ve got it right now. And I think - I think it’ll probably work okay even if you say no. I’ll find a way to make it work. But it won’t be as right without someone like you. It won’t be as good. I don’t want it to just be about a band, flash and noise and whatever. It’s got to be more than that. It’s got to be substance. We’ve got to back it up with something real. Like I said, it’s gotta be vital. And I want it to be you in it with me. If you want.”
Gerard holds the pages out then, and Ray takes them. Turns them slowly, one at a time. Half of them are pictures, the thick black and red markered lines of blood and bodies and, but the rest are words scrawled in Gerard’s handwriting, messy and half finished. Ray picks one that looks finished, or close enough.
“How does this go?” Ray asks, lifting his guitar into his lap, the strings digging against the soft pads of his fingers.
“Fucked if I know,” Gerard laughs, settling on the bed, his knees brushing against Ray’s. “That’s why I called you.”
Ray doesn’t argue the point.