Fic: Bleeds Like A Boy
The usual suspect takes the blame for this one, I’m afraid.
apiphile: Oh *MIKEY*. I do love his epic brotherlove. But I got half-way through the picspam and was hit with a plotbunny for an AU where Mikey's not biologically male but a transboy, and Gerard's REALLY TOUCHY about anyone mentioning it, and. Yeah. Fuck you, giving me ideas.
strangecreature: Dude. Dude. I would read the shit out of that. I would write the shit out of that.
*proceeds to write the shit out of that*
Title: Bleeds Like A Boy
Fandom: Bandom RPS (MCR)
Word Count: 8400
Rating: PG-14
Pairing: mentions of Mikey/Pete, mild Ray/Mikey... this isn’t really a ‘pairing’ story, I promise.
Disclaimer: This didn’t actually happen, kids. That’s why it’s fanfiction. All media clippings are entirely fictional as well.
Thanks to stratospherique for the speedy beta!
“I still think it’s a bad word,” Gerard announced, wide awake and way too cheerful. “It’s not jet-lag if you’re not actually flying, right? It doesn’t even involve a jet. There should be a totally different word when you’re driving across time zones. Van-lag. Wheel… weary.”
“You are too loud,” Frank said, clutching his coffee cup like a lifeline with his face pressed against the kitchen table. “I’m stuck in a fucking trailer with the loudest person in the universe and the sun’s not even up and you all smell and I hate my life.”
“Except you love it,” Bob reminded him from beside Gerard on the couch, his head half-buried in one of the lumpy pillows.
“Except I love it,” Frank agreed. He cracked an eyelid. “Is Mikey ever getting up or what?”
“MIIIKEY!” Gerard bellowed towards the back of the trailer. (Frank was right, Ray decided. Gerard really was the Loudest Person in the Universe.) “MIKEY, GET… oh, you’re up.”
Mikey flailed weakly at him from the doorway, phone in one hand and the other over his eyes. “Oh my god, why are you so loud?”
Frank snickered, his eyes still shut. “Aww, is widdle Mikey all hung-over?”
“Aww, is widdle Frankie going to have to bite me?” Mikey muttered, but flopped down next to Frank just the same, wilting against him. “That last round of shots was your idea.”
His hair was a fluffy mess and he wasn’t wearing his vest yet, small breasts showing through his thin pajama shirt. Ray tried not to look, then tried not to look like he was trying not to look, then gave it up for a lost cause and poured Mikey a mug of coffee instead, sliding it across the table to him. Mikey smiled blearily at him and Ray’s heart gave a little twist.
“We don’t mention shots ever again,” Frank groaned, “Unless you’re planning on putting one through my fucking head.”
“I warned you we’d have to be up this early,” Gerard said, pulling his feet up onto the couch and resting his coffee cup on his knees. “You were duly warned.”
“And I warned you your warnings never work,” Ray pointed out.
There was a beep and Mikey glanced at his phone. “Oh. Um. Since we’re talking about warnings… Incoming, guys.”
There was a perfunctory knock on the trailer door about a second later before it banged open. “You really shouldn’t leave that door unlocked,” Pete announced, climbing inside, “Anyone could get in. Whoa, you guys look rough! Hey, Mikey.”
“Hey, Pete,” Mikey said and smiled a different smile than that one he’d given Ray.
“Hey-hey,” Pete echoed, sitting down next to Ray without invitation and looking Mikey up and down. “Hey! You’re a girl today!” he said, before promptly making a face like he would’ve liked to swallow his own tongue. Gerard gave an inarticulate ‘mmphf!’ of protest with his mouth full of coffee.
“Mikey’s a guy every day,” Ray corrected firmly.
“Failtard,” Frank added under his breath.
Pete looked deeply abashed. “No, I totally know. I didn’t mean it like that…”
Mikey flapped his hand at him, somewhere between ‘it’s fine’ and ‘please stop talking now’, his face unreadable.
“Right. Just. I was up and I saw you guys were up and Joe knows this place in town and I thought I could… Can I maybe buy you breakfast, Mikey?”
Mikey shot Pete an appraising look over his glasses. Pete grinned his stupid manic hopeful-puppy grin.
“What the hell. Sure,” Mikey said. (Pete’s big stupid grin managed to get even bigger and stupider.)
“Since when do you even eat breakfast?” Frank asked.
“Since shut up, Frank,” Mikey said, and shoved himself to his feet. “Wait here, okay? I gotta get dressed.” He shot a quick ‘you got this under control?’ look at Bob, who gave him a sleepy thumbs-up in return. And that was kind of sad, because Ray liked being someone who could be counted on to keep the peace.
He just… He didn’t like it when Pete hung around, because despite having the best intentions in the world (according to Mikey, anyway), the dude just kept fucking it up. And things had been so good lately too. They had Bob’s awesome calming presence these days and they’d made it through the gauntlet of the media in one piece, and here came Pete bumbling in and making Ray relive all the greatest hits of his own fuck-up record.
“So,” said Pete to nobody in particular, after Mikey had disappeared into the back of the trailer. He eyed Mikey’s coffee longingly, noticed Ray watching him, and clearly thought better of it. “Lots of rain this summer, huh?”
Frank covered his head with his hands and groaned.
Ray had been running into Mikey at parties and shows casually for a couple of months before the night that Mikey walked right up to him and said “Hey. I think you’re pretty awesome.”
Bordering on tipsy, Ray had been messing around with a heartbreakingly neglected Gibson in the basement of some friend-of-a-friend’s house. He’d retreated to the relative quiet downstairs when the party in the kitchen took a turn for the messily destructive, and had been trying to harmonize something to go with the rhythmic thud of bass from upstairs when Mikey sat down in front of him, drink in hand.
“Thanks,” Ray said, startled. “Michaela, right?”
He already knew who he was talking to without having to ask. She was memorable; sharp pretty face under hair like a blond trainwreck and possibly the most amusingly awful pair of glasses that Ray had ever seen in his life.
“Just Mikey.”
“Ray,” said Ray, and stuck out his hand like a big dork.
“Nah, I remember you, dude,” Mikey said, but shook his hand anyway. “Seriously though. Fucking awesome.”
“You play at all?” Ray plucked at the strings idly, putting up a valiant fight against the old high school mindset creeping back in. (A girl! A girl is talking to me! Why is a girl talking to me?) The fact that Mikey was wearing a jacket over a hoodie over a baggy Motorhead shirt did make it easier.
Mikey waggled her hand in the universal so-so gesture. “Kinda-sorta. Not like you.” A flurry of raised voices by the pool table across the basement caught her attention and she looked over Ray’s shoulder with a grin, apparently forgetting that she’d been talking to Ray at all.
“I like your shirt,” Ray blurted.
Mikey’s attention drifted back to him. “Thanks. Stole it from my brother. So. Right. I don’t have your number yet.”
Ray’s thumb twanged against the E string. “You want it?”
Mikey raised an eyebrow. “Pretty much why I came over, yeah. Don’t worry. I’m not, like, whatever. You just seem cool. We should hang.”
And so assured (and maybe a little disappointed) that Mikey Way was not, like, whatever, Ray had given her his number. And that had been the start of that.
Ray opened his eyes and waited, holding his breath.
“You’re good,” Gerard pronounced. “Oh wow, this is going to be really… good. I’ve got… Here, I’ve got all these notes, if you want to look at them.” He cast around the attic before snatching a much-doodled-upon notebook off the top of a lamp and fervently flipping through it.
Mikey shot Ray a triumphant double thumbs-up from her perch on the edge of the antique sofa in the Way’s attic and Ray remembered to exhale.
“I can drum a little bit too, if you need,” he said.
“I’m the drummer,” said Matt firmly.
“You’ll be our guitar guy,” Mikey told Ray, messing with her bangs. “Obviously. Gerard’s our singer. I’ll do… something. I’ll play the fucking tambourine if you let me in. Do we need another guitar, Gee?”
She’d cut her hair even shorter since the last time that Ray had seen her and was currently slouched in a sleeveless Anthrax shirt, kicking her heel against the edge of the couch. Ray couldn’t stop watching. He was quickly coming to terms with the fact that he had kind of developed a big stupid teenage crush on Mikey Way over these last couple of months.
“Maybe. We definitely need a bass though,” Gerard said, eagerly shoving a mess of papers into Ray’s hands before looking distinctively self-conscious about his enthusiasm and rubbing his nose. “That’s all just rough stuff. Concepts and shit.”
“I could learn to play bass!” Mikey exclaimed.
“It’d be pretty cool to have a girl on bass,” Matt said.
“I could learn bass,” Mikey repeated insistently.
“He’s talking about you, bleach-brains,” Gerard said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh,” said Mikey, “I knew that.”
(In retrospect, Ray felt pretty fucking shitty for having laughed.)
The first album came together almost as fast as Mikey had fallen apart.
Gerard’s notebook of ideas was turning into something real, something powerful, something… with kind of a disproportionate amount of vampire metaphors, but whatever. Gerard had a vision and Ray trusted him to steer the band in the right direction.
But the closer they came to the release date, the more Gerard and Mikey were fighting. And for all Gerard’s assurances that this was pretty normal for them, it was still awkward to watch in close proximity.
Like everything else they did, the Ways fought weird. Gerard would talk and talk while Mikey picked at her nails and played with her hair and slipped in little muttered comments that would start Gerard yelling until Mikey just got up and walked out. Ray almost thought it would’ve been healthier if they could’ve just thrown down and got it out of their systems.
The frustrating part was that they were fighting over nothing. Over concepts, and what Mikey was going to wear for photo shoots, and… and make-up. Or like today, when Mikey had made some comment about maybe moving in with Frank when they came back from touring and Gerard had just lost it on her.
And of course Ray had to be sitting right there. He shot a furtive glance towards the studio door and toyed with his guitar, concentrating very hard on the muffled sounds of Matt taking another stab at laying down his drum tracks in the next room.
“What is with you?” Gerard exploded, yanking at his hair in frustration.
“What’s with you?” Mikey mumbled. She half-turned away from where Gerard was pacing, launching into what had to be the most intent shoe-tying process in history.
“I’m trying to look out for you. You’re always acting so fucking weird now and you’re… you’re being stupid. Michaela…”
“Don’t.”
“Jesus, you’re not even listening to me.”
“Nope,” Mikey agreed petulantly. “Because you’re worse than me. You’re always worse than me. If I’m being stupid…”
“It’s different for you,” Gerard insisted. (In his peripheral vision, Ray saw Mikey tense.)
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because fucking why? Why?”
“Because you’re a girl,” Gerard snapped. “Jesus, Mikey, get it through your head.”
Mikey made a noise, a rough exhalation like Gerard had punched her.
This moment literally cannot get any more awkward, Ray thought. Prematurely.
“Hey, Ray, I changed my mind. You want to go to Gabe’s party with me?” Mikey said with strained flippancy, getting to her feet. Her hands were shaking. Ray shot a panicked glance at Gerard.
Gerard made a violent gesture of dismissal. “Fucked if I care anymore,” he announced, and turned his back on them.
Ray slunk out of the studio after Mikey, feeling so miserable that he couldn’t even smile when Mikey realized she’d forgotten to slam the door and had to run back to do it.
“So,” said Ray, “Gabe’s?”
Ray wasn’t particularly close with Gabe Saporta, but Gabe and Mikey had a thing. Not exactly an ‘on again, off again’ thing. More of an ‘oh hey, we haven’t made out in a couple months, have we’ thing. Ray never quite knew what to make of it, just that it made him feel a little gross and prickly to watch.
“Why the hell not, right? I told him I wasn’t coming but we can ply him with booze if he says anything. Gabe’s… pliable.” Mikey shoved open the outside doors onto a parking lot to find it unexpectedly dark with torrential rain. Her shoulders slumped.
“Why the hell not?” she repeated under her breath, and marched out into it.
Ray hurried after her. “You want my jacket?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure? I don’t really need…”
“I wish everybody would stop trying to take care of me,” Mikey burst out.
Ray held up his hands in submission, falling silent. Mikey folded her arms and looked around helplessly, rain spattering her glasses as she visibly came to the same conclusion that Ray had come to a minute back. Neither of them had a car and they wouldn’t have a ride until Matt was done for the evening.
“Okay,” said Mikey. “We can bus it.”
Ray decided that a shrug was the safest course of action. Mikey raked her dripping bangs out of her eyes with grim determination and led the way.
By the time that they reached the bus stop at the end of the next block, Mikey’s hair was plastered to her head and her tee-shirt was sticking to her in a way that might’ve been sexy if she weren’t still radiating frustrated hurt. She sat down on the narrow mental bench with a squelch, gripping the edge with both hands and staring at the ground.
Ray stepped in under the awning, grateful to be out of the rain. Behind Mikey, a larger than life cover girl beamed down at them from amid an artistic riot of freshly shampooed curls, oblivious to the Hitler moustache and angry eyebrows somebody had gleefully added in black marker. YUM YUM HERPES, announced a purple-penned speech bubble.
Ray sat down next to Mikey, trying to ignore the irritating feeling of rain trickling down the back of his shirt from his hair. He bumped Mikey lightly with his shoulder.
After a moment, Mikey’s mouth twisted in a not-quite-smile and she bumped him back.
“Glasses?” Ray offered.
Mikey hesitated before taking them off and handing them over, letting Ray dry them on his shirt for her.
“You okay?” Ray asked.
Mikey shrugged, putting her glasses back on and blinking. “Not really, no.”
“Right.”
“Just… just…” Mikey broke off, making a valiant effort at wringing out her shirt. Her stomach was really pale. “Shit. You ever feel like you’re… wrong? Seriously wrong? Like something got screwed up when they made you?”
“Constantly,” Ray agreed solemnly.
“Toro,” Mikey snorted, and leaned against him. She smelled like hairspray and wet denim, which made sense. Ray considered putting his arm around her and rubbed her back instead.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “We’re all just freaking out because of recording. It’ll all be cool once this is wrapped.”
“I don’t know,” Mikey said quietly. “Maybe not this time.” Her teeth had started to chatter.
“Would you please just take my coat already?”
Mikey looked at him, the streetlight outside the bus stop reflecting on her glasses and masking her eyes. “Would you give it to Matt? Or Gerard?”
“What?”
“Would you give your jacket to Frank, if he was here?”
“Uh, yeah. Frank might actually die of pneumonia if he was out in this.” Ray unzipped his jacket and shrugged out of it, holding it out to Mikey and waiting for her to take it. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here,” he admitted quietly.
Mikey shook her head, her bangs dripping water down her cheeks. “Nothing. It’s not you, it’s me, et cetera, et cetera.” She pulled on his jacket and tucked her hands between her knees, not looking at him. “Nice coat. Warm.”
She sat without speaking for the next ten minutes, while Ray mentally composed and discarded a hundred friendly gambits to get her talking again. It seemed like a decade or two had passed by the time that a city bus finally hissed to a stop in front of them, sloshing water up over the curb. The door jerked open and Ray got to his feet, looking back when he realized that Mikey hadn’t actually moved.
“Downtown route?” the driver called down to him through the open door.
“Mikey?” Ray asked.
Mikey shook herself and stared at the bus like she’d never seen one before in her life.
“Going downtown?” the driver repeated. “Your girlfriend coming or what, bud?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Mikey said, with a note of quiet surprise. “I won’t. I don’t… I don’t have to.”
“There’s always the taxi,” the bus driver offered helpfully, and shut the door on them, pulling away. Ray danced away from the curb to avoid getting splashed, hurrying back to Mikey, who was scrolling through her phone.
“Mikey?”
“Sorry, sorry. I have to… I have to…” She fumbled the phone and nearly dropped it, swearing, then pressed it to her ear. “Come on, pick up, dude. Pick up pick up pick… oh. Hi. Um. It’s just me. Don’t hang up.”
Ray slowly took a seat next to her again, watching as Mikey gave a shaky chuckle and put her free hand over her eyes.
“I know. I just have to talk to you, okay?” Her voice was funny like she was holding back tears, or had already started to cry. Ray swallowed and looked away. “No, like in person, Gee, please. Yeah, now. No, we’re just at the bus stop... I am not, fuck off. It’s just cold out. ‘Kay. Bye.”
She hung up, took a deep breath, and then doubled over, her head against her knees and her hands at the back of her neck, still clutching her cell.
“Jesus, Mikey,” Ray exclaimed quietly, really starting to get scared now. “Will you talk to me?”
“I don’t even know what I’m going to say to Gerard yet,” she mumbled, sitting up into her usual slouch. “Sorry.”
The worst suddenly occurred to Ray, although he didn’t know how the hell it could’ve happened, since Mikey wasn’t, like… well, Ray didn’t think Mikey was… “Okay. You’re not, like, pregnant, right?”
Mikey yelped out a short laugh, clapping her hands over her mouth like she was startled by the sound, staring at him. “I’m really really not, dude.”
“That’s all I could think of,” Ray muttered, and felt himself blush. “Sorry.”
“Nothing like that. It’ll totally be fine. Probably not even a big deal.” Mikey was still shivering like she was freezing despite the jacket. “Jesus, sorry about this. If you still wanted to head out…”
“I was only going because of you anyway,” Ray said.
Mikey smiled at him sidelong. She held out her hand between them and Ray took it, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
It was only a few minutes before Gerard showed up, oversized black umbrella over his head and Mikey’s coat over his arm.
“Okay, the cavalry’s here,” Gerard said, stepping into the shelter and shaking out the umbrella. “Everybody breathe a sigh of relief.” His eyes darted briefly to their clasped hands, then to Ray. Ray gave a small shrug.
“Hey,” Mikey said, mustering a sheepish smile. “Shit, sorry for making you walk.”
Ray regretfully untangled his hand from Mikey’s, getting to his feet and offering Gerard his seat.
Gerard set down the stuff he was carrying and wrapped Mikey in a tight hug. “Sorry I yelled.”
Mikey buried her face against his shoulder, hanging on.
“I’ll just give you guys a minute or whatever,” Ray mumbled awkwardly, and went to loiter by the door, pretending like he was standing guard or doing something useful.
“So what the hell’s up?” Gerard asked quietly. Ray leaned against the wall, watching them out of the corner of his eye.
“Okay. Okay… don’t freak out.” Mikey’s voice was trembling badly enough that it was hard to understand her. “Remember when you came home for spring break and we drank that rye in your old room and I said all that stuff?”
“I was drunk,” Gerard protested, “You’ve got to give me more of a hint than… oh! Oh, okay, about gender and stuff. Sure, I remember.”
“Yeah,” Mikey sighed, “So. I kind of wasn’t joking.”
Silence.
Ray glanced over; he couldn’t help it. Mikey was looking at the ground again, visibly fighting back tears, and Gerard just looked… shell-shocked.
“So you’re…”
Mikey mouthed I don’t know, spreading her hands helplessly.
“That was years back,” Gerard breathed. “Jesus.”
“I thought it’d be easier if I just… stayed this way. Can’t anymore. I’m going out of my fucking head.” Mikey wiped at her cheeks with the sleeve of Ray’s jacket. “Are you totally freaked, Gee?”
Gerard shook his head immediately. “It’d take so much more that this to freak me out,” he said, but his smile was all wonky and wobbly. “No, it’s totally cool, we’re cool.”
“Cool,” echoed Mikey. They both giggled the slightly-hysterical giggle of the emotionally overwrought.
“Um, if I start crying in a minute, don’t take it the wrong way, okay?” Gerard added, and set them both off again. He pulled Mikey into another hug while she was still laughing. “Love you no matter what, all right?” Ray heard him whisper fiercely.
Ray shifted slightly, trying to be inconspicuous despite the fact that his left foot had kind of gone to sleep, and (as usual) patiently waited his turn to be allowed into the circle.
“I fucked up,” Gerard repeated. He took a long drink, wiped his mouth, and shook his head. “Oh man. I fucked this up so bad, Ray.”
“We couldn’t have known,” Ray said. He was pretty sure he’d said that same line about five times in the last half hour. He was probably going to keep saying it until both of them were finally drunk enough to believe it.
“I just wanted Mikey to be happy with who she is, you know? Fuck. Who he is. Motherfucking dumbfuck…” Gerard’s head hit the table with a resounding thunk that made Ray wince. “I’m the worst brother ever.”
“You’re not,” Ray protested. “There was nothing wrong with wanting h… Mikey to be happy. That’s what brothers do, right?”
Gerard managed to shake his head while keeping it on the table, his hair becoming sodden with recently spilled vodka. Ray made a futile effort to at least keep it out of the cigarettes butts and wound up petting Gerard’s head instead. It was easier focusing on Gerard right now.
“No, you don’t get it,” Gerard insisted miserably. “That wasn’t who Mikey was. I wanted her to, like, accept herself and I was trying to force her to change all along.”
There was a reflective pause.
“Him,” Gerard corrected belatedly, and gave a cracked sort of laugh. “Just punch me in the face the next time I do that and I’ll learn, okay?”
Ray slid his chair over and put his arms around Gerard’s slumped shoulders, resting his cheek on Gerard’s sticky-soggy hair. “We’ll learn,” he promised.
Interview excerpt (Scene Not Herd Magazine, February 2005)
SNH: Dedicated fans have noticed a change in the lyrics of one of your earlier songs lately.
Gerard: Which one? We change a lot of stuff in concert. You can get away with more live.
Ray: I think he means ‘Mirror’. [Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us]
SNH: Yes, that’s the one.
Frank: (laughs) You all owe me twenty bucks. I told you they’d call us on it. Fans have good ears. They pay attention.
SNH: In the album jacket, there’s a line which was originally printed as “You can’t touch my sister”.
Gerard: Yeah. We sing it as ‘brother’ live now. It felt right to make that change and it scans better anyway. We’re not going to get into any more than that here though.
SNH: It’s just an interesting change in relation to some recent publicity the band has been receiving [concerning the band’s transgendered bassist Michaela (Mikey) Way].
Bob: Time for a new topic.
Frank: Listen to the drummer-man. Next question, moving right along…
SNH: Do you feel as though you’ve lost a sister, Gerard?
Gerard: What? No. Fuck no. I’ve just always had a Mikey. That’s all.
“But you look the same,” Frank said, tilting his head sideways and squinting, visibly mystified. “Pretty much the exact same.”
Mikey smoothed his hands down his chest self-consciously, looking mildly crestfallen. “Really? I feel different. Or, like, I feel normal. That’s different.”
“Okay, guys…” Brian tried again.
“Well, you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” Frank pointed out. “Actually, I think you’ve been wearing the same clothes all week.”
“Nah, I borrowed that jacket on Tuesday,” Gerard said.
Frank rolled his eyes. “My point… also, your hair’s the exact same… My point is that you’re just, like, Mikey-without-boobs now. I kind of thought you’d really look different.”
Ray was glad to have Frank around for this. He was clearly curious, but the pronoun thing wasn’t as much of a… a paradigm shift as it was for Gerard and Matt. (And Ray.) Ray kind of got the impression that Frank had already been thinking about Mikey as one of the guys before all this happened anyway.
“Thought I’d draw on a moustache?” Mikey asked, smiling a little.
“I would have! Moustaches are badass. Oh, dude. Brian, would it be okay if I…”
“No, Frank,” Brian sighed. “Okay, so…”
“Is it weird that you liked guys?” Ray blurted, mentally kicking himself for bringing it up here and now at Brian’s emergency meeting, but unable to stop himself. “I mean, did you like guys?”
“I did. I do,” Mikey said quietly, and Ray thought maybe there was something significant in his expression when he looked him. “I don’t know if that’s weird.”
“I thought you liked unicorns,” Matt put in dryly.
“That’s because unicorns are the fucking shit,” Mikey said with feeling. “Look, I’m the exact same person. I’m just a guy who likes other guys and… and unicorns. Oh wow. I’m going to get beat up every single day.”
“Let anyone try,” Gerard muttered from around his cigarette. “I’ll rip their fucking kidneys out.”
Mikey beamed at him affectionately.
“Okay, actual business here for a minute, guys?” Brian said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Please? Give me ten minutes to figure out the PR on this and then Gerard can talk about maiming people all he wants. This is one kind of crisis I definitely haven’t done before.”
“It’s not really a crisis-crisis, is it?” Frank wondered out loud.
“Gerard is the crisis,” Matt commented, grinning.
“Your face is the crisis!”
“Your mom is…”
“Ten minutes of business,” Brian repeated, like he could summon it just by saying it beseechingly enough. “Interviews. The subject is going to come up.”
“I don’t see why it even has to,” Gerard protested.
Brian shook his head. “You don’t have a choice. People take an interest in the band, they get curious about you… They’ll start digging. It’ll take one old yearbook photo. One comment from a college buddy who knew Mikey from before. I want us ready to deal with that before we have to.”
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Matt added, “But I don’t want to be just the band with the tran…” He broke off and waved his hand vaguely in Mikey’s direction. (Mikey looked away and chewed his thumbnail.) “Shit, man, if that’s all we’re going to be known for? I don’t want that. Sorry, Mikey.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” Mikey said quietly, “Me neither.”
(The difference, Ray figured, was that Mikey didn’t really have a choice.)
By the time that they were finally able to wrap up the meeting, everyone was getting twitchy and Mikey was slumped in his chair, more expressionless than usual, looking as though he was only just now realizing the full extent of what he was in for. He remained seated as Gerard and Brian left with their heads bent together, still talking business, and as Matt headed out on his own, frowning in thought.
Frank went over to Mikey wearing a too-solemn expression, the usual portend of a serious hair-ruffling. “I still think this was a hell of a lot of effort just to get Gerard to be cool with us being roomies.”
Mikey snorted. “You’re still down with that?”
“You’re still the same person,” Frank reminded him, and slugged him in the arm. “Call me later, fucker. We need to hang and watch girls check you out.”
Ray loitered, messing around with Brian’s new mixing board until Frank had headed out too. He looked up to find Mikey watching him steadily. Ray’s stomach gave the usual skittish hop.
“I think Frank’s going to be seriously disappointed,” Mikey said.
“Bet you he’s not. You’re still really…” Ray hesitated on ‘pretty’ and pretended to focus on putting Brian’s settings back the way he’d found them. “You look good this way.”
“Apparently I look the exact same.”
“I guess you look good every way then,” Ray said, and smiled at him.
“Cool that you think so,” Mikey mumbled, and took a deep breath.
Ray abandoned the mixer and walked over to Mikey, crouching down in front of him. “You okay?”
“Not… maybe not right this very second, but yeah in general,” Mikey said.
Ray touched his knee, looking questioningly at him.
“It would’ve been awesome to be something, with you,” Mikey said quietly, “And I think you think so too, but I couldn’t be your girlfriend. Is the thing. It wouldn’t have been right that way.”
Ray swallowed, heart rate leaping into a higher tempo. “Oh.”
“That’s like an ‘oh, I get that’ oh?” Mikey asked hopefully.
“Um,” said Ray. (He was pretty sure it had actually been an ‘oh wow, I can’t believe you actually said that because I had no idea that this wasn’t an unrequited thing and, oh god, you waited until now to tell me?’ oh.)
Mikey was watching him nervously, biting his lip. “It really wasn’t, was it? Shit. Was it an ‘oh, I never actually wanted…”
Ray shuffled forward on his knees and stretched up to kiss Mikey on the mouth.
Her… his, his lips were hot and dry and Ray imagined that he could feel the heat go into him, everything suddenly burning like a full-body blush when Mikey kissed back immediately.
He ran his hands up Mikey’s thighs and Mikey made a quiet noise and flicked his tongue against Ray’s lip, and everything in Ray’s head was just a full ensemble chorus of finally, finally. He put his hands around Mikey’s hips and pulled him forward, pulled him in tight, and then Mikey’s hands were on his shoulders, fingers digging in hard before snaking up to tangle in his hair.
“Oh,” Mikey said breathlessly against Ray’s mouth.
Ray grinned and kissed him again, deep and hungry, learning the taste of her... fuck, of his, of Mikey’s tongue. His knees were a comforting pressure against Ray’s sides.
Mikey’s shirt had ridden up and Ray’s fingers found skin, soft and warm, and he stroked shaky lines over Mikey’s ribs with his thumbs, making him squirm. Unthinking, Ray slid his hands up the flat plane of Mikey’s stomach, fingertips colliding suddenly with bandages…
Ray flinched and pulled away.
Bandages, his fingers had said. Wound, injury, his brain had answered.
Fuck.
Mikey was watching him, only his eyes giving away the hurt. “No, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Ray whispered, choking on disappointment. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair. When he had kissed her… God, he was doing it again! That kept happening, his mind slipping back to something that he couldn’t have anymore.
“Sorry.” Mikey sat back, touching his mouth lightly with his knuckles.
“Don’t be,” Ray muttered past the lump in his throat. “Shit, don’t be sorry. I just want you to be happy. That’s the important part.”
Mikey gave a miserable laugh. “Thanks. Still working on that.”
Ray sighed, dropping his head to rest against Mikey’s knee and shutting his eyes.
After a moment, Mikey began to gently work his fingers through Ray’s hair.
When the shit finally hit the fan, they were in Reading. Ray figured that made sense. They’d never had much luck in Reading.
“SHOW US YER TITS!” yelled a drunken voice from the front of the crowd, horribly clear in the pause between songs. “TRANNY! SHOW US YER CUNT! KNOW YOU GOT ONE, BABY!”
Mikey placidly wandered back a few steps towards Matt’s drum kit, eyes shadowed under his hat.
“OI! OI, TRANNY!”
A bottle arced through the air and Mikey skittered to the side to avoid it. It smashed on the stage, spraying a foamy mess up onto the bass drum. The second and third were closer misses. Frank jumped up between Mikey and the edge of the stage, making a show of trying to catch the next couple bottles, getting a finger on one of them and sending it spinning off to the wings.
Ray glared daggers into the audience, trying to keep the shaking in his hands under control so they could at least keep playing and give the crowd something else to think about. He could already see the security guys elbowing through the crowd to find the shouter. They’d been briefed for this sort of thing.
“Time to grow up or get the fuck out, kids,” Gerard snapped into the mike. “Your call.”
Security got it under control fast and they were able to keep going, even if Gerard’s voice was a little wonky with real rage for the first couple of verses of the next song. When one more bottle came flying up hard and fast halfway through, they had to pause briefly to retrieve the mike stand that Frank had hurled right back at the thrower, but they finished the set in one piece. That counted for something.
“So I think somebody might’ve figured it out,” Mikey joked weakly into the grim silence afterwards, clutching a bottle of water in sweaty hands. “Better stay off the Internet for a while.”
“Who wants to phone Brian and thank him for getting us get ready for this?” Ray added, when the silence started creeping in again. “Not it.”
The expected chorus of not its followed like usual, if a little half-heartedly.
Mikey shoved his glasses up to his forehead, rubbing at his eyes. “Fuck. Sorry, guys.”
“Don’t even,” Gerard sighed, morosely wiping stage make-up off with his sleeve. “I’m too sober for this shit.”
Matt obligingly produced a flask and handed it over. Gerard took a grateful swig and passed it over to Mikey, who passed it along to Ray when he’d taken a drink, like some sort of 80-proof communion. Ray drank and handed the flask to Frank before looking over at Gerard.
They were all looking at Gerard, was the thing, with a kind of quiet expectation. There had always been that tacit understanding among them that Gerard… that the rambling, awkward guy with the rat’s nest hair and the serious shower aversion… would always know exactly what they had to do next.
Gerard tilted his chair back, wobbling precariously and studying the ceiling. He overbalanced, flailed to keep from falling (Frank made a dutiful grab for his feet), and abruptly sat forward again with a thunk.
“Okay,” Gerard said. “I say fuck ‘em all. They’re not going to shut us up like this. Not like this.” He looked around the room. “We don’t back down, we don’t make concessions, and…” He looked specifically at Mikey. “… we don’t apologize. If fuckheads want to make war on us, we’ll just have to start wearing bulletproof vests.”
There was a moment of contemplative silence. Matt shifted uncomfortably.
“Amen,” murmured Frank, and sent the flask around again.
Can You Hear Him Now?
Posted April 13th 2005 1:33pm by TMZ Staff
Close call for My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, who was attacked by a knife-wielding man while leaving an Atlantic City Starbucks late Tuesday evening.
Way was reported to be “spooked but unharmed”, having jabbed his attacker in the eye with his cell phone, giving fellow band mates Frank Iero and Bob Bryar the opportunity to join the scuffle. Bryar held the unidentified assailant until police arrived, although there is still no word as to whether any charges will be pressed.
If nothing else, the incident certainly answers the age-old question: If emo bands always sing about being alone, why do they still travel in packs?
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“Batman,” Ray decided, after a moment of serious consideration. “Has to be Batman. His stuff is just more out there, you know?”
Bob nodded his consensus, but Frank was already shaking his head.
“Bond’s gadgets are always cooler though. And his don’t have stupid names.”
“That’s because Batman’s stuff has to stick with the bat-theme,” Mikey pointed out. “I think he should get more points for that.”
“Batarang,” Frank insisted, walking backwards in front of them as they headed across the field through the mini-market of merch tents, forcing a couple of people to dodge out of his path. “A batarang, Mikey. James Bond wouldn’t carry a batarang if Q begged him.”
“I like Batman. He’s not as misogynistic as Bond,” Gerard remarked.
“Oh jeez,” Frank sighed, flipping his sunglasses down over his eyes, “You guys are all fuckin’ hopeless. I’m ashamed to been seen with you.”
“Hey, Pete’s already here,” Mikey commented, looking over Frank’s shoulder. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered “YO, SELLOUT!” down the crowded lane between the tents.
No less than a half dozen faces wearing identical expressions of serious offense whipped around to glare in Mikey’s direction.
“Whoa,” Mikey said and shrank against Ray’s side, but Pete spotted him and broke into a smile, waving him over.
“Okay, I guess I’ll be over there,” Mikey said. “My vote stays with Batman though. See ya.”
Ray watched Mikey pick his way through the crowd to where Pete was waiting for him. Pete was wearing lurid purple pants, had his hoodie thrown around his shoulders like a short, lumpy cape, and somehow managed to look perfectly comfortable in the mid-summer heat. Ray scratched miserably at the back of his neck where his hair was plastered to his skin with sweat and tried not to hate the guy too passionately.
“Pete’s okay for him, right?” Gerard asked, apparently on the same wavelength as Ray today. “I shouldn’t be trying to intervene here or whatever?”
“I thought we figured out that interventions don’t work for shit,” Frank said, falling into step next to Gerard. “You’ve got to figure stuff out for yourself, right?”
Pete had slung his arm around Mikey’s shoulders and said something that made Mikey laugh. Gerard watched them, rubbing his forehead and looking stricken. “You figure he is bad for him then? Shit, I knew it. He’s probably a total freak, isn’t he?”
“Careful. You’re smudging your zombieness,” Bob said, gesturing at Gerard’s stage makeup. Gerard scowled at him.
“Don’t ‘pot, kettle’ at me, Bryar. Mikey’s not dating me. And I’d still be scared for him if he was dating me, like, if I wasn’t his brother.”
“Way weirdness alert, Way weirdness alert, whoop-whoop,” Frank intoned, making blinker hands.
Gerard’s scowl turned into a full-on sulk.
“What?” Frank protested. “You told me to warn you. Look, I wouldn’t worry. Pete’s trying. He’s not going to post a sex tape of him and Mikey on YouTube or whatever. Anyway, when I walked in on them last week, they were totally still dressed…”
“La la la,” Gerard sang, fingers hovering near his ears.
“… well, Mikey was dressed…”
“LA LA LA,” Gerard repeated emphatically, with a bit of threat to it this time.
Ray was still watching across the field, where Mikey and Pete had retreated into the shade of one of the merch tents, brow to brow as they discussed something of utmost importance about Mikey’s phone. Mikey was smiling, totally unguarded and a little bit smitten; Pete was talking with his hands.
“He’s happy,” Ray said. He looked over to make sure that Gerard had actually unplugged his ears and could hear him. “That’s what we said we wanted, right? For Mikey to be happy.”
“That’s what we said,” Gerard confirmed with a sigh. He shot one more dubious glance at the pair before turning back. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of the sun already. I’m dying here.”
Everybody else was already on stage by the time that Mikey snuck in, slinging on his bass and creeping over to stand nonchalantly behind Frank and Ray like he’d been there all along.
“How was breakfast?” Frank asked, tearing his eyes away from Bob going through his checks to smirk at Mikey.
“Fun. Pancakes,” Mikey answered.
“You and Pete had pancakes for six hours?”
“Um,” said Mikey, going through the motions of tuning his bass. “We hung out. And then the coffee wasn’t working so we had a nap and we got stuck in the infinite nap loop and then I remembered about soundcheck.”
Infinite nap loop Frank mouthed, raising his eyebrows.
“You know,” Mikey insisted, and got shushed by one of the sound guys. “You know. Like, when you wake up and your… whatever-person… the person you were asleep with is still sleeping so you go back to sleep and then when they wake up you’re asleep so they go back to sleep…”
“Mikeyway, you’re the weirdest person I know,” Frank said fondly.
“Ready for bass!”called the guy at the soundboard, and Mikey was able to make a moderately graceful escape up to his usual mark.
Frank elbowed Ray in the ribs. “Twenty says they weren’t just napping.”
“Who wasn’t napping?” Gerard asked, arriving out of breath with the (third) new set list in hand. “Listen, I think I figured out where to work in the new song, if you guys just want to take a look. Oh, Mikey’s here. I was just going to call him.”
“He was ‘sleeping’,” Frank said. Gerard managed to miss Frank’s emphatic air-quotes entirely, busy looking at the set list.
“Cool. Really though, you think it’ll be okay if we do it there? I’m nervous about this one.”
Ray didn’t make a Captain Obvious remark. “Hey, if it doesn’t fly…” He patted his chest. “… we always have the bottleproof vests on standby.”
Gerard grinned. “No, I mean I’ve got a good-nervous feeling about it. If we do it right, I think it could be big. I’ve just… got a feeling.” He idly scruffed up his hair, while Ray and Frank exchanged a glance. Gerard’s good feelings hadn’t let them down this far.
“Guitars on mark, please,” came the call from the soundboard.
“We’ll make sure everything’s perfect before we do that one live,” Ray promised, and headed for stage left like making his way home.
It was a few more long minutes of standing and strumming before they were ready to go through any of the actual music, and even then it was all stops and starts and “check, check” into the mikes. Ray wasn’t a big fan of that part; it felt like being leashed. He found himself watching Mikey instead of paying attention, turning this thing with Pete over and over in his mind. Thinking about things like exploitation and fetishes and jealousy-induced logic until Gerard started making concerned faces in his direction.
“Okay,” called the sound tech, “You guys can move around or whatever. Just do what you usually do for this one.”
Frank shot a gleeful glance of impending destruction in Bob’s direction. Bob made the universal fingers of ‘I’ve got my eye on you’ back at him, while Gerard strutted back from the mike, clearly choreographing some new variation on the sexy-chicken dance to the music in his head. Ray settled comfortably into head banging position, secure in the knowledge that he was part of one of the weirdest bands in the world.
Bob counted them off and they tore into the new song, everyone coming in on cue, all the mikes working perfectly. Gerard grabbed hold of the microphone and chanted the first line low like they’d practiced, while Frank went whirling off towards the back of the stage.
It was awesome. Ray didn’t have Gerard’s sixth sense when it came to that sort of thing, but he knew when music just felt good. He caught Mikey’s eye across the stage and smiled. Mikey just looked so peaceful and happy playing…
He was happy.
When Ray wasn’t looking (or else was looking too closely), Mikey had become happy with himself, and happy with the path his life had taken despite all the shit he’d already been through, and even happy with this thing with Pete. It wasn’t the ending that Ray would have chosen, if it was an ending at all, but that didn’t make it any less valid.
Ray walked over to him, overwhelmed with an attack of pure uncomplicated love for the guy.
“Hey,” he said, close enough that he barely had to raise his voice over the music, “Just so you know, I think you’re awesome.”
Mikey grinned, the goofy guileless grin that Ray always liked best because he was the one who usually made it happen. You too, Mikey mouthed back.
Ray leaned over, kissed the corner of Mikey’s smile, and thought to himself, no matter what.
Radio Interview Excerpt (QTZL Modern Alternative, October 2005)
Q: Today we’re fortunate enough to be joined live by the members of My Chemical Romance. Hi guys!
Gerard: Thanks for having us.
Q: Our pleasure! Now, MyChem has exploded as a major name to know on the music scene both here and overseas since the release of your new single, “Bleeds Like A Boy”.
Gerard: Yeah, it’s been… wow. We had no idea that song would resonate with people like it has.
Ray: It’s actually kind of funny though because you’re usually thinking about your audience when you’re writing, at least sort of.
Gerard: Like, ‘What will they get from this? What are we trying to say to them?’
Ray: Sure, exactly. But with that one, we didn’t really. Not to the same degree.
Frank: We wrote it for us.
Q: Right, because the song itself is dealing with the experiences of a particular member of the band…
Gerard: (laughs) We’re on the radio. They can’t see you wave, Mikey.
Mikey: Oh, hey. Hi.
Q: Hi! So Mikey, “Bleeds Like A Boy” was written about your experience coming out as a transgendered musician over the last few years?
Mikey: Um, sort of. Not my experience, but, like, the experience.
Gerard: You don’t have to be transgendered to understand the meaning of “Bleeds Like A Boy”. It’s more a song about feeling wrong in your own head, about feeling imperfect.
Mikey: Yeah.
Gerard: And that’s a feeling that almost everyone is able to relate to at some point in their life. I think that explains why it’s been so widely embraced. It really struck a chord with people.
Q: The subject hasn’t always gotten such an understanding reception though, has it? I know the band caught a lot of flack.
Frank: And beer bottles. We caught a lot of bottles.
Mikey: If there was an award for dodging shit, MCR would win every year.
Gerard: (laughing) No contest. We’ve all got ninja skills now.
Mikey: Not just Bob anymore.
Q: Do you find it hard to reconcile that attitude with the warm reception for “Bleeds Like A Boy”?
Mikey: Not me… No, I don’t. Do you guys?
Frank: I don’t know. We weren’t really giving people a chance to see where we were coming from before. Maybe being more open about everything changed minds.
Bob: Assholes are assholes though. I think we were going to get shit thrown at us no matter what we did at first.
Ray: I find it hard to reconcile.
Gerard: So do I, actually. We had to be really careful a couple years back, just making sure Mikey didn’t get hurt by jerks. And now people are waiting after the shows specifically to thank him. It’s awesome, but it is a big turn-around.
Mikey: Well… I don’t know. I’m going to do a shitty job trying to explain this.
Q: No, go ahead.
Mikey: Well, like, I knew what was going on in my head since I was little, so I was used to it. And then when I told Gerard and everybody, they had to catch up to the place I’d taken ages getting to in my own head. And it’s… it’s probably like that for the audience too. They just needed some time to get to that level of, like…
Gerard: Comfort? Acceptance?
Mikey: Or something, yeah. So now they’re closer to where we are and they can understand where we’re coming from. They’re closer to where I am. It’s cool.
Q: And where are you at these days, Mikey?
Mikey: Good. (laughs) I’m good. How are you?
apiphile: Oh *MIKEY*. I do love his epic brotherlove. But I got half-way through the picspam and was hit with a plotbunny for an AU where Mikey's not biologically male but a transboy, and Gerard's REALLY TOUCHY about anyone mentioning it, and. Yeah. Fuck you, giving me ideas.
strangecreature: Dude. Dude. I would read the shit out of that. I would write the shit out of that.
*proceeds to write the shit out of that*
Title: Bleeds Like A Boy
Fandom: Bandom RPS (MCR)
Word Count: 8400
Rating: PG-14
Pairing: mentions of Mikey/Pete, mild Ray/Mikey... this isn’t really a ‘pairing’ story, I promise.
Disclaimer: This didn’t actually happen, kids. That’s why it’s fanfiction. All media clippings are entirely fictional as well.
Thanks to stratospherique for the speedy beta!
“I still think it’s a bad word,” Gerard announced, wide awake and way too cheerful. “It’s not jet-lag if you’re not actually flying, right? It doesn’t even involve a jet. There should be a totally different word when you’re driving across time zones. Van-lag. Wheel… weary.”
“You are too loud,” Frank said, clutching his coffee cup like a lifeline with his face pressed against the kitchen table. “I’m stuck in a fucking trailer with the loudest person in the universe and the sun’s not even up and you all smell and I hate my life.”
“Except you love it,” Bob reminded him from beside Gerard on the couch, his head half-buried in one of the lumpy pillows.
“Except I love it,” Frank agreed. He cracked an eyelid. “Is Mikey ever getting up or what?”
“MIIIKEY!” Gerard bellowed towards the back of the trailer. (Frank was right, Ray decided. Gerard really was the Loudest Person in the Universe.) “MIKEY, GET… oh, you’re up.”
Mikey flailed weakly at him from the doorway, phone in one hand and the other over his eyes. “Oh my god, why are you so loud?”
Frank snickered, his eyes still shut. “Aww, is widdle Mikey all hung-over?”
“Aww, is widdle Frankie going to have to bite me?” Mikey muttered, but flopped down next to Frank just the same, wilting against him. “That last round of shots was your idea.”
His hair was a fluffy mess and he wasn’t wearing his vest yet, small breasts showing through his thin pajama shirt. Ray tried not to look, then tried not to look like he was trying not to look, then gave it up for a lost cause and poured Mikey a mug of coffee instead, sliding it across the table to him. Mikey smiled blearily at him and Ray’s heart gave a little twist.
“We don’t mention shots ever again,” Frank groaned, “Unless you’re planning on putting one through my fucking head.”
“I warned you we’d have to be up this early,” Gerard said, pulling his feet up onto the couch and resting his coffee cup on his knees. “You were duly warned.”
“And I warned you your warnings never work,” Ray pointed out.
There was a beep and Mikey glanced at his phone. “Oh. Um. Since we’re talking about warnings… Incoming, guys.”
There was a perfunctory knock on the trailer door about a second later before it banged open. “You really shouldn’t leave that door unlocked,” Pete announced, climbing inside, “Anyone could get in. Whoa, you guys look rough! Hey, Mikey.”
“Hey, Pete,” Mikey said and smiled a different smile than that one he’d given Ray.
“Hey-hey,” Pete echoed, sitting down next to Ray without invitation and looking Mikey up and down. “Hey! You’re a girl today!” he said, before promptly making a face like he would’ve liked to swallow his own tongue. Gerard gave an inarticulate ‘mmphf!’ of protest with his mouth full of coffee.
“Mikey’s a guy every day,” Ray corrected firmly.
“Failtard,” Frank added under his breath.
Pete looked deeply abashed. “No, I totally know. I didn’t mean it like that…”
Mikey flapped his hand at him, somewhere between ‘it’s fine’ and ‘please stop talking now’, his face unreadable.
“Right. Just. I was up and I saw you guys were up and Joe knows this place in town and I thought I could… Can I maybe buy you breakfast, Mikey?”
Mikey shot Pete an appraising look over his glasses. Pete grinned his stupid manic hopeful-puppy grin.
“What the hell. Sure,” Mikey said. (Pete’s big stupid grin managed to get even bigger and stupider.)
“Since when do you even eat breakfast?” Frank asked.
“Since shut up, Frank,” Mikey said, and shoved himself to his feet. “Wait here, okay? I gotta get dressed.” He shot a quick ‘you got this under control?’ look at Bob, who gave him a sleepy thumbs-up in return. And that was kind of sad, because Ray liked being someone who could be counted on to keep the peace.
He just… He didn’t like it when Pete hung around, because despite having the best intentions in the world (according to Mikey, anyway), the dude just kept fucking it up. And things had been so good lately too. They had Bob’s awesome calming presence these days and they’d made it through the gauntlet of the media in one piece, and here came Pete bumbling in and making Ray relive all the greatest hits of his own fuck-up record.
“So,” said Pete to nobody in particular, after Mikey had disappeared into the back of the trailer. He eyed Mikey’s coffee longingly, noticed Ray watching him, and clearly thought better of it. “Lots of rain this summer, huh?”
Frank covered his head with his hands and groaned.
Ray had been running into Mikey at parties and shows casually for a couple of months before the night that Mikey walked right up to him and said “Hey. I think you’re pretty awesome.”
Bordering on tipsy, Ray had been messing around with a heartbreakingly neglected Gibson in the basement of some friend-of-a-friend’s house. He’d retreated to the relative quiet downstairs when the party in the kitchen took a turn for the messily destructive, and had been trying to harmonize something to go with the rhythmic thud of bass from upstairs when Mikey sat down in front of him, drink in hand.
“Thanks,” Ray said, startled. “Michaela, right?”
He already knew who he was talking to without having to ask. She was memorable; sharp pretty face under hair like a blond trainwreck and possibly the most amusingly awful pair of glasses that Ray had ever seen in his life.
“Just Mikey.”
“Ray,” said Ray, and stuck out his hand like a big dork.
“Nah, I remember you, dude,” Mikey said, but shook his hand anyway. “Seriously though. Fucking awesome.”
“You play at all?” Ray plucked at the strings idly, putting up a valiant fight against the old high school mindset creeping back in. (A girl! A girl is talking to me! Why is a girl talking to me?) The fact that Mikey was wearing a jacket over a hoodie over a baggy Motorhead shirt did make it easier.
Mikey waggled her hand in the universal so-so gesture. “Kinda-sorta. Not like you.” A flurry of raised voices by the pool table across the basement caught her attention and she looked over Ray’s shoulder with a grin, apparently forgetting that she’d been talking to Ray at all.
“I like your shirt,” Ray blurted.
Mikey’s attention drifted back to him. “Thanks. Stole it from my brother. So. Right. I don’t have your number yet.”
Ray’s thumb twanged against the E string. “You want it?”
Mikey raised an eyebrow. “Pretty much why I came over, yeah. Don’t worry. I’m not, like, whatever. You just seem cool. We should hang.”
And so assured (and maybe a little disappointed) that Mikey Way was not, like, whatever, Ray had given her his number. And that had been the start of that.
Ray opened his eyes and waited, holding his breath.
“You’re good,” Gerard pronounced. “Oh wow, this is going to be really… good. I’ve got… Here, I’ve got all these notes, if you want to look at them.” He cast around the attic before snatching a much-doodled-upon notebook off the top of a lamp and fervently flipping through it.
Mikey shot Ray a triumphant double thumbs-up from her perch on the edge of the antique sofa in the Way’s attic and Ray remembered to exhale.
“I can drum a little bit too, if you need,” he said.
“I’m the drummer,” said Matt firmly.
“You’ll be our guitar guy,” Mikey told Ray, messing with her bangs. “Obviously. Gerard’s our singer. I’ll do… something. I’ll play the fucking tambourine if you let me in. Do we need another guitar, Gee?”
She’d cut her hair even shorter since the last time that Ray had seen her and was currently slouched in a sleeveless Anthrax shirt, kicking her heel against the edge of the couch. Ray couldn’t stop watching. He was quickly coming to terms with the fact that he had kind of developed a big stupid teenage crush on Mikey Way over these last couple of months.
“Maybe. We definitely need a bass though,” Gerard said, eagerly shoving a mess of papers into Ray’s hands before looking distinctively self-conscious about his enthusiasm and rubbing his nose. “That’s all just rough stuff. Concepts and shit.”
“I could learn to play bass!” Mikey exclaimed.
“It’d be pretty cool to have a girl on bass,” Matt said.
“I could learn bass,” Mikey repeated insistently.
“He’s talking about you, bleach-brains,” Gerard said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh,” said Mikey, “I knew that.”
(In retrospect, Ray felt pretty fucking shitty for having laughed.)
The first album came together almost as fast as Mikey had fallen apart.
Gerard’s notebook of ideas was turning into something real, something powerful, something… with kind of a disproportionate amount of vampire metaphors, but whatever. Gerard had a vision and Ray trusted him to steer the band in the right direction.
But the closer they came to the release date, the more Gerard and Mikey were fighting. And for all Gerard’s assurances that this was pretty normal for them, it was still awkward to watch in close proximity.
Like everything else they did, the Ways fought weird. Gerard would talk and talk while Mikey picked at her nails and played with her hair and slipped in little muttered comments that would start Gerard yelling until Mikey just got up and walked out. Ray almost thought it would’ve been healthier if they could’ve just thrown down and got it out of their systems.
The frustrating part was that they were fighting over nothing. Over concepts, and what Mikey was going to wear for photo shoots, and… and make-up. Or like today, when Mikey had made some comment about maybe moving in with Frank when they came back from touring and Gerard had just lost it on her.
And of course Ray had to be sitting right there. He shot a furtive glance towards the studio door and toyed with his guitar, concentrating very hard on the muffled sounds of Matt taking another stab at laying down his drum tracks in the next room.
“What is with you?” Gerard exploded, yanking at his hair in frustration.
“What’s with you?” Mikey mumbled. She half-turned away from where Gerard was pacing, launching into what had to be the most intent shoe-tying process in history.
“I’m trying to look out for you. You’re always acting so fucking weird now and you’re… you’re being stupid. Michaela…”
“Don’t.”
“Jesus, you’re not even listening to me.”
“Nope,” Mikey agreed petulantly. “Because you’re worse than me. You’re always worse than me. If I’m being stupid…”
“It’s different for you,” Gerard insisted. (In his peripheral vision, Ray saw Mikey tense.)
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because fucking why? Why?”
“Because you’re a girl,” Gerard snapped. “Jesus, Mikey, get it through your head.”
Mikey made a noise, a rough exhalation like Gerard had punched her.
This moment literally cannot get any more awkward, Ray thought. Prematurely.
“Hey, Ray, I changed my mind. You want to go to Gabe’s party with me?” Mikey said with strained flippancy, getting to her feet. Her hands were shaking. Ray shot a panicked glance at Gerard.
Gerard made a violent gesture of dismissal. “Fucked if I care anymore,” he announced, and turned his back on them.
Ray slunk out of the studio after Mikey, feeling so miserable that he couldn’t even smile when Mikey realized she’d forgotten to slam the door and had to run back to do it.
“So,” said Ray, “Gabe’s?”
Ray wasn’t particularly close with Gabe Saporta, but Gabe and Mikey had a thing. Not exactly an ‘on again, off again’ thing. More of an ‘oh hey, we haven’t made out in a couple months, have we’ thing. Ray never quite knew what to make of it, just that it made him feel a little gross and prickly to watch.
“Why the hell not, right? I told him I wasn’t coming but we can ply him with booze if he says anything. Gabe’s… pliable.” Mikey shoved open the outside doors onto a parking lot to find it unexpectedly dark with torrential rain. Her shoulders slumped.
“Why the hell not?” she repeated under her breath, and marched out into it.
Ray hurried after her. “You want my jacket?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure? I don’t really need…”
“I wish everybody would stop trying to take care of me,” Mikey burst out.
Ray held up his hands in submission, falling silent. Mikey folded her arms and looked around helplessly, rain spattering her glasses as she visibly came to the same conclusion that Ray had come to a minute back. Neither of them had a car and they wouldn’t have a ride until Matt was done for the evening.
“Okay,” said Mikey. “We can bus it.”
Ray decided that a shrug was the safest course of action. Mikey raked her dripping bangs out of her eyes with grim determination and led the way.
By the time that they reached the bus stop at the end of the next block, Mikey’s hair was plastered to her head and her tee-shirt was sticking to her in a way that might’ve been sexy if she weren’t still radiating frustrated hurt. She sat down on the narrow mental bench with a squelch, gripping the edge with both hands and staring at the ground.
Ray stepped in under the awning, grateful to be out of the rain. Behind Mikey, a larger than life cover girl beamed down at them from amid an artistic riot of freshly shampooed curls, oblivious to the Hitler moustache and angry eyebrows somebody had gleefully added in black marker. YUM YUM HERPES, announced a purple-penned speech bubble.
Ray sat down next to Mikey, trying to ignore the irritating feeling of rain trickling down the back of his shirt from his hair. He bumped Mikey lightly with his shoulder.
After a moment, Mikey’s mouth twisted in a not-quite-smile and she bumped him back.
“Glasses?” Ray offered.
Mikey hesitated before taking them off and handing them over, letting Ray dry them on his shirt for her.
“You okay?” Ray asked.
Mikey shrugged, putting her glasses back on and blinking. “Not really, no.”
“Right.”
“Just… just…” Mikey broke off, making a valiant effort at wringing out her shirt. Her stomach was really pale. “Shit. You ever feel like you’re… wrong? Seriously wrong? Like something got screwed up when they made you?”
“Constantly,” Ray agreed solemnly.
“Toro,” Mikey snorted, and leaned against him. She smelled like hairspray and wet denim, which made sense. Ray considered putting his arm around her and rubbed her back instead.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “We’re all just freaking out because of recording. It’ll all be cool once this is wrapped.”
“I don’t know,” Mikey said quietly. “Maybe not this time.” Her teeth had started to chatter.
“Would you please just take my coat already?”
Mikey looked at him, the streetlight outside the bus stop reflecting on her glasses and masking her eyes. “Would you give it to Matt? Or Gerard?”
“What?”
“Would you give your jacket to Frank, if he was here?”
“Uh, yeah. Frank might actually die of pneumonia if he was out in this.” Ray unzipped his jacket and shrugged out of it, holding it out to Mikey and waiting for her to take it. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here,” he admitted quietly.
Mikey shook her head, her bangs dripping water down her cheeks. “Nothing. It’s not you, it’s me, et cetera, et cetera.” She pulled on his jacket and tucked her hands between her knees, not looking at him. “Nice coat. Warm.”
She sat without speaking for the next ten minutes, while Ray mentally composed and discarded a hundred friendly gambits to get her talking again. It seemed like a decade or two had passed by the time that a city bus finally hissed to a stop in front of them, sloshing water up over the curb. The door jerked open and Ray got to his feet, looking back when he realized that Mikey hadn’t actually moved.
“Downtown route?” the driver called down to him through the open door.
“Mikey?” Ray asked.
Mikey shook herself and stared at the bus like she’d never seen one before in her life.
“Going downtown?” the driver repeated. “Your girlfriend coming or what, bud?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Mikey said, with a note of quiet surprise. “I won’t. I don’t… I don’t have to.”
“There’s always the taxi,” the bus driver offered helpfully, and shut the door on them, pulling away. Ray danced away from the curb to avoid getting splashed, hurrying back to Mikey, who was scrolling through her phone.
“Mikey?”
“Sorry, sorry. I have to… I have to…” She fumbled the phone and nearly dropped it, swearing, then pressed it to her ear. “Come on, pick up, dude. Pick up pick up pick… oh. Hi. Um. It’s just me. Don’t hang up.”
Ray slowly took a seat next to her again, watching as Mikey gave a shaky chuckle and put her free hand over her eyes.
“I know. I just have to talk to you, okay?” Her voice was funny like she was holding back tears, or had already started to cry. Ray swallowed and looked away. “No, like in person, Gee, please. Yeah, now. No, we’re just at the bus stop... I am not, fuck off. It’s just cold out. ‘Kay. Bye.”
She hung up, took a deep breath, and then doubled over, her head against her knees and her hands at the back of her neck, still clutching her cell.
“Jesus, Mikey,” Ray exclaimed quietly, really starting to get scared now. “Will you talk to me?”
“I don’t even know what I’m going to say to Gerard yet,” she mumbled, sitting up into her usual slouch. “Sorry.”
The worst suddenly occurred to Ray, although he didn’t know how the hell it could’ve happened, since Mikey wasn’t, like… well, Ray didn’t think Mikey was… “Okay. You’re not, like, pregnant, right?”
Mikey yelped out a short laugh, clapping her hands over her mouth like she was startled by the sound, staring at him. “I’m really really not, dude.”
“That’s all I could think of,” Ray muttered, and felt himself blush. “Sorry.”
“Nothing like that. It’ll totally be fine. Probably not even a big deal.” Mikey was still shivering like she was freezing despite the jacket. “Jesus, sorry about this. If you still wanted to head out…”
“I was only going because of you anyway,” Ray said.
Mikey smiled at him sidelong. She held out her hand between them and Ray took it, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
It was only a few minutes before Gerard showed up, oversized black umbrella over his head and Mikey’s coat over his arm.
“Okay, the cavalry’s here,” Gerard said, stepping into the shelter and shaking out the umbrella. “Everybody breathe a sigh of relief.” His eyes darted briefly to their clasped hands, then to Ray. Ray gave a small shrug.
“Hey,” Mikey said, mustering a sheepish smile. “Shit, sorry for making you walk.”
Ray regretfully untangled his hand from Mikey’s, getting to his feet and offering Gerard his seat.
Gerard set down the stuff he was carrying and wrapped Mikey in a tight hug. “Sorry I yelled.”
Mikey buried her face against his shoulder, hanging on.
“I’ll just give you guys a minute or whatever,” Ray mumbled awkwardly, and went to loiter by the door, pretending like he was standing guard or doing something useful.
“So what the hell’s up?” Gerard asked quietly. Ray leaned against the wall, watching them out of the corner of his eye.
“Okay. Okay… don’t freak out.” Mikey’s voice was trembling badly enough that it was hard to understand her. “Remember when you came home for spring break and we drank that rye in your old room and I said all that stuff?”
“I was drunk,” Gerard protested, “You’ve got to give me more of a hint than… oh! Oh, okay, about gender and stuff. Sure, I remember.”
“Yeah,” Mikey sighed, “So. I kind of wasn’t joking.”
Silence.
Ray glanced over; he couldn’t help it. Mikey was looking at the ground again, visibly fighting back tears, and Gerard just looked… shell-shocked.
“So you’re…”
Mikey mouthed I don’t know, spreading her hands helplessly.
“That was years back,” Gerard breathed. “Jesus.”
“I thought it’d be easier if I just… stayed this way. Can’t anymore. I’m going out of my fucking head.” Mikey wiped at her cheeks with the sleeve of Ray’s jacket. “Are you totally freaked, Gee?”
Gerard shook his head immediately. “It’d take so much more that this to freak me out,” he said, but his smile was all wonky and wobbly. “No, it’s totally cool, we’re cool.”
“Cool,” echoed Mikey. They both giggled the slightly-hysterical giggle of the emotionally overwrought.
“Um, if I start crying in a minute, don’t take it the wrong way, okay?” Gerard added, and set them both off again. He pulled Mikey into another hug while she was still laughing. “Love you no matter what, all right?” Ray heard him whisper fiercely.
Ray shifted slightly, trying to be inconspicuous despite the fact that his left foot had kind of gone to sleep, and (as usual) patiently waited his turn to be allowed into the circle.
“I fucked up,” Gerard repeated. He took a long drink, wiped his mouth, and shook his head. “Oh man. I fucked this up so bad, Ray.”
“We couldn’t have known,” Ray said. He was pretty sure he’d said that same line about five times in the last half hour. He was probably going to keep saying it until both of them were finally drunk enough to believe it.
“I just wanted Mikey to be happy with who she is, you know? Fuck. Who he is. Motherfucking dumbfuck…” Gerard’s head hit the table with a resounding thunk that made Ray wince. “I’m the worst brother ever.”
“You’re not,” Ray protested. “There was nothing wrong with wanting h… Mikey to be happy. That’s what brothers do, right?”
Gerard managed to shake his head while keeping it on the table, his hair becoming sodden with recently spilled vodka. Ray made a futile effort to at least keep it out of the cigarettes butts and wound up petting Gerard’s head instead. It was easier focusing on Gerard right now.
“No, you don’t get it,” Gerard insisted miserably. “That wasn’t who Mikey was. I wanted her to, like, accept herself and I was trying to force her to change all along.”
There was a reflective pause.
“Him,” Gerard corrected belatedly, and gave a cracked sort of laugh. “Just punch me in the face the next time I do that and I’ll learn, okay?”
Ray slid his chair over and put his arms around Gerard’s slumped shoulders, resting his cheek on Gerard’s sticky-soggy hair. “We’ll learn,” he promised.
Interview excerpt (Scene Not Herd Magazine, February 2005)
SNH: Dedicated fans have noticed a change in the lyrics of one of your earlier songs lately.
Gerard: Which one? We change a lot of stuff in concert. You can get away with more live.
Ray: I think he means ‘Mirror’. [Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us]
SNH: Yes, that’s the one.
Frank: (laughs) You all owe me twenty bucks. I told you they’d call us on it. Fans have good ears. They pay attention.
SNH: In the album jacket, there’s a line which was originally printed as “You can’t touch my sister”.
Gerard: Yeah. We sing it as ‘brother’ live now. It felt right to make that change and it scans better anyway. We’re not going to get into any more than that here though.
SNH: It’s just an interesting change in relation to some recent publicity the band has been receiving [concerning the band’s transgendered bassist Michaela (Mikey) Way].
Bob: Time for a new topic.
Frank: Listen to the drummer-man. Next question, moving right along…
SNH: Do you feel as though you’ve lost a sister, Gerard?
Gerard: What? No. Fuck no. I’ve just always had a Mikey. That’s all.
“But you look the same,” Frank said, tilting his head sideways and squinting, visibly mystified. “Pretty much the exact same.”
Mikey smoothed his hands down his chest self-consciously, looking mildly crestfallen. “Really? I feel different. Or, like, I feel normal. That’s different.”
“Okay, guys…” Brian tried again.
“Well, you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” Frank pointed out. “Actually, I think you’ve been wearing the same clothes all week.”
“Nah, I borrowed that jacket on Tuesday,” Gerard said.
Frank rolled his eyes. “My point… also, your hair’s the exact same… My point is that you’re just, like, Mikey-without-boobs now. I kind of thought you’d really look different.”
Ray was glad to have Frank around for this. He was clearly curious, but the pronoun thing wasn’t as much of a… a paradigm shift as it was for Gerard and Matt. (And Ray.) Ray kind of got the impression that Frank had already been thinking about Mikey as one of the guys before all this happened anyway.
“Thought I’d draw on a moustache?” Mikey asked, smiling a little.
“I would have! Moustaches are badass. Oh, dude. Brian, would it be okay if I…”
“No, Frank,” Brian sighed. “Okay, so…”
“Is it weird that you liked guys?” Ray blurted, mentally kicking himself for bringing it up here and now at Brian’s emergency meeting, but unable to stop himself. “I mean, did you like guys?”
“I did. I do,” Mikey said quietly, and Ray thought maybe there was something significant in his expression when he looked him. “I don’t know if that’s weird.”
“I thought you liked unicorns,” Matt put in dryly.
“That’s because unicorns are the fucking shit,” Mikey said with feeling. “Look, I’m the exact same person. I’m just a guy who likes other guys and… and unicorns. Oh wow. I’m going to get beat up every single day.”
“Let anyone try,” Gerard muttered from around his cigarette. “I’ll rip their fucking kidneys out.”
Mikey beamed at him affectionately.
“Okay, actual business here for a minute, guys?” Brian said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Please? Give me ten minutes to figure out the PR on this and then Gerard can talk about maiming people all he wants. This is one kind of crisis I definitely haven’t done before.”
“It’s not really a crisis-crisis, is it?” Frank wondered out loud.
“Gerard is the crisis,” Matt commented, grinning.
“Your face is the crisis!”
“Your mom is…”
“Ten minutes of business,” Brian repeated, like he could summon it just by saying it beseechingly enough. “Interviews. The subject is going to come up.”
“I don’t see why it even has to,” Gerard protested.
Brian shook his head. “You don’t have a choice. People take an interest in the band, they get curious about you… They’ll start digging. It’ll take one old yearbook photo. One comment from a college buddy who knew Mikey from before. I want us ready to deal with that before we have to.”
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Matt added, “But I don’t want to be just the band with the tran…” He broke off and waved his hand vaguely in Mikey’s direction. (Mikey looked away and chewed his thumbnail.) “Shit, man, if that’s all we’re going to be known for? I don’t want that. Sorry, Mikey.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” Mikey said quietly, “Me neither.”
(The difference, Ray figured, was that Mikey didn’t really have a choice.)
By the time that they were finally able to wrap up the meeting, everyone was getting twitchy and Mikey was slumped in his chair, more expressionless than usual, looking as though he was only just now realizing the full extent of what he was in for. He remained seated as Gerard and Brian left with their heads bent together, still talking business, and as Matt headed out on his own, frowning in thought.
Frank went over to Mikey wearing a too-solemn expression, the usual portend of a serious hair-ruffling. “I still think this was a hell of a lot of effort just to get Gerard to be cool with us being roomies.”
Mikey snorted. “You’re still down with that?”
“You’re still the same person,” Frank reminded him, and slugged him in the arm. “Call me later, fucker. We need to hang and watch girls check you out.”
Ray loitered, messing around with Brian’s new mixing board until Frank had headed out too. He looked up to find Mikey watching him steadily. Ray’s stomach gave the usual skittish hop.
“I think Frank’s going to be seriously disappointed,” Mikey said.
“Bet you he’s not. You’re still really…” Ray hesitated on ‘pretty’ and pretended to focus on putting Brian’s settings back the way he’d found them. “You look good this way.”
“Apparently I look the exact same.”
“I guess you look good every way then,” Ray said, and smiled at him.
“Cool that you think so,” Mikey mumbled, and took a deep breath.
Ray abandoned the mixer and walked over to Mikey, crouching down in front of him. “You okay?”
“Not… maybe not right this very second, but yeah in general,” Mikey said.
Ray touched his knee, looking questioningly at him.
“It would’ve been awesome to be something, with you,” Mikey said quietly, “And I think you think so too, but I couldn’t be your girlfriend. Is the thing. It wouldn’t have been right that way.”
Ray swallowed, heart rate leaping into a higher tempo. “Oh.”
“That’s like an ‘oh, I get that’ oh?” Mikey asked hopefully.
“Um,” said Ray. (He was pretty sure it had actually been an ‘oh wow, I can’t believe you actually said that because I had no idea that this wasn’t an unrequited thing and, oh god, you waited until now to tell me?’ oh.)
Mikey was watching him nervously, biting his lip. “It really wasn’t, was it? Shit. Was it an ‘oh, I never actually wanted…”
Ray shuffled forward on his knees and stretched up to kiss Mikey on the mouth.
Her… his, his lips were hot and dry and Ray imagined that he could feel the heat go into him, everything suddenly burning like a full-body blush when Mikey kissed back immediately.
He ran his hands up Mikey’s thighs and Mikey made a quiet noise and flicked his tongue against Ray’s lip, and everything in Ray’s head was just a full ensemble chorus of finally, finally. He put his hands around Mikey’s hips and pulled him forward, pulled him in tight, and then Mikey’s hands were on his shoulders, fingers digging in hard before snaking up to tangle in his hair.
“Oh,” Mikey said breathlessly against Ray’s mouth.
Ray grinned and kissed him again, deep and hungry, learning the taste of her... fuck, of his, of Mikey’s tongue. His knees were a comforting pressure against Ray’s sides.
Mikey’s shirt had ridden up and Ray’s fingers found skin, soft and warm, and he stroked shaky lines over Mikey’s ribs with his thumbs, making him squirm. Unthinking, Ray slid his hands up the flat plane of Mikey’s stomach, fingertips colliding suddenly with bandages…
Ray flinched and pulled away.
Bandages, his fingers had said. Wound, injury, his brain had answered.
Fuck.
Mikey was watching him, only his eyes giving away the hurt. “No, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Ray whispered, choking on disappointment. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair. When he had kissed her… God, he was doing it again! That kept happening, his mind slipping back to something that he couldn’t have anymore.
“Sorry.” Mikey sat back, touching his mouth lightly with his knuckles.
“Don’t be,” Ray muttered past the lump in his throat. “Shit, don’t be sorry. I just want you to be happy. That’s the important part.”
Mikey gave a miserable laugh. “Thanks. Still working on that.”
Ray sighed, dropping his head to rest against Mikey’s knee and shutting his eyes.
After a moment, Mikey began to gently work his fingers through Ray’s hair.
When the shit finally hit the fan, they were in Reading. Ray figured that made sense. They’d never had much luck in Reading.
“SHOW US YER TITS!” yelled a drunken voice from the front of the crowd, horribly clear in the pause between songs. “TRANNY! SHOW US YER CUNT! KNOW YOU GOT ONE, BABY!”
Mikey placidly wandered back a few steps towards Matt’s drum kit, eyes shadowed under his hat.
“OI! OI, TRANNY!”
A bottle arced through the air and Mikey skittered to the side to avoid it. It smashed on the stage, spraying a foamy mess up onto the bass drum. The second and third were closer misses. Frank jumped up between Mikey and the edge of the stage, making a show of trying to catch the next couple bottles, getting a finger on one of them and sending it spinning off to the wings.
Ray glared daggers into the audience, trying to keep the shaking in his hands under control so they could at least keep playing and give the crowd something else to think about. He could already see the security guys elbowing through the crowd to find the shouter. They’d been briefed for this sort of thing.
“Time to grow up or get the fuck out, kids,” Gerard snapped into the mike. “Your call.”
Security got it under control fast and they were able to keep going, even if Gerard’s voice was a little wonky with real rage for the first couple of verses of the next song. When one more bottle came flying up hard and fast halfway through, they had to pause briefly to retrieve the mike stand that Frank had hurled right back at the thrower, but they finished the set in one piece. That counted for something.
“So I think somebody might’ve figured it out,” Mikey joked weakly into the grim silence afterwards, clutching a bottle of water in sweaty hands. “Better stay off the Internet for a while.”
“Who wants to phone Brian and thank him for getting us get ready for this?” Ray added, when the silence started creeping in again. “Not it.”
The expected chorus of not its followed like usual, if a little half-heartedly.
Mikey shoved his glasses up to his forehead, rubbing at his eyes. “Fuck. Sorry, guys.”
“Don’t even,” Gerard sighed, morosely wiping stage make-up off with his sleeve. “I’m too sober for this shit.”
Matt obligingly produced a flask and handed it over. Gerard took a grateful swig and passed it over to Mikey, who passed it along to Ray when he’d taken a drink, like some sort of 80-proof communion. Ray drank and handed the flask to Frank before looking over at Gerard.
They were all looking at Gerard, was the thing, with a kind of quiet expectation. There had always been that tacit understanding among them that Gerard… that the rambling, awkward guy with the rat’s nest hair and the serious shower aversion… would always know exactly what they had to do next.
Gerard tilted his chair back, wobbling precariously and studying the ceiling. He overbalanced, flailed to keep from falling (Frank made a dutiful grab for his feet), and abruptly sat forward again with a thunk.
“Okay,” Gerard said. “I say fuck ‘em all. They’re not going to shut us up like this. Not like this.” He looked around the room. “We don’t back down, we don’t make concessions, and…” He looked specifically at Mikey. “… we don’t apologize. If fuckheads want to make war on us, we’ll just have to start wearing bulletproof vests.”
There was a moment of contemplative silence. Matt shifted uncomfortably.
“Amen,” murmured Frank, and sent the flask around again.
Can You Hear Him Now?
Posted April 13th 2005 1:33pm by TMZ Staff
Close call for My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, who was attacked by a knife-wielding man while leaving an Atlantic City Starbucks late Tuesday evening.
Way was reported to be “spooked but unharmed”, having jabbed his attacker in the eye with his cell phone, giving fellow band mates Frank Iero and Bob Bryar the opportunity to join the scuffle. Bryar held the unidentified assailant until police arrived, although there is still no word as to whether any charges will be pressed.
If nothing else, the incident certainly answers the age-old question: If emo bands always sing about being alone, why do they still travel in packs?
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“Batman,” Ray decided, after a moment of serious consideration. “Has to be Batman. His stuff is just more out there, you know?”
Bob nodded his consensus, but Frank was already shaking his head.
“Bond’s gadgets are always cooler though. And his don’t have stupid names.”
“That’s because Batman’s stuff has to stick with the bat-theme,” Mikey pointed out. “I think he should get more points for that.”
“Batarang,” Frank insisted, walking backwards in front of them as they headed across the field through the mini-market of merch tents, forcing a couple of people to dodge out of his path. “A batarang, Mikey. James Bond wouldn’t carry a batarang if Q begged him.”
“I like Batman. He’s not as misogynistic as Bond,” Gerard remarked.
“Oh jeez,” Frank sighed, flipping his sunglasses down over his eyes, “You guys are all fuckin’ hopeless. I’m ashamed to been seen with you.”
“Hey, Pete’s already here,” Mikey commented, looking over Frank’s shoulder. He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered “YO, SELLOUT!” down the crowded lane between the tents.
No less than a half dozen faces wearing identical expressions of serious offense whipped around to glare in Mikey’s direction.
“Whoa,” Mikey said and shrank against Ray’s side, but Pete spotted him and broke into a smile, waving him over.
“Okay, I guess I’ll be over there,” Mikey said. “My vote stays with Batman though. See ya.”
Ray watched Mikey pick his way through the crowd to where Pete was waiting for him. Pete was wearing lurid purple pants, had his hoodie thrown around his shoulders like a short, lumpy cape, and somehow managed to look perfectly comfortable in the mid-summer heat. Ray scratched miserably at the back of his neck where his hair was plastered to his skin with sweat and tried not to hate the guy too passionately.
“Pete’s okay for him, right?” Gerard asked, apparently on the same wavelength as Ray today. “I shouldn’t be trying to intervene here or whatever?”
“I thought we figured out that interventions don’t work for shit,” Frank said, falling into step next to Gerard. “You’ve got to figure stuff out for yourself, right?”
Pete had slung his arm around Mikey’s shoulders and said something that made Mikey laugh. Gerard watched them, rubbing his forehead and looking stricken. “You figure he is bad for him then? Shit, I knew it. He’s probably a total freak, isn’t he?”
“Careful. You’re smudging your zombieness,” Bob said, gesturing at Gerard’s stage makeup. Gerard scowled at him.
“Don’t ‘pot, kettle’ at me, Bryar. Mikey’s not dating me. And I’d still be scared for him if he was dating me, like, if I wasn’t his brother.”
“Way weirdness alert, Way weirdness alert, whoop-whoop,” Frank intoned, making blinker hands.
Gerard’s scowl turned into a full-on sulk.
“What?” Frank protested. “You told me to warn you. Look, I wouldn’t worry. Pete’s trying. He’s not going to post a sex tape of him and Mikey on YouTube or whatever. Anyway, when I walked in on them last week, they were totally still dressed…”
“La la la,” Gerard sang, fingers hovering near his ears.
“… well, Mikey was dressed…”
“LA LA LA,” Gerard repeated emphatically, with a bit of threat to it this time.
Ray was still watching across the field, where Mikey and Pete had retreated into the shade of one of the merch tents, brow to brow as they discussed something of utmost importance about Mikey’s phone. Mikey was smiling, totally unguarded and a little bit smitten; Pete was talking with his hands.
“He’s happy,” Ray said. He looked over to make sure that Gerard had actually unplugged his ears and could hear him. “That’s what we said we wanted, right? For Mikey to be happy.”
“That’s what we said,” Gerard confirmed with a sigh. He shot one more dubious glance at the pair before turning back. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of the sun already. I’m dying here.”
Everybody else was already on stage by the time that Mikey snuck in, slinging on his bass and creeping over to stand nonchalantly behind Frank and Ray like he’d been there all along.
“How was breakfast?” Frank asked, tearing his eyes away from Bob going through his checks to smirk at Mikey.
“Fun. Pancakes,” Mikey answered.
“You and Pete had pancakes for six hours?”
“Um,” said Mikey, going through the motions of tuning his bass. “We hung out. And then the coffee wasn’t working so we had a nap and we got stuck in the infinite nap loop and then I remembered about soundcheck.”
Infinite nap loop Frank mouthed, raising his eyebrows.
“You know,” Mikey insisted, and got shushed by one of the sound guys. “You know. Like, when you wake up and your… whatever-person… the person you were asleep with is still sleeping so you go back to sleep and then when they wake up you’re asleep so they go back to sleep…”
“Mikeyway, you’re the weirdest person I know,” Frank said fondly.
“Ready for bass!”called the guy at the soundboard, and Mikey was able to make a moderately graceful escape up to his usual mark.
Frank elbowed Ray in the ribs. “Twenty says they weren’t just napping.”
“Who wasn’t napping?” Gerard asked, arriving out of breath with the (third) new set list in hand. “Listen, I think I figured out where to work in the new song, if you guys just want to take a look. Oh, Mikey’s here. I was just going to call him.”
“He was ‘sleeping’,” Frank said. Gerard managed to miss Frank’s emphatic air-quotes entirely, busy looking at the set list.
“Cool. Really though, you think it’ll be okay if we do it there? I’m nervous about this one.”
Ray didn’t make a Captain Obvious remark. “Hey, if it doesn’t fly…” He patted his chest. “… we always have the bottleproof vests on standby.”
Gerard grinned. “No, I mean I’ve got a good-nervous feeling about it. If we do it right, I think it could be big. I’ve just… got a feeling.” He idly scruffed up his hair, while Ray and Frank exchanged a glance. Gerard’s good feelings hadn’t let them down this far.
“Guitars on mark, please,” came the call from the soundboard.
“We’ll make sure everything’s perfect before we do that one live,” Ray promised, and headed for stage left like making his way home.
It was a few more long minutes of standing and strumming before they were ready to go through any of the actual music, and even then it was all stops and starts and “check, check” into the mikes. Ray wasn’t a big fan of that part; it felt like being leashed. He found himself watching Mikey instead of paying attention, turning this thing with Pete over and over in his mind. Thinking about things like exploitation and fetishes and jealousy-induced logic until Gerard started making concerned faces in his direction.
“Okay,” called the sound tech, “You guys can move around or whatever. Just do what you usually do for this one.”
Frank shot a gleeful glance of impending destruction in Bob’s direction. Bob made the universal fingers of ‘I’ve got my eye on you’ back at him, while Gerard strutted back from the mike, clearly choreographing some new variation on the sexy-chicken dance to the music in his head. Ray settled comfortably into head banging position, secure in the knowledge that he was part of one of the weirdest bands in the world.
Bob counted them off and they tore into the new song, everyone coming in on cue, all the mikes working perfectly. Gerard grabbed hold of the microphone and chanted the first line low like they’d practiced, while Frank went whirling off towards the back of the stage.
It was awesome. Ray didn’t have Gerard’s sixth sense when it came to that sort of thing, but he knew when music just felt good. He caught Mikey’s eye across the stage and smiled. Mikey just looked so peaceful and happy playing…
He was happy.
When Ray wasn’t looking (or else was looking too closely), Mikey had become happy with himself, and happy with the path his life had taken despite all the shit he’d already been through, and even happy with this thing with Pete. It wasn’t the ending that Ray would have chosen, if it was an ending at all, but that didn’t make it any less valid.
Ray walked over to him, overwhelmed with an attack of pure uncomplicated love for the guy.
“Hey,” he said, close enough that he barely had to raise his voice over the music, “Just so you know, I think you’re awesome.”
Mikey grinned, the goofy guileless grin that Ray always liked best because he was the one who usually made it happen. You too, Mikey mouthed back.
Ray leaned over, kissed the corner of Mikey’s smile, and thought to himself, no matter what.
Radio Interview Excerpt (QTZL Modern Alternative, October 2005)
Q: Today we’re fortunate enough to be joined live by the members of My Chemical Romance. Hi guys!
Gerard: Thanks for having us.
Q: Our pleasure! Now, MyChem has exploded as a major name to know on the music scene both here and overseas since the release of your new single, “Bleeds Like A Boy”.
Gerard: Yeah, it’s been… wow. We had no idea that song would resonate with people like it has.
Ray: It’s actually kind of funny though because you’re usually thinking about your audience when you’re writing, at least sort of.
Gerard: Like, ‘What will they get from this? What are we trying to say to them?’
Ray: Sure, exactly. But with that one, we didn’t really. Not to the same degree.
Frank: We wrote it for us.
Q: Right, because the song itself is dealing with the experiences of a particular member of the band…
Gerard: (laughs) We’re on the radio. They can’t see you wave, Mikey.
Mikey: Oh, hey. Hi.
Q: Hi! So Mikey, “Bleeds Like A Boy” was written about your experience coming out as a transgendered musician over the last few years?
Mikey: Um, sort of. Not my experience, but, like, the experience.
Gerard: You don’t have to be transgendered to understand the meaning of “Bleeds Like A Boy”. It’s more a song about feeling wrong in your own head, about feeling imperfect.
Mikey: Yeah.
Gerard: And that’s a feeling that almost everyone is able to relate to at some point in their life. I think that explains why it’s been so widely embraced. It really struck a chord with people.
Q: The subject hasn’t always gotten such an understanding reception though, has it? I know the band caught a lot of flack.
Frank: And beer bottles. We caught a lot of bottles.
Mikey: If there was an award for dodging shit, MCR would win every year.
Gerard: (laughing) No contest. We’ve all got ninja skills now.
Mikey: Not just Bob anymore.
Q: Do you find it hard to reconcile that attitude with the warm reception for “Bleeds Like A Boy”?
Mikey: Not me… No, I don’t. Do you guys?
Frank: I don’t know. We weren’t really giving people a chance to see where we were coming from before. Maybe being more open about everything changed minds.
Bob: Assholes are assholes though. I think we were going to get shit thrown at us no matter what we did at first.
Ray: I find it hard to reconcile.
Gerard: So do I, actually. We had to be really careful a couple years back, just making sure Mikey didn’t get hurt by jerks. And now people are waiting after the shows specifically to thank him. It’s awesome, but it is a big turn-around.
Mikey: Well… I don’t know. I’m going to do a shitty job trying to explain this.
Q: No, go ahead.
Mikey: Well, like, I knew what was going on in my head since I was little, so I was used to it. And then when I told Gerard and everybody, they had to catch up to the place I’d taken ages getting to in my own head. And it’s… it’s probably like that for the audience too. They just needed some time to get to that level of, like…
Gerard: Comfort? Acceptance?
Mikey: Or something, yeah. So now they’re closer to where we are and they can understand where we’re coming from. They’re closer to where I am. It’s cool.
Q: And where are you at these days, Mikey?
Mikey: Good. (laughs) I’m good. How are you?