fic: In The Walls (1/8)
Headers & Main Post - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight - Bonus Content
It's a running joke in the band that they always bring bad weather with them to L.A., and the rain pelting against the windshield of the van as they pull up the long and winding drive to the Paramour Mansion is doing nothing to break their streak.
"We're fucking cursed!" Frank shouts as water rolls down his face and under his collar, as they're hauling bags and gear into the mansion's front foyer.
"Don't say that, asshole," Mikey sighs, and punches Frank's shoulder on his way by to drop off his last bag.
"What did I do?" Frank asks disingenuously, and then laughs when Ray rolls his eyes at him.
So it's kind of funny, Gerard will think later, in the middle of the night when his eyes are burning dry and his throat is chafing from trying not to scream, that everything really started going wrong when the sun finally came out.
* * *
Nobody says as much aloud, but Gerard can tell from everybody's faces when they get inside that they're all a little awed by the opulence of their surroundings. They decide to put their gear in the ballroom near the mansion's front foyer, and for the first hour it feels like they spend less time setting up than just wandering around slowly and taking in the total visual overload of their surroundings. The room is packed full of antique furniture, strange statues, and massive paintings in elaborate frames, and Gerard isn't sure where to even start poking around to make space for their gear.
He stands in the middle of the room and tips his head back to look up at the ceiling, paneled in dark wood and no less extravagant and ornate than the contents of the room beneath it. There are chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, too, massive crystal affairs that light up the whole room.
"This is un-fucking-believable," Frank murmurs as he comes to stand next to Gerard.
"It's no Jersey basement, that's for sure," Gerard agrees, still a little wide-eyed.
They keep staring at everything around them, their eyes skipping back and forth as things keep catching their attention.
"Those lion statues are ridiculous," Gerard says, and walks over to run his hands along the carved stone head of the nearer of the pair.
"Everything here is ridiculous," Frank mutters, leaning over Gerard's shoulder to peer at the lions. Frank is warm where he's pressing up against Gerard's back-and it's freezing in the ballroom, Gerard realizes suddenly.
"Hey, Frank," Ray calls from across the room.
Frank and Gerard both look up to see Ray trying to carry four guitar cases at once.
"Shit, better go help," Frank says, and he runs over to grab two of the cases from Ray.
Bob trails after them, carrying a drum case in one hand and a guitar rack against the other shoulder with the ease of years of practice.
Gerard watches as the three of them stand in a loose circle, pointing to various parts of the room as they figure out where to put everything. Gerard smiles while he watches them, and sure enough, they all move with a sense of purpose once they break apart, moving things and unrolling the rugs they'd brought and starting to get boxes unpacked.
Mikey comes over to join them once he notices what's going on, and Bob helps him roll their enormous bass cab across the floor. Mikey starts pulling cables out of an old duffel bag and passing them to Frank and Ray when they hold out their hands.
Gerard loves the way the band works together these days, like five precisely interlocking parts of a well-oiled machine. Or something. He's not sure how he feels about machines as a metaphor anymore. Maybe they're like different organ systems, working together to keep a living body going. Bodies are imperfect, he thinks, but there's that certain magic to how they just seem to work, so complex that even scientists haven't really figured out all the details of yet, and-
"Hey asshole," Frank shouts. Gerard startles out from where he's lost in thought and looks over, and sure enough, Frank is looking right at him, a tiny grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "You just going to stand there or are you going to pull your weight?"
"Coming, coming," Gerard says, and he grins back at Frank.
Gerard's been worrying that maybe he's aiming too high with the album they're writing, that he's pushing the band too hard for too much, but right now all he can feel is the excitement crackling in the air between them, and honestly, he can't wait to really dig in and get going again.
He shoots one last look at the chandelier overhead. Coming to L.A. for a change of scenery while they finish writing was definitely something they decided on a whim, but Gerard thinks it's going to work in their favour. There's no way they're going to get anything less than an epic record out of a room-a house-like this.
* * *
They only get halfway set up before Ray starts yawning, and Frank and Mikey catch it from him in short order.
"Why don't we call it a night?" Bob suggests. "We can finish setting up tomorrow. Where are the bedrooms here, anyway?"
"Um," Ray says. "I think they left a list of rooms they got ready for us." He picks up the big folder of papers that had been waiting for them in the front entrance when they arrived and starts shuffling through it. "Yeah, here it is. There's six rooms ready, it looks like they're all on the second floor."
Gerard plucks the paper from Ray's hand and skims over it quickly. "Should we pick numbers randomly, or what?"
"May as well," Frank shrugs.
Ray pulls a blank sheet of paper from the back of the folder and pulls a pen out of his pocket. He writes the room numbers onto the sheet and then rips it up into surprisingly even pieces. "Shit, what am I going to put these in?"
"Use this," Bob says, and they all laugh when Bob swipes the beanie off Mikey's head and holds it out to Ray so he can put the bits of paper inside.
One by one they reach in and pick their numbers. Gerard and Mikey end up with consecutive numbers, but other than that, there's no real pattern or meaning to the numbers they pick.
"Mine ends in 13," Frank says, peering at his number. "We're in a haunted house, do you think I should be worried?"
"Yes," Mikey tells him.
Frank laughs. "I'm just kidding, man."
Mikey sighs melodramatically. "Don't complain to me when your room is haunted, then."
"I won't," Frank tells him, "because it won't be."
"If you insist," Mikey says. "Hey, Bob, can I have my hat back?"
"As if this house is actually haunted," Frank scoffs.
Bob throws the hat back to Mikey. "I'm going to bed," he announces. "See you guys tomorrow."
"Don't let the ghosts get you!" Frank calls at his retreating back.
Bob flips Frank the bird over his shoulder, and Frank cracks up.
"Hey, our rooms must be near each other, right?" Mikey asks Gerard.
Gerard nods. "That makes sense."
"Walk with me," Mikey says, and goes to get his bag.
Gerard can't say no to that. It's no secret that Mikey believes in ghosts, and it's no surprise that he's a little freaked out by being in a house that's so famously haunted. Even though Mikey was playing it off as joking with Frank, Gerard could see the real nervousness behind it. He doesn't think that Mikey-or any of them-have anything to worry about, but he's got no problem keeping his brother company on their way to their rooms.
"Fuck, I'm cold," Mikey mutters as he wheels his suitcase down the second-floor hallway towards where they figured their rooms must be.
"Me too," Gerard agrees. "It's freezing in here. Downstairs, too. You'd think they would have turned the heat on for us, I mean, they knew we were coming today."
Mikey just shrugs.
They keep walking, their footsteps soft on the faded red Oriental carpet that runs down the middle of the entire length of the hall.
Finally, one of the doors catches Gerard's eye. He stops and checks the tiny wrought-iron numbers nailed to the door against the numbers he'd scrawled on his hand downstairs.
"I think this is it," he says.
Mikey nods, and then looks warily down the hall to the last door. Gerard catches the look, and he suddenly feels the urge to follow Mikey and make sure he gets settled in okay.
Gerard drops his bag in front of the door to his room and then hurries to catch up with his brother, who throws him a look over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
"I want to see your room," Gerard says. It's not exactly a lie, anyway. He does want to see Mikey's room.
Mikey doesn't say anything to that. He drops one bag to free up a hand and then slowly opens his door, almost as if he were nervous about it.
Gerard peers in over Mikey's shoulder. It's his first glimpse of anything in the house that isn't the ballroom, and it simultaneously both is and isn't exactly what he was expecting.
The furniture is old and the brocade wallpaper has definitely seen better days, but the bedding is new and bright and expensive-looking. There's no dust-at least not that he can see from this distance, anyway-and the whole room gives off an impression of stiff, austere tidiness. It doesn't actually feel very friendly, but Gerard doesn't want to say anything about it.
Mikey steps into the room and then pauses for long seconds. It doesn't look like he's taking it all in, Gerard thinks; it looks more like he's completely frozen in place. But then Mikey shakes it off and reaches for the light switch on the wall near the door.
They both gasp when the light comes on.
It's the strangest thing: the single bulb in the middle of the ceiling is giving off light in this unsettling shade of blue. It barely counts as light, even; it's just an eerie, watery glow.
Gerard's eyes ache when he tries to look directly at it, but it's not the same ache that comes from looking directly at any other light; it's more of a buzz in the very liquid of his eyes. He dares himself to keep staring at it, to be contrary. The buzz gets worse the longer he stares, and when he finally tears his eyes away it doesn't subside right away. He's shivering now too, even though he's got a hoodie on, because it's real fucking cold in Mikey's room.
He takes a step towards his brother almost unconsciously, and it brings him into the room. As he steps across the threshold, this overwhelming feeling of wrongness hits him like a wave, crashing over his head and trying to drag him under.
Some kind of fight or flight instinct must be kicking in, because all Gerard wants is to get the fuck out of there-it's not like there's anything to fight against, anyway. "Are you going to be okay in here?" he asks, and then feels stupid right away. Why wouldn't Mikey be okay? As weird as the blue light is, it's just a light-and as weird a vibe as Gerard gets from the place, it's just a room.
"Why wouldn't I be?" The look on Mikey's face makes Gerard feel bad for worrying.
"Okay, well, I'm gonna go unpack," Gerard says awkwardly, and then he backs quickly out of the room.
The hallway is noticeably less cold than Mikey's room, and Gerard pauses for a moment to try to clear his head. What the hell had happened in there?
The bedroom door is still open so Gerard turns back to check on his brother. He looks okay, if a little washed-out under the weird blue light. He's moving around slowly, like he's taking stock of the furniture and considering where he wants to keep his things.
Gerard still can't put his finger on why he'd reacted like he had to the room, so he decides that he may as well push it from his mind; it must be just nerves, or concern for his brother. He turns and goes back down the hallway until he gets to where he left his bags in a heap.
The knob on the door to his own bedroom turns easily under his hand, and the door swings open on silent hinges.
His room looks a lot like Mikey's, but one wall shows exposed brick and everything is appointed in warm tones of red and orange. It's shocking how inviting his room is in contrast to Mikey's.
He takes a deep breath and braces himself, and then steps into his room.
Nothing happens.
When he breathes out, it's a sigh of relief.
His room is cold too, but only as cold as the hallway and the ballroom downstairs, and he's pretty sure he'll get used to it. He hopes he packed slippers.
In the corner is an enormous desk, and there's a big lamp on its corner. Gerard is already getting mental images of spreading out his sketchbooks and markers and taking full advantage of the space.
He hauls his bag into the middle of the room and decides that he may as well start unpacking now. He fills the small dresser next to the window, stopping now and then to admire the view, which looks out over an enormous swimming pool and the other wing of the house on the other side of the central patio. Gerard watches for a while as the rain falls into the pool, the steady barrage of drops making its surface choppy with hundreds of overlapping ripples. It looks pretty cool, actually.
It turns out that the dresser doesn't quite hold all the stuff he packed, so he needs to figure out where the closet is. He hopes it has hangers, because he didn't bring any. He isn't really into hanging his clothes; it's too much work. Maybe he can leave the rest of his stuff in his suitcase. They're only going to be here for a month and some, right?
Gerard sighs. His ma would be shaking her head sternly at him for that. He needs to find the closet.
He opens a nearby door set into the wall. He was expecting a closet, but what he gets instead is a small bathroom with Mikey standing in it, unpacking his toiletries onto a shelf above the sink.
"Oh," Gerard says, and Mikey drops his toothpaste.
"You scared me," Mikey gasps as he whirls around to face Gerard, his tone harsh and accusing. He balls his hands into fists, but not before Gerard sees them shaking.
"Sorry," Gerard offers. "So, hey, we're sharing? Just like back at home, man, what a trip." He steps around Mikey to peer around the shower curtain into the tub.
"Yeah," Mikey mumbles. "Just like home."
Gerard pulls his head out of the tub and leans against the jamb of the door back into his room.
"You okay?" he asks his brother.
"Just peachy," Mikey says. He clearly doesn't mean it and Gerard doesn't get why. They've been in L.A. less than a day; surely Mikey isn't homesick already?
Maybe he misses Alicia, Gerard thinks. Maybe he's found out that the cell reception in the house fucking sucks and it's hitting him hard. Gerard watches as Mikey gets the rest of his toiletries unpacked and lays out his razor and soap and deodorant in a neat line on a shelf, but his eyes eventually drift away to the door at the other end of the bathroom.
It's leaned most of the way closed so Gerard can't see into Mikey's room, but the blue light is coming in through the space around the edges. It still gives Gerard the heebie-jeebies and he turns away quickly.
Gerard wants to ask Mikey about it, wants to say something to cheer him up, but doesn't because it's clear that Mikey doesn't want to talk.
The air gets thicker and thicker between them as they stand in silence, and Gerard excuses himself a moment later under pretenses of finding his actual closet.
* * *
New digs are old news to them by this point, so nobody is clamouring to explore the place right away the next morning-except Frank, because "it's a giant fucking haunted mansion! Come on, this is awesome, aren't you guys even the least bit interested?"
"Shut up, Frank," Bob growls, clutching his first Red Bull of the day close to his face.
"Back me up here, Gerard," Frank pleads around a mouthful of toast.
Gerard shrugs. "Let's stick to the rehearsal schedule," he says. "We can explore after."
"Nothing stopping you from going alone," Bob points out. When Frank doesn't answer right away, Bob smirks at him and says, "Or are you too scared to go alone?"
"I am not," Frank bristles. "It's just more fun with someone else, you know?"
"Sure it is," Bob says, too amiably to be sincere.
"You're all pussies," Frank mumbles. "I'm going to go finish my set-up, see you guys in a bit." He shoves the rest of his toast into his mouth, then gets up and dumps his plate into the sink. It sounds like he's making as much noise as he can, which Gerard wouldn't put past him.
Gerard watches Bob scowl at Frank's back as Frank moves across the kitchen towards the ballroom, but then the door slams shut with a startling BANG scant inches from Frank's face.
Frank jumps backwards, practically tripping over his own feet as he dashes back to the table. "Did you guys see that? What the fuck was that?" He sits back down in the seat he'd just vacated and then scoots it over, closer to Ray.
"Probably just a draft," Ray tells him, then puts one hand on Frank's shoulder, comfortingly.
"Probably just a ghost," Frank spits. "I told you guys this place is fucking haunted."
Everybody stares at Frank for a minute, and then Bob bursts out laughing. "You fucking liar," he says gleefully, "you are scared, admit it."
"I am not," Frank protests, but his heart's really not in it. "It took me by surprise, that's all."
Bob doesn't say anything; he keeps smirking at Frank.
"This place is fucking haunted," Mikey says into the silence.
Frank smiles, then. "See, Mikey Way knows what's up."
Mikey smiles back, and he and Frank high-five awkwardly across the table, their edges of their palms skidding away from each other with barely a noise.
"Did that count as landing it or not?" Frank asks the room.
"I say not," Ray says.
Bob shakes his head.
"No," Mikey says.
"Same," Gerard agrees. He's actually not sure how it should count, but he doesn't want to screw around with their high-five superstitions. Now is really not the time.
"Good," Frank says, and he's just leaning up to go for the high-five they actually want to land when he freezes in place.
"Frank?" Mikey blinks at him, and shakes his raised hand in front of Frank's face.
"Did you guys see that?"
"See what?" Mikey asks.
"Did you see a ghost?" Bob asks. Gerard leans over and punches him gently to keep Frank from doing it harder.
"I thought I saw something moving over in the corner," Frank says.
"I didn't see anything," Ray says.
"Me either," Gerard and Mikey say at the same time.
"Oh," Frank says. "Well, never mind, then."
Bob snorts.
Frank's features start settling into that mulishness that Gerard has come to recognize so well, so Gerard gets up, wincing briefly at the scrape of his chair against the tiles of the kitchen floor, and says, "Hey, Frank, let's go finish setting up. Ghosts won't fuck with the two of us, right?"
The hard look on Frank's face softens, and Gerard is pleased to have headed that one off early.
"Sure," Frank agrees, and gets up again.
They make it through the kitchen door and into the ballroom where they left all their gear without event, although Gerard chooses not to comment on the fact that Frank is sticking awfully close to his back the entire walk over.
* * *
The rest of the band drifts into the ballroom over the next half an hour, and their set-up slowly comes together as they finish arranging cables, repositioning amps, and filling the guitar rack.
"Fuck," Bob hisses in the middle of screwing his tom onto his rack, and Gerard looks up quickly. Bob is scowling at his finger, which is bright red, visible even from where Gerard's standing. "Pinched myself," Bob says by way of explanation. "Motherfucker, ow."
"Are you okay?" Ray asks.
"Yeah," Bob grunts and goes back to putting his drums together. He gets the tom attached, finally, and he turns to take his snare out of its case. When he turns back to his kit, he trips on something and knocks his crash cymbal over. Gerard winces at the immense noise-it echoes around the giant ballroom, louder than he would have figured possible-and Mikey almost drops his bass in surprise.
"Seriously, are you okay?" Ray asks, sounding a lot more concerned.
"Sorry," Bob sighs as he rights the cymbal stand. "Yeah. I'm fine. I didn't sleep very well last night. There was water dripping in my bathroom and it kept going all night."
"Why didn't you turn it off?" Mikey asks. He looks serious, though, and not like he's trying to give Bob shit.
Bob shrugs, adjusting his last tom and eyeing the whole kit critically. "I got up a couple times and watched the faucets, but none of them were actually dripping."
"Maybe it was in the pipes?" Mikey offers. He doesn't look too convinced, though, and neither does Bob.
"I didn't sleep well either," Ray admits. "I couldn't get warm, you know? I kept waking up because I'd get so cold."
"Yeah, my room was real cold too," Gerard tells him.
"I was cold, and it felt like something was biting my toes," Frank says.
"Bedbugs?" Ray asks, cringing a little.
Frank shakes his head. "No, it felt like actual teeth, not a bug bite."
"Okay, that's fucking weird," Gerard says.
"Dude, I know, right?" Frank finishes attaching his pedals and straightens up. "Is anyone else still really cold, or is it just me?"
"It's freezing," Mikey tells him.
"Why is there no heat in here?" Frank asks.
"Maybe it'll kick in soon?" Gerard suggests half-heartedly.
"I hope so," Ray says. "My fingers are already getting cold. We should get playing, help warm up."
"You good, Bob?" Frank asks.
Bob looks up from where he's settling in behind his kit, adjusting the throne. "Yeah," he says, and starts tapping on the rim of his snare with one stick.
"You guys good?" Frank gestures to the rest of them.
"Yeah," Ray says, and he reaches over to turn on his amp. There's a big static pop and a moment of crackle, but it smoothes out after a second into the warm background hum of a well-used Marshall stack.
Gerard readjusts his mic stand, fixing the angle in tiny increments. There was nothing wrong with it before, and now he realizes he actually over-adjusted it with his fidgeting and he can't figure out which way to bend it to set it back. He's not sure why he's so anxious about rehearsal all of a sudden, but now that he's here in front of a mic in this enormous crazy ballroom with half an album's worth of songs done and another half still to write, he can feel the pressure breathing down his neck.
He takes a deep breath and nods at Frank, then looks over at Mikey.
Mikey's got his bass on and he's shifting his weight from foot to foot, pressing his fingers across the width of his bass's neck one fret at a time. It's a ritual Gerard's seen hundreds of times now, and he smiles as he watches Mikey work his hand all the way up to the last playable fret before he looks up and catches Gerard looking at him.
Mikey nods at Gerard, a single tip of the head.
Gerard looks away only when he hears Frank start playing the opening chords to "Dead!"
* * *
Their warm-up goes really well. The music sounds amazing in the ballroom, bigger and more than it might otherwise be, and even though the room is still surprisingly cold they're all playing well, getting more and more comfortable in the new songs with every repetition.
They're running through "Teenagers" when the painting on the far wall catches Gerard's eye. He stares at it for a few moments as he sings, but he's too wrapped up in the music to pin down what exactly about the painting is bothering him. He looks away without thinking about it, turning to watch Ray start improvising on the guitar solo.
It's not until half an hour later, when they're running through the song again with a completely different drum part, "just to see what happens," that Gerard figures out what exactly about the painting was bothering him before.
"Hey, guys," he says instead of coming back in where he's supposed to after the solo.
The song grinds to a staggering halt as they all stop playing and give him various weird looks.
"What?" Ray asks him.
"You see that painting over there, above the fireplace?"
"The one with the angel?" Frank asks, squinting a little as he looks.
"Yeah, that one," Gerard says. "Didn't it used to be over by the front window?"
"I have no idea," Frank says.
"Did any of you move it?" Bob asks.
Everyone shakes their head.
"So it didn't move," Bob says like it's the most obvious thing ever, and taps his sticks together like he's anxious to count them all back in.
Gerard wrinkles his nose. "Weird. I could have sworn it was by the front window."
"Maybe you got it confused with a different painting?"
Gerard looks over his shoulder at the wall by the front window. There's a painting there, but it's a portrait of a woman and much smaller than the painting of the angel. "Maybe," he says.
He's not convinced, though, and it lurks in the back of his mind as practice goes on.
They work their way through most of the songs they wrote back in New York, still trying little tweaks and changes to get the songs sounding as good as they can. The echo of the ballroom gives them a new perspective on the songs; they sound different under the chandeliers and wooden ceilings, and Gerard suspects that at least some of them would agree with him that part of the difference isn't just acoustic.
Ray starts strumming the the verse chords to "Mama," but he has this look on his face like he's concentrating on some tiny aspect of them, which they all know means he wants to play on loop for a while to get a feel for something that's bothering him.
"Do you guys mind if I take a break?" Mikey asks then.
Gerard jerks around to look at him; he's already got his bass unplugged and propped up in its stand, the strap trailing on the floor.
"Sure?" Gerard says, a little confused. They haven't been playing for that long, surely. He glances down at his watch to check, and-oh, they've been playing for four hours.
The rest of the guys nod and agree. Frank raises an eyebrow at Gerard in question, but Gerard just shrugs back at him.
"Cool," Mikey says. "I'll be right back." He shakes his hands out, and then walks out of the ballroom.
It takes a few minutes for Gerard to shake this feeling of whiplash, going from filling the room's huge space with music to standing around like the last pill in the metaphorical bottle.
Ray's still working out his problems with the verse and Frank is watching intently, his lips pursed and eyebrows drawn in close, so Gerard leaves them be and starts wandering around the ballroom, looking at the weird carved statues and extravagant antique furniture that's all scattered around in the room, serving no discernible purpose-except, perhaps, to give the room its particular ambiance.
Soon enough his feet bring him to the portrait of the woman by the front window, as if that wasn't his whole purpose for leaving their set-up in the first place. There's a plaque at the bottom of the frame that he hadn't seen from across the room, so he leans in and gently brushes the dust from it with a finger.
Daisy Canfield Danziger, it says in neat engraved Art Deco letters.
"Oh," Gerard says in surprise. He vaguely remembers Mikey telling him something about the history of this mansion when they were still in New York, and he recognizes the name. She and her husband had the house built, he thinks, and she died in a car accident on Mulholland.
He looks up from the plaque to her face. She has big sad eyes, and there's something truly haunting about them. Gerard can't quite put his finger on whether it's her likeness or something more, maybe a quirk of the way the artist handled the oils. She's staring past him, through him, distant and proud in her pearls and finger-waved dark hair.
Gerard sort of feels like he should talk to the painting-say "hi" or something-but he bites it back because he's not sure that talking to the painting won't get him mocked mercilessly for the rest of the day. Bob and Frank are both still a little punchy and he'd rather not draw that his way. Instead, he keeps looking at the painting like that'll settle things in his mind; he's still sure that this painting wasn't here yesterday. He doesn't remember seeing it at all.
He finally gives up on Daisy's portrait and wanders over to the fireplace to look at the painting he thought used to hang by the window. He cranes his neck, leaning in over the screen in front of the hearth to try to get a closer view. It's a painting of an angel with wings as big as her body and her arms held wide, palms up, as if giving benediction.
This painting isn't giving up any secrets, either, so Gerard turns away after a few moments of observation and wanders back to the circle of their instruments.
Frank's playing a riff Gerard doesn't recognize over a simple beat from Bob, and Gerard leans against his mic stand and listens until Frank stops.
"Is that anything?" Gerard asks.
Frank shrugs. "It might be later, but it needs more work."
"I like it," Ray says, and Frank grins at him.
There's a noise from somewhere across the room, then-not loud, but enough to startle Gerard. He spins on his heel and he's relieved to see that it's just Mikey.
Gerard frowns as he watches Mikey start walking back towards their set-up. He looks unsteady on his feet, and his path couldn't be described, even generously, as a straight line. Gerard can't help but notice that Mikey's hands are shaking as he picks up his bass again, and when Gerard looks up from Mikey's hands to face, he's shocked at how pale he is.
"You okay?" Gerard leans in to ask quietly.
"I'm still kind of jet lagged," Mikey tells him shortly before turning back to his bass, adjusting the strap on his shoulder and then turning his amp back on.
Gerard stares at Mikey's back, a little surprised by the brusqueness of the brush-off, but then he notices that everybody else is ready to to play again, so he lets it slide in favour of letting Bob count them in to "I Don't Love You".
* * *
They play almost until midnight, with only a quick break for dinner, before they finally decide to call it a day, setting their instruments down carefully and leaving the ballroom. The house is dark around them and the hallways seem almost claustrophobic for it. They shuffle together through to the foyer, and Gerard sticks as close as he can to his bandmates. It's not that he's afraid of the dark, or afraid of the house, or worried about getting lost, but somehow it feels like the right-safest-thing to do.
A light further down the hall comes on, then. The single bulb in the ceiling gives just enough light that some of the shadows retreat, and in the dim glow, Gerard can see Ray taking his hand off a light switch on the wall.
"You guys want to explore now?" Frank's voice sounds strangely loud in the near-dark.
"Go for it," Ray says.
"Are you coming with me?" Frank asks him.
Even as Ray nods his agreement, Bob starts snickering.
Frank frowns at him. "What?"
"You still won't go alone? Now who's the pussy?"
"Shut up, Bryar," Frank mutters, and Gerard is more than half-expecting Frank to launch himself at Bob, but he doesn't.
Gerard watches as Ray and Frank take off down the hallway, Frank talking animatedly about something while Ray nods along.
"I haven't been into the south half of the house at all yet," Bob says, "you guys wanna come?"
"Okay," Gerard agrees. He's still too pumped from the day of rehearsal to go to bed, so he figures that if nothing else, walking around a bit will help him wind down. He wouldn't do it alone, though; he's completely with Frank on that one.
On the way to the south end of the Paramour, they pass through an enormous foyer with oversized French doors leading out to the swimming pool. Gerard walks over to the doors before he even realizes what he's doing, unlocking them and opening one only far enough that he can step through into the yard.
He walks out onto the patio, still acting on whatever weird impulse has been leading him so far. It's like there's this itch at the back of his brain that's getting scratched more and more as he gets closer to the pool.
He walks all the way up to the edge before he stops, his mind suddenly clear again. He stares down at the water, which is dark and murky in the rain, exactly the way it was when he saw it from his window. It's just a swimming pool, he tells himself. Perfectly normal, except for how big it is.
Gerard is so intent on the pool that he doesn't realize Bob is standing next to him until he clears his throat.
"Gonna go for a swim?" Bob asks, his tone gently teasing.
"You gonna work on your tan?" Gerard shoots back. He doesn't take his eyes off the pool.
"Hey, fuck you, I'm not the one who needs it," Bob says mildly, and they both laugh.
Gerard finally manages to look up from the pool and he notices Mikey hanging back, lurking around the edge of the patio. He's about to call over to him when Mikey wanders off down the far edge of the patio, past the end of the pool, and then flips his phone open and starts squinting at it, hunching over it to protect it from the rain. He stands still for a few minutes, his fingers moving quickly across its buttons, and then he visibly deflates, jams the phone back in his pocket, and walks back into the house.
Gerard follows him in, ready to head for the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee and try to warm up. He's expecting Mikey to do the same thing, so when Mikey walks past the turn for the kitchen and then past the turn for the stairs up to his bedroom, Gerard decides to keep following him.
Gerard hangs back, waiting for Mikey to turn a corner before he goes down the hallway Mikey just left. He can't put his finger on why he's trying to hide from his brother, why he's trailing him rather than catching up, but that doesn't stop him from doing it.
Soon enough Gerard finds himself in the back of the house, and he hears the door to the yard open and then close. Gerard lets himself out half a minute later, shutting the door as quietly as he can behind him, and he stands on the back stoop under a small overhang to protect himself from the rain as he watches Mikey walk across the back yard.
Mikey's shape gets smaller and smaller as he gets further from the house, and eventually he stops at what Gerard assumes must be the pond-somebody mentioned there was one out back. It might have been Mikey, come to think of it.
Gerard watches as Mikey skirts the edge of the pond, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. Then he veers off and Gerard squints and strains but can't see what Mikey is heading towards.
Eventually Mikey stops, seemingly in the middle of the lawn, and bends down. He stands stooped for a minute before sinking down to his knees in the wet grass, leaning in close to peer at something. Gerard has no idea how long Mikey sits there looking, how long he himself stands there watching, but it feels like a long time-too long for somebody to be out in the rain without a jacket, for sure.
Gerard wonders if he should go out and ask Mikey to come back in, but the debate between brotherly care and justifying why he was watching Mikey so closely is rendered moot when Mikey gets to his feet and starts back towards the house.
Gerard has a few moments to decide whether he wants to wait for Mikey at the door or retreat to the kitchen and pretend that he wasn't watching. There's nothing wrong with what he was doing, he tells himself.
So he waits.
Mikey is soaking wet when he gets back to the house, and he doesn't seem surprised to find Gerard waiting for him. A little irked, maybe, if Gerard is reading his expression right, but not surprised.
"What did you find?" Gerard asks.
"Daisy's grave," Mikey tells him, taking his glasses off and wiping some of the rain off the lenses with his cuffs. It looks like he's only smearing more water around instead of helping.
Gerard is taken aback. "She's buried on the property?"
"Yeah." Mikey frowns at his glasses, then puts them back on, low on his nose.
"Oh," Gerard says. There's an edge of awkward tension between them, now, and Gerard can't stand it. "Look, I'm going to go get some coffee, do you want some?" he asks, feeling like he's grasping at straws. He doesn't know why Mikey's been so distant since they got to L.A., and he doesn't like it.
Mikey is silent for a moment, and Gerard's heart drops. But then Mikey smiles at him-albeit a bit weakly-and says, "Sure."
* * *
Ray and Frank are already in the kitchen when Gerard and Mikey get there. There's half a pot of coffee left, and when Frank sees them come in, he jumps to his feet to pour a new mug and press it into Mikey's hands.
"Jesus," Frank mutters, "you're soaking wet and it's freezing in here, are you trying to catch pneumonia and die? Because you're on the right track, believe-" Frank cuts himself off and makes a face. "Oh my god, I'm turning into my mother."
They all laugh at that, even Mikey.
Gerard gets his own coffee and slides into one of the empty seats at the table, sitting with the mug held close to his face so the steam can help warm him up. It hadn't been that bad outside but it's still freezing inside, and being a bit damp is only making it worse.
"Where's Bob?" Gerard asks, realizing that he has no idea where he is if he's not in the kitchen.
"He went to bed," Ray says. "I don't blame him, actually. It was a long day." He puts his mug down, looks at it, and then stands up and says, "You know what, I'm going to turn in now, too."
Mikey gets to his feet, then. "I'll go up with you," he says to Ray. "I really need to put on some dry clothes."
Ray nods at him, and they head out together.
"This house is really something, huh," Gerard says, once it's just him and Frank sitting across the table from each other.
"Do you think this place is haunted?" Frank asks. He's staring at some point over Gerard's shoulder, probably deliberately avoiding meeting his eyes. "Be honest."
"I don't know," Gerard says. "I guess not."
Frank's face falls.
"I don't- I don't not think it's haunted, either," Gerard adds hurriedly. "I mean, there's this weird vibe here, right? We all feel it, so it's got to be something, you know?"
"It's definitely something," Frank agrees fervently.
"I know Mikey thinks it's haunted," Gerard says. "Maybe that's why he's been so weird since we got here."
"You think he's been weird?" Frank's concern is evident, right next to his confusion.
"You don't think so?" Gerard frowns at Frank. "He's been kind of distant."
"He seemed okay just now," Frank says.
Gerard can't argue with that, and he makes a non-committal noise of agreement.
"Maybe he's homesick?" Frank offers.
"That's what I figured," Gerard says.
"I mean, he hasn't been engaged to Alicia for very long, right? It's hard to have to leave so soon." Frank's voice gets soft, and Gerard knows he's got to be thinking about Jamia, waiting for him back in Jersey.
"Yeah. I don't know. I mean, that must be it. It's hard to see him like that, you know?"
Frank smiles at Gerard, then reaches across the table to cover Gerard's hand with his and squeeze it tightly. "He'll be okay," Frank says.
"I hope so."
"He will," Frank insists, and Gerard wants nothing more than to believe him.
They sit in silence after that, but it's comfortable. Gerard finishes his coffee and debates getting another cup, but quickly decides against it in favour of actually being able to fall asleep at some point that night.
"Hey, so," Frank starts into the quiet, and Gerard looks up at him. "This is really dumb, but can you walk me to my room?"
"Sure," Gerard says, and gets up and offers Frank his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman. Frank laughs, which was the whole point of the gesture.
The trip up to Frank's room is mostly quiet-the overwhelming stillness of the house around them seems to demand it somehow-and when they get to Frank's door, Frank leans in to confide, "I'm not scared, okay, but it's still fucking creepy to be alone in this place after midnight, you know?"
Gerard wraps his arms around Frank in a goodnight hug and murmurs, "I know," into the top of his head.
"Thanks," Frank says against Gerard's shoulder.
"It's nothing," Gerard says.
"Be careful on your way," Frank says seriously, pulling back from the hug to look Gerard in the eye.
"I will," Gerard assures him.
So of course Gerard gets turned around on his way back to his room. He wouldn't say that he's lost, necessarily, but he clearly missed a turn somewhere because he wasn't paying enough attention.
The hallway gets darker and darker as he goes until it's almost completely wrapped up in shadows. The things hanging on the walls are just dark outlines as he moves by; some look like they must be framed paintings, perhaps portraits of long-dead Hollywood players, while others look like old-fashioned ornamental sculptures, nailed to the wall to ride out the tastes of changing residents.
Gerard stops to admire a really ornate gilt frame of a mirror. The glass itself is dusty so he blows on it to clear it, and then he spends the next minute coughing as the dust flies back into his nose and mouth. The glass is cleaner for it, though, and he gives it an extra swipe with the cuff of his hoodie.
He can see himself reflected in it now: the rise of one cheekbone, the peak of his nose, the line of his brow, all picked out in the contrast of light and shadow. It's almost poetic, he thinks as he tilts his head sideways to watch the way the change in angle affects the play of shadows across his skin, changing the face he sees in the mirror.
There's a flicker, then, not in the lights around him but in his reflection. His hair suddenly looks much shorter, cropped close above the ears and a only a little longer than that in front, and his reflection's cheeks are flushed even though it's far too cold in the hallway for his face to be so hot. He looks younger in his reflection, almost like a teenager.
And his eyes...
He hesitates to even call them his; they're bloodshot around the edges and his pupils are dull and flat in a way that has nothing to do with the lack of light in the hallway, and it makes something dark and sick start to swim around in his guts.
Gerard winces, stepping back from the mirror as though he's trying to dodge the wild swing of a fist. He takes a deep breath, trying to slow the too-fast beating of his heart, and then shakes his head as if it'll help him shake off what he just saw.
When he looks back a heartbeat later, his reflection is exactly as it should be.
Gerard stares at the glass for a long moment before turning away, moving briskly down the hall back in the direction he came from to put as much space between himself and the mirror as possible.
He's still kind of turned around, but eventually he finds his way back to his room. He shuts the door firmly behind him, strangely relieved to have something solid between him and the rest of the house.
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