Mighty Fall {Trohley, Petekey}

14: gerard undoubtedly gets fucked

My Chemical Romance were pretty gay even when they weren't on stage.

Pete could smell the sexual tension between Gerard and Frank. He wondered how Mikey felt, seeing his brother's ass being observed so intensely by his friend. He must be used to it by now, Pete figured, as this was definitely a regular occurrence.

Meanwhile, Mikey was grinning at Pete as he plunked around on his bass, looking up every once in a while to read Pete's expression and make sure he was playing well enough for him. Ray seemed to be the only one who was actually paying more attention to the music than he was paying attention to anyone else. The band went over a few of their new songs, asking Pete and two other people that Pete wasn't introduced to, supposedly their professional creative consultants - people who were actually paid to make sure that the music sounded good, or more accurately, would sell the most copies.

"Can we take a break? I gotta piss," Ray said after a performance of a song that they'd been working on for a while, as Pete was told. He was lucky enough to have been the deciding factor in one of the lyric changes when a man with long black hair and an ungroomed beard pointed out that the line was in present tense while the rest of the song implied past tense. The other man, who had shorter, bleach blonde hair and was a little more chubby, thought the lyric sounded fine. Everyone in the room looked at Pete, one by one, until he agreed with the darker-haired man. After all, the song should have a flow and make sense even if on the purely auditory side it would sound better and not make sense, right?

"Yeah, sure. You better have your ass back in here in five, or else we're going to change that riff that you really like," Gerard threatened, his smile showing that he wasn't really all that serious. Ray gave him a silent thumbs up, and disappeared into the hallway of their rehearsal space. Mikey took off his bass strap and set down the instrument carefully, then turned to Pete.

"So what d'you think?" He asked.

"It's... just - wow, I mean, I've never seen you guys live before, but I've heard that it's really cool, and I guess they're right. I don't know how to explain it, but it's like... it's like you're all communicating with each other while you play." Mikey nodded at Pete's words, encouraging him to go on. "I have no idea if this is making sense at all or if I'm just saying things that I think sound poetic, or-"

"No, no," Mikey interrupted. "What you're saying makes sense. I mean, to a certain extent, it can be taken literally. I have to listen to everyone else to know when to come in, or to know if I'm going too fast, or whatever. It's cool how you can tell that we listen to each other while we play."

"Yeah. You seemed really into it, the whole 'being a part of something bigger' thing," Pete observed.

"Yeah, I don't know if I could ever do music on my own. I'm not much of a songwriter, I guess, mostly just tell the guys what I'd rather or rather not play. I'm a little too anxious to be a frontman of anything," Mikey giggled.

"But you're so goddamn cute!" Pete exclaimed, probably a little too loudly as he could feel Gerard's glare. Oh, shut up, he wanted to tell him, I've seen the way you act with Frank so don't get all 'defensive big brother' when you're doing the exact same thing with your bandmate.

"So I've heard," Mikey said, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. There was a small moment of silence where Pete was thinking of what to say.

"Thanks again for letting me watch you guys rehearse, it's really a magical experience," Pete said.

"No problem, seriously, Pete. Sometimes rehearsals can get really boring so I'm glad to have you here to occasionally glance at. You've got a good face for glancing," Mikey replied, his voice wavering towards the end. Pete would have had more time to question if Mikey was just flirting with him or not if Ray hadn't entered the room at that moment.