Collision

We came to a halt beside another bus which had already parked — which I recognized as the Hello, Irony one — as MCR’s bus pulled in a few feet away. I jumped up as soon as our bus engine cut out, eager to be the first one off a bus and outside, because, for no reason at all, I just decided that would be cool. After yelling goodbye to Ethan I leapt down the stairs from the bus, and hopped onto the asphalt outside. The bus that SAYF and Antagonism Enmity were sharing had just driven in, too, and I ran up to it as it stopped and the door opened.

“Red!” I yelled, hugging the bass guitarist. He was the first person to come out and thus the victim of my eager greeting — which he reluctantly returned, then gently pushed me away.

“I am about to kill Finley,” he said darkly, when I asked how he was.

“Oh. Sugar rush?”

“Not this time. Nope, today it was a whole hour of Spongebob and plotting pranks. Do you happen to know why he’s getting revenge on Gerard Way? What did the poor bugger do?”

I shrugged, nonchalantly. “Nothing, really. But Frank and Fin have decided to pair up because they can... yeah, I know, I feel sorry for him too. What stopped you from killing Finley?”

“Couldn’t find something I didn’t mind getting blood on which was hard enough to hit him over the head with,” Red replied, as the guitarist in question, yelling loudly, launched himself down the steps and into my arms. I staggered backwards under the force of his body thrown against mine, and Red took this as his cue to walk off before he really did end up killing the younger, green-haired guy.

“Cam! Caaaaamm!” Fin shouted, drawing out my name, even though I was currently being unwillingly clung to and thus he was only a few inches from my ear. I winced, trying not to think murderous thoughts. “Guess who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”

“Huh? What?” I replied, articulate as always, extracting myself from his grip. He pulled away, but only so he could jump around, clapping, and grinning so widely I’m sure his face hurt.

“Noooooo... SpongeBob SquarePants!” He cried, as if it was obvious, and continued his odd little dance in circles around me, singing in an obviously off-key way; I’m sure he knew just how annoying that was, and he was doing it on purpose. “Absorbent and yellow and porous is he! SpongeBob SquarePants! If nautical nonsense be something you wish... ”

I sighed and turned away, choosing to ignore the guitarist, and it was at that moment that the door to MCR’s bus opened, and out stepped the lead singer. Except, something was different, now — he was covered in bright paint. His black jeans were untouched, but the black shirt which had been quite clean earlier now was covered in a rainbow of colours, and he had bright streaks in his hair and all over his skin. I stared at him for a while before I burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“What the hell?” I said, walking over, still taking in the site with wide eyes. “What happened to you?”

He shot a glare behind him into the confines of the bus, and I heard a familiar giggle. “Frank is a complete and utter dick,” he said as an explanation to me, extracting a squashed packet of Marlboro Red cigarettes from his jeans with paint-stained fingers, plucking out a cigarette, and raising it to his lips. He hunted his pockets for a lighter for several seconds, cursing, until I handed him the one I had, conveniently, in my hoodie.

“Um... what?”

“He attacked me whilst I was sleeping. Fucking woke me up and all. I’m not even gonna ask how he got hold of that much paint. You know, I’m totally gonna have to get back at him for this? He deserves it.”

I giggled, slightly. “Well, you do need a bit of colour in your wardrobe — maybe he was just trying to help out?”

He twisted his mouth up, slightly, into a grimace, still gripping the cigarette between his lips as he raised the lighter up and flicked it into life. “This shirt,” he said, motioning at his ruined piece of clothing, “cost about sixty dollars. I’m gonna fucking kill him. Do you know where I can dump the body?”

I pretended to think about it for a few seconds, before shaking my head. “Not really. But you could try asking Red — I think he’s scoping out a few places to dump Finley’s body, just in case. You guys should pair up.”

“I might just,” Gerard replied grimly, taking a long drag of the cigarette and handing my lighter back. He offered me a cigarette too, but I shook my head. “Do you think that the excuse ’he was annoying me’ would hold up in court?”

“I don’t know — if they knew Frank, probably. But I’d be your witness, Gee,” I said, grinning and leaning against the bus next to him. “You got a plan for how to get back at him?”

“Oh yes. Just wait. I’ve got the perfect idea.”

He winked, tapping the side of his nose mysteriously at my questioning look, so I just shook my head, not really in the mood to interrogate him, and went to find my sister so I could annoy her for a bit. I had nothing better to do and I was kind of missing just hanging out with her — or rather, how much I could wind her up when I was hanging out with her. I found her lying down on the sofa in the shared bus, watching some kind of drama on the TV, and flopped down next to her with a huge sigh.

“Alex,” I said, drawing out the word as long as I could in one breath. “I’m bored!”

“Do something then,” she said, without even moving her eyes from the obviously thrilling TV program.

“No. Entertain me,” I demanded. She shook her head.

“Go find a hot guy to fuck around with,” she suggested after a few more seconds of my whining, only then looking at me, and that was for the briefest of moments so she could roll her eyes in her normal ’god-leave-me-alone-can’t-you-see-I’m-busy’ way. Busy doing what, I wasn’t sure. “And then fucking leave me the fuck alone.”

I pouted, exaggeratedly, poking her side with my pointer finger to make her look at me again. “They’re all taken!” I said, ignoring the sheer amount of ’fuck’ she managed to use in the brief sentences.

“Even better. Stops them from being clingy and all that emotional shit. Now, please Cam, fuck off.”

I fell silent and she apparently saw this as the end of the conversation. She turned back to her program and completely blanked me, despite the fact I was still sitting there, and even ignored my other pokes. After a while I stood up with another sigh, then glared at her. “I hate you,” I said, before flouncing over to the door.

“Ditto, sister!” She yelled after me. I slammed the door shut behind me as I walked out, and tried to decide what to do now. I’d basically run out of ideas — except going to sleep, but, unlike my bus-mates, I couldn’t do that in the middle of the day easily, especially if I didn’t want to end up staying awake half of the night as a consequence.

I decided to explore, although it was as I was rounding a corner that my plans were interrupted — because somebody came hurtling towards me, and suddenly, instead of being on my feet, I was on the ground, with Gerard standing above me. He quickly offered his hand to help me up.

“Sorry, Cam,” he said, then looked up, dropped my hand, turned and sprinted off. It was at that moment that a red-faced Frank came around running around the same corner, narrowly missing flattening me again like Gerard just had, and paused to catch his breath beside me.

“Where’d the fucker go?” He demanded, straightening up, and I took the chance to take in his appearance. He had black permanent marker all over his face — doodles and writing — and down his arms. I had to admit, I was quite impressed by the artistic skill (at least, judging from the little scribbles of devils and demons on his cheeks.) In fact, I guessed it had to have been Gerard who’d done it, which explained the whole running away thing. I rubbed the back of my head where I’d hit the floor when I’d been barrelled into by Gerard, then shrugged.

“I don’t know?” I offered, deciding that anything which meant that Gerard was running away from Frank about was probably to do with their ongoing prank war, and that I should probably protect the lead singer — since he was a friend. As much as I liked the oddball guitarist as well.

He, however, obviously didn’t like this answer, because he huffed and glared at me. “Well, fat lot of good you are!” He said, before running off again. I laughed, at the sheer weirdness of the situation which had just occurred, and then turned and followed him. I wanted to see this. I sped up when I heard a yelp, unmistakeably from Gerard, and when I found the pair they were on the ground, wrestling with each other. I’m pretty sure Frank had a hold on Gerard’s hair, which was what had caused the yelp, but already people were flocking forward to see this spectacle and blocking my view. Chantel was there, though, with a digital camera, and snapping pictures as I forced my way through to her.

“Wow...” I muttered, taking in the site of the two brawling guys rolling around on the floor — I was certain that I saw Frank dig his nails into Gerard’s arm to get him to yelp again. “You wouldn’t think they were a day over five, would you?” I said to Chantel, who laughed and then walked over and nudged them both with the toe of her trainers and shook her head disapprovingly.

“Break it up, idiots. Or you’ll get in trouble with Brian — I heard he’s in a super bad mood today.”

After the mention of their manager, they finally did indeed break it up... although it took the intervention of Isaac, as well, to haul Frank to his feet and away. Gerard got up with as much dignity as he could muster, brushing the dirt off of his jeans and looking around at the small crowd gathered as if to say ’what are you looking at?’, until everyone but Chantel and I dispersed and went back to what they were doing before. I giggled lightly, shaking my head like Chantel just had and watched when he pulled strange faces as he rolled his shoulders, which cracked loudly.

“Ugh, god. My back hurts now,” he complained. “Fucking concrete floors. They’re really not made for falling on after being tackled by an angry guitarist.”

“I just think you’re getting old, actually,” Chantel said lightly, pocketing her camera. I would have to snatch that off her later, because I’m sure the photos on it would be a great addition to the blog. In response to her teasing, Gerard stuck his tongue out at the black and blonde haired girl.

“Fuck you, El,” he said. “I’m not old. I’m young and fit and sexy.”

She nodded, mockingly. “Right, right, sure you are, Father Time.”

“So that was your revenge?” I asked, interrupting. “Marker pens? That’s kind of lame, Gerard.”

He laughed. “Sure, normal marker pens are lame. But THESE pens are special. They’re really hard to get off, trust me. Frank knows that, after last time.”

“Last time?”

“It took him a whole week to finally get rid of the moustache,” he said, smirking and looking quite pleased with himself. “Kind of missed it in the end — I think he even ended up naming it... he’s a bit weird like that.”

“You don’t say? Because you’re all weird,” Chantel said. “Every single one of you. Disturbed and weird.”

I shrugged. “That’s what makes us great, right Gee?” I asked, turning to the lead singer. He nodded.

“Pretty much.” He dug into his jacket pocket, and suddenly had a marker in his hands. I ducked away quickly, wary that I could be his next victim. He just grinned and grabbed Chantel’s arm — despite her protests, which weren’t that strong-worded, really — and started scribbling something. When I peaked at it I noticed it was words, but they were upside down and extremely hard to read in his handwriting.

“Weird is the new cool,” Chantel read out, when she finally did get her arm back. “Well, they never said you were the original, creative one — oh wait, you write the lyrics, don’t you Gerard? Gosh, that’s why they suck then.”

He flipped her off, not even bothering to glare at her. “My lyrics rule,” he said, turning to me and waving the marker. “Your turn,” he said, his eyes glittering with a mischievous kind of excitement, and then he took hold of my arm and started writing. I tried to focus on what he was writing, but my mind found it funny to be distracted by other things, namely his proximity and the feel of his hand on my skin. I’m pretty sure that my hormones really really hated me as well as my brain, judging from the flush of heat which hit me.

“You have really warm hands,” I said, absent-mindedly, as he let go of my arm and stood back to admire his work.

“Do I?” He asked, holding his hands up to look at them, as if that would inform him they were indeed warm and not just that they were just relativity hand-shaped in nature. I looked down and I smiled as I read the words now on my arm — ’everybody wants to change the world’, with a tiny little smiley face and then the words ’wanna try?’ underneath it.

“Cute,” I said. “But you better be kidding when you said it takes ages to get off.”

“Nope, not kidding. It’s like a temporary tattoo for a week.” He chuckled, shaking his head, and then smirked when I shot him a dark look. Chantel did, too, although her one was distinctly more murderous in nature.

“Hey, I have a date,” she said, “and you’ve written ’Weird is the new cool’ on my arm?”

“You have a date?” I asked turning to her.

“Not the point,” she said, waving my question away with one hand. “You’re a dick, Way,” she added, turning and stalking off, muttering death threats under her breath. Gerard and I looked at each other for a long time. Then, suddenly, a wave of laughter rolled out of my lips, and he joined in, until we were both leaning on each other, laughing hard, with no clue why. After a few strange looks from people walking past we recovered from our laughing fit, but I was still giggling slightly when his phone rang and he shot me an apologetic look before walking away to answer it.

“Hey Nessa,” I heard him say as he raised it to his ear.

I ignored my sudden urge to hit something, although Finley appearing — or rather, bounding up to me — at that exact moment didn’t help. Especially when I realized he was still humming the SpongeBob theme tune and that he was grinning manically, waving a candy bar at me. “I looooooooooove Alex!” He said, after he’d flung himself at me in his version of a hug, and I’d shoved him away. “She gave me chocolate! Fucking awesome.”

“Oh god,” I said with a groan, not really in the mood to deal with a hyper Finley for several hours. “Please leave me alone.”

He stopped bouncing and gave me a concerned look. “Why? Somethin’ wrong?” He asked, his grin marginally smaller now.

“Yes, you. In the head.”

“Not my fault, it was how I was born,” he replied happily, looping an arm around my waist and pulling me — protesting — along with him, until we were alone. “So, tell me... what’s really up, Cammy?”

I loved Finley — he could be so very annoying at times; in fact, most of the time I wanted to murder him for his endless childish energy, but he had a way of picking up on feelings, and whilst that was both bad and good (mostly bad when I was trying to keep things from people) it meant he was a great friend for confiding in. Now, however, I shrugged away his question. “Nothing,” I said, because honestly I didn’t know myself.

He obviously didn’t want to accept this answer though, dropping his arm from around my waist so he could fold them across his chest. “Tell me,” he insisted, giving me a stern look — it didn’t seem believable, with the lime-hair and insane grins he normally wore, but at times he could look pretty authoritative. I shrugged again, thinking that I really needed a different way of showing my apathy and when I didn’t know the answer to a question. He furrowed his brow slightly, looking at me for a few seconds silently. “Is it Gerard?” He asked, finally.

“Um, what?” I replied, uncertainly.

“Is it him?”

“Is it him... what?”

He sighed, apparently annoyed with my ignorance. “You know, do you... like him?” He said, waving his hands and looking extremely awkward. I don’t suppose he often had to ask anything that that. I opened my mouth to answer, but found that I didn’t actually have a reply. And before I could come up with one, he was speaking again. “I was talking to Liza... she mentioned how she suspected you liked him, but that you denied it and that... well, she was worried. So she found me.”

Ugh. God. Trust Liza to spill the beans.

“No, I don’t like him,” I replied, biting my lip and half-heartedly rolling my eyes. “He’s a friend. I’m allowed to have friends, right? Male ones? It’s not like I want to jump you or Red or Jack, is it?”

“I know when you’re lying, Cam,” he said, a small smile turning up the corners of his lips. “For one, of course you want to jump me, I’m fabulous. And you’ve turned bright red.”

He was telling the truth — I could feel the heat on my cheeks — and I looked away, fiddling with my charm bracelet in an attempt to not just stand there looking awkward. I debated with myself for a few seconds on what to do, then sighed. “Fine. Perhaps I do like him. But for heaven’s sake, it’s not like I’m gonna do anything. He’s got a girlfriend and all. Even you know what that means, right?”

Finley grinned. “That you have to seduce him?” He asked, hopefully.

“No, that you’re an idiot. But mostly that, me liking him? It means nothing. Now stop acting like my mother asking about my first boyfriend.”

“Your mother suggested you seduce your first boyfriend?”

“Surprisingly... no. I was thirteen, after all. I meant with the stupid questions.”

“Why should I?” He quirked an eyebrow a tiny bit (although that took a lot of effort for Finley, since he was the only one in our group who couldn’t raise their eyebrows easily) and smiled. “Oh, by the way, you didn’t deny it. You totally want to jump me.”

“Totally, Finny. Totally.”

~*~

Janey called me as I was just getting dressed after a shower, hopping around on one foot and trying to pull my jeans up without falling over. I’d asked Liza if I could have a shower at their bus (after asking my sister, and getting rejected, that was. Bitch) and she’d said yes on one condition: that I didn’t touch her Batman shampoo. I could do that. I didn’t succeed in my endeavour of not falling over, mostly because I went to answer my phone — inside the pocket of my discarded hoodie, now lying on the floor — and ended up losing my balance and crashing down with a thud.

I scrambled to my feet again, grabbed the phone, and answered it. I finally managed to get my jeans in place whilst putting it to my ear and speaking. I was that talented. “Heya?” I said, breathlessly.

“Cam! You bitch!” came the reply in Janey’s familiar accented voice.

“What did I do?” I asked with a small sigh, thinking back to the last few days and what I could have done.

“You mean what haven’t you done? And that’s call me to tell me all about this super-fuckin’-fantastic tour you’re on and all the guys and famous people and things! What the hell, Cam? Why do I have to call you?” She sounded severely distressed, like I’d killed her mother and her dog rather than forgotten to call.

“Um. Sorry?” I offered, trying not to laugh at the way she said it. I could imagine her waving her arms around wildly at the other end of the phone, like she always did when she was annoyed. “I’d have called you later; I just got out of the shower. And honestly, it’s not that good. Fun, but... it’s hard work.”

She scoffed. “Sure it is.”

I was about to reply when I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and then I turned around at the sound of Gerard’s voice — before realizing I hadn’t actually put a shirt on yet, and so I was standing there in my jeans and a bra. He began to say something, then stopped, obviously noticing the state of dress I was in, and turned red before quickly spinning around so he was no longer facing me. “Um, sorry. I just heard... you... we heard a fall. Just wondered if you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” I replied, trying not to sound embarrassed and I quickly threw on the t-shirt I had bought with me, switching the phone between my hands to do so. I didn’t even stop to wonder what the hell he was doing on Hello, Irony’s bus, either, because I’d noticed already that people spent a lot of time switching buses and not a lot of time in their own — which made it quite hard to track someone down when you wanted them, really. When I put the phone back to my ear I heard Janey giggle.

“Who was that?” She asked. I knew the expression she’d have on her face — the kind of quizzical little smile she always got when she was being nosy.

“Uh, that was Gerard.”

“Gerard... Gerard... ooh, the singer? Gerard Way? He’s cute! Nowadays, at least. Can I talk to him?”

“I... I guess. As long as you promise not to phone-molest him or something.”

“You know I can’t promise things like that,” she replied, giggling some more. I shook my head and walked over to Gerard, then tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to look at me, still slightly redder than normal, and looked mystified when I offered him the phone.

“It’s my friend, Janey. She wants to talk to you. Do you mind?”

“Uh... sure, I guess,” he said, taking the mobile out of my hand and putting it to his ear. “Hi?”

I sat down on the nearest bunk — which I remembered was Liza’s — and started pulling on my shoes, listening in on his responses. I’ll admit, I was worried about what she’d say, since Janey wasn’t known for her tact. I swore she didn’t actually have any decency at times. Like the night she’d been dared to run down the street with her top off, and she’d actually done it. Which, amusing as it was, didn’t sit very well with the neighbours (not helped by the extra loud music we’d been playing, anyway) and ended up getting the host of our little party in quite a lot of trouble.

For the most part, though, Gerard’s replies were a lot of one syllable things like ’mhmm’ and ’uh’, which didn’t do much to help me work out what they were talking about (or rather, what Janey was talking about and he was listening to.) Still, as I finished struggling with pulling the rather tight shoes on, I saw him pause and his eyebrows raise slightly, and I got to my feet quickly — sensing danger — and went to take the phone back. He moved away just as quickly, intent on keeping hold of the little device.

“What?” He said, looking slightly bemused; apparently because of what Janey had just said. “Well, I — ”

“Hey, come on. Give that back. It’s mine,” I interrupted, now slightly annoyed and trying again to take the mobile back. He laughed slightly, taking advantage of the fact he was a few inches taller than me to hold his arm up too high for me to reach, still talking to Janey.

“Oh, I think Cam thinks you’re asking too much. Mhmm, she’s giving me a great look now... no, sort of a mixture of murderous and horrified... what, that’s her normal expression? I think you piss her off a little bit too much to be impartial there, Janey.”

I was — with my arms folded — scowling quite unbecomingly at the singer who’d currently kidnapped my phone.

“I, uh, don’t really...”

Taking advantage of the fact he was distracted, I quickly jumped up and snatched the phone out of his hands, and ran towards the back of the bus so he couldn’t grab it back again. He just gave me a sort of amused look, shook his head, then turned and went back downstairs. “Janey, what the fuck?” I demanded, now I was alone again.

“What?” She replied, sounding as innocent as ever. “I didn’t phone-molest him.”

“Yeah, but what did you do?”

“I asked if you’d met any hot guys yet.”

“Is that all?” I asked, relieved. I could deal with that.

“Well, yeah... that, and if he thought you were hot yourself...”

I felt my stomach drop slightly. “Jesus, Janey, are you insane?”

“I’m kidding. But seriously, Cam, you need to get out there a bit more. You can’t mope over dickface for much longer, can you?”

“I’m not moping over dickface — who, has a name, by the way,” I snapped back. “I dumped Will, remember?”

“Oh, sure you did, hun. After he cheated on you, what, three times? And you two broke up like five times before you finally found some balls and called it quits.”

I glared at the space in front of me, since I couldn’t glare at her, mentally sending death rays at her through the phone. “Oh, shut up, Janey.”

“Well, whatever. I think he does, by the way. Even if I didn’t really ask him — he sounded pretty put out when I asked if you’d met any guys.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s because he’s a guy himself, you idiot. And my friend. You don’t do that, okay Janey? It’s not normal.” I shook my head. I wasn’t sure, sometimes, why Janey was my best friend, especially when she acted like this... well, I did know. She was probably the only person who could cheer me up when I was having a really really bad day. But, whilst most of the time she meant well — she wasn’t that malicious — she lacked foresight, and when she decided to take things into her own hands it, more often than not, ended badly. “Why does everyone keep trying to pair us up?” I asked finally with a sigh. “I’m really getting sick of it, actually.”

I heard her laugh, tinnily, through the small speaker. “Hey, I’m sorry — I was only joking around, Cam.”

“S’okay,” I mumbled back, leaning my head against the bus’s wall. “It’s not like we were getting on great and that you might just have made it awkward — oh, wait, that’s exactly what it’s like, bitch.”

I’m pretty sure she picked up on the fact I was only joking — after all, I could never hold anything against her for that long, really — because she giggled again. “Alright, fine, Cam... why don’t we talk about something else?”

“Like what?”

“... how about Jack?”

“Fuck you, Janey. Fuck you.”