Collision

“I can’t believe tour is almost over,” I said.

Janey, Liza and I were laying on the tarmac outside the buses on three beach towels which Liza had found in the back of their bus. I wasn’t sure when Hello, Irony had expected to go to the beach, but, hey, I was grateful for the towels. I was staring up at the sky, which was surprisingly blue and sunny. Apparently spring had decided to come just Whiteout wrapped up, which was just annoying.

Liza sighed. “It’s been a wild journey,” she agreed. “I’ve learned a lot.”

“But I haven’t got laid,” Janey added sadly. We both turned to her, or at least turned our heads. More than that was too much effort. “What?” she said, noticing our disbelieving looks. “It’s true!”

We were in London now. It was the last stop of the tour, and I was feeling sad. I had made so many good friends and had enough bizarre experiences to write a whole book on, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to give it up just yet. Granted, the tour was meant to spend three days here before being packed up and everyone going back to their old lives – except, of course, the bands, who were probably already planning their next tour – but that still didn’t feel like long enough.

“I’m not ready to go home,” I mumbled. “Although I do miss my bed quite a lot.”

“What are you gonna do?” Janey asked. I glanced over at her, confused.

“Sleep?”

“No, you little shit,” she replied. “I meant, what are you gonna do about you know… you, and the world’s most caffeine-fuelled emo?”

I realised suddenly she meant Gerard, and I quickly turned my gaze away. Truth is, I had no answer for her. I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to him about the fact that the tour was over in three days, and he was gonna be flying three and a half thousand miles away. “We’ll be fine,” I said unconvincingly. “I mean, we’re not even like, serious. And there’s Skype.”

“You’re an idiot,” Liza said. “You’re still trying to fucking tell me you’re not serious? That boy’s got googly-eyes for you, and you’ve had a raging heart-on for him for months.”

“That… is an interesting description.” I laughed and shrugged slightly, which was apparently quite difficult to do whilst lying down. “We’ll figure it out. First, I need to find myself a fucking job.”

“You can be our merch bitch,” Liza offered. “On our next tour.”

“Actually, I have dibs.” That was a new voice, but one I recognised easily. The world’s most caffeine-fuelled emo – as Janey had apparently dubbed him – appeared in my field of vision, which required him leaning over me since I was still staring at the sky. I grinned happily up at him.

“Rude.” Liza didn’t sound impressed, but I knew inside she was smiling, because she’d given me her blessings already.

“You’re blocking my sun,” I said instead.

He huffed slightly, taking a seat next to me instead. “You guys are mean.”

“I’m lovely,” offered Janey, apparently taking offence to this broad declaration. He looked over at her and smiled. “Hey, Gerard,” she continued now she had his attention.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know any hot guys?”

~*~

I sought out Mallory later that day just before SAYF were due to go on stage, because I was still ridiculously worried about my sister, and I needed to talk to someone about what was going on. Mallory seemed like the best bet. He had a clear head on his shoulders, and it was technically his job to try and keep the band in line as best as he could. Poor, poor guy.

“We need to talk,” I began as I walked up to him next to the stage, trying to catch his attention. It worked – he looked up from his phone and gave me a puzzled smile.

“What’s up?”

“Alex. And Finley. Something’s going on, and it’s scaring me. She’s not okay.”

He turned his head slightly to the side, as if weighing up my words, and then nodded over my shoulder. “She looks fine to me,” he said in a tone of voice which allowed no argument. I turned to look where he was looking, and saw Alex walking up. She was grinning, chatting animatedly to none other than Rob from Vaudeville, and she looked practically glowing.

What the fuck? I hadn’t seen her look like that in a while.

“It’s not right,” I said, but Mallory shrugged away my concerns.

“I know what’s going on. Let them have their teenage spat,” he said gently. He spoke like my mum would speak to me when she was trying to reason with me in my more emotional moments. I tried not to resent him for it. “They’ve spent weeks cooped up together. Shit goes down. Alex is working hard, and she’ll have her moments, but as long as she’s happy and she puts on a good show, we don’t need to get involved. Trust me.”

I wasn’t convinced, but then suddenly Alex bounded up, slinging an arm around my shoulders and that was the end of that conversation for now. “I’m so fucking ready to go,” she said. She was talking too fast, tripping over her words, and she was almost bouncing with what I assumed was excitement. “I’m gonna fucking blow their faces off.”

Rob was there, in the background, smiling at her in a way I was so not okay with. It was too intimate and fond, as if they were best friends, but they’d known each other all of five seconds and that infuriated me. God, I was becoming such a control freak, but I just knew he wasn’t good for her. Not like I had any choice in who she called friends, but I wanted her to be safe.

I smiled weakly at her. “Yeah man. Fuckin’ blow their faces off.”

The rest of the band arrived only a few minutes later. Finley was more perky than he was when I’d last seen him, but there was nothing like the normal buzz he gave off, and I only got a small smile in my direction as a greeting. He was gripping his guitar in a death grip. He’d barely spoken to me since he’d sang the song, and I wasn’t sure what to think of it all.

Red, who had Ellie by his side, looked positively cheerful in comparison, and if that wasn’t a fucking weird swap, I didn’t know what was. At least Jack was acting normal, already exchanging flirty words with one of the crew members I had yet to work with, a girl I’d seen him chatting up before. I gave them a sideways glance. She was pretty, I decided, but she didn’t look impressed by his flirting.

I wished I had Mallory’s ability to believe in them to sort out their own problems, but I was Alex’s big sister, and it was my job to worry. I’d worried over her since she’d first come home from the hospital, all wide-eyed and fresh-faced. I’d worried over her when she’d hurt her knee riding her bike for the first time without stabilisers. I’d worried for her when she got in a fist fight at school, and ended up with a bruised lip. I’d worried for her when she had broken her first bone, and when she’d got her heart broken for the first time, and when she’d broke curfew as a teenager. It was my thing.

I watched them head onto stage, watched the crowd that had turned out for them, which looked much bigger than usual, but then again, I hadn’t paid much attention to their rocketing popularity lately. All I knew is that Alex looked tiny on that huge stage with so many attentive faces looking up at her. God, she was going to turn into a role model for all her younger fans, I realised suddenly. I wasn’t sure if she was ready for that.

She was so energetic today as she sang, throwing herself into the music and the fans and the stage (at times) head-first, gripping hands and screaming and yelling, and I was relieved, because this was the old Alex I remembered. Even Finley was spinning in circles and getting under everybody’s feet as normal.

I relaxed.

Until I noticed the blood.

It was only a little bit at first, but there it was, a smear of red on Alex’s top lip that was too dark to be lipstick. I squinted at her, unsure, and I noticed the exact moment that she realised something was wrong, because she missed the next line in Watchmen, and her hand flew up to her nose.

“Mallory,” I said, but he’d already noticed, and he was making frantic motions at her, trying to tell her something.

Finley noticed too, because suddenly he was at her side, the song forgotten – although Jack kept a drum fill going – and his hands on her shoulders. He was wide-eyed, but then he seemed to take charge, pushing her towards the side of the stage Mallory and I were standing at, and taking the microphone. “Hey guys! I’m so sorry, but it looks like Alex needs to get checked out, so we’re gonna take a break, okay?”

The crowd was loud. Some people were booing.

Alex stumbled off stage, her hand still gripping her nose, head titled back, and Mallory pushed her into a chair.

“Did you hit yourself?” he asked concerned, as he pulled her hand away from her bleeding nose, and produced a tissue from his pocket in one smooth movement.

“No, fuck—” She winced as he gently wiped away the blood with the tissue, then pressed the tissue against her nose. There was a lot of blood, but I was relieved, because at first I’d thought it had been a cut or something like that. A nosebleed wasn’t as bad. I hoped. “Just came out of fucking nowhere.”

“Lean forward,” I said gently, crouching next to her. “Pinch your nose just above your nostrils—yeah, just there.”

I glanced over at the stage, and realised that Finley was watching us. He caught my gaze and mouthed a question: ‘Is she okay?’

I nodded, and he looked relieved as he turned back to the crowd.

“Alright, who here wants to hear something new today?” he asked loudly. “It’s shit and half-finished, but I think you’d like it.” There was a loud cheer in response, and he grinned, looking totally in his element. “Okay, well, Jack, Red, I guess you can take five,” he said, as he began to play the song he’d played me before, except this time it sounded harder, more vicious because it was on the electric guitar.

Jack and Red joined us in the concerned huddle around Alex, leaving Finley as the only one on stage as he sang. I watched him, realising that he’d gained so much confidence in such a short time.

“And you don't want to be here in the future so you say the present's just a pleasant interruption to the past, and you don't want to look much closer, but you’ve been drinking, and I’ve been thinking, and it gets us nowhere.”

Alex cautiously removed the tissue she was holding to her nose, and touched it gently with the hand she removed from pinching the bridge of her nose, as the song came to an end. “I think,” she said, sniffing experimentally. “I think it’s okay.”

“This is to the girl that got in my head with all the fucked up things she said.”

Mallory didn’t look convinced, but Jack was already trying to pull Alex up, obviously eager to get back on stage. I wasn’t sure, but part of me thought it may have something to do with the beautiful blonde girl he’d been talking to earlier, who was still watching from the other side. “Let’s go,” he said brusquely.

Alex laughed, wiping away the leftover blood with the already-sodden tissue. “Alright, alright,” she said, letting him pull her back on stage. As soon as she stepped back on, the cheering increased, and Finley ran over to wrap her in his arms, swinging his guitar to the side to pull her into a tight hug,

I exchanged a look with Mallory as he watched her take her place back in the middle of the stage and the band launched into SILENCE.

“Okay,” he said finally. “You’re right. Something’s wrong.”

~*~

Gerard found me that night, after everyone on my bus had gone to sleep, and I was the only person left awake, stretched out in the front, trying to distract myself with a blog post and failing miserably. He knocked gently on the door, and I got up to let him in.

“Hey,” he said, as he stepped inside. He held out his arms, and I instantly melted into them. “You looked stressed.”

“Gee, thanks,” I mumbled into his shirt, mock cross, and I felt rather than heard his chuckles, a pleasant vibration against my cheek. He took me over to the seats, and pulled me down with him, so I ended up curled against him, with my head in his lap, looking up at him.

“I heard about Alex,” he began cautiously, stroking my hair away from my face. I looked away, not sure if I really wanted to talk about this, not when I hadn’t seen him all day and I was so, so tired, already.

“You’re worried,” he stated.

“Of course I am,” I replied softly, finally turning back to look at him. As soon as I said that, it was like I’d opened the floodgates on my emotions. I could feel myself getting more hysterical by the second, but I couldn’t help but like the words floor out, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. “She’s like a fucking yo-yo. One moment she’s barely speaking, the next she’s happy as she’s ever been, happier even. And today, when she just got that fucking nose bleed out of nowhere… I’ve known her since she was a screechy little shit, and she’s never had a nose bleed in her fucking life, except when I punched her in the face once but that was an accident and –”

“Okay, okay, hold up, take some deep breaths,” he said gently. I would have laughed at how he sounded exactly like me when I was trying to calm down Alex, except that hurt to think about. “Do you think she’s just stressed out?”

I didn’t know, I had no clue, and I said as much to him. “All I know,” I added, “is that she’s barely been eating too. I’ve watched her. She takes bites and mushes her food around her plate, but that’s about it.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then his fingers, which had, up until that moment, been gently stroking through my hair, paused. “Did you say she’s been having mood swings?” he questioned, his tone light, but I froze, because I could tell he was putting it on.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Why?”

“It’s just—” He cut himself off then, a puzzled frown crinkling the skin between his eyes. “Nevermind, it’s nothing.”

I glared up at him. “Don’t you dare keep things from me,” I said, trying to sound threatening even though I knew I probably sounded more like a stressed out fucking puppy.

“I know, I shouldn’t, I’m just not sure… It’s probably nothing,” he said, but I remained unconvinced. I gave him a pointed look, which was difficult when basically all I could see was his chin, but still. It was the thought that counted.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” I said, when it became apparent that even my best pointed look wasn’t going to get him to share. I had just recalled my conversation earlier with Liza and Janey, and I knew that they were right, that it was time to have a talk about what this was meant to be now that tour was coming to an end.

“Yeah?” he titled his head slightly down and raised an eyebrow. “If it’s about Frank, don’t worry. He’s my favourite lover, but you’re a close second.”

I laughed, trying to gently hit his arm but mostly managing to flail ineffectively. “Shut up. I know you’re gonna love Frank forever. I’ve accepted that.”

“Good,” he said, grinning. Then he sobered up. “What is it then?”

I hesitated, not sure if my words were gonna ruin the nice moment we were having, but then I decided to plow ahead. “Are you… are you looking for something serious? Like, between us?” I asked finally, extracting myself from the comfy position I’d got myself into and sitting up, because this felt like a conversation I should have whilst actually being able to look him in the eye.

He took his time to answer, and that made me panic slightly, but then he smiled at me. “Yes,” he said. “I know it’s gonna be difficult, but… yeah. Are you?”

“I just…” I trailed off. “I mean, yeah, of course. But, like, logistically…” I made a wiggly motion with my hands, as if this was meant to explain what I meant.

Somehow, he seemed to understand. “You know, Cam, they have these things now called airplanes? I can come over here. We’re gonna be having a long break after this tour, it’s been about two years since we’ve had one and we fucking deserve it.”

“You do,” I agreed.

He leaned over and kissed the tip of my nose. “Stop worrying.”

I huffed slightly, but when he held out his arms, I turned and let him pull me back into an embrace.

“Wanna watch Psycho so you can stare at your crush?” he asked finally. I couldn’t help but laugh.

~*~

We watched Psycho, and then we watched the sequel which was really a disappointing compared to the first one, as I happily told Gerard before we’d even started. At least Anthony Perkins was in the sequel as well, and I sort of still thought he was cute even twenty-two years later. (Nobody said I was normal.)

Finally, when we’d exhausted ourselves laughing at the movies, he went and grabbed a blanket from my bunk, and we snuggled up underneath it, dozing off whilst still chatting softly.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep entirely, because the next thing I knew there was a loud, sudden BANG, and I woke up with a jolt, scared shitless that the zombie apocalypse had finally begun.

The door to the bus burst inwards, and I watched, wide-eyed, as Finley fell through. His face was red, which would have been comical next to his green hair if he didn’t look so fucking scared.

“Cam, Gerard, thank fucking god,” he said, tumbling over his words in a haste to say them. “You’ve got to come quick.”

A quick glance at my watch showed that it was 3am. It had to be something bad if Finley was in such a panic at this time. I instantly clambered to my feet, shaking off my sleepiness and grabbing for my shoes. “What’s happened?” I asked urgently. Behind me, I could hear Gerard doing the same, although he was muttering something about killing Finley under his breath.

Finley turned his wide eyes on me. “It’s Alex. Something’s… something’s really wrong.”

My stomach dropped.