Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time it happens, no one notices until after the show is done.

Gee bounds off the stage, following her little brother and Frank. Matt and Ray are close behind, everyone weaving through the dimly lit back stage hallways to pile into the tiny dressing room. The stage still hums with feedback, the crowd still screaming and thrumming with energy even as they exit. 

"Holy fucking shit," Gee rasps, voice raw from shrieking like a banshee for the past thirty minutes. She clears her throat, panting a little to catch her breath. The stage lights are hot as fuck and have her damp with sweat so she snatches a towel from off the back of a cheap black folding chair, wiping across her flushed forehead. Her dark hair clings in stringy strands to her tacky skin. "Fucking incredible!"

"Fuck yeah!" Mikey agrees enthusiastically. His nerves are high during performances, but the moment he's off stage, the post show adrenaline hits him and he turns all smiley. He is, also, very drunk. Same as his sister.

"Could have fuckin' played all night," Ray says, a water bottle crinkling obnoxiously loud in his hands as he had just drained it entirely in the whole ten seconds they have been off stage. He wipes the sweat and water from his upper lip with the back of his hand. He pants from the exertion of the performance and from chugging back the room temperature bottle. "They were crazed!"

Ray is right, the reaction from the audience tonight was fucking insane. Electric and massive and pulsing out of every body in the room, filling the bar venue with an energy the band cannot help but feed off. It felt like the entire building descended into chaos the moment the opening riff of Sorrows ripped out of Ray's guitar, fans attempting to crawl up onto the stage and dive back into the undulating pit of people. Screaming in each other's faces, screaming their lyrics right back into Gee's face, arms and feet kicking like a writhing mass as they ate up every note the band gave them. Gee is pretty sure she saw people crowd surfing, which she cannot recall happening much before tonight.

The high is still running strong for them while they can hear the bustle of people behind the brick walls, their friends helping with merch sounding like they are having a hell of a time corralling excited fans into orderly lines. The come down will hit them later when they are shoving themselves all into the back of the van and attempting to get some rest, everyone crammed between boxes of merchandise, overflowing backpacks, and billfolds of scratched up and skipping CDs.

"Fuck, I wish we could've! Or at least had more time, we've got enough songs down," Gee agrees, giggling happily. "Sound techs already had enough of our shit for the night, though." 

"Eh, fuck'em. We sounded great." Mikey chimes in, recalling the arguments about their input list and struggling equipment.

"Fuckin' right we did."

 Ray pops back up from the floor where the plastic wrapped case sits, stretched and warped from all the bands on the bill taking from it, and comes around with an armful of bottles to hand out to the rest of them. "Water."

"Thanks, man." Mikey cracks into his, long limbs spread out in front of him as he perches on a stool.

"Yeah dude," Matt couldn't find a fresh towel for himself, so he sits in one of the folding chairs while wiping the sweat off his forehead and out of his eyes with his t-shirt, reaching out blind for Ray to hand him the bottle. "Thanks."

"Thanks, mooom." Frank drones, but still takes the bottle and breaks the seal on the cap, downing half in one go. He plops himself down onto the floor across from the couch and coffee table, despite having multiple seating options.

"Thank you." Gee takes her bottle from Ray before he sits down with a smile and she finally stops pacing around the room. She has a brown glass beer bottle already open in one hand, a plastic water bottle now in the other. The forest green vinyl couch along the back wall looks like a perfect place to flop out, now.

She takes a swig of beer number-whatever and then quickly strides over to the couch to take a seat and decompress. She side-steps in behind the wobbly coffee table stacked with theirs and other bands assortment of trash from before their sets, puts her water down in a miraculously clear spot, and then all eyes in the room flick to her as she collapses her full body weight onto the cushion that wheezes anciently under her. She lies back and begins to feel like melting into the couch for a little while, until they get kicked out or have to load out, whatever comes first.

"You know, I think we really should play Sorrows like that more often, like as the opener? I think that really sets the energy up to eleven, right off the bat, right? Like, that was the loudest the kids have ever been. And I heard them singing the right lyrics this time, too. I'm also pretty sure I saw fuckin-" She pauses, realizing that everyone - save for Mikey, who's got his head down - is staring at her like a school of buggy eyed fish without reacting to what she's saying. The moment she catches them, their heads all turn away, comically synchronized. "...What’s up?"

"Uhm," Frank clears his throat. "Your, um." 

He gestures to his own chest over his stained t-shirt. Gee's eyes immediately shoot downwards to her own chest.

Oh no. Fuck. 

"Aw, shit!"

She doesn't even know how she didn't notice. Staring back up at her from her white shirt is a window of her own pale cleavage, her black and white striped tie strewn off to the side and leaving the big open gap between the buttons entirely visible. The top button remained in its closure, along with the ones down the rest of her torso, but the middle one, right dead center of her breasts, had popped loose.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry, what the fuck-"

"Dude, you're good!" Frank tries, but gets cut off in her panic.

"Did that happen just now?" She asks hurriedly, jamming the glass bottle between her thighs so her fingers can fumble for the edges of the fabric, searching for the plastic button and the stitched edge of its accompanying closure, a sick feeling creeping into her guts. Locating it and closing her shirt brings only a little relief. At least she isn't flashing the entire room including her little fucking brother now.

"Uh... Maybe?" Frank giggles, like everything is a joke to him. 

"That doesn't help!"

"I mean, probably, you tossed yourself pretty hard there?" Ray supports, but still doesn't sound confident. He is unmistakably pink in the face, but she can tell he's trying hard to keep her from curling up into a ball and dying from the shame of a potentially very public wardrobe malfunction like this. "I didn't notice until now."

"Ugh, I just hope no one else noticed... If that happened during the show..." She groans, trailing off. She picks up her beer again, takes a long sip from it and crosses her arms protectively.

However, Genevieve is fully fucking aware that her tits are pretty hard to not notice. 

She doesn't put them on display with any sort of intent but genetics had another plan. Since puberty graced her with broad shoulders and a heavy chest, she began living in sports bras and oversized sweaters. It's not as if she hates the shape of her body, now - though high school was a different question, and there are still some harboured insecurities - she more hates the unwanted attention it brings and the struggle to find fitting fucking clothing. Shopping trips became a nightmare; a comfortable bra is rare to find and unusually expensive, and finding a shirt that doesn't stretch or cling awkwardly to her is an ongoing battle. It's part of why she insists on shopping in the men's section of thrift stores for her stage outfits, now.

Larger sizes, less form fit. It makes her feel secure, wearing men's dress pants and button downs with her blazer and tie. She feels powerful,  dangerous, even. Gets out there and rips up the stage almost every fucking night with her best friends and baby brother, thrashing, screaming viciously, jumping and rolling around the stage like she's been possessed. Tragically, the build of her clothes versus the build of her curves clash often, and there was an obvious failure on the behalf of her clothing tonight.

Gee can feel her face burning hot and her body feeling high strung the more she worries about that massive fucking audience getting an accidental eye-full of her boobs busting her shirt open mid show. "What if there's pictures, y'know?"

This wasn't a show they were aware of being recorded at, thank god. If they did, they got bootlegged and it's audio only, or there is a VHS tape now out there with some very embarrassing footage on it. Or a slew of disposable cameras to be developed, and she wishes she could detonate every one of them to explode at once with her mind. Gee's stomach gets all cold and she can feel her limbs tingle with the spike in anxiety about accidentally exposing herself to a room full of strangers. What if there is proof posted on some random guy's forum or blog in a few days time? Maybe the internet will just forget about it. Hopefully.

"There's not gonna be, man, it happened when you flopped out just now, we would have noticed if it was before," Ray says assuredly. "You're good! And at least you're wearing a bra!"

She huffs a laugh out of her nose at that and smiles despite herself. Ray always knows how to get a laugh out of her, and tries his damnedest to help derail her spiraling anxious thoughts like this. She pulls herself forward from the couch and digs through the shit dumped on the coffee table for her pack of cigarettes that she left out with the lighter tucked inside the foil, hoping it hadn't already been lifted by some other asshole passing through the room.

"Yeah, true," Gee feels thankful for the basic black underwire bra she was wearing tonight, and also for the fact that it wasn't her stained ratty sports bra she usually has on. That way, if it did happen to be immortalized on camera forever, at least her clothing wasn't visually... That gross. The stale sweat smell is another story. 

"I mean, we were all pretty distracted out there, so..." Frank chimes in, trailing off and being a smug little asshole.

"Dude." Ray chides him, an unspoken what the fuck? lingering the statement.

"Oh shut up, you douche." Gee grumbles at the same time. Frank giggles, high and delighted.

Gee finally recovers the dinged-up white and black box she was searching for, pulls a cigarette from the pack with her lighter and perches it between her lips. She collapses back into the musty couch seat and clicks her lighter to life, inhaling deep, cigarette in one hand, sweating beer bottle in the other, water bottle forgotten on the table where Ray will eventually pick it up and give it back to her in the van. The bass of a kick drum bangs and reverberates through the walls; the sound of the next band kicking to life on the little stage. "'Kay. I'm gonna smoke this and then get changed."

Gee blows the smoke out, hazing the room under fluorescent lights as everyone mutters in acknowledgement.

When she finishes her cigarette, she goes out to the trailer hooked up to the van to fish out her black jeans, a passable t-shirt, and her crumbling leather jacket from where they got stuffed in a random duffle bag in the hustle of pre-show preparation. As she changes in the back seat of the van, peeling the sweat-damp button down from her back and off her shoulders, she examines the buttons on the chest. 

The one that lost its battle against her cleavage tonight is looking a little loose; the threading holding it in place being under such tension has caused the white thread to stretch and the button to flop around a little, and she decides that for the next few shows, she is just going to stick to jeans and a t-shirt. She got this button down in the men's section of a thrift store a few states ago and has been wearing it regularly, starting to toy with a uniform look for herself on the stage for the upcoming album. It's already seen better days, as the opportunities to wash it properly between near nightly shows are few and far in-between. But she likes it. She wants to keep it.

Gee balls it up and stuffs the shirt into her bag and elects to ask Frank if she can borrow his sewing kit later.

-- 

Ray was lying. He totally fucking saw.

He feels like the worst friend in the world. He feels like a pervert. Like the exact kind of fucking sleazy-skeevy-ass rock dude his best friend rants about between songs at their shows.

Okay, well - he didn't see the exact moment her shirt gave way. They were flying through the intro of Best Day Ever, and Ray looked up from his fretboard to see Gee turned towards his stage left, one leg up on a speaker at the front of the stage. His eyes caught the edges of her shirt popped open around the swell of her cleavage, pale and shining under the hot stage lights with sweat, wobbling around in her bra as she energetically bounced her elevated leg to the drum beat, eyes closed and lost in the energy of the audience. Oblivious to the familiar eyes locked on her. 

Ever since, Ray's brain function has been fucked. Worst Day Ever, maybe.

Ray has had some very real feelings that he's been ignoring for a while that's making this all worse for him, as well. Ignoring may be a strong word for it - perhaps down playing is a better description for how he's been "dealing" with his feelings for Genevieve. He was always enamoured by her, even when she was just Mikey's quiet, kind of off-putting, artsy sister that lived in the basement and they weren't close yet. His infatuation with her only intensified after she called him a few years after college to reconnect. 

Genevieve asked Ray that fateful, loaded question; is he happy with what he was doing with his life? Gee wasn't, after what she’d gone through in the weeks preceding the phone call. She wanted to call him to meet up, finally get to know each other better after years of being only vaguely acquainted, and show him some ideas she had been working on after quitting her fancy cartoonist job. She said she needed the best guitar player she knows to work something out. He quit his job for her idea, after the first practice session, that same week.

The more Ray got to know Genevieve during that time, the more they connected; the more they connected, the better the music they made together became. They are best friends, they get each other better than anyone else in the world, they make incredible art together. Ray wouldn't sacrifice what they have for an entire galaxy's worth of shining stars, so he pushes down the greedy thoughts of having something more.

Christ, how he wants more. Romantically, sexually, in every way possible he fucking wants her. It's exactly what got him into this stupid position.

His dick over-rode his romantic brain and better judgement, he had a chance to oogle at her exposed tits that he's definitely not been oblivious to - just figured that was off-limits, and then felt so bad about indulging himself that he got scared of saying anything and lied to her. Now his thoughts are full of gut wrenching shame and sloppy x-rated shlock about it. Great.

It's been three days since The Incident and they are on route to the next venue. Three days and Ray's facade is failing and he is only getting weirder about it.

At least, Ray feels like he is. Everything seems to be business as usual with Gee. Conversation is regular, laughter is raucous, music is sung along to over the tinny speakers of the van. They buy each other Burger King and slushies from convenience stores, cigarettes and weed are mutually exchanged and smoked. They stay up late together when Ray or Genevieve is driving, they watch the stars and the moon while everyone else is fast asleep, and they are still utterly attached at the hip.

But Ray just can't stop fucking noticing. It's like he can't help himself. His brain takes these little obscene post-it notes to paste on the inner walls of his skull every time his eyes drop and land on her breasts while she isn't looking, and he hopes and fucking prays that she isn't looking. He reasons with himself that she would yell at him (or something) and make it fucking known if she caught him in the act, and he reminds himself of this fact every time he has caught himself slipping.

She wouldn't appreciate being so... Objectified like this, by her best friend no less. Ray knows this well about Gee, and he knows he should be able to control himself better than this, and it makes him nauseous because he is not this kind of guy. Not under normal circumstances. Guilt has been a constant state for Ray these past three, agonizingly sexually frustrated days.

They stopped at a diner on their day off yesterday before hitting the highway, and all five of them clamored into one booth in the back; Gee, Matt and Frank on one side, Ray and Mikey on the other. Gee and Ray sat facing each other. There were only three menus available on the table, and instead of troubling the waitress for extras they simply shared the three amongst themselves. 

There was a moment; a very unfortunate moment for Ray Toro, when Gee leaned forward to look at the menu Matt slid over to her. She straightened her back when the table cut into her chest, and when she relaxed, her tits just plopped down onto the table edge while she casually scanned over the menu while Ray's brain shut off all functions.

God, he feels like he's in fucking high school again. She's in a stained t-shirt and her rank leather jacket, for Christ's sake. It's getting a little ridiculous.

He spends the next several minutes with cheeks he knows for certain were a deep, shameful shade of red and a gelatinous tongue, face down in the menu and trying his best to spit out his order coherently to the waitress when she came by to take their orders.

Yeah, no way she didn't notice that fumble. Mikey kicked his foot under the table. Frank glared suspiciously. Matt was too un-caffeinated to be paying much attention. However, Gee appeared to remain blissfully unaware, already sipping her first cup of coffee as she flipped through sweet pancake options and debated if she wanted whip cream, because it costs extra.

Weird.

--

The situation got exponentially worse the night after that. 

Ray is somewhere in the hazy back hallway of another venue. He hears some voices, chatting, laughing distantly over the band currently on stage. The bass drum shakes the floors, the guitars and bass rattle the framed pictures of bands on the walls, the whole place reeks of stage haze and cigarette smoke. Then he hears her.

Gee is wandering back here too, it seems. She's chatting with a bunch of faces Ray doesn't think he's acquainted with, but then again, he hasn't been the biggest social butterfly. Neither is Gee, but she seems relaxed here. Probably due to several chain-smoked cigarettes and the handful of beers she could score drink tickets for.

Ray must be pretty drunk, too. Everything feels wobbly and disjointed. She's coming closer now, rounding the corner into Ray's double vision.

His focus immediately snaps to her when she stands in front of him.

She grins. "Hey."

Ray doesn't even get the chance to say anything back to her before she's got him crowded up against the wall, lips crashing together, her hands cradled on both sides of Ray's face. Her movements against him are insistent, her kisses demanding and sloppy on his gasping mouth.

"Whoa, whoa-" Ray tries to say, his mouth mashed against hers. "Gee, this is a hallway-"

"Don't care," She rasps. Her nasally voice has a gravel to it, the smell of smoke on her breath and the taste strong on her wet tongue as she practically licks Ray's soft lips between kisses. "Don't fucking care. Just want you."

"Oh," Ray moans into her, and he could nearly melt from how pathetic his noise was, and how aroused Gee's words made him feel. "Yeah, yeah, come here."

Ray's hands grip Gee by the curve of her hips, pulling her in against himself. He squeezes the soft give of her there, feeling where the waistband of her jeans cuts into the soft fat under her sweat damp shirt. She feels so good in his hands, even better against his body. Better than he imagined. Thoughts of what she would look like sweaty and naked against him flash subconsciously, and he can't resist sliding a hand to her ass to grip her there too. She rocks against him, and his body must be ahead of his brain because he had no idea when he got this hard. His cock is rock solid and hot behind his zipper, pushing against her wide thigh. She has it damn near shoved between his legs.

Gee growls and sucks on his lower lip, pulling away with a pop, hands now pushed into Ray's wild curls. She's curling his hair behind his ears to see his face better, and when she looks into his eyes, hers are shining in the dark with something raw and intense. "Put your fucking hands on them."

"Huh?" Ray has gone fuzzy in the head, brain full of fluffy cotton that can barely form a train of thought other than she's so fucking hot and all over me and I'm so, so fucking hard right now.

"I know you wanna, you've been staring, touch them."

“Oh god, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-”

“Ray…”

Gee cuts him off by emphatically pushing her chest against Ray, her breasts squishing up against his chest, and whoa. Ray is now acutely aware of that sensation, that he would have been aware of the whole time had he been less distracted by her trying to swallow his tongue, and he strains even harder in his jeans at the realization. She can probably feel it through the denim.

“Touch them…”

It's like how she looked in the diner, tits casually pushed up on the table while Ray felt like his brain was liquifying and escaping through his burning hot ears. A visual that is being mirrored right up against his body. 

“Please, Ray.”

It's all so up close, and personal, and sudden, and he doesn't even know what possessed her to go at him like this right now, but his hands want to travel up and up to give her everything she asks for. Ray gives her little plump ass a squeeze before he trails up the dips of her hips, up her waist, even further up up up to cradle his hands reverently around the heavy swell of her -

Ray's eyes drift open to the loud mechanical clunk of the van door sliding open. Sunlight pours in across the side of his face, and everything glows white for a moment before his vision adjusts. 

“Morning, Toro. We're here.” Frank announces.

“‘Morning.” Ray responds, voice raspy with sleep.

Fuck.

They've arrived in town for their show tonight. They spent the day driving and relaxing as much as they could yesterday after the diner, and Ray remembers going to sleep last night on the middle bench of the van. Matt's music played in the background as he drove and highway streetlamps passed overhead like a yellowed strobing light, the rumble of the road vibrating every inch of the vehicle that kept threatening to shit out on them again any day now. He feels surprisingly well-rested, despite the subconscious torture his brain decided to subject him to.

Speaking of.

Ray can feel that his cock is still really, really hard. More than some half-chub morning wood hard, it's an I had a vivid, if nonsensical, wet dream at age twenty six kind of hard. His boxers feel hot and damp and he knows he's been dripping and the thought of one of his friends seeing now if he gets up to go take a morning piss at the road stop is thoroughly mortifying. God forbid he made any noises in his sleep.

Luckily he was lying on his side on the seat of the van, curled up on his sleeping bag with his sweater on and a scratchy blanket tucked over his legs up to his waist. His boner is hidden, but he's afraid to do anything other than sit up, rub the sleep crust from his eyes, and ball the blanket up over himself until he wills it away.

Sliced fingers on guitar strings. Getting his feet stomped on and shins kicked by Frank throwing himself around. The lingering stench of Mikey Way's sneakers emanating from the seat behind him. Venue men's room with a clogged toilet. Moldy food in fast food bags that gets discovered under the seats after weeks of hot summer weather on tour with a broken air conditioner.

Yeah, that about does the trick.

-–

“What do you mean you don't have any more clean shirts?”

“I didn't get to use the Laundromat,” Gee says, a little sheepishly, “I was… Distracted. Elsewhere.”

“You were in that comic shop?”

She stares at Frank.

“No.”

“You were in a comic shop. Instead of washing your clothes.”

“My pants got washed! And my fuckin’ underwear,” She caves neigh immediately. There was a plaza with a Laundromat that they had found yesterday while passing through the city to get gasoline, and everyone was in desperate need of clean socks and undies. “Only ‘cause they were in the laundry bag…”

The Laundry Bag became a communal thing, a mesh bag that was acquired from a cheap-o store in the effort to contain the explosion of five people's worth of clothes getting tossed around the van, up to seven whenever Shaun and Alex were on the road with them. Every time they stop in a city or stay at a motel with cheap machines, someone different is responsible for getting whatever is in the bag washed. It's a good system, it works for them to spread out the cost, and as long as everyone else remembers that they are personally responsible for laundering whatever was forgotten, it’s great.

Everyone else, does not include Gee, this time.

She had just gotten so side tracked though, this little hole in the wall comic place she found between a charity shop and a small business restaurant occupied her for the entire time they stuck around in town. She knew the essentials were in The Bag and would get clean, but falsely assumed that she had stuffed at least one of her band t-shirts into there at some point. She figured she would be able to get by re-wearing her jeans and one clean shirt, alternating with other shirts that weren't that bad yet until the next laundry opportunity. That shop just had so much to look at that she got completely carried away; limited edition issues and figurines and miniatures that have her itching for paint brushes and a magnifying glass…

Frank sighs. “Man, what are you gonna wear for the show then? We don't have enough time to wash shit now.”

There's less than an hour on the clock until they go on, 9:06pm.

All of this was brought on by Gee coming out to the van to get changed and gather her makeup box. She brought Frank along, because he wasn't doing much backstage other than pestering anyone who stood still long enough, and she wanted someone to keep watch outside while she got changed. Gee technically doesn't need someone on watch, she keeps her pocketknife everywhere but on stage, but she knows that Frank likes to play a little guard dog for her.

When she began rummaging through the clean bag of clothing out of the back of the van, her anxiety spiked when she realized there was nothing her size to wear; besides her black dress pants, a few pairs of socks, the three bras she has to her name, boxer briefs, and a few granny panties. Gee would ask to wear something that belongs to the guys, but their shirts are uncomfortably tight on her. She still has to get her stage clothes and makeup on, she's in a parking lot with shit just spilling everywhere out of the back of the van onto the pavement, and there is less than an hour.

“I dunno yet,” Gee groans. “I think I have my button down and- aw fuck, I forgot to ask you.”

It dawns on her that yeah, she has her button down shirt, it probably stinks but it might not be crusty or have ketchup stains like her tees, but she also forgot to ask Frank to borrow his sewing kit to stitch that damn loose button back into place.

“Huh?” 

“I forgot to ask to borrow your kit to fix the button, remember,” She sighs, really beating herself up on the inside for forgetting two very critical things now. This week has been so hectic with the travel between shows and she just got wrapped up in a distraction to ground herself from the insanity...Ray also had really great weed, this week. “My tits attempted to destroy it.”

Frank giggles his high pitched trill. “Oh shit, yeah!”

“It's kinda too late now for that, too. Fuck it.”

She drags her backpack over, digging to the bottom where she remembers jamming it after The Incident.

The white fabric is crumpled and wrinkled to hell. There's powdery makeup smears from her white foundation all around the neckline of it and her tie, and there are definitely some pit stains and a funky smell but it will have to do.

Gee sighs. “Yeah. Fuck it. Where’s the Febreze spray?”

After they locate the bottle and give her shirt a spray down and shake out the wrinkles, Gee wrenches open the side door of the van - that is thankfully not as crowded with the boxes of merchandise that are currently in the venue - while Frank stands on watch outside.

She kicks off her shoes, strips off her ripped jeans, wrestles her dress pants on and over her ass while sitting on the middle bench, slides her worn belt through the loops and buckles her pewter Bat into place. She then pulls off her graphic tee and quickly replaces it with her button down, the perfumey Febreze spray still slightly damp and drying against her skin.

The gears start to turn in her head as her fingers push the buttons through their embroidered holes over her belly. 

Ray's been staring lately. She knows it.

She has found herself… Reveling in it.

It's so rare that she likes this kind of attention. Obviously, she's gone to extended lengths to actively avoid it in the past. But this is Ray. She knows Ray. Ray knows her. She knows that he doesn't see her as some kind of slab of meat, he's not a stranger on the train or in the bar. He's the guy she has been harbouring a huge, mushy crush on for several years now. The craving for his attention outweighs the initial embarrassment Gee felt about The Incident, because it feels like a tipping point in the unspoken thing between them.

Ray is being so painfully shy about the fact that he's been stealing looks at her, pointedly hiding it because he's just too damn respectful, but Gee caught on almost immediately after that night. It's why she’s been fucking with him the last few days.

Exaggerating her movements on and off stage so her tits bounce. Intentionally wearing her one slightly undersized bra so the soft flesh squeezes and spills over the edges of the cups. Not wearing a bra at all while in the van relaxing or going to sleep, shameless about her poking nipples. Doing a lot of unnecessary bending and leaning over so he can look at the roundness of her ass and the enticing curve of her hips, too. The morning in the diner. It's fucking exhilarating to watch Ray turn pink and squirm and struggle to hide how worked up he's getting just noticing and looking at her.

Her fingers continue buttoning up to her bust. She gets to the loose button, running her finger over it distractedly as a plan forms in her mind.

She wants to catch him in the act. Give him something to look at. Poor thing has been so embarrassed about looking at her, she wants to see exactly how red and sweaty and incoherent she can make him. 

The thought of pushing that self control until he snaps sends a little shiver through her and a warm throb between her legs. She's been so easily turned on ever since her initial embarrassment subsided. Picking up on Ray's wandering eyes was like a tectonic plate shift in her head; Gee stopped feeling as bad about the whole situation, stopped giving a fuck if there was pictures, simply because it caused this noticeable shift in Ray’s behaviour that he thinks he's hiding, but it told her everything. She keeps thinking she should be offended that he's gawking at her body, but she's far from it, because it's him. The groundwork is already there between them - some even ask if they're already together - and having something more feels plausible, now. It's so obvious to her that he fucking wants her back. He just can't stop looking.

Ray's attention has been making Gee feel like rubbing her clit any free chance she gets; the free chances being limited to gas station bathroom stalls and the back bench of the van when everyone was asleep and the radio was turned up, unfortunately. It's the most privacy she can get lately and it makes her feel so fucking dirty, sliding her fingers into her boxer briefs to find that her pussy is hot and utterly soaked thinking about her best friend groping her tits and ass when he's only one seat away, dead asleep and snoring. It’s been getting harder and harder to be cautious of the sound of her fingers plunging in and out of her cunt.

The way Ray looks is so indecent; his eyes locked like magnets on her jiggling tits and flashes of her ass at any and every opportunity he's presented like he just can't help himself. Meanwhile he acts friendly as usual, so secretive about what he's doing, and is trying so painfully hard to remain outwardly respectful of her that he just won't bite her fucking bait… It has Gee wanting to climb the goddamn walls. 

She wants him to let the composure slip for one night and just fucking take what he wants.

Jesus. Gee has to put a pin in those thoughts. She's pink in the face, breathing a little heavy, and still running tight before showtime. She leaves her shirt unbuttoned two holes from the top, the threateningly loose button straining tightly as the first on the way down her torso. Gee slides her blazer on and decides to forgo her tie. It would get in the way of the view, anyways.

Crawling back out of the van after applying a quick smear of eyeliner and white foundation, she finds Frank smoking against the side of the vehicle. She takes out her own pack from her blazer pocket, steals Frank's lighter to spark one between her crooked lips, and inhales while she pushes a hand through her unbrushed hair, the length nearly past her shoulders now. The oily strands fall in inky black chaos around her pale face. She exhales a thick cloud and passes his dying Bic back to him while they cross the parking lot.

“Alright, let's get in there and fucking kill this.”

Chapter Text

The second time it happens, it's completely intentional.

It's another killer fucking show tonight. There is maybe around sixty people packed in the venue and they are fucking vicious, colliding with each other as they all scream the lyrics with surging enthusiasm along with Genevieve. They're so into the music, and the energy plays into the band's, a feedback loop of visceral emotional blood-letting that has lent itself to a truly beautiful and violent performance so far.

It's hot at fuck in this little basement bar. Everyone is sweltering, sticky with sweat from the hot stage lights and thrashing their bodies around, and they are just a little over half way through the setlist. They are going through water bottles by the handful amongst the five of them, and the first act of Gee's plan falls into action when she is tossed another one from the wings of stage right.

“Fuckin’... It's hot as fuck up here,” Gee mumbles into the mic, before suddenly shouting, “How the fuck are you guys doing? Ya’ doing good?”

The audience screams back at her, raucous and passionate.

“Fuck yeah, alright, it's fuckin’ hot in here so you guys gotta drink water, lots of fuckin’ water, or you'll pass out and that's not good,” She rambles. “Don't pass out, don't get fuckin’ hurt, okay.”

There are a few shouts, whoops and hollers in agreement.

“Okay, this next song is about fuckin’ Vampires,” Gee paces back and forth across the wire-strewn stage, partly due to nervous energy and partly as an outlet for the adrenaline rush she gets from performance. Up here she feels powerful, untouchable, unkillable. “I wanna hear you fuckin’ scream those lyrics for me if you know ‘em!”

Matt kicks in with the percussion to start them off as the song builds up gradually in the room, Mikey's bass and Ray's guitar joining the mix. Gee's voice drifts out over the instrumentals, starting hushed and gentle. She's starting to sing about creatures coming out to get her at night as she cracks open the seal on her fresh water bottle, glancing over stage left to see Ray casually turn to gaze at her, fingers gliding over his frets. The moment she descends into shrieking with the combined guitars crashing together, she up-ends the water bottle over her head.

The water pours out like a flood, soaks her hair and face, making black strands stick all over her flushed cheeks and neck. Her makeup runs and drips in white droplets off her chin. The water is hardly cold, but it's refreshing in the sweltering heat either way. It's dripping all the way down, down, down, soaking into her white shirt, the fabric becoming translucent and clinging to her. She knows her black bra and cleavage is visible through it. All according to plan.

She watches Ray's face the entire time. He's already red faced and sweating, but his eyes flicked to and from her; up to her face, down to her soaked chest, down to his guitar that he is still reliably shredding, running in a guilty circut as if Gee isn't inviting this willingly, staring him down like a fucking prey animal as she wails gutterally into the microphone. 

Ray tries to keep straight-faced, but the way he sucks and chews his lower lip as he turns away to hide his reaction from Gee blows his cover entirely. He's a professional, he doesn't falter in his performance, but he's hiding his face from her. Gotcha.

They get through the rest of the song, and it's not long before they're nearing the end of the setlist. A few of the shows over the last week, including tonight's, were opened with Our Lady of Sorrows as per Genevieve's request. It has been nothing but positive reactions from the audience every time. Tonight, the show was set to close on a newer song they have been workshopping for the next album.

“Holy shit,” Gee is panting, breathless from the heat and singing, “Alright, ‘kay, we've got one more for you motherfuckers, you guys wanna hear it?”

The roar of the audience rings in her ears over guitar feedback, an unanimous affirmative to her question.

“Fuck yeah! Right, we just wanna say another big thank you to every one of you here tonight, everyone comin’ out here, all you guys, the bands out on tour, every volunteer, we’re havin’ a sick fuckin’ time up here, I want you to know that. Thank you for coming, thank you,” She clears her throat, still trying to catch her breath. It must have been the tenth time she has thanked the audience and staff, but she knows that every one of them on stage is grateful for getting to do what they love every night. “Okay - one more, this song's about making a fucking Living!”

They rip into the intro, guitars screaming, bass thrumming, drums pounding, Genevieve spitting venom over it all, and the crowd fucking explodes.

Gee is center stage and commanding the entire room, wet with perspiration and the bottle of water she poured over herself, which has since defeated its purpose and has become uncomfortably heated and humid against her skin where the fabric of her shirt clings. It soaked right through her shirt and bra rather predictably, and wouldn't be able to dry out until she took off her stage outfit. Or, someone else takes it off for her. If all goes according to plan.

The second and final act of the night is a green light. Gee feels the music with every inch of her body, and she can't help thrashing along. She doubles over, banging her head to the drum beat and rhythm of the guitars, hair flying with the movement and undeniably flicking hot sweat and water all around her. Strands get in her mouth and eyes while she sings and she thinks she must look absolutely debauched to the point of filth.

Gee thinks it's fitting while she is screaming her own lyrics about knives and bloody sheets and how dirty she is. They're approaching the breakdown of the song, instrumentals swelling up just to come crashing down, Ray looks over at her once again, and that is her cue.

She straightens from her thrashing and pulls her shoulders back in a quick, jerked movement that thrusts her chest forward, tight and bulging against her shirt. There is a snap that is felt more than heard, and Gee only catches the little fleeting shine of the plastic button flying off for a split second before it lands somewhere in the audience, gone for good.

Fuck. Maybe the button popping clean off should have been predictable in its weakened state, but Gee is surprised and impressed by the drama of the display nonetheless. She's really pulled this stunt off, repercussions be damned. The edges of her wet shirt part around the large mounds of her breasts, held back now only by her black underwire - that exact same one from The Original Incident. It's a little decrepit, the fabric worn and tattering under years of friction and infrequent washing, but Gee knows it gives her unreal cleavage. It has been this week's bra of choice out of her limited selection for that reason alone.

However, now that Gee sees and feels how exposed she is, with dozens of fans reaching for her hand when she outstretches the microphone over them, a hot feeling in her gut comes creeping in. Gee is acutely aware of how much her chest is moving with the thrashing of the rest of her body, and she has a brief moment when she pictures having a nipple slip free from the cup and it makes her face burn hot as hell. With mild shock and horror, Gee realizes then that she is, actually, overwhelmingly aroused by the idea and the situation she has put herself in.

Gee knows the guys were lying to her when they said the first time didn't happen on stage, they all suck at lying. Especially Frank, and Ray was just covering his ass. She knows it happened without her knowledge that first time, and that freaked her out. The idea of being creeped on by a random sleaze bag that wasn't even at the bar for their music and having photos posted of something she hadn't intended to be seen made her skin crawl. But planning it to happen? Wanting to show off? Playing it up?

For Ray?

Fuck, that is making her wet.

There is not much she can do about it in her current position center stage. All she can do is ride out the rest of the song, close out this setlist, and hope that her point has been made, loud and clear as glass.

–

Ray is convinced Genevieve is out to kill him now.

Fully premeditated, absolutely planned manslaughter.

Well, not actually. It's just that Ray cannot stop being a pig about every little thing she does. 

She dumped water on herself because it's hot in here, and she's trying to cool down the only way she can when there is not a single bladed fan in sight.  That wasn’t something she did just for the hell of it, or as something for Ray to watch with wide eyes as her white shirt became fucking see-through and clung to her tits and soft pot belly.

Her shirt getting destroyed also wasn't for him to see. It wasn't for anyone to see, not with how embarrassed she got the first time. Ray honestly thought that she wouldn't be wearing that shirt again after The Incident and her subsequent embarrassment, plus the switch back to tees and jeans; thinking naively that he was home-free and his only goal was to forget he saw anything the first time. Which has proven to be a daunting task in itself.

Now that it's happened a second time, there is not a chance in the devil's sweet hell that he is ever going to forget what happened to him on that stage tonight.

The memory of her tits quite literally exploding out of her shirt is going to be playing on repeat in his temporal fucking lobe for the rest of eternity. He watched that god forsaken button fly into oblivion and knew he was fucked forever. The thoughts of ripping the rest off with his teeth that followed were proof of the fact.

Ray's predicament somehow continues to find a way to get worse when they hit the home stretch of the last song. Gee strides over to his stage left position, where he had locked himself to prevent any stupid stumbling accidents from happening in his hair-trigger state. She grasps at his shoulder for his attention, standing close beside him. Ray leans and angles himself to press his sweat damp forehead to the back of her shoulder while he shreds through the last portion of the song, nuzzling in there and feeling the scratch of her blazer against his skin and the heat radiating off of her from underneath.

Gee sneaks her arm under and around Ray, cradling his head in towards her chest, a hand in his heat-frizzed curls on the back of his head and oh fuck. Jesus Christ, boobs in his face, big sweaty shiny boobs right under his nose and pressed to his cheek. Ray's cock goes from twitching in perverse interest over some mild body contact, to nearly rock solid and grinding a hole in the back of his guitar in seconds flat.

It makes him lightheaded and fucking dizzy with how quickly his erection bulges in his jeans. She's got a hand tight in his hair, fingertips firm on his scalp with curls pushed between her angular fingers, and he can't fucking move. Ray can do nothing but nuzzle into her here too, forehead pressed to the left of her breastbone just above the bulk of her, and he whines - inaudibly over the music - behind pursed lips while he tries to keep up with his damn job. His hearing is focused exclusively on the hammering of Gee's heart and the reverberation of her howling voice inside her ribcage under his ear.

Then she lets go, tossing herself back from Ray to pace to stage right and back to center.

The show ends without a hitch - for the rest of the band, that is. 

The moment they are headed off the stage, Ray leads the pack of them into the dark backstage area and tosses his guitar into his case. Matt, Frank and Mikey move much less urgently, prompting them to watch Ray's frenzy with mild concern.

“Hey, dude, you okay?” Mikey asks, setting his bass down and pushing his glasses up his face from where they had slipped down while performing. His beanie is all crooked and when he takes it off, his hair is all spiked fucked up underneath from the humidity.

“Yup, just gotta take a piss real bad. Kinda forgot to before we went on. I'll be right back!”

More lies, he totally did piss before the show, but Ray doesn't stick around to hear much after that. He dodges and maneuvers his way through the thrall of people circulating the venue, some leaving to street level, some headed to merch line ups, some crowding around the bar for another round of drinks and cigarettes. He makes his way to the very back and shoves through the creaky washroom door, making a b-line straight to the nearest open stall.

He is so, so unbelievably fucking hard. His heart races in his chest, hands shaking and body tingling while he fumbles to lock the graffiti plastered stall, metal squealing and clattering with the jostling door. Thank Christ the washroom is empty, for now.

Ray turns and leans back against the exposed brick wall, facing the metal partition between the stalls that has been coated in stickers and scribbles. It's like he's on autopilot when his hands begin wrestling his belt open, working on instinct and muscle memory. He unbuttons his jeans and drops his zipper, the release of pressure making him sigh with the promise of relief. He knows his fingers are still grimy from the neck of his guitar and they stink like steel strings, but he cannot find it within himself to pause to wash up or give a solitary fuck. Not when he's already worked up and pulsing like this.

Ray's right hand dips into the sweat-damp waistband of his boxers, fingers gripping his shaft and pulling his cock out over the elastic still around his hips. He encircles the base of himself with a thumb and forefinger, looking down in the uneven fluorescent lighting to see how desperate he looks. Tip red and swollen, pre-cum beading, veins prominent - it looks like he's been hard for an hour, not just five minutes.

Without hesitation, Ray gathers up as much saliva from his mouth as he can manage, opens his right palm and spits into it, a sticky trail dropping from his lips. When it lands his hand wraps around his thickened cock again and oh, god, this is the point of no return.

His hand flies over his cock hard and fast, tight, no build up and barely breathing while he beats himself nearly dry. The reddened tip peeks out from the top of his circled fist on every hurried down stroke, pre-cum quickly accumulating and slicking his palm the more his imagination runs wild with the fodder he was served on a silver platter tonight.

Gee looked so fucking good all night. Her black hair tangled around her round face the entire show, huge black lined eyes shining from behind wet strands, bright and animalistic in their intensity. The stage lights cast her delicate pixie-like features and soft edges in dramatic black shadows and a palette of neon colours. Her energy was high, prowling around the crowded space and riling up the audience the closer she got to the apron of the stage. They followed her every movement and ate up every last minute of it. Gee had the entire room eating out of her palm, and her command has always been so incredibly sexy to Ray.

The entire last song of the night is what did him in, though. The fucking moment keeps repeating in his brain; Gee looking over to him, jerking her shoulders back, the tension of the fabric pulling over her, the button giving up and her tits being so voluptuous that they are unable to be fucking contained by her top, threatening to tumble out of her bra with every thrash she made.

It's driving him to the point of obsession, only made worse by her pressing his fucking face to her chest and holding him there. Is it bordering workplace harassment? Ray doesn't give a fuck. It just spawned about a dozen different fantasies for him to indulge in at once. 

Ray imagines what it would be like to shove his face between Genevieve's tits and jerk himself off. Rubbing his face around, feeling the sweat and the slickness on her skin, the water she dumped all over herself. He thinks about suckling on her nipples until they're swollen into sensitive red peaks. Pinching them, rolling them between his fingers, the noises she would make when it becomes too much. Gee might like the pain, knowing her. Ray shudders. Thinks about groping both tits in his hands, palms overflowing with the velvet soft fat. His grip gets even slicker, soft panting over the background noise of the loud bar as his pink lips hang open, bottom teeth bared.

“Jesus, fuck,” He imagines bending her over and grabbing her ass, squeezing and spanking her pale cheeks. Gee doesn't really have a huge ass, but it's cute and round and he knows it would jiggle so fucking nicely on his lap with the rise and fall of her curvy hips. His hands would leave big pink prints on the white skin, and she would probably be delighted about it. Ray has seen Gee slap herself one too many times on stage for it to just be a stage gag, at this point. “Oh, god.”

The muscles in Ray's forearm flex with his repeated frantic motions. His head hangs forward, eyes slipped shut and his curls hanging damply in his face while he continues to rapidly strip over his cock. He thinks about Genevieve’s thighs wrapped around his head, thick and hot against his face while he licks and sucks her, pink cunt dripping down his chin as he makes her squirm. He wonders what she would taste like - what her natural flavour is, and how it would be even more intense in her undoubtedly unwashed state. The thought of being surrounded by her musk is enough to push a choked moan out of Ray's throat. 

He pictures the faces she would make in ecstasy; pink in the cheeks and all the way down to her collarbones and sternum, delicate lips parted, panting, moaning his name, eyes rolled back, spidery eyelashes fluttering. Her hips thrusting and fucking his face, hands pulling at his hair; how she would gasp and smile and praise him when he sucks hard on her clit and sinks two thick digits into her soaked pussy and finger fucks her so good -

With a harsh drag of air into his chest and a choked noise, Ray's cum shoots out lava hot and splatters the stall partition across from him, dribbling down the marker coated wall. It knocks the fucking wind out of him with how hard it hits, hot pleasure rushing through his gut and up his spine. He leans hunched and panting against the wall with a hand around his softening cock while he settles back into reality around him.

The reality he is eclipsing back into is one where he just jerked off uncontrollably in a piss-sticky men's washroom after a show in a crowded basement bar; fantasizing about his best friends huge tits and round ass that she keeps torturing him with, but the thought that made him explode and paint the stall with cum was eating her pussy and the thought of her smile. Ray might be exponentially more fucked than he previously believed.

Someone walks into the washroom and it fully breaks Ray out of whatever trance-like state he fell into. He quiets his breathing so it's not a dead give-away what he was getting up to - or off to. It's not been any longer than five minutes, maybe, and he prays it's not one of the guys coming to nit-pick his aim.

The guy doesn't say anything, just pisses loudly and leaves without washing his hands or flushing the urinal. Fantastic.

Ray sighs. There is a shame that's creeping in pretty quickly the more he thinks about how quickly he lost his cool, there. He pulls a strip of shitty one-ply paper from the dispenser bolted to the stall and wipes his cum from between his fingers, another strip to wipe up the wall he coated. He drops everything into the toilet before taking a piss, flushing, and going to wash his hands because he isn't a fucking animal.

Ray can't deny that he did kind of need that. This entire week he has been teased unknowingly within an inch of his life, has been having vividly pornographic dreams, and hasn't had the privacy to jack off the entire time which has had him horrendously pent up. He's a little surprised he didn't crack sooner, but tonight was dialled up to eleven. He doesn't know what the hell has gotten into Gee but it has really been affecting him, and he doesn't know how to address it at all. At this point Ray has no idea what is intentional and what is not, and it makes him feel nauseous to think about bringing it up with Gee. It could mean potentially cornering himself into admitting that he’s been sexualizing her to a point that feels offensive even to himself. When he's not rock hard.

Ray feels gross leaving the washroom despite cleaning himself up, both from the lack of cleanliness in the room and the ashamed feeling that settled inside of him. He has to go back and face the band after doing that. He'll probably need to make up an excuse about actually needing to take a shit to explain his extended absence when he actually sees the time on the clock and how long he was gone. Then he'll help with loading out before they all hop in the van to head to the after party.

One of the volunteers for the show tonight had some connections to someone else hosting an after party at their place. Ray has no idea who the host is, where this place is, and if anyone else they know will be there, and he would usually be fine with a random midnight house party with the band. A joint, a handful of beers, and an Xbox with a copy of Halo with his best friends would keep him happy for hours. 

This time, all he can think about is not ending up in one-on-one time with Gee. Absolutely not because he thinks he is unable to control himself, no, but because he is afraid Gee will somehow be able to psychically tell what he was doing in the venue washroom and confront him about it. He's already been worried that the weird brain-link the two of them seem to have has given away his dirty thoughts, and now that he's acted on them rather enthusiastically it feels inevitable that she'll read him like a book. Ray knows that it's stupid and ridiculous, but he is also pretty convinced the world might come crashing down if she tears him a new asshole for his ongoing and increasingly perverse behaviour, so he resolves to keep his distance.

–

The sound of the party carrying on in the house behind her is muffled only slightly by the closed screen door. The yellow light from the kitchen washes out and over her back, casting her face and curled up body in shadows. It's dark out over the fenced in backyard, crickets chirping actively, the air a little balmy and humid with the early summer heat. Genevieve changed into her dark gray jeans and an oversized zip up hoodie despite it.

She doesn't fucking get what she's doing wrong here. She has given Ray every possible signal she can come up with to show him that she's interested, but he is just not getting it. Short of dancing around and yelling like some kind of horny exotic fucking bird performing a mating ritual, she can't figure out what else to do. Gee fucking needs him like she needs air at this point, and he doesn't seem to need her back. 

In fact, Ray has been avoiding her actively since they wrapped up at the fucking venue. She was hoping for some kind of cliché backstage ravaging after her stunts, but he vanished before she could even make it to the greenroom. When he reappeared, he was quiet and short with her, not unkind, but more… Cagey, than anything else.

Gee sighs before taking a heavy drag of her cigarette burning between her fingers, nearly down to the filter. She hasn't kept a good count but it must be her fourth or fifth that she's huffed back since arriving at the party, along with a shot or two of whiskey. Her throat burns and it fucking stinks on this back porch she's sequestered herself to. With her elbows propped on her knees she hangs her head in her hands, careful to not burn her tangled hair with the hot cherry, and blows out her cloud of smoke. It rises up and singes inside her nostrils and stings her eyes. She blinks through the tears with her head down. The peeling paint and decaying wood of the stairs she's sat on are the most enthralling things in the world to her right now.

She thinks she took it too far. Way too far. She came on too strong, freaked Ray out with how forward she's being, and now he won't talk to her. She shoved his face into her tits, for fucks sake. No wonder he doesn't want to be anywhere near her. Maybe she's actually been misreading this entire fucking thing, and Ray never felt the same way and maybe he hasn't wanted her the entire time and she has made him deeply uncomfortable and grossed the fuck out by assuming he wants to fuck her and things are going to change between them and that fuzzy happy feeling she gets around him will be gone and -

Gee's rapidly spiralling thoughts are interrupted by the metal latch of the back door clicking, the hydraulic tube hissing as it slows the close and then slams with a clatter of the glass panes behind her.

“Hey.” 

She looks up, smiles weakly. It's Mikey.

“Hey, Mikes.”

“What’chu doing out here?”

“Nothin’. Thinkin’.” 

He knows her way better than that. “Doesn't seem like it.” 

She flicks the butt of her cigarette down the steps and onto the concrete patio stone, orange sparks flying out where it bounces before landing and smoldering. Mikey plops down to sit on the stairs beside her, long legs outstretched with the heels of his sneakers propped on the cracked stone.

“Yeah.”

“S’up then, dude?”

She takes a breath in. This whole thing feels like something she wants to talk to Mikey about, but Ray is also his best friend. His best friend he introduced Gee to, and their band mate. “It's… some weird personal stuff. Kinda awkward.”

Mikey shoots a look over his glasses at her. One that says yeah, and? like they haven't told each other all manner of awkward and embarrassing things in the past that most other siblings would never. She snorts a laugh.

“Fair. It's…” She pauses, searching for the right way to start explaining. “Fuck, it's so weird. Really weird. It's… about Ray.”

“I figured.”

That takes her aback. “Oh, um. Okay. So. Has he been like… Looking at me? Have you noticed?”

“Uh, yeah, it's kinda hard not to,” Mikey deadpans like it's obvious information. “He's like, totally…”

Mikey makes a vague gesture with his hands. “Enraptured with you, or something.”

That gets a solid laugh out of Gee. Leave it to Mikey to drop a word like enraptured unprompted. It makes her feel a bit less miserable.

“Enraptured, huh. Well he's not fuckin’ acting like it, now,” Gee rests her chin on her hand now, sounding defeated. “He hasn't talked to me or even fuckin’ looked at me since we loaded out at the show tonight. Didn't sit beside me in the van either.”

Maybe she really did fuck this up.

“Naw, he's totally into you. It's like… super obvious,” Mikey is definitely a little stoned, swaying back and forth where he sits and knocking his shoulder against hers. “He's always lookin’ at you and smiling. He blushes so bad every time, dude, Matt pointed it out.”

“Oh, god,” Gee groans, “When?”

“Um, I think… something like, a month ago?”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“I'm sorry, a fucking month?”

A month. That's processing for Genevieve.

“Yeah,” Mikey sounds so fucking casual about it, laughing like he isn't rearranging the entire timeline that Gee has made up in her head. A month ago. She only caught a wandering eye and figured Ray's game out on fucking Tuesday this week. “He said it's definitely been a thing but it's super obvious, dude. Frank and I have been catching it too, it's funny ‘cause he thinks he's hiding it. Head over heels, man.”

“So I'm not fucking crazy,” Gee feels something hot boiling up in her. This has been going on for much longer than she originally thought, and only now when she's gone out and made a horny idiot of herself he suddenly doesn't reciprocate? “That motherfucker has been staring at me for over a month, but as soon as I start getting my tits out for him he suddenly chickens?”

“Whoa, I meant he gets like, big heart eyes over you,” Mikey laughs, “I've been ignoring the part about your boobs pretty blatantly. I definitely caught him on that, too. But I think he's just nervous.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever, like, talked to him about it?”

Gee immediately feels defensive as all hell. 

“Well. Um,” She clears her throat, “I was taking a more, uh, theatric approach to things, y'know. And I only noticed this week.” Her voice trails off quietly.

“Seriously?” Mikey dissolves into giggles. “Man, you gotta talk to him. He's confused, like, I don't think he knows you're fucking with him on purpose.”

“What do you know about talking to men, Mikeyway.” Gee grumbles, jokingly. Mikey is probably right. She is still kind of pissy, for the time being.

“I talked my way into having us sleep here for the night,” Mikey grins. “By the way.”

“With who?” Gee narrows her eyes.

“Hostess.”

“Jesus,” Gee whistles. She does not want further details on that. She swings the topic back around. “Y’know, I thought you'd be way more upset about something like this. Within the band. And he was your best friend first.” 

“Shit, that doesn't matter to me, Gee. You guys make each other happy as fuck. I can tell,” Mikey sounds so sincere that her frustration fades just a little. “You gotta go talk to him.”

“Yeah,” Gee says, unfolding her body from her balled up and hunched over position. Normally, Genevieve is not a confrontational person; she is not an instigator, and certainly not an initiator. However, now that this has pushed her to the brink of a full blown downward spiral on a strangers back porch after she's gone and put her tits on display to no avail, she is at her limit. This has gotten way out of fucking hand. She stands up, ready to turn and walk back up the steps and into the house. “Fucking apparently.”

“Oh, and here,” Mikey leans over where he's sitting to stick a hand in his back pocket. He pulls out something square and metallic gold that shines in the yellow light quite recognizably, presenting the packets to Gee.  “Good luck.”

Genevieve scoffs, cringing. She takes them anyway, pocketing them in her sweater. “You're so weird. That's, eugh.”

“Says you.”

“Says you, who just had those.”

“You never know.”

“Do you know where he is?” 

“Somewhere in the living room, last time I saw.”

She sighs, turning to reach for the latched metal handle on the porch door. “Okay.”

“And hey, Gee?”

“Yeah?”

“Try not to bitch him out too hard, ‘kay?”

She laughs. Mikey knows her well.

“I'll try.”

–

Ray has been having a decent time. Not the most incredible, but passable. He's spent most of his night on the couch in the living room where the music is cranked on the stereo system, surrounded by strangers and only Frank and Matt milling around as familiar faces. It's out of his comfort zone, but he is currently avoiding his comfort zone like an ashamed fool.

He doesn't even know where she is right now. Hopefully having a way better time than he is. He feels like such a dick about all of this and how far he's let it go into his head. If he could have just controlled himself and not been gross about what he saw then he wouldn't be sitting alone right now.

Ray lifts himself up from the couch without a word and leaves to the kitchen, noise of the room still thrumming without him. He's opening the fridge in search of a bottle of beer when he hears the rattle of the door that leads outside to the backyard. Someone steps inside and the door slams behind them.

Ray looks up and locks eyes with Genevieve over the door of the fridge. She looks as equally caught off guard as he feels, her eyes owl-ish and blinking. She takes a deep, shaking breath.

“Can I talk to you alone, Toro?”

“Yeah, sure.” He chirps. He closes the fridge promptly.

“Come with me.” 

Gee grabs his wrist and pulls him through the little kitchen. The entire trip through the crowded house and out the front door, across the creaky porch, down the peeling steps, and across the street to the parallel parked van feels like a walk to the fucking gallows.

This is it, she's figured out he's a horrible friend and a horrible pervert. He is toast, his ass is grass, she is about to bite his fucking head off, he just knows it. His heart is in his throat. Ray immediately starts thinking of what retail job he's going to have to apply for to pay off his student loans because he is totally not going to be welcome in My Chemical Romance anymore. 

Genevieve leads him over to the hidden side of the van, shadowed in darkness from the street lights on the opposite side of the road. This side is facing out towards a forested area, leaving the two of them in relative cover from the party. Gee stops and whips to face him, her face ultimately straight and unreadable in the shadows. She looks devastatingly beautiful, if a little creepy in the dark like this, her eyes bugged round and intense and trained intently on Ray.

“You think I'm dumb or something, Toro?”

“What? Fuck, no- absolutely not-”

“Don't act like that, I know you saw.”

“Gee, I'm so sorry, please, I didn't mean to - I know you, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have looked, it's so wrong of me and-”

“Sh! Ray.”

“Wh- huh?” Where is this going?

“Oh my god. I've been practically shoving my tits in your face for a week and you still don't get it?!”

What the fuck?

“What am I not getting?” Ray sounds stupid even to his own ears.

“Holy shit,” Gee laughs. Laughs at him. This is the direct opposite of what Ray thought was about to explode violently in his face. “Holy fucking shit, dude. You've been looking because I'm allowing it.”

Ray pauses. Utter silence. “Wait. Really?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gee says, matter-of-fact. Her nasally giggle underlying her amused tone makes his heart stutter. “I would have said something if I didn't want you to.”

Want you to. It echoes in Ray's brain.

“But you- when the button thing happened you were so upset!?” Ray asks, incredulous. His entire outlook on The Incident and this past week is changing and morphing before his eyes into something out of his wildest fantasies. At least he was right about Gee chewing him out if he wasn't allowed to look, but finding out she was baiting him to do it the whole time? 

This game is torture. He can't deny that he's been getting off to it, though.

“Yeah, but then I kinda stopped giving a fuck, y'know? Some shit like that was bound to happen eventually, I mean, look at these things,” She gestures to her chest. She doesn't miss the way Ray's eyes instantly shoot down from her face. “It's a little ridiculous.”

Ray's mouth is dry as fuck. “You could say that.”

“And I was upset, for a little. ‘Cause I didn't expect that shit. In hindsight I should have, maybe. But I stopped being upset when I realized you kept staring at me.”

His eyes flick back to hers in an instant, guilty as sin. “I feel so fucking bad about it.”

“Don't,” Gee emphasizes, voice softening. “It's okay, really. It's okay. I was doing it all on purpose, after that.”

Ray is quiet for a few seconds. “...For me?” 

He's so quiet Gee barely hears him. “Hm?”

“You did it for me?”

“Yeah, Ray. Yeah. I did.” Gee also doesn't miss how breathy she sounds admitting to her acts of exhibitionism.

“Oh my god,” Ray pushes his curls from his forehead, leaning to rest against the van, cool metal against his heated back. “You were torturing me on purpose? As an invitation? Oh my god.”

“Yeah, and you were chickening out on me!”

“No!” Ray whines, “I thought you were going to kill me for staring at your fucking boobs!” He doesn't appreciate the way his voice cracks and betrays him. “You - you've always covered up, and when the button thing happened, the first time I mean, you seemed so grossed out by it. And I felt gross for looking and lying about it-”

“But you still kept looking. And I liked it.”

“You liked it?”

Gee's pale hand reaches out to Ray, fingers curling experimentally on his broad shoulder. She feels how hot he's burning under the thin cotton of his tee. “Yeah, I liked it.”

His breath hitches in his throat when her fingers twirl around a coil of his hair and her other hand joins on the opposite shoulder. She leans in close to his ear, breath hot, the smell of cigarettes wafting with her.

“I really liked it.”

“How?” It blurts out of Ray's mouth without second thought, heat immediately pooling in his gut over the feeling of her hot breath on the shell of his ear. “How did you like that, I mean?”

Gee is still so, so fucking close to him, face almost in his neck, hands toying with his sanity. She hums, “I liked it because every time I caught you looking, you'd go all pink in the face.. So fuckin’ cute.”

“Ugh,” Ray groans, face scrunching and head bonking back against the van with a thud. “Not cute. Totally embarrassing."

“So fucking cute, Toro. And,” She's adjusting, feet shuffling closer on the curb as she brings her body in against Ray, pushing him up against the vehicle. The hand that was twirling up his hair has slid under the mass of curls and is now caressing the side of his neck. He can feel her breath casting over his skin there too, and shivers. “I liked watching you squirm. So hot knowing I didn't even have to do anything, and you were still getting all worked up.”

Ray makes a sound like a whine and groan, his hands clenched uselessly at his sides. He's having a hard time paying attention to anything other than the feeling of Gee pressed up against his body. “Didn’t do anything, my ass.” 

Gee giggles devilishly, pulling back a bit to face him. Ray hauls in a breath. “Guilty as charged, it was so fun fucking with you tonight. And every time before that.”

“I bet.” There is hardly any venom in his pitched voice. Ray can see her face better now, still shadowed in the warm glow of the street lamp, but her eyes seem to glow in it and the look she is giving him is downright hungry.

“I also liked how I could tell exactly how bad you wanted to fucking touch me,” She purrs. Her eyes are half lidded, dark with need and boring into his. Gee runs both hands down Ray's chest, feeling the soft muscles over top of his shirt before running all the way back up, cradling his flushed cheeks in her hands. She bites her lip, he leans into her touch. “God, I really want you to fucking touch me.”

Everything falls into place at once. Ray doesn't need any more invitation than that before his hands are rushing to her hips, pulling her snug up against his body, locking her pink lips in a kiss as she holds his face between her palms.

Genevieve’s eyes slip shut and she makes a delighted sound against Ray's mouth. She knows she tastes awfully strong like cigarettes, but Ray doesn’t seem phased. Gee has thought about this for what feels like forever; she’s done her own amount of staring at Ray's pretty lips and imagining what they would feel like on hers. How his strong arms would feel while wrapping around her waist just like this, hands grabbing at her. After dreaming about it for so fucking long it feels so good to fit together so perfectly, lips working and sliding with warm spit. He clutches at her tightly, hands gripping at the fabric of her sweater while she holds his jaw in her hands.

Gee doesn't waste any time before her tongue is slipping from her mouth, running wetly along Ray's plump lower lip, and he opens for her willingly with a noise of encouragement. Her tongue slips past his lips, licking the edges of his teeth, dipping further in search of his tongue when his jaw goes slack in her hands and he moans. Dampness begins to seep from the corners of their mouths and she can feel it slide under her thumbs. Ray pushes back in turn, brushing his tongue against hers. 

The hot slide feels positively erotic, and things are getting so heated; Ray is sucking on her tongue, tasing the smoke and sweetness of her mouth, dick hard as a fucking nail against her hip. He can feel her breasts squished up against his chest. This suddenly feels so similar to the dream and how he awoke this morning that his head swims. For a moment, the only sound that fills their ears is the wet clicking of their mouths and their panting breaths through their noses. Ray's hands dare to slip a little lower than her hips and he palms over her ass, making her hips kick forward and it pushes Ray harder up against the vehicle.

Gee suddenly breaks the kiss but doesn't move away from Ray's mouth, saliva coated lips brushing against his when she whispers hotly;

“Get in the fucking van.”