Archive of Our Own

Warped might just be the most genuinely disgusting, dusty, humid mud pit Mikey has been in since Gerard moved out of their parents’ basement.

He and Bob are weaving through throngs of dirty rockstars and sweating groupies, techs and medics and god knows who else, all standing or sitting or lying around under awnings and in lawn chairs like the entire festival is just one giant backyard party. Which, to be fair? It pretty much is.

They haven’t seen a single other member of their band in hours, but several hundred feet ago they were told by some drunk guy that he’d seen Ray playing kickball with Gym Class Heroes, so they’re at least heading that far to try to catch up with her, and hoping that maybe she can point them in the direction of Frank and/or Gerard.

When they get to the aforementioned game of kickball, though, it seems to be mostly winding down, and Ray’s eminently noticeable halo of giant, curly hair is nowhere in sight, leaving Bob to sigh audibly and Mikey to frown, his face scrunching as he stands up on his tiptoes and looks around like maybe Ray will magically appear if he just looks a tiny bit harder for her.

“Hey, y’all lookin’ for your guitarist?” Travie calls out, spotting them on the edge of the group and pointing over at them.

“Yeah,” Bob says simply while Mikey nods next to him, shoving his glasses up further on his nose.

Travie clicks his tongue and shrugs a little, his long arms somehow conveying an apologetic nature just with their movements.

“Just missed her, man,” Travie says, nodding off into the distance. “She said she was feelin’ a little overheated so she was headed back to y’all’s bus to try to cool down.

Bob sighs again, even deeper this time, and Mikey claps him reassuringly on the arm before waving at Travie in gratitude.

“Thanks, man!” he calls, and Travie gives him a little salute before he goes back to their game, everyone playing looking more than a little haggard, like weeds wilting in the middle of a sidewalk.

“To the bus it is,” Bob grumbles, and they trudge off in that direction, hands shoved in pockets, their feet scuffing up more dust around them as they go.

When they get to the bus, Mikey knocks first, both he and Bob waiting patiently for a minute or so for any shout or movement that would indicate Ray’s unreadiness for them to step in. One of the big rules on tour for all of them has always been that when privacy is so goddamn hard to come by, you should at least give someone an opportunity to tell you to fuck off if you realize they’ve managed to snag a moment alone.

Whether it’s masturbating or showering or just getting one single second to breath without 4 other people living on top of you, they do like to at least make some attempt at being courteous to each other, and if Ray came back to the bus alone, the last thing they want to do is interrupt her. But when they don’t hear anything, Mikey swings the door open, Bob stepping quickly beside him, and then both of them promptly freezing in the doorway before they even get a chance to step up the first stair.

“Oh, shit,” says Bob, while Mikey just stands there gawking, his eyes and mouth all wide fucking open, his brain making the fucking screeching-ass AOL dial-up sound because yeah, oh shit is right.

Across from them, Ray is in the bus’s bathroom, standing in front of the little mirror on the wall with her headphones in her ears, her iPod tucked into her jeans pocket, and no fucking shirt or bra on.

Clearly, she didn’t hear the knock because of the music, and now they’re both just fucking staring at her with her tits out, and Mikey feels like he’s falling off a cliff or something, somehow. He can’t catch his breath, but he also feels vaguely sick and like he’ll never be able to regain his footing.

It’s about that moment when Ray turns her head and notices them standing there, letting out a wordless, strangled sound and throwing an arm over her boobs, then slamming the bathroom door shut with as much force as possible.

Mikey and Bob both stand there for another second before Bob takes it upon himself to close the main door of the bus, effectively shutting them off from accidentally interrupting Ray even more. Mikey turns to look at him, Bob is already looking back at him, both of them clearly feeling immensely guilty already.

“Shit, dude,” Bob says again, like that’s really the only thing he can think to say in this situation. Mikey nods, dazed, the sight of Ray’s chest seared into his mind like someone’s branded it directly onto his frontal cortex, and fuck, this is already a problem, isn’t it?

“Um…wow,” Mikey says, voice low, words coming out of him without his thought or permission. “That…uh. I mean I knew she was, like…” Stacked? his brain supplies, not at all helpfully, and Mikey wants to kick himself in the balls for being so gross about his friend, but really, just. Wow.

Thankfully, Bob seems to know what he’s saying, and doesn’t look like he’s going to beat Mikey’s ass for thinking it.

“Yeah,” Bob agrees, his eyes darting slightly towards the door of the bus, then back over to Mikey. “Like, it’s one thing to know, but another to see, right?”

“Right!” Mikey says, flailing a hand out, jumping on any opportunity to feel less like a huge pervert, even if it just really means that Bob might possibly also be one too. “I do feel bad, though. She’s probably gonna be really upset.”

Bob winces, chewing at his lip ring, looking as worried about the fall out as Mikey feels.

“We’ll apologize,” Bob says, more confident that Mikey probably could at this moment. “It’ll be fine. Not like she hasn’t seen more of all of us than she needed to, right? Part of touring.”

“Right,” Mikey agrees, still feeling uneasy, but at least marginally less so than before.

Then, the bus door opens and Ray stands in the entry, t-shirt firmly back on and her cheeks pink with embarrassment.

“We’re not going to talk about it,” she says immediately, before either of them can get a word out. “I know you’re both sorry, you don’t have to say it. I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have left the bathroom door open even though I thought I was dying of heat stroke. It was stupid. But I don’t want to ever hear about it ever again, from either of you. Got it?”

Both of them just stand there looking at her dumbly, giving twin nods of affirmation in her direction. Between her already impressive height and the fact that she’s standing two steps above them in the bus while they’re planted on the ground outside, she’s cutting a fairly intimidating figure. Neither of them are going to be stupid enough to contradict anything she says.

“Good,” Ray pronounces, like everything is completely settled, stepping back from the doorway, giving them room to come onto the bus if they want to. They do, in fact, enter the bus, and they don’t talk about seeing Ray shirtless.

They don’t talk about it to her, or to each other, or to Frank and Gerard when they eventually make their own ways back from fuck-knows-where. Nobody talks about it, and Ray and Bob both seem to move on as if everything is absolutely fine. Outwardly, Mikey thinks he’s probably managing to come across the same way – or, at least he hopes he is. Because inwardly, Mikey cannot stop fucking thinking about it to save his life.

Three weeks later, Mikey is approximately one fucking wet dream about Ray’s tits away from finding the nearest busy highway and laying down right in the middle of traffic.

He feels a constant, nauseating mix of lust and guilt pretty much 24/7. He sees Ray behind his closed eyelids every night and acts like a fucking weirdo around her every day. His dick remains perpetually half-hard at literally all times, regardless of whether Ray is actually anywhere in his physical vicinity or not. He feels like he’s going more than a little crazy, and doubly so because Bob, who saw the exact same thing as him, doesn’t seem to be having anything resembling the same problem.

At some point, Bob calls him out on it while they’re alone, pulling him aside after Mikey makes a particularly stupid attempt at speaking to Ray normally and ends up sounding like an absolute tool. Bob’s eyebrows are set in a hard line, his mouth turned down, and Mikey feels like a speck of dirt as he scuffs his shoes and tries not to look Bob in the eyes.

“Dude, are you still hung up on seeing her half-naked?” Bob asks, and Mikey sighs, not even trying to deny it even though he desperately wants to.

“I mean, yeah,” he says instead, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re telling me you haven’t thought of it again since then?”

The look Bob gives him makes it very clear that he has not, in fact, been thinking about Ray the way that Mikey has, and Mikey feels like an even bigger piece of shit than before, fiddling with his hair and fidgeting under Bob’s gaze like a bug trapped in a glass jar.

“No,” Bob says slowly, the word weighty and honest. “Because it’s Ray.”

Like that explains anything at all, Mikey thinks, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in the air.

“I know!” he says, an edge of desperation in his voice that he doesn’t like hearing in himself but doesn’t know how to get rid of. “That’s why I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Huh,” Bob says, and Mikey feels his heart jump into his throat, his eyes widening behind his glasses.

“What do you mean, huh?” Mikey asks, wanting to grab Bob and shake him, wanting to rip his own skin off until he stops feeling like this. “You saw her too! You even said ‘wow’,” Mikey reminds him, feeling more and more wound up by the second, like he’s on a roller coaster he can’t get off of.

“Well, yeah, they were pretty ‘wow’,” Bob allows, shrugging. But there isn’t a hint of, like, lust in his eyes, nothing that says that he’s attracted to Ray. Just a general ability to recognize a great set of boobs when he sees them, just like any other person on earth who likes people with boobs. “Again, man, it’s Ray. She’s like, my best friend. And a fucking musical genius. But I’m not falling in love with her because of her tits,” Bob finishes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“That’s not why I fell in love with her either!” Mikey protests, before he can process a single word that’s coming out of his own mouth. His brain screeches to a halt when Bob’s eyes widen and he replays what exactly he just said. Mikey’s face goes ashen instead of tomato-red, feeling like all his blood just drained clean out of his body.

“Oh. Shit,” Mikey says, and then flees, and he doesn’t talk to Bob again for the rest of the day.

So, okay.

Mikey has maybe known for a while that his feelings for Ray might not be entirely that of a good friend and bandmate. He’s never made anything resembling a move on her – he respects her too much, first of all. And secondly, she’s never shown anything like what he would consider returned interest, always treating him exactly the way she has since the day they met, with no hint that she has designs on getting into his jeans the way a lot of girls in the scene seem to want to.

And that’s fine, Mikey’s been totally cool with that. At the end of the day, he’s always known that he’d rather have her as a friend and a kickass guitarist than risk losing her because he took a chance on showing his interest.

But it’s been approximately six thousand times harder to keep that mindset going now that his brain just keeps conjuring up memories of her soft, tapered waist, the smooth skin of her belly, the sweet little spill of her hips over her waistband, the swell of her breasts and the flash of her nipples he got before she threw her arm across herself and slammed the door shut in his and Bob’s faces.

Mikey hates himself for not being able to let go of the image – mainly because Ray had made it pretty damn clear that she wanted him and Bob both to forget about it entirely. He feels like he’s…violating her somehow, even just in his brain, and it makes him physically sick. Maybe he needs to go to a doctor. Do they still perform lobotomies?

The day after his conversation with Bob, all five of them are sitting around a picnic table under a couple of massive shade trees on the edge of a concessions area when Peyton Wentz from Fall Out Boy comes sidling up, eyes already sparkling at Mikey even from several feet away. Mikey swallows and does his very best not to look unfriendly.

It’s not that he doesn’t like Peyton. They talk a lot about bass riffs and dealing with diva lead singers – even though they both love Gerard and Patrick to death. Peyton is sarcastic and smart and has really cool tattoos. And she’s clearly been doing everything she can for the last several weeks to let Mikey know without ever outright saying it that she’d be down to let him hit if he wanted. It’s just, well. She isn’t Ray. And Mikey is fucked.

“Hey, My Chemical Romance,” Peyton greets as she approaches, the whole band chorusing various hellos in response before her eyes land directly back on Mikey, her big, toothy grin widening even further when she looks at him.

“Hey, Mikeyway,” she says, more pointed that time, shoving her hands in her tight jean pockets and leaning her hip on the edge of the table next to him, looming over him a little in a way that makes him flick his gaze nervously to the others.

Gerard looks mostly wary – his protective older brother instincts always a little on alert when he knows Mikey’s being flirted at. Frank looks amused, Bob largely indifferent given he’s known all of Fall Out Boy longer than the rest of them and is exceedingly used to Peyton’s patented brand of nonsense.

And Ray, well. Mikey can’t really tell how Ray is reacting to Peyton’s presence, because her head is turned down and she seems to be texting furiously with her phone held in her lap, her curls falling down over her face and obscuring any expression Mikey might be tempted to try and read.

“Hey, Peyton,” Mikey says at last, giving her a slight smile, shaking off his itching desire to know who Ray’s writing to, especially given that she’s not usually that big of a texter. That’s more Mikey’s thing. “What’s up?”

Please don’t ask me to leave with you, please don’t ask me to leave with you, his mind chants, a little meanly, already knowing that if he has to try and fumble for an excuse as to why he can’t hang out with Peyton alone, he won’t be able to think of anything and will end up looking dumb as fuck in front of everyone. Thankfully, the universe seems to be on his side, because Peyton shifts and turns her attention to Ray, reaching out a hand to nudge her lightly on the shoulder, grabbing her attention.

“Some of the girls from the other bands are going out to the nearest mall, and we wanted to see if Ray here wanted to join,” Peyton explains, Ray’s face doing something complicated in response that Mikey can’t fully translate before it settles into a blandly polite expression, with maybe just a little bit of shyness under it.

“Who all is going?” Ray asks, eyeing Peyton almost warily, like she’s a shark in the water and Ray’s a minnow just hoping not to get caught up in her jaws.

“Hayley, Lacey, possibly some combination of Shiragirl depending on what else they have going on,” Peyton lists out, dragging her hands from her pockets to tick the names off on her fingers as she talks. “So, you in?”

Ray nods, tucking her phone into her pocket before standing up from the table. Mikey’s gaze immediately locks in on the little sliver of skin he can see at her hip where her t-shirt has risen up above her jeans, and he wants to smack himself for the way his mouth goes dry staring at it.

“I’ll, uh, see you guys later?” Ray says, pulling Mikey’s attention from her hip to her eyes, noticing a pinkness in her cheeks that he would swear wasn’t there a second ago.

Everyone murmurs their goodbyes and Ray and Peyton head off towards wherever the girls are all meeting up, Mikey watching their retreating forms until they disappear around a bus in the distance. Frank’s voice cuts into the silence they leave behind them and draws Mikey back to the guys.

“So, are you ever gonna hook up with Peyton?” Frank asks, folding his hands together on the tabletop and leaning towards Mikey with a look of intrigue on his face. “Or are you just gonna keep eyeing up Ray right in front of her while you wait for her to get the hint that you’re already interested in someone else?”

“You – I – What?” Mikey stammers, any semblance of coolness nowhere to be found, looking at Frank like he just got caught with his hand down his pants.

Frank snorts, and next to Mikey, Bob shakes his head, sighing loudly before clapping Mikey on the back.

“He’s freaking out because we accidentally saw Ray’s tits a few weeks ago and now he’s being forced to admit he’s obsessed with her,” Bob explains, making Mikey let out an indignant noise and flail his arms around.

“Shut up, I am not obsessed with her!” Mikey argues, and Gerard and Frank exchange a look that says they aren’t buying what he’s selling for a minute, making him scowl at the both of them. “What the fuck is that look?” he demands, his fists curling so hard his nails dig into his palms.

“You have been acting kind of weird around her lately, Mikes,” Gerard says almost apologetically, wincing like he hates to be the one to break the news to his little brother that he’s been incredibly obvious about his crisis of both heart and boner.

“Not to mention I absolutely heard you saying her name in your sleep a bunch of times the other night,” Frank chimes in, making Mikey’s whole body go rigid. Gerard and Bob just look, thankfully, confused. Bad enough that Frank is apparently overhearing Mikey’s subconscious yearning – he doesn’t need the rest of them in on it too.

“Do you think she – ?” Mikey asks, too scared to finish the question, exhaling a breath of relief when Frank immediately shakes his head.

“Nah, man, she was asleep,” Frank assures him, drumming his fingers on the rough wooden surface of the picnic table. “That was the night she bonged all those beers and passed out the second she got back on the bus. She was snoring until way after the rest of us the next morning.”

Mikey feels his posture unlock in relief, although his face also starts to burn when he remembers the night in question, immediately pinpointing exactly what he’d been thinking before falling asleep that night, as well as knowing exactly what dream he’d had that Frank would have overheard.

He’d been feeling an even more heightened sense of that half-horny, half-guilty feeling than ever that day. He was concerned about how much Ray was drinking and battling a desire to step in and try to keep her safe without implying that she didn’t know her own limits, which already made him feel like an asshole all on its own.

But, at the same time, he’d been there when she’d bonged at least some of those beers, and watching the way her pillowy pink lips had wrapped around the end of the hose had almost made him come in his fucking pants. When the foam from the beer had started to leak from the corners of her mouth and run down her chin towards her tight t-shirt, her head tipped back and her neck all long while she tried to keep it from spilling over, he’d had to literally flee back to the bus just to stop himself from keeling over and dying right there in the dirt.

By the time he’d managed to will his erection down enough to fall asleep later that night, he’d been primed to dream about Ray, and dream about her he fucking had. In his mind, he saw her kneeling over him while he laid down in a bed much bigger and softer than his bunk, her absolutely insane tits providing an incredible backdrop for the sight of her lowering her mouth over his cock, her pretty, dark eyes holding his when he spilled into her mouth, his come dripping down her chin like that stupid beer had.

So, yeah, Mikey’s sure Frank probably did hear him saying Ray’s name that night. He’s only lucky that nobody else did – especially Ray herself – because then Mikey would be even more completely and utterly fucked than he already is, which shouldn’t even be possible given how sorry he already feels every second of every day.

“I’m going to fucking cut my dick off,” Mikey says miserably folding his arms on the tabletop and burying his face in them, his head thumping down onto them audibly. “No,” he continues, his voice muffled in the dark space between his arms and the table, “I’m going into witness protection. I’m quitting the band and changing my identity. None of you will ever see me again, and Ray can settle down with a nice young gentleman who doesn’t objectify her against her will.”

Around him, he dimly hears the rest of the band either snorting at his theatrics or speaking over each other to tell him why he’s being overly-dramatic, but none of it really makes its way past his iron-clad barrier of self-pity. At least, not until Frank raises his voice above all of them, cutting back in with a statement that Mikey is sure he must have heard wrong.

“Wait, say that again?” Mikey demands, raising his head from his arms and looking at Frank intently, squinting like he’ll be able to hear him better if he concentrates on staring at him hard enough.

“I said, I don’t even see what the big deal is when Ray literally told me she likes you, like, two days ago,” Frank repeats, like he isn’t dropping the biggest bomb possible on Mikey’s world.

“What the fuck?” Mikey asks, his heart speeding up, thinking for sure this is one of those things where Frank is just fucking with him. He’s going to keep an impeccably straight face for way longer than he should be able to, look at Mikey all earnest and swear up and down he isn’t lying, only to bust out into crazy laughter at the last second and wheeze over how dumb Mikey is for believing him, leaving Mikey to have to strangle Frank to death right here next to this tree.

“Frank!” Gerard says, smacking him on the arm, Frank rubbing at the spot and scowling while Bob waves a hand, surprise clear on his face.

“And you didn’t think to say this earlier in the conversation?” Bob asks, to which Mikey points thankfully in his direction and makes a wordless questioning sound, seconding Bob’s interrogation.

“What if she didn’t want you to share that?” Gerard asks before Frank can answer, clearly worrying that Frank has broken Ray’s confidence by letting Mikey know. But Frank just shakes his head, telling everyone to shut up.

“She never said not to say anything,” Frank defends himself, holding his hands up against his chest. “In fact, she specifically said it ‘wouldn’t matter’ if I told you anyway, because she’s been texting her sisters every day about the fact that you’re clearly going to have sex with Peyton. She said that if seeing her half-naked didn’t make you want to make a move, then nothing will.”

Mikey blinks at Frank like he just finished speaking a goddamn alien language, his world spinning out underneath him, his stomach in freefall.

“Frank…” Mikey says slowly, staring him down seriously like this is the most important conversation he’s ever been a part of. “If you are lying about this, I swear to god I will have you fucking murdered, do you understand me?”

Frank looks genuinely offended, glancing over to Bob and Gerard like he’s asking for backup, seeing a cautious skepticism reflected in their own gazes too which just makes him pound his hands down onto the table.

“I’m telling the fucking truth, dude!” Frank says, and both his face and his voice are sincere enough that Mikey actually believes him now. But he still never actually answered Bob’s question, which Mikey would like to hear an explanation for.

“Okay, and again, why did you not say that immediately at the start of the conversation, instead of waiting this fucking long, huh?”

Mikey asks, pinning Frank with another glare. This time, Frank does get that sheepish, mischievous expression he’s always wearing, looking for all the world like a little fucking gremlin, hell-bent on torturing people for his own amusement.

“I just wanted to give you some shit about it before I put you out of your misery,” Frank admits. Mikey groans while Gerard honks out his stupid laugh (now that he knows Ray isn’t having her secrets blabbed without her permission, Mikey guesses), Bob sighing again and rolling his eyes.

Mikey’s barely paying attention to any of them, though, because he’s too busy turning over Frank’s admission in his mind, grappling with the reality of what it means for him.

Ray likes him. Ray thinks he doesn’t like her because she thinks he likes Peyton. Which…probably explains Ray’s reaction to Peyton showing up at their table earlier. She would have been texting her sisters under the table, probably telling them that she was sitting there having to watch Peyton blatantly flirt with Mikey, and Mikey feels a stab of guilt totally unrelated to how much he’s been skeeving on Ray recently, this time for not having been more explicitly honest with Peyton about not being into her.

“Hold on,” Mikey says, re-running part of Frank’s story, eyes finding him again. “She said she thought I would have made a move after seeing her with her shirt off?”

Frank nods, Gerard tilting his head curiously, Bob’s eyes boring into the side of Mikey’s face.

“She didn’t, like, do it on purpose, right? She couldn’t have been waiting on the bus on the off chance that I’d be the first one to show up. I mean, Bob was literally with me. If that was a plan, it wasn’t very well thought out.”

“No, dude, she wasn’t trying to fucking lure you,” Frank says, rolling his eyes like Mikey’s the biggest idiot on earth. Which, to be fair, he might actually be at this point, Mikey can concede. “It really was an accident. She got too hot playing kickball, didn’t realize she hadn’t locked the door, and didn’t hear you guys knock because she had her headphones in. But she said after it happened she thought you were looking at her in some type of way. But when you never made a move, she figured she’d misread it.”

“She specifically told us not to bring it up ever again,” Mikey says, trying to defend his reasoning. The rest of them look at him sympathetically.

“Mikey, it was a weird, embarrassing situation,” Gerard says, looking at him kindly. “She probably meant, like, ‘just don’t bring it up to make fun of me or run around telling a bunch of people what my boobs look like because you’re a huge jerk’. But, from what she said to Frank, it sounds like she would be fine with you mentioning it if you’re into her. Which is the last I need to know about how the two of you feel about each other, ever,” he concludes, nodding succinctly like that settles it all.

And, well, maybe it fucking does.

They all go their separate ways for the afternoon pretty quickly after that, Mikey just wandering aimlessly through the carnival-esque tent city that is Warped Tour on his own, deep in thought about how this entire clusterfuck has unfolded. He realizes he must have been meandering for hours when he sees Peyton up ahead with Patrick, clearly having returned from the girls trip into town quite a while ago. She and Patrick are chatting about something outside of their bus, and Mikey smiles ruefully back when Peyton waves at him and leaves Patrick’s side to trot over to him.

“Hi again,” Peyton says, grinning. She runs a hand through her artificially-straightened hair and fluffs her side bangs, getting them to fall just-so over her deeply-lined eyes, tilting her head Mikey’s way.

“Hey,” Mikey says kind of dully, already not looking forward to how this is going to go, feeling bad in advance about hurting her if that’s what he ends up doing. “Um, look, I should probably tell you that…I’ve like, really enjoyed getting to know you better this summer, and you’re, like, super rad, but…”

Peyton waves a hand, cutting him off, her smile dimming a noticeable degree but not fully leaving her face.

“If you’re trying to tell me you don’t wanna hook up, you can just say it, Mikey,” Peyton says, and there’s no animosity in her tone, just straightforward acceptance. Mikey breathes out a sigh of relief before Peyton continues. “I know I’ve been sending pretty heavy signals your way, but I promise I can take a rejection. Not like there aren’t other pretty boys on this tour I can try to get with. No offense.”

“None taken,” Mikey says quickly, mostly just incredibly stoked that Peyton isn’t devastated by the loss of whatever flirtation she may have thought they had going on. “You really are cool,” he tells her genuinely, smiling at her. Her grin brightens again as she bounces up on her toes, darting in to lay a friendly, smacking kiss on his cheek that he laughs and wipes away with the back of his hand.

“You too, Mikeyway,” she returns. “I still wanna talk to you about bass stuff and movies. Don’t be a stranger just because we’re not gonna bang it out.”

Mikey laughs and promises he won’t be, even pinky-promising her about it, all of the anxious, coiled tension he’d had prior to the conversation unspooling easily under her friendly acceptance. Peyton nods happily and salutes him before turning on her heel and heading back for her bus, where Patrick has disappeared inside already.

One confession down, one to go, Mikey thinks, turning his attention back to the fact that if Peyton is back from the mall, it means that everyone is. Which means that unless she got roped into going somewhere else immediately after, Ray is also around here somewhere, and Mikey has a chance to find her.

His feet start carrying him back to his own bus as fast as they can, figuring it’s the most logical place to start, and he’s almost back there when he rounds a corner and ends up physically colliding with someone else, exchanging breathless sorries until he takes a step back and realizes it’s Ray. Her eyes are wide and her hands are kind of wringing in front of her, until she raises one of them to push her curls back from her face, giving Mikey a pained sort of look.

“Oh, um, sorry Mikes,” she says, refusing to meet his eyes, a jittery kind of energy radiating off her that Mikey instinctively wants to soothe away.

“No, no, you’re good,” Mikey says, maybe a little too adamantly, Ray’s eyes glancing over to meet his briefly before they slide away again, leaving Mikey with the insane urge to do anything in his power to get them to land on him and stay there.

“You’re actually exactly who I was looking for,” Mikey says, his inner monologue sounding suspiciously Frank-like when it snorts and laughs at him for how telling that choice of phrasing might be, but he shakes it away.

“Yeah?” Ray asks, seemingly nervous and…maybe hopeful? She bites at her bottom lip in a move that makes Mikey almost groan, too many recent thoughts about her mouth colliding all at once now that he’s standing in front of her so close. Ray continues. “Figured now that we were back, you’d be off with Peyton somewhere.”

A day ago, Mikey would have heard that statement as nothing more than a neutral observation. But now that he knows how Ray’s been feeling, it hits his ears completely differently, the slight hint of sadness and resentment ringing through loud and clear. Mikey wants to kick his own ass for not seeing it sooner.

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head, making sure to look Ray in the eyes. “Peyton’s cool, but I finally realized she was looking for more out of hanging out than I was. We agreed just a few minutes ago that we’re, um…friends. Just friends.”

Ray seems taken aback by that, her eyes locked in with Mikey’s, her throat bobbing as she swallows, Mikey tracking the motion with a little bit of heat in his belly.

“Oh,” Ray says quietly, crossing her arms and shifting her stance a little, like she suddenly doesn’t know what to do with herself. Mikey understands the impulse – he kind of feels like he’s ready to jump out of his own skin, especially because Ray crossing her arms like that kind of pushes her tits up a little under her shirt and…damn. “Well, I mean…there are other girls on the tour, right? I’m sure someone’s caught your eye. Or if they haven’t, that’s…that’s cool too. I guess.”

Ray huffs a laugh that doesn’t actually sound all that amused, kicking at the ground a little with her boot, giving Mikey a look that he’d almost class as self-deprecating. He hates seeing an expression like that on someone as beautiful and talented and generous and kind as Ray Toro.

“Sorry, I don’t know what I’m rambling about,” Ray says self-consciously when Mikey leaves the silence lingering for too long. Ray kind of half-turns away like she might be planning to make an excuse to leave, and Mikey absolutely cannot let that happen. Before he thinks about it, his hand has darted out to land on her arm, stopping her not through force, but just by its presence.

“Ray, I…” he starts, heart beating fast, enamored with the feeling of her skin under his hand, even if it’s just the back of her forearm. “I have to tell you something, and I hope you’re not going to be mad at me. I’ve been pretty mad at myself, lately, so…I guess I’d deserve it if you were.”

She looks at him curiously, and Mikey looks around, double-checking that there’s no one in their immediate vicinity to overhear them. Luckily, they’re in a relatively secluded spot – back behind several of the buses but far enough away that nobody really walks this direction. One of the permanent buildings in this particular city’s setup is at their side, brick wall providing a little bit of shelter from prying eyes.

Mikey drops his hand reluctantly from Ray’s arm, figuring it’s better to not be touching her during this, even if he’s hoping that Frank’s tip-off was accurate and coming clean about it will lead to him getting to touch her a lot more very soon.

“So, obviously you remember a few weeks ago when, uh, Bob and I saw you…y’know. Without your shirt?” Mikey starts. Ray’s cheeks immediately go red, and she doesn’t respond verbally, just nods like she’s waiting for Mikey to continue, so he does.

“Okay, well, I know you said not to bring it up again, so I’ve been trying not to because, like, I respect you a lot, okay? It’s important to me that you know that. But, like, I also…can’t fucking stop thinking about it?” he confesses, his words turning up in a questioning tone without him meaning them to, like he’s flinching away from his own feelings even now. Even when Ray’s eyes are widening a little and her mouth is parting in a way that doesn’t look at all like she’s about to punch him. Mikey forges ahead.

“And, well, not just that moment,” he continues, kind of hitting his rambling stride now, the truth pouring out of him like a fountain now that he’s given himself permission to say part of it. “But just…you in general. I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re, like, just so pretty and nice, and you’re the best guitarist I’ve ever met, and you’re one of my best friends and I can talk to you about anything, Ray.”

He stops short, his mouth turning up in a tiny little quirk that might be a smirk or might be a smile, or might be fucking nervous indigestion, who knows.

“Well, I can talk to you about anything except the fact that I can’t stop dreaming about you and wanting you, I guess. And…I’m really sorry if you hate me now, but I just. Kind of had to tell you, because it was driving me insane.”

Mikey finally stops talking, realizing only after the sound of his own voice dies away just how much he fucking said right there. He wonders if he’s ever spoken that much at one time in his entire life without being high off his ass and on the topic of video games or comics or something. Ray seems to be thinking along the same lines because the first thing she says isn’t a response to any of his confessions, but rather a commentary on just how long he fucking talked.

“Not one of the fans would believe me if I told them you could say that many words in a row,” she says, her voice and expression mostly neutral, but with the tiniest hint of a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth, in the little creases at the edge of her eyes.

“Shut up,” Mikey mumbles instinctively, much more in line with his usual level of elocution. The sound of Ray’s laugh in response is music to his ears, like a fucking choir of heavenly angels or some shit. Jesus, he’s starting to think like Gerard.

“You’ve really been thinking about me?” Ray asks, her voice quiet but hopeful, drawing Mikey’s eyes to her, making him want to devote himself entirely to making sure she never sounds this uncertain about his feelings ever, ever again.

“Fucking non-stop,” he confirms, and Ray sucks in a little breath that he can hear, that makes something hot twist inside him. He wants to hear her gasping like that under different circumstances. He wants to figure out what kind of sounds she makes when he pulls out every trick that made him famous in the scene back home among all the club kids and the groupies.

“Since before I saw your tits,” he clarifies, wishing for a second that he’d chosen a less crude-sounding way of saying that, but letting go of the regret instantly when Ray’s expression doesn’t change and it becomes clear she isn’t offended by his phrasing. “But, uh. Just much worse, ever since then. Like…I can’t really think about anything else a lot of the time. It’s a problem.”

“I thought…” she starts quietly, and then trails off, causing Mikey to give her a quizzical look. Ray shakes her head a little before she continues. “I thought I just wasn’t your type or something. Thought you wanted someone like Peyton…tattoos and scene hair and…skinny,” Ray finishes flatly, almost curling in on herself a little, Mikey immediately reaching out again to catch her arm, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Hey, whoa,” he says, voice layered with disbelief, bewildered at the idea that Ray could ever think of herself as anything other than stunningly gorgeous. “Fuck that. First of all, I don’t even have a specific type, so you can throw that shit right out the window. And second, even if I did…Ray, it’d be you. You’ve like, completely reset all my wiring or whatever. Not that I’ve tried to get with anyone lately or anything, but if I did, I’d probably have to find someone who looks stupidly like you to even be halfway interested.”

Ray blushes fiercely again, and Mikey wants to kiss her so bad it hurts, but he holds himself back, waiting for her first, not wanting to push.

“That’s…huh,” Ray says wonderingly, like it never would have even occurred to her. “Wow, Mikeyway. You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

Mikey grins and steps up a little closer to her, putting himself in her space and testing the boundaries. She doesn’t move away and he thrills at it, the hand not resting on her arm landing lightly at her hip, tangling a finger in one of her belt loops.

“I’d flatter you a lot more if you’d let me,” Mikey says, voice quiet and low, pitched just for her. He’s back in his element now – he knows how to do this part, even if he’s never done it with anyone who means quite as much to him as Ray does.

Ray’s breath hitches and Mikey feels like he just won a fucking trophy, like he’s got the blue ribbon in pickups if he can make Ray Toro make that tiny little sound. She doesn’t take her eyes off of his, almost looking like she couldn’t glance away even if she wanted to. It makes Mikey hungry in a way that really doesn’t belong out in the open like this.

“I think I’d be…really okay with that,” Ray says finally, her face flushing just a little, going rosy at the apples of her cheeks. The single latch Mikey has at her belt loop turns into a full hand cupping her hip, his fingertips just sneaking up under the hem of her t-shirt to skate across skin. She’s so warm it’s almost ridiculous, soft and smooth and Mikey’s dick honest-to-Christ twitches in his skinny jeans and that’s it, really, he can’t stand it anymore.

“I gotta take you somewhere or I’m gonna die,” he says honestly, prompting Ray to let out a nervous but giddy-sounding giggle before she grabs his hand, tugging him in the vague direction of their lot.

“No one else was on the bus when I left,” she explains as they walk, catching a few people’s eye with the way their hands are intertwined, not that Mikey gives a single shit. “But you should probably text them and tell them to steer clear for a while just in case.”

Mikey nods, agreeing with the wisdom in that suggestion, and whips out his phone with his free hand to send a group message to Gerard, Frank, and Bob: going 2 bus w Ray, DONT come back 4 a bit. Various responses pop up pretty much instantaneously, respective choruses of “gross” and “hell yeah” and “no fucking on shared surfaces!!!” that make Mikey roll his eyes before he shoves his phone back in this pocket without answering any of them, just as they make it to the bus and Ray opens the door.

Mikey follows Ray inside, twisting the lock immediately when the door closes. She turns to face him and his palms itch with the desire to get back to her. He doesn’t fight the impulse – doesn’t even try to. He just steps forward and puts his hands on her waist, crowding her a little so she steps back against the closed bathroom door, Mikey’s face inches from hers, breathing in each other’s space.

“This okay?” Mikey asks, and Ray nods, her fluffy hair haloing around her face where she’s pressed back against the door. The very same door she didn’t bother to close however many weeks ago that let Mikey get his first unobstructed view of her body. The memory of it comes flooding back to him with such clarity that he groans out loud, tipping his head forward to land on Ray’s shoulder, his lips dampening her t-shirt a little.

“Mikes? You good?” Ray asks with some degree of concern, one of her hands coming up to tentatively slide around the back of his neck, combing into his hair and making him want to whine, her short nails with their chipped polish scratching softly.

“So good,” he says, voice muffled for a second before he pulls back to look at her again, eyes boring into hers. “I just…I was thinking about when we saw you and I –” he trails off, letting out a breath, pushing even closer against her, their chests and the fronts of their jeans brushing against each other. “I wanna see you again, Ray,” he admits, his eyes darting down to the front of her shirt, his thumbs swiping over her sides. “Can I? Will you let me?”

Ray makes a choked, whining kind of sound in her throat and tips forward, catching Mikey’s lips before he can think to initiate a kiss for himself. Mikey shoves against her in a way that probably isn’t at all gentlemanly, but she doesn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, she just makes another pretty sound into his mouth, letting him tangle his tongue with hers as they tilt their heads just right, the kiss deepening into something dirty and promising.

They make out for a few long minutes, hands wandering over clothes, Mikey stiffening steadily in his jeans and knowing Ray must be able to feel it because of how close they’re standing. He doesn’t feel the need to draw any specific attention to that, though, because he’s having too much of a great time just feeling her, even somewhat indirectly like this. After they’ve both sufficiently bruised their mouths with each other’s lips, they part only enough to catch their shaky breaths, foreheads together, blood singing in Mikey’s veins.

“Bob said no fucking on any shared surfaces,” Mikey says, almost conspiratorially. “But there isn’t really room in the bunks for what I wanna do with you, so…are you willing to face that wrath?”

“Lounge,” Ray says immediately, as uncaring as Mikey is about whatever the supposed consequences will be of anyone finding out they used the couch for this. “We’ll clean it, I don’t care. Bryar won’t do shit to me anyway, he loves me.”

I love you, Mikey almost says, but holds himself back at the last second, figuring he should at least make her come half a dozen times and maybe take her out on a date before he gets into all that.

Instead of revealing his heart like that and probably scaring her away, Mikey just says “Yeah, okay,” and takes her by the hand, pulling her towards the lounge where he can resume kissing her as soon as they’re in the general vicinity of the couch, pushing her shirt halfway up her belly with absolutely no subtlety. Ray huffs out a little laugh against his lips in the face of his newly-unleashed insistence.

“Here, let me…” she says quietly, hooking her own hands at the bottom of her shirt and pulling it up, her hair springing back around her face when she frees it from the neck hole, tossing the shirt aside uncaringly as she stares back at Mikey with a little too much uncertainty in her eyes for his taste.

“Goddamn, Ray,” he breathes reverently, eyes completely locked in on the way her tits spill over the cups of her probably years-old bra, washed and re-worn so many times it definitely isn’t supporting her as thoroughly as a nicer, newer one would. But Mikey is totally fine with that because he thinks she’d look beautiful in anything. A fucking potato sack would look like lingerie to him if she was the one wearing it, he is so fucking gone for this girl it’s insane. And he’s so glad he doesn’t have to pretend otherwise anymore.

“Yeah?” she questions softly, a slight, shy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, tucking a rogue curl behind one of her ears.

“Fuck yeah,” Mikey says, and swoops in to start kissing her again. He reaches up behind her to find the clasps of her bra within seconds, wanting it the fuck off of her now, his fingers playing over it until he can back off her mouth enough to breathe, “Can I?”

“Yeah, Mikey. God,” Ray says, and Mikey unhooks the clasps and tugs the straps down her arms, not letting himself look directly at her chest until he’s thrown the bra onto the ground and can fully appreciate the view, which. Fucking shit fuck, what a view it fucking is.

Ray’s breasts are even more glorious up close than they had been when he saw them before – round and heavy with nipples the same hue as her stupidly gorgeous mouth. Her entire torso is just slightly paler than the shade of her arms and face because she’s always wearing t-shirts out in the sun and covering all this up which, in Mikey’s opinion, should be a crime.

“You are…the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” Mikey says solemnly, catching Ray’s hips again except this time it’s all skin-to-skin.

Ray shudders out a little breath before Mikey leans in and presses a kiss to the swell of her left breast, slowly tracing his mouth down until he can flick his tongue over the peak of her nipple. She whimpers and arches and Mikey feels like he could drill through fucking glass with his dick right now, but this moment isn’t about him at all, it’s about her. He keeps his mouth moving as he maps out every last centimeter of her chest with his lips, committing it all to memory just in case he dies right after this so he can still say he’s done everything he ever wanted.

“Mikey, I gotta…can we sit down?” Ray asks, voice sounding a little strangled and a lot turned on. Mikey glances up at her while he finishes sucking at her right nipple, drawing back with a soft pop and licking over his lips, a motion that Ray’s dark eyes track intensely.

“Yeah, angel, of course,” Mikey says, the pet name slipping out without conscious thought. Ray looks slightly surprised for about half a second, but then it quickly morphs into a pleased expression and Mikey grins, pushing her back towards the couch until her knees hit it and she falls, seated on the leather.

“Do you mind if I…?” Mikey asks, standing in front of her, his hands reaching for the hem of his own shirt, dragging it up his stomach a little, watching the way Ray’s eyes fall to follow his movements immediately.

“No, please,” Ray encourages, and Mikey sweeps his shirt off quickly. He only knocks his glasses slightly askew with the motion, righting them quickly before he pops open the button on his jeans and lowers the zipper. He doesn’t reach in to free himself or shove them down or anything, but even just releasing that tiny bit of pressure from the fabric is enough for now, allowing a little bit of relief to flood in from where he’s trapped so insistently beneath it, turned on as fuck.

“You’re, like, really fucking hot, Mikes,” Ray says then, her voice still quiet but almost in a reverent way this time, instead of a nervous or embarrassed one.

When Mikey looks at her, she’s got her eyes trained somewhere in the vicinity of his belly – or maybe his crotch – probably that little space where his briefs are slightly visible underneath his open fly, and, wow, Mikey’s going to come just from that gaze alone if she doesn’t stop.

“Thanks,” he says, tilting his head a little, scratching idly at the back of his neck. He never really knows what to do with compliments, despite the fact that he’s pretty used to hearing them all the fucking time, and it turns out he’s not magically any better with his responses just because it’s Ray that’s leveling them at him. “Can I…?”

He doesn’t actually finish his sentence, just toes his shoes off and then gets on the floor in front of her, putting his hands on her knees through her jeans and nudging just lightly – just enough to suggest that he wants her to part them.

Ray says, “Oh,” and then does it, letting her legs fall open just a little bit. Mikey notices immediately that the denim on the inside of her thighs is rubbed a little thinner, lighter, softer than the rest, where they rub together when she walks or plays guitar. He wants to rip holes into those soft spots with his teeth, lick her skin until he can’t taste anything but her. Instead, he leans in and places a kiss to each side, his nose skimming against her zipper with the motions.

“I’m gonna take your pants off,” Mikey murmurs, following the line of the zipper up to her belly with his mouth, tugging at the button with his teeth. He doesn’t make it a question, though of course he wouldn’t try to convince her if she wasn’t down for it. But he really hopes that she is, because his mouth is fucking watering for it.

“O-okay,” Ray breathes shakily, nodding above him, her hips shifting a little bit on the couch in anticipation that makes Mikey smile.

Despite his confidence that he could if he wanted to, he doesn’t try to get fancy and get her jeans undone with his teeth – too impatient, and it doesn’t really fit with his mood right now anyway. He raises his hands to her lap, flicks open the button and lowers the zip carefully before hooking his fingers in the waistband at her hips, tugging down until Ray helpfully lifts her ass up to help give him room. As the fabric reaches her mid-thighs, Mikey’s breathing kicks up to a labored cadence that’s almost fucking embarrassing – the round, soft skin of her legs looking so inviting he wants to die there, wants to bury his face in until he can’t fucking breathe.

And that’s to say nothing of the sight of her underwear – worn black cotton but with a red lace edging and a tiny little red bow at the front. Probably picked up in a 3-for-5-dollar pack at a Walmart somewhere, but looking for all the world like the sexiest thing Mikey’s ever laid eyes on in his life, just because they’re on her.

He tugs her jeans down faster after that point, less careful, more efficient and impatient. When he reaches her ankles he tugs off her shoes and socks both, her toenail polish as chipped as that on her fingers and a completely different color. Mikey finds the whole thing so strangely endearing it makes his head spin as he tosses all her clothes off to the side, totally uncaring of where they land.

A fraction of a second later, he’s back between her thighs, kneeling up and kissing her hips, the dips and folds where her thighs meet her panties. He licks the little bow on the front of her underwear, wetting the skin right under her belly button with the same motion, and Ray’s hand slides into his hair as she lets out a wordless sound followed by his name.

“Ah, Mikey…” she says, and he hums against her belly, taking the waistband of her panties between his teeth and tugging, letting it spring back against her skin when he releases it.

“Yeah, Ray,” he answers, the words not taking the shape of the question he intended them to be, morphing halfway across his lips into an encouragement instead. An answer in and of themselves. He nuzzles at her core, licks lower so he can just start to taste her, smell her through the fabric. She whines and he does it harder, burrowing in closer, damp heat surrounding the lower half of his face the further he works his way into the warm center of her.

“Mikey, you gotta…fuck,” Ray says, her fingers tightening and loosening rhythmically in his hair, her thighs trembling a little next to him.

“I gotta fuck?” Mikey asks with a smirk, looking up at her from under his eyelashes, his lips still hovering right above her waistband, right where the elastic digs into her skin. Even as turned on as he is, there’s no world in which he’s not gonna make the joke. Luckily for him, Ray laughs, fond and silly, only making him smile even bigger.

“Yeah, maybe you do,” Ray says, tugging at his hair a little more forcefully, sending a shiver rolling down his spine. The amusement drops off his face at that one, replaced with a plaintive look of want as he hauls himself up to his feet, shoving his unbuttoned jeans down and peeling off both them and his socks so they’re both in nothing but underwear.

“C’mere,” Ray whispers, biting her lip a little as she looks at the tent in the front of his briefs, the obvious wet spot showing at the front of the grey fabric. She crooks a finger and everything, Mikey stepping forward as surely as if she’d physically reeled him in, until he’s standing between her legs and Ray’s sitting forward. She straightens up on the couch so she can reach out and drag that same finger down the line of his cock, shifting the cotton across the length and making him groan. Her hands curl into the sides of his briefs, her eyes briefly flicking up to gauge his reaction. When he nods, she pulls them down swiftly, letting them fall so that Mikey can step out of them.

And then immediately she’s holding onto his hips again, her long fingers spanning his slender waist in a way that Mikey is absolutely into. But he doesn’t really have long to think about it before Ray is leaning forward and licking the tip of his cock like a popsicle or some shit, stealing his breath and making him reach down to cup her face, his thumb brushing over her cheek while she wraps her pretty – no, gorgeous - lips around the head.

“Ohhhh fuck,” Mikey says, really all of it coming out in one big breath, sounding stupid and virginal in a way he hasn’t since his actual first time, like he’s truly in danger of blowing his load before she even makes it all the way down. “Jesus, Ray, holy shit.”

Ray looks up at him and he damn near blacks out, her big, breathtaking eyes holding his while she sinks her mouth further onto him. Her mouth forms the world’s most perfect ‘o’, her tongue slick and warm on the underside, and she keeps going slow and steady until he’s all the way back in her throat, her eyelashes fluttering but her breathing remaining even, not a hint of a gag reflex in sight. Mikey sends up every prayer he was ever taught all at once, literally thanking God for Ray, because clearly, he’s found a fucking angel on earth.

Ray starts moving, finally lowering her eyes to focus more on the task in front of her. One of her hands grips Mikey’s dick at the base to help her along, and the other reaches for her tits to – oh God - to *squeeze* them so that he can see it beyond what her mouth is doing. His hips buck forward at the sight of it, her fingers plucking at her own nipples the way she does at her guitar strings, circling and pinching until they’re pebbled and peaked, Mikey’s pulse thundering in his ears.

“I fucking dreamed about this,” he tells her, voice gravelly and strained. Ray’s eyes flick up again for the briefest of moments, meeting his like she’s telling him to keep talking, like she wants to hear it. “After you bonged all those fucking beers,” he admits, his cheeks and chest going pink with a blush as he confesses it, Ray’s hand and mouth moving over him so good. “I had to leave, I couldn’t keep watching you. Your fucking mouth, all the foam dripping all over your face, shit.”

He hisses, moving the hand he’s had resting on Ray’s cheek to slip carefully into her hair, not wanting to get tangled up in her curls and pull too hard – ruin the moment with an accidental tug. Ray slips off his dick just long enough to lick several long, hot stripes from root to tip, circling around so she covers all of it, then blowing out a cool breath across the head before diving back in and enveloping it all again.

“I dreamt about you doing this that night,” Mikey continues, voice reedy, needing to get the fantasy out now that he’s started talking about it. Wanting her to know what she’s been doing to him. “Jerked off twice in the shower the next day before I could even think about looking at you again. The real thing is so much fucking better.”

He tips his head back after that and shuts the fuck up, lightly nudges his hips forward so he’s fucking shallowly into Ray’s mouth. It’s the barest hint of movement from him, Ray riding it out and working in counterpoint to him with all of her flashier moves. A little like they’re used to doing with their music, only much, much more fun. After a while, he can feel his stomach tightening, his balls drawing up, and he practically stumbles back with a move so sudden that Ray has to anchor herself with her hands on his thighs to keep from falling off the couch, blinking at him in surprise.

“Sorry, fuck, sorry,” Mikey apologizes, breathing heavy, cock twitching heavily between them. “I was gonna come and I didn’t wanna, you know. Finish that way without warning your or…at all, really, because I, uh…”

He trails off, a little worried that she’ll find him gross or stereotypical or otherwise be put off by what he has in mind, but wanting it badly enough to risk asking for it anyway. His gaze drops to her flushed chest, the light sheen of sweat on her breasts, her nipples still flushed and straining from the attention she’d been paying to them while she blew him. Mikey licks his lips.

“I really, really wanna come on your tits, if you’ll let me,” he says, having to wrap a steadying hand around the base of his dick just from saying it. Ray’s eyes drop briefly down to her own body like she’s only just remembered that she’s even mostly-nude, or that she has a body at all when she’s been so focused on Mikey’s.

“Ah,” Ray says, still looking down at her chest like she’s imagining it for a second. And then her eyes move back up to his and her pupils are blown out, her cheeks flushing and her breathing picking up a little, and Mikey already knows she’s going to agree before she even says anything else. “God. Yeah, you can…you can do that. Absolutely.”

Mikey lets out a breath of air – relieved and turned on at the same time, anticipatory as he squeezes his dick harder to keep from spilling right this second.

Ray shifts a little, sitting up straighter on the edge of the couch so her chest is pushed ever-so-slightly forward, just that much more pronounced and exactly at fucking dick-level. She grabs her breasts with her hands, pressing them together, presenting them to him. Mikey feels like his whole body is on fire, his hips twitching forward of their own volition.

Distantly, he thinks the next thing he’ll have to request – provided he ever gets lucky enough to get to do this with Ray again – is if he can fuck her tits. Just straddle her and shove his dick in between them, rut against her until he comes on her chest and her chin. He’d lick her clean, of course, he isn’t an animal. But shit, the idea of it almost makes him dizzy, and he focuses on the moment they’re in so he can stop thinking about the potential of future encounters.

“Is this okay?” Ray asks, her voice more unsure than he’d like it to be, making him realize he’s been quiet for too fucking long, his pervy internal monologue causing him to stop actually talking to her out loud, which, C’mon, Mikey. Don’t be an asshole.

“Perfect,” he corrects her, moving his hand over himself again, slowly at first, just easing back into the friction. His eyes flick between her boobs and her face, both so pretty, so fucking stunning, and his hand moves slightly faster, drawing her attention that way too. “It’s perfect, you’re fucking perfect, Ray, you don’t even know.”

He’s babbling, a little, but it seems to be working for both of them. Ray’s eyes are big and shining and locked in on his moving hand now, the way he’s leaking at the tip as he looks at her tits, her belly, her soft thighs and her angelic face. She squirms on the couch, like she’s maybe seeking some friction from the seat through her panties, and he strokes himself faster with a moan, determined that he’s going to make her come hard as fuck as soon as he gets through with this.

Actually, he thinks, stripping his dick like his life depends on it, he should tell her that. Give her something to look forward to besides just watching him nut all over her like a freak.

“I wanna finger you after this,” he says, breathless and low, dipping into a voice he only ever hears from himself when he’s stupidly turned on and getting a little unhinged. “And get my mouth on you again, but like…without the underwear this time.”

He strokes himself even faster as he talks, picturing it, straining towards it, and then realizes he should probably check in or something, make sure that’s something Ray even wants. “I mean – fuck. If that’s okay?” he grits out, teeth clenching together as his thighs and belly start to clench, getting closer and closer to the edge.

“Fuck yeah, more than okay,” Ray breathes, and this time she’s definitely squirming against the couch, not even trying to hide it or make it subtle. She’s practically rocking her hips down against the couch while she continues to hold her tits up for him, sitting forward far enough that the tip of his cock brushes against her skin, making him groan out loud.

“Shit, that’s so hot,” he gasps, rubbing his dick all across her chest more intentionally while he keeps stroking, leaving behind sticky lines of pre-cum that shine on her skin and make Mikey’s mouth water just looking at them. “Oh my god, you’re so soft, I’m gonna fucking come all over you, Ray, Ray, Ray…”

“Do it,” Ray encourages, sounding breathy and kind of captivated. As if she’s watching something astonishing happening instead of just Mikey with his hand on his dick, all awkward elbows and skinny hips and glasses slipping down his nose because he can’t be bothered to focus on shoving them back up. “Mark me up, Mikey, I want you to. Want you dripping off me, wanna see how you look when you come for me.”

And that’s it, Mikey’s only a man, and nobody on earth could be expected to keep it together when Ray fucking Toro says something like that to them. He comes so hard he shakes with it, groaning and striping the swell of Ray’s breasts, the valley between them where she has them shoved together, anywhere he can aim.

He works himself down with his mouth hanging open, dumbstruck and stupid, watching his come slide down over her nipples, to her fingers still gripping her flesh. He finally lets go of his dick, breathing heavy and gasping, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the hand he didn’t just have wrapped around his cock.

“Holy…fucking shit,” he says, and Ray giggles, the most adorable sound he’s ever heard in his life. His cock twitching briefly again at the sound like it’s trying valiantly to get back in the game, and Mikey scowls down at it briefly before looking back at Ray, his face softening instantly. “Thank you for letting me do that,” he says earnestly, putting his clean hand on her face and tucking a curl behind her ear, leaning down to kiss her on the mouth, softer than the kisses they’d shared earlier.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Ray mumbles against his lips, an eye-roll almost audible in her tone. But when he pulls back, her cheeks are pink again and she looks pleased that he’d said it, so Mikey files it away as something that was worth saying.

Ray isn’t holding on to her tits anymore, her hands having dropped to grip the edge of the couch on either side of her body, held almost tremblingly still. Mikey wonders if she’s having to hold herself back from putting one down her panties, or using both to just take them off entirely.

“I know I don’t have to,” he says, grabbing for a roll of paper towels sitting conveniently in the corner and then getting on his knees in front of Ray again. “But I wanted to, so you know that I feel really, stupidly lucky to be doing any of this.”

He tears one of the paper towels off the roll and holds it up questioningly, raising an eyebrow as his hand hovers near Ray’s chest. “Can I?” he asks, and he nods, so Mikey uses it to gently wipe his come off of her while she waits there, looking down at him with a soft little smile on her face.

“Thanks,” Ray says quietly, when her chest is clean and Mikey’s dropped the wadded paper towel onto the floor for the moment. He presses a kiss right above her beating heart and then onto her lips again, his hands resting on her plush thighs, his thumbs swiping across her warm skin.

“Can I eat you out now?” he asks, a low murmur against the corner of her lips, his nose nudging her temple. “Take your panties off and get my fingers inside you?”

He kisses her jaw, her cheek, ghosts his breath over to her ear, and hides his smile in her hair when she shudders, his hands flexing on her thighs, fingertips pressing in harder, kneading flesh.

“If you don’t, I might be forced to kill you,” Ray responds, huffing a shaky laugh alongside her words that Mikey responds to in kind.

“No need for that,” he promises, sitting back and sliding his hands from her thighs to her hips, encouraging her to sit so she leans against the back of the couch again instead of perching on the edge. “I’ll take care of you, Ray.”

At his urging, her butt lifts off the seat so that Mikey can tug her underwear down and off. He throws them into the ever-growing pile of clothes on the floor, his and hers all tangled together in a mountain they’ll sort back through later.

His eyes drop to her core and he has to swallow very hard, arousal clawing its way up his throat so strongly it almost chokes him, because holy shit, that is Ray’s pussy, and if Mikey thought her tits were incredible, he hadn’t even let himself think about this.

She isn’t shaved – isn’t even trimmed – and her curls here are fucking soaking wet in a way that makes Mikey wish he could get hard again immediately, that’s how unbelievably sexy she looks. Her pussy is swollen and glistening and it looks so perfect and so pretty, Mikey can’t make himself wait to check in with her another time because if he doesn’t get his mouth on her right this second, he will die.

“God, Ray, he says as he pitches forward like a man possessed and kisses underneath her belly button first, making her breath hitch as she settles a hand in his hair.

He moves down, down, his ears ringing and his hands sliding half-under her to grip her ass. Round, soft, his caveman brain growls, and then he licks her once, just enough to taste her on his tongue, both of them swearing in tandem before he just fucking… goes to town.

Mikey buries his face in Ray’s cunt like it’s what he was born to do. Slick noises and deeper groans than he’s maybe ever heard himself making echo in his ears, combined with Ray gasping and moaning above him. Ray has one hand in his hair and the other gripping his arm, holding onto him like she might just completely fly apart if she doesn’t. And if he tugs against her grasp a little, increasing the sting of it and the way it zips down his spine, well…they can talk about that some other time.

“You taste so fucking good,” he tells her, after he’s been working away at her for he doesn’t even know how long, feeling like he could stay there forever and never get tired of the taste of her, the smell, the sounds she makes. His voice is muffled against her as he licks between her folds and teases his tongue at her entrance, then goes back to sucking on her clit until her thighs clamp around his ears and make it harder for him to hear her response.

“Fingers,” Ray voices weakly, tapping his arm now instead of just holding onto it, reminding him of his stated plan from earlier. “You said – you promised your fingers too.”

Yeah, he sure fucking did, and he’ll make good on it if that’s what she’s asking for. At this point, he’d give her anything she wanted, anything within his capabilities. Anything to keep her making those sounds, get her to come so he can know he’s the one that made it happen.

“I got you, angel,” he promises, getting one hand off her ass and brought down between her thighs, slipping across her clit and down to just above her entrance, tracing back and forth a few times until his fingers are wet with her, his forehead against her belly and his breath on her mound.

“Mikey, please,” Ray begs, tugging hard enough on his hair to make him moan, his nipples hardening and his cock threatening again to come back to life against his thigh. He shushes her and places a kiss on her clit, then quickly sucks two fingers into his mouth, wetting them even more before heading right back where he was, looking up at her face as he slides them inside.

“Oh,” Ray says when just the ends of his fingers slip in. And then, “Oh, fuck, holy fucking shit, Mikey, ah,” when he sinks them inside slowly, steadily, until they’re as deep as he can reach. Even then, she’s still shoving her hips down against him like she wants more, every part of her body begging for him.

Ray is so goddamn hot it’s killing him, and he just drinks in the sight for a few minutes while he draws his fingers in and out of her cunt, crooked up so he’s dragging against her g-spot with each pass. He leans down to put his mouth back on her at the same time after a while, the taste and the heat of her making him delirious with want.

“More, Mikey,” Ray pants after a bit, and his eyes flick up to meet hers where she’s watching him, gaze locked in on his head between her legs, his fingers thrusting into her. “I need…you can fit more, I can take it.”

Mikey licks her and then draws his hand back carefully, tucking a third slender finger against his other two and driving them home without asking her if she’s certain. It’s pretty obvious from the way she’s angling her hips up that she can, and the deeply contented sigh she heaves when he has all three of them as deep as they can go just proves it even more.

“That what you needed, angel?” he asks, sucking a mark into her thigh that makes her cry out and tug hard on his hair as he keeps fucking her with his fingers. “Wanna make you come.”

Ray nods wordlessly in response to his question, head tipped back against the couch and hair squished up under her, eyes closed as her hips lift steadily to meet his hand, fucking him as much as he’s fucking her. Mikey doesn’t mind – in fact, it’s maybe one of the hottest things he’s ever seen.

Ray, chasing her pleasure on her own from his fingers, not waiting for him, telling him what she wants and then enjoying it for herself. He lays his head on her leg and just goes back to watching again, working his fingers however she seems to like it best, feeling the way she clenches around him with every movement.

After another short while, her eyes flutter open and one of her hand sneaks down her body, tracing over her soft belly and carding through her pubes to land on her clit, the pads of her fingers rubbing in counterpoint to Mikey’s thrusts. He sits up with a slight frown, enjoying the sight but not wanting her to have to do any work. He bats her hand away and replaces it with his other one, relying on the level of ambidextrousness required for bass-playing to stimulate her himself, Ray biting her lip and whining deliciously.

“I’m gonna come if you keep doing that,” she whispers, so he does it fucking harder, thrusting into her as deep as his fingers can reach and rubbing her clit in fast, tight circles that have her keening and bucking her hips up against his hands. He’s murmuring encouragement as he does it, nonsense words he barely thinks about, telling her how beautiful she is and how bad he wants to see her fall apart for him.

With his voice in her ears and his hands on her body, Ray takes next to no time between her warning and its conclusion. She covers her mouth with her hand as she shouts out her orgasm, but she’s still being loud enough that anyone walking past the bus could probably hear it. Mikey honestly hopes that someone does, that they stop and ask themselves Is that Ray? and then wonder who’s making her feel like that, just so that they can find out later it was him. The thought of it makes a flare of heat go straight to his groin, his cock half-hard again.

Ray’s hole pulses and clenches around his fingers as she comes, her thigh muscles tensing and her belly quivering. Mikey watches her, thinks she’s looks like a fucking goddess. He tells her so, running his stupid mouth even more, talking about how she looks like a painting, like she should be in a museum.

Ray squeezes one more time around him and then slumps back down to the couch with a kind of squeaking sound falling from her mouth, eyes round and glassy and chest heaving in a way that would put any pornstar in the world to shame.

Mikey backs off when she’s finished, drawing his hands away from her slowly, carefully, shushing her and apologizing softly when she hisses at the loss of his fingers inside her. He runs his hands up and down Ray’s thighs soothingly, waiting for her to rejoin the land of the living, massaging her soft skin and thumbing over the bite mark he left on her earlier, a surge of combined lust and pride hitting him when he looks at it.

“Mikey fuckin’ Way,” Ray pronounces, looking down at him while still sprawled boneless on the couch, shaking her head in something like disbelief. “Jesus. At least I know what half of Jersey and all of last year’s tour have been raving about now. Damn.”

Mikey snorts and shuffles forward on his knees to drop his head onto her shoulder, her hands coming up automatically to pet through his hair. She places a kiss on the top of his head and his heart swells. Another on his forehead and he returns it with one on her collarbone, that I love you from earlier on the tip of his tongue again, bitten back only because he still doesn’t want to scare her away.

“I didn’t even sleep with that many people last year,” he protests lightly, nuzzling into her neck and nipping at her skin, her hands wandering to his shoulders, his back, making him sigh with how good they feel on his bare skin.

“Okay, sure,” Ray snorts, like she doesn’t believe him at all. Mikey pulls back with an affronted look, poking her in the side and making her giggle and writhe, a smile breaking out on his face despite her basically calling him a slut.

“Either way, it doesn’t matter,” Mikey says, looking into her eyes, any hints of teasing gone. “After that? I don’t want to sleep with anyone else anyway,” he declares. Ray’s face softens in a way that makes his heart flip over, and Mikey continues. “If that’s…you know. What you want, too.”

The confidence has dropped out of his voice now, replaced by something vulnerable and seeking that makes Ray lean forward and kiss him softly on the lips, her hand cupping his face and making him sigh.

“I would love to be the only person you’re sleeping with,” she says when she pulls away. Mikey smiles and kisses her again just because he can, and they’re still kissing when there’s a pounding on the door of the bus and a muffled voice yelling something they can’t even make out from all the way back in the lounge.

“Goddamn it, I told them not to come back for a while,” Mikey hisses, hauling himself up off his knees with his dick still at half-mast for the second time, while Ray covers her blushing face with her hands and laughs from the couch.

“It’s been a while, Mikes,” she points out when he starts handing her clothes over to her, sorting through the pile on the floor and grumbling to himself as he starts getting dressed, the incessant knocking resuming, along with shouts that now sound like they’re coming from multiple people.

“Give us a fucking minute!” Mikey yells, sticking his head and torso out of the lounge’s doorway and back towards the main part of the bus. There’s more shouting and one final, solid thud on the door before everything falls quiet again, and by the time Mikey turns around Ray is – unfortunately – dressed again, her body hidden away from him under jeans and a t-shirt like always.

“I miss looking at you already,” he sighs, stepping closer to her and planting his hands on her hips, pulling her in so he can press his semi against her through their pants. Ray makes a little mmm sound when she feels it, kissing his cheek and then his lips, both of them staying close together for one last moment.

When they pull away, he gives her a rueful look and then sighs, knowing they need to stop pressing their luck and let the other guys in before they break down the fucking door. As he goes to step away, Ray stops him with a hand on his arm and a quick command of, Wait. He turns back to her with a quizzical look, sees her biting her lip almost nervously before she finds her nerve and speaks.

“I know we need to let them in,” Ray says, eyes flicking over Mikey’s shoulder before training back on him. “But I just wanted to say…you made me feel better about the way I look today than anyone else ever has. I felt sexy because of you, which isn’t something I’m used to, so…thank you.”

Mikey wraps his arms around her again, fully around her waist this time in as crushing of a hug as he can give, trying to pour every ounce of his affection and lust and care for her into it all at once, make her feel all of it with this one embrace.

Behind them, there’s knocking starting up again, and Ray laughs when Mikey growls in frustration, her hands urging him to break his hold on her even though it’s the last thing he wants to do.

“It’s okay,” she says, “I know. And we’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about it more, right?”

The expression on her face is sweet and open, and her eyes are actively hopeful, a spark in them that makes him want to keep giving and giving and giving her everything he has until she one hundred percent believes every compliment he pays her.

He thinks about doing this again with her, about holding her hand while they walk around this dusty-ass caravan of unshowered heathens for the rest of the summer. About giving interviews where they field the same questions sixty-thousand times about what it’s like dating someone in the same band as you because they’ve gone public about it. He wants that shit so bad he can taste it, almost as clearly as he can still taste Ray on his tongue.

“Yeah, plenty of opportunities,” he agrees, and the smile she gives him is blinding, gorgeous, the only thing he wants to see for the rest of his life.

Her smile even stays in place when the other three pile onto the bus a few minutes later, fully yelling at Mikey and making him scowl as they carry on about how long they were locked out and about how little warning he gave them.

Mikey scowls and Ray smiles and everyone else gives them shit, but when it all dies down all Mikey can really feel is grateful that he accidentally saw Ray’s fucking tits.