Bob's always a little excited when he leaves home, even the times when he's actually reluctant to go. It used to be just because he likes traveling, and doing incredible sound for incredible bands, and he never knew what was going to happen, but he knew it was going to be interesting. Now it's at least as much because he knows he can come home again.

He's in New York City alone on New Year's Eve, aka his birthday, and feeling just slightly, just a little sorry for himself. He hasn't been gone long enough to be homesick - just a couple of days, and he's having a good time, and birthdays themselves aren't all that important to Bob, but he always enjoys seeing what Ray's going to come up with for them. It's not that Ray is a sap. Bob sometimes suspects that it's actually because he fears Bob's feelings will be hurt if he doesn't really work at picking a present and celebrating. His favorite is still the Neo action figure Ray got him the first birthday in Belleville, though. At least, Neo himself is happy enough on top of the TV, and he's not even, technically speaking, Bob's favorite action figure; but it was Bob's favorite present. And looking at it always reminds him - vividly - of his birthday fuck that year.

He lights a cigarette and leans against the wall, tipping his head back to exhale up. It's a good party. Just a little loud, but good. And the gig earlier is good money. He checks his watch, though, for the fiftieth time. His birthday is almost over.

Considering that Ray has just been visiting his parents and brother in Hoboken, though, Bob definitely has the good deal tonight. He's at a big, noisy New York club full of murals and glitter and anonymous people, and he spent most of the day sleeping. Ray is surrounded by a loving family, and has probably been babysitting or cooking all day.

If he's really unlucky, Ray might be asleep already, from exhaustion or peer pressure. Last year after Ray's parents and nieces had gone to bed on New Year's, he and Bob and a couple of spare brothers had still had plenty of time to make it to a club before the ball dropped. Or if he's lucky, maybe he's at the same one right now, having a great time, and it would be too loud to hear each other on the phone anyway.

Bob finishes his cigarette and goes looking for some champagne. The tour's starting soon - it was only a few days' loss to come up and work tonight, anyway. And if Ray hasn't died of babysitting or too much spicy food, his phone will still work tomorrow.

But actually, Bob's phone rings at two am - he's back in the hotel relatively early, and he was already asleep, even. "'Lo?" he says, without even looking at the call display.

"Happy Birthday," says Ray, sheepishly. "Only a little late."

"Hi," says Bob, half-sitting up in bed as he comes halfway awake all at once, but okay, he's still pretty drunk, so he flops forward onto his pillow instead. "Thanks."

"You're getting up there," says Ray. "You'll be as old as me soon."

"That's what I'm looking forward to," Bob tells him, but it's a total lie. Right at the moment, for some reason, what he's really looking forward to is Ray's ribcage, on the side of his body, where the hard bone drops away and the pale skin that never gets a tan turns soft and pliant underneath.

Ray can probably hear his mood in his voice, because he has to clear his throat, and then he sounds embarrassed anyway. "And happy new year."

"Happy new year," says Bob.

"How's it been so far?"

"I've had better," says Bob. "But it's only 2:40, and right now it's looking pretty good."

"What room did you say you were in, again?" Ray interrupts.

Bob has to think for a second. "514." He waits for the punchline.

...And sure enough, there it is. "Oh," says Ray, "Okay. Well, then - do you think you could come let me in?"

The hallway right outside, when Bob manages the coordination to open the door, is empty. He blinks twice, and it still is. Maybe Ray didn't say "let me in" - maybe he heard wrong. "Ray?" he says into the phone, but Ray's already hung up.

And, oh, that sound was his feet, because he comes around the corner then, his hair puffing out from under a stocking cap, his cheeks pink with cold.

He sees Bob and smiles, and rips the top of his coat open with one hand as he walks. By the time he gets to the door and closes it behind him - Bob is just standing there, watching him - he's managed to halfway shrug out of it.

He drops it on the floor somewhere, Bob thinks, and then he touches Bob's face with his cold, cold hands.

"Ow, fucker," says Bob, but without real annoyance.

Ray kisses him and says, regretfully, "Three hours late."

"I'm going to charge you for those three hours," says Bob.

"In what?" says Ray bemusedly, kissing the corner of his mouth, next to the lip ring.

"Overtime," Bob smirks, and Ray yelps indignantly:

"I wasn't that late!"

"Sorry," says Bob. "For every hour you were missing you owe me two and a half."

Ray relaxes a little when he realizes Bob isn't talking about money, but he still looks suspicious. "Who says your overtime rate is two and a half?"

"I do," says Bob patiently.

"Huh," says Ray, "okay, so you want me to stay for seven and a half extra hours?"

"We can negotiate the details when I'm sober," says Bob.

Ray looks thoughtful. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that before."

Bob ignores him and slides his hands under Ray's sweater. The edge of his ribs is still hard through soft skin, and his belly is still warm and smooth and maybe a little bigger than usual, so soon after Christmas.

Bob leans forward and nuzzles his neck, rubbing little circles with his thumbs, and Ray says, amused, "Missed me, huh?"

Bob's not even going to lie. Especially not drunk. "Yes," he says simply, and bites at the curve of tendon between Ray's neck and shoulder.

Ray laughs and slides his hand around the back of Bob's neck and shakes him gently. His fingers are still a little cold. He pulls Bob back a little and says doubtfully, "How wasted are you?"

Bob gives that some thought as Ray backs him into the bed. "Hopefully not too wasted," he says.

"You're never too wasted for a handjob," says Ray, and that's especially true if you're talking about Ray's hands, which are big and long-fingered. They're also deft and callused in all the right places and very, very well-acquainted with Bob's dick in a way that doesn't ever get old.

Bob sighs and murmurs something, rolling his head on the pillow, while Ray's hand, thoroughly warm now, wraps around his cock and works its magic, careful and firm and just a little rough, a little slow.

"Umm," says Bob. Ray strokes his hip and licks the corner of his mouth, catching his lip ring with the tip of his tongue. Bob tries to catch his eye, but Ray's tipping his face down, focusing on his hand on Bob's cock and, possibly, on his own cock. Bob doesn't remember getting him out of his jeans. He hopes they've done that, because he might not remember how anymore, the way Ray's fingers feel, and he doesn't want to get up.

Ray has thought of all that, though, and he doesn't have to get up at all. Bob comes, and then it seems like a moment later he has a lapful of Ray, warm from all the layers he's just peeled off, climbing under the covers and settling carefully onto Bob and rubbing his cock on Bob's belly. It's a little uncomfortable, but it's warm, and Bob is used to nothing if not to being a little crushed by Ray, who sleeps like an octopus, heavy and clingy and spread out over as much of the bed as he can reach.

"Thanks," Bob murmurs later.

"For what?" says Ray sleepily, next to his ear.

"For coming."

"Oh." Ray just yawns and nestles closer. Bob turns off the light.

He wakes up slowly the next day, huddled with Ray under the stiff, slightly scratchy hotel sheets on the other side of the bed, with his head tucked down into Ray's neck against the gusts of moving air from the heater.

"It might be time to get a new apartment," Ray tells him, stretching his long arms up over their heads and knocking into the wall.

"Why?"

"There was a flood," says Ray.

And Bob forgets about this entire conversation until the next time he's home, after Easter, when he finds the water stains all around the walls in the kitchen.

"What the fuck is that?" he says. "The wall looks like a napkin that someone spilled coffee on." There's sort of a spot that looks like a hole was patched, too.

"That's from the flood," says Ray. "I told you about that."

Bob just stares at him a minute.

"What?" says Ray. "Oh, no, honestly, it wasn't me! And for once it wasn't Mikeyway, either, this time it was apparently just the pipes. Well, technically it was the pipes, really it was the landlord's fault. I mean, I guess this place is kind of a shithole."

"Technically," Bob agrees, kicking the baseboard. The walls are kind of like cardboard, too.

Ray looks up quickly at him, his eyes going round, then relaxes when he sees the hint of smile on Bob's face. "When I was shopping for apartments the last time around I was worried more about it being - "

"Cheap?" says Bob.

"Well, yeah," Ray agrees cheerfully. He doesn't seem to have noticed the hint of sarcasm in Bob's voice.

The apartment is a little shithole, but on the other hand, it's the little shithole that he's used to living in with Ray. It's the most inviting and nicest place he knows because it's so full of video games and guitar-playing and Bob's drum kit and their comic books and their TV covered in action figures. After a while, you stop noticing the shittiness underneath.

That night Bob's stretched out on the couch with his feet between Ray's guitar and his belly, and Ray's strumming the guitar and picking out a series of snatches of melody, the way he likes to do when he's thinking.

"What do you think?" says Ray seriously.

"If you mean about the apartment, then fuck, yes, I think we should move," says Bob. "Someplace with room for the DVDs. And if you mean what you were playing, I think it should be twice as fast, but I like it."

"I think you're overestimating my abilities," says Ray, and runs quickly through the fingery bridge he was just working on with a few effortless deft twists of his wrists. It's almost twice as fast already.

"I'm totally not," says Bob, closing his eyes contentedly and nudging Ray's thigh with his toes. He feels Ray's hand close around his foot and move it firmly so his toes are against the couch cushion instead. "I've heard you do it."

Ray frowns to himself and hums the melody, tapping the heel of his hand on the guitar, and tries again, and has it up to twice the speed in a few minutes. "I think you're right," he says, switching from 4/4 to 2/2. "Yeah, I like it."

When he turns his head to look at Bob, he's grinning that excited, carefree smile he gets sometimes when he's writing music, like a kid pressing his nose to the glass to watch the first snow of the year come down.

"Maybe someplace that's less of a shithole," says Bob.

"Sure," says Ray, and leans over Bob, turning sideways on the couch, getting up on his knees, and kisses him without even putting the guitar down. It's not the only time they've kissed with a guitar between them. "Perfect." He's really happy about this and in the mood to give Bob a reward, and he's still hovering there with the guitar resting on Bob's belly. "Do you want to fix the intro while you're at it?"

"Maybe later," says Bob.

Ray grins. "Oh, like when we run out of frozen lasagna?"

"Yeah," says Bob, "maybe something like that."

They have run out of frozen lasagna exactly once in the time they have been living together, and they decided to savor the relative emptiness of the freezer for a while before mentioning it to any of the numerous moms who are trying to fill the kitchens of Belleville with food for later.

Unfortunately, Ray's mom had happened to be in town during that time and discovered the lack, and they still haven't used up the resulting supply of pesto, salsa, homemade ice cream, and frozen enchiladas. The really unfortunate part is that Ray's mom's salsa burns Bob's tongue. He always gets it out and inhales a bowlful when he has a cold to clear his sinuses, but he's made Ray promise not to mention it to her and he always ends up killing the entire top layer of taste buds on his tongue when they visit Ray's parents.

"Oh well," says Ray quickly, and crawls back off of Bob again. He strums a few chords idly without looking at what he's doing - Bob's seen him play whole songs without realizing it before - and then adds, "Maybe with an extra bedroom, too." Then his head jerks up and he adds quickly, "For the music stuff!"

Bob has a hard time not rolling his eyes, and he doesn't bother suppressing his laughter. "You just want somewhere to hide when you're sulking with your guitar."

Ray says wryly, "At least you know who to be jealous of."

"The new guitar," says Bob, sliding his feet back into Ray's lap and kicking him gently. "I know you, Toro. Now go back to your guitar and let me sleep."

The new place they find is a little farther from everything, but in a way that's kind of good, actually. It's close to a big supermarket and one of those intersections with five roads that they always take people to for their driver's license tests, and there are big parking lots in between the apartment buildings, and evenly spaced spindly, sick-looking baby trees, trimmed into identical picture-perfect bush shapes.

There's woods behind the apartments, at least for a little ways, because they're near the edge of town, and the apartment's on the ground floor in one of the older buildings with only four apartments in it. There's a sidewalk that goes all the way down to the parking lot right next to the door.

A pink tricycle is lying on its side two identical sidewalks down when they arrive the second time to sign the papers, its wheels spinning gently in the wind, and a plastic bucket of sand toys is overturned on the lawn nearby. "So do you think this place is like, for... young families that are too lazy to mow their own lawns?" Bob whispers, when they're waiting around for the agent to come back, watching out the big front windows from behind the bar in the kitchen.

"More kids means more noise means you can play your drums," says Ray cheerfully. "Isn't this carpet great? It's seriously the color of astro-turf."

"Astro-turf isn't this blue," Bob tells him.

There was a time when all the stuff of Bob's in Ray's apartment fit in his car, but that time is long past. Comic books, CDs, his favorite mug, boxes of band merch, one and a half more drum kits, even a stuffed bear he hasn't slept with since he was ten and a worn-out Ninja Turtles blanket have made the trip from Chicago over the last two and a half years. All of their stuff isn't even in Ray's apartment, which is kind of a small shithole. Boxes live in Frank Iero's garage.

"The last time I decided to move," Bob muses that night while he's breaking down his drums, "it only took me a few hours to put everything I wanted in my car."

"What? When was that?" Ray calls from the bedroom. He emerges a second later with dust on his nose, in his oldest t-shirt, a ripped gray Rutgers sport shirt with coffee stains. (He's already filled a garbage bag with trash and another one with clothes.)

Bob looks up and blinks at him. "When was the last time I moved?" he says slowly. A slip like that might actually be worse than not remembering the anniversary they don't have, not that Bob would care about that.

"Yeah, do you mean that - oh, do you mean when you came here?" says Ray.

"It wasn't exactly moving by some people's standards, maybe," says Bob.

"Especially since you just asked for a place to crash and lived out of like, a duffel bag and two backpacks for months," Ray points out.

"Well, I wasn't living in Chicago," says Bob. "What should I call it?"

Ray puts his hands on his hips and looks annoyed. "I don't know, but I don't think that really counts as moving in. I would say you didn't move in until June. I had no idea that sleeping on my couch was your idea of asking me out."

Bob ducks down under the cymbal to hide his smile and says, "It wasn't. Not... exactly."

"Exactly," Ray scoffs. Then he comes over and flicks a piece of hair out of Bob's eyes. "Do you think we should ask someone with a truck we could borrow?"

"Well, we could do that," Bob agrees. "Or we could just ask someone who will stand around all day without actually helping and someone whose car never works."

"Mikey and Frank," Ray says thoughtfully. "Those fuckers owe us, bigtime."

In the end they do both. Donny lends them his truck, but doesn't come along himself, and Mikey shows up early with Starbucks and sits around their kitchen table, hogging the space Ray was planning to use to wrap the rest of the glasses in the morning's newspaper and stick them in a box.

Bob carries a couple of boxes of stuff to the car for each thing Ray carries out, because he's also moving furniture closer to the door and stacking couch cushions out of the way. Basically their entire apartment moves around Mikey, who sits at the table and then lurks at the sink like the serene, silent eye of a hurricane, and finally carries out Bob's drumsticks and the two issues of Drummer from the living room shelves.

They fill Ray's car with assorted junk and Donny's truck with boxes of comics, a stack of couch cushions, all the chairs Mikey wasn't sitting in, and two suitcases and all the bags they could find full of clothes, books, towels, and Ray's ridiculously large collection of weird, ugly, and ratty old blankets.

"Mikey, can you come help me with this?" Bob hears Ray call as he comes back through the front door.

Mikey's standing by the door furiously texting, and he edges out of Bob's way and behind a floor lamp without glancing at Bob or anything. Bob sticks his head in the bedroom and discovers Ray's ass kind of directly in his face.

Nice.

The rest of Ray is there too, stretched between a step ladder and the light fixture, his hands over his head and his head tilted back and his shirt riding up to show the sweaty dip of the small of his back.

Bob skirts two garbage bags full of clothes and garbage, respectively, and cranes his neck around to catch Ray's eye past the glass bowl of the light. "Yeah?"

"Could you hold this somehow before I drop it and we all die of electrocution?"

"I don't think Mikey would really be the person to ask for help with that," Bob says. He climbs up on the edge of the bed and leans over to steady the light with one hand while Ray finishes unscrewing it.

Then he takes the light bulb and the pieces of the light away from Ray, one at a time, and steadies himself with a hand on Ray's hip and the waistband of his second-oldest jeans, which are wearing out rapidly at the knee and inner thigh.

"How full is the truck?" Ray asks, biting his lip in thought and looking down from the ladder at Bob. His hands are braced on the top of it and his arm muscles bulging a little. (The muscles are mainly from moving things and carrying things and playing the guitar, which is why they're concentrated in his arms and shoulders and thighs when his belly is still soft and round.)

"Halfway, if we didn't have to get up into it to get the stuff back out," Bob says, squeezing Ray's hip a little. "We're not gonna make it in one trip."

Mikey appears in the bedroom door with his skinny arms crossed over his chest. "That was Frank," he announces. "Neil threatened to kill himself by overdosing on donuts last night. He was up until four talking him down. But he says he'll come over as soon as he showers."

"We're about to head over to the new place," says Ray.

Mikey eyes them with one Lurch The Butler eyebrow twitching and Bob takes his hand off Ray's hip. The skinny little fucker, like he's never behaved inappropriately or ruined Ray's bathroom floor. "Fifteen minutes," says Bob.

"Oh," Mikey mumbles.

"He can probably just chill here and wait for us or call when he's - " says Ray, but Mikey's already melted back around the door frame, hunching his shoulders over his phone and texting up a storm.

Bob shrugs and moves toward the door, pausing to squeeze the back of Ray's thigh.

Ray shrugs too.

Mikey finishes with his phone just in time to wander down to the truck and stand next to the door looking long-suffering and kind of bored with both his arms wrapped around a mostly-empty cardboard box with potholders, half a roll of paper towels, and all the action figures from the top of the TV carefully laid out in rows. Grima's stabbing-action arm sticks up over Aquaman's shoulder and Neo scowls over keychain Yoda's head.

The TV and DVD player and stereo go in last, wrapped in towels, and Ray says, wiping sweat off his forehead with a bandanna, "Where's Mikey?"

They almost go looking for him, but it turns out he's already in the passenger seat of Ray's car.

Bob laughs at the look on Ray's face and leaves him climbing into the car.

The new apartment starts out looking big and empty and ends up looking about a tenth the size by the time they've piled the contents of the truck in the center of the main room and Mikey's piled half the contents of the car in the kitchen.

"I think Frank's on his way," says Mikey, shoving his glasses up his nose and unwrapping, like, the second glass in the first KITCHEN box. "I can stay here and like, start to unpack and wait for him for now."

"Yeah, okay," says Bob.

"Just be careful with the kitchen stuff," Ray says, kind of bossily, but without realizing he is being bossy. "Don't touch the toaster. I'm not talking about plugged in, just don't touch it at all. After you take those dishes out you can, like, get the stuff in the living room, okay? And if you find a box marked bedroom, just put it in one of the bedrooms. Oh, same with the music stuff... except for the magazines, and oh, the comic books, those go in here still. Well, the living room, not here. I think, anyway. Oh, and the garbage bags, those go in the bedrooms."

Mikey unwraps the third glass and carefully sets the balled-up newspaper down on the counter. "Okay," he says vaguely. "Don't worry about it, I'll try not to break anything."

Bob ruffles his hair. "You always try."

Mikey shrugs one bony shoulder irritably and rolls his eyes. "I'll try really hard."

Bob and Ray have been breaking down shows, packing and unpacking cars and trucks, shopping and getting takeout together for so long that the packing seems to go faster without Mikey around. They could do it without talking at all, but they talk anyway, like they do when they're alone.

"I hate this fucking table," Bob muses, trying to unscrew the legs from the coffee table that won't fit through the door with them on.

"Yeah, but I'm afraid even if we want to throw it out, we still have to get it outside first," says Ray, fanning his face with the sweat-soaked bandanna. He vanishes into the kitchen and Bob gives up and goes looking for a wrench or a pliers or something to use on the stripped screw on the bottom of it.

"I'm going to do a show and get paid in Ikea," says Bob.

"No you're not," says Ray serenely, and leans over a stack of comic boxes so fast he loses his balance and only catches himself on Bob's shoulders, grinning and breathless.

Bob kisses him and tugs on a frizzy curl of hair that's falling down in front of his eyes.

"Okay, maybe," Ray says, licking his lips, and steps over Bob's knees to go make sure the bedroom is empty. Bob goes back to the coffee table and it takes him a while to remember what Ray was saying okay to.

They actually manage to get the whole place empty by packing Bob's car practically to the roof with odds and ends, everything except a bucket full of cleaning shit and a mop that they leave for later. They also completely obliterate a bag of Oreos, which Ray never gets tired of pointing out would have been shared with Frank and Mikey if they'd actually been there helping. Bob isn't sure if he's smug or trying to assuage his guilt.

"Our come is totally going to taste like chocolate now," Bob says, to distract him.

"Yeah, if we're not too fucking tired to taste it," says Ray distractedly, stuffing the empty Oreo bag in the top of the dumpster in the corner of the parking lot. "If a guy comes without getting a blowjob, does it still taste like chocolate?"

"Why wouldn't it?" says Bob, and keeps a blank straight face all the way back to the truck while Ray explains, twice, about trees falling in the forest.

"- Gerard once talked about that for like, an hour, when we were in high school," he says. "Whether sound has any meaning when you're not there and, like, electromagnetic waves, and the Big Bang."

"The Big Bang?" says Bob.

"The start of the universe was before the first life, unless there were aliens in another universe watching. Then he started talking about squids, I think - Hey," he says suddenly, "you're totally shitting me."

Bob grins and shakes his head, and Ray pushes him up against the side of Donny's ugly beige truck and leans on him, chest to chest and cock to cock and knee to knee, pressing into his body all the way down and breathing on his ear.

"You're an asshole," says Ray, giggly, and licks under Bob's ear.

"I'm an asshole," Bob agrees, and Ray hums and rubs his thigh on Bob's crotch until he starts to get a little uncomfortable. "Um?"

Ray laughs and lets go of him so suddenly he almost falls over. "You go first. That way Frank can jump on you and I'll get out of range."

Bob drives his car over to the new place and loses Ray somewhere downtown. He hopes he's picking up some kind of lunch, because it's a little late in the day to have only eaten Corn Flakes and Oreos and Starbucks all day. Frank's car is in the parking lot, which means this is a good day. Huh. And then Bob opens the door and... stops.

It looks like a hurricane has hit. Most of the floor is actually covered with the newspaper that was in the kitchen boxes and the entire kitchen counter is covered with DVDs, the sink is full of a backpack, and the ripped carcass of a cardboard box is lying dramatically at a long diagonal a little inside the door. There are also styrofoam packing peanuts in the corner that look like the result of an explosion in a down pillow factory.

The most out of place thing in the entire room, in fact, is the couch, which is sitting in the middle of the living room, back against the wall pretty much exactly where Ray wanted to put it, with all its cushions on and a stack of blankets at one end, facing the TV on its little table right next to the fake fireplace.

Mikey is moving comics, apparently one issue at a time, from their box to the small white bookshelves. "Hi," he says, without turning around. "There was a spider."

"You freaky little motherfuckers'd better get rid of most of this shit before Ray gets back here and decapitates you."

"You'll be an accessory," says Mikey, but he puts aside the comics and goes to start picking up the styrofoam peanuts.

"Damn right," says Bob.

Frank rockets out of the smaller bedroom and does a hilarious kind of tip-toe dance across the living room floor, ending up between Bob and the door, clinging to his back. "Why did you get an apartment with spiders?" he demands accusingly, next to Bob's ear.

"Maybe so you wouldn't be over here mooching all the time?" says Bob.

"I haven't been at your place mooching all the time for at least six months," Frank says indignantly. "And besides, haven't you fuckers ever heard of the punishment fitting the crime? Spiders, that's sick!"

"How did the punishment fit the crime for the living room?" Bob asks rhetorically. "It was the spider's fault."

"Don't fucking look at me, okay." Frank crosses his ankles firmly around Bob's waist. "You leave me alone with spiders and a lameass Mikeyway to kill them, there's going to be some casualties."

"There's going to be some more casualties if you don't get off me and make it so we can see the floor," says Bob. "There's a truck and a car full of shit, and it all has to fit in this room."

"There are spiders in the living room," says Frank tightly. "There might be a nest. I'm just going to stay in the music room."

Bob finally manages to dump him off on the floor. He considers breaking out the booze as a precaution, but right now he'd be more tempted to break it on Frank's head. "Is there a nest, Mikey?"

Mikey shrugs. "No, it was just one."

"One giant spider in the middle of the wall!" shrieks Frank. "What about its spawn? He didn't clear the room! Its spawn could still be lurking."

"I looked around," Mikey sighs. "I didn't see any more. Besides, this room was empty before, and there weren't any spiders there. It probably came out of the fireplace."

Frank is backed up in the far end of the kitchen before Bob has time to grab him by the scruff of the neck, sticking his head out of the laundry closet to shout that he's not emerging until the fireplace has been fumigated or bricked over.

"That's gonna take a while," says Bob. "If you want to be our laundry maid, just be aware that you're not getting paid."

"I don't care!" says Frank.

"I am going to look at the fireplace and close the flue, okay, and Mikey is going to look in all the corners, and then if you don't come out of there, I swear to God I am going to put you inside the washing machine," says Bob.

"Do you think I'd fit?" says Frank.

It's Mikey who answers. "No." He sounds glum. "I've tried it."

So Bob's closed the fireplace and Mikey has examined the corners of the room and they've wiped a spider web away with paper towels and thrown it in the trash and tied the bag shut, and Frank emerges from the laundry closet about the same time that Ray comes in.

Bob has just about managed to shove all the balled-up newspaper on the floor into the box of comics and so the dismembered cardboard and the boxes pretty much covering the entire floor - and the kitchen - are the only problems left. Bob watches him anxiously. If he faints, he will drop the pizza boxes.

"Um, guys," says Ray, "what the fuck happened in here?"

"Spider," says Bob. "A spider that Mikey tried to kill."

"It's safe to come out now, right?" says Frank. He's hovering on one foot behind the edge of the kitchen bar, like if he puts it down on the astro-turf carpet he might be immediately attacked by the giant spider from Harry Potter. "Ooh, I smell pizza."

Ray's voice is clipped and like, an octave higher than usual. "A spider."

"It was fucking huge!" says Frank. "It had like eighty eyes, and they were all glowing. I swear it was looking at me. And its creepy legs were all hairy and ugggh." He shudders and covers his head with his arms.

"A hairy-legged spider destroyed the living room?" says Ray, still in that squeaky voice.

"I'm thinking I'm going to go try and catch it later," Bob interrupts casually. "You know, if it moves boxes around, maybe it can be trained to unpack boxes too."

Ray looks from Bob to Frank to Mikey a few times. Then he sighs, sadly, and puts the pizza down on top of the kitchen table just so he can put his hands on his hips. "All right," he says. His afro droops with, like, pure fucking heartbreak.

"Awesome," says Frank, and darts straight for the pizza.

Bob just crosses his arms and watches while Frank gets snagged in a headlock in mid-dive and hefted over Ray's shoulder and then dangled upside down, gasping and swearing and laughing, while Ray shakes him.

"What is the matter with you, you fucking freak?" says Ray. "You're not leaving until the truck is unpacked."

"All right, all right! I won't!" says Frank, his face rapidly turning red. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, now can I please have some pizza? Ray! Come on, Ray, I love you like my own brother." He's flailing around with his arms and having way too much fun to use them and seriously try to get away.

"I should drop you on your head," Ray mutters, but he sets Frank down carefully.

"Can I still have pizza?" Frank grins, opening the box and grabbing a slice.

"I can see you've been working really hard," Ray sighs. "Where are the paper towels?"

Mikey slouches over and hands him the roll they used to clean spiderwebs out of the corner. Then he picks up a slice of pizza and starts eating it with tiny, bird-sized little bites.

After the pizza Frank settles down and works pretty hard. He's a great guy like that, and he'll totally give you the last beer in his fridge and the last twenty in his wallet if you need them. Fairly useless most of the time because he's always likely to jump on your back or knock over some furniture and break shit, but on the other hand, Bob's seen him build a successful and tiny label of his own mostly with a lot of determination and a lot of work, and not all that much help, actually, from Ray and Bob.

(Ray has a hard shell sometimes, but the core of a sponge. Bob often thinks it's a good thing that he has such a determined sense of fairness - and capitalism - or he'd be a complete pushover for any dickwad who wanted to take advantage. He drops everything to help Frank out with gigs and then bends over backwards doing more work to make sure Frank doesn't find out he went out of his way than it took him to reschedule his commitments or shift his guitar lessons off to other people in the first place. He's pretty determined to make Bob get paid in actual money from Frank whenever he can, because he insists money shouldn't come between friends. He doesn't count what he spent on Frank when Frank was flat broke, or when he was still a kid. Bob asked him about it once, and Ray said defensively, "He couldn't help it!", like Bob was trying to attack him or something.)

They spend most of the night in the living room, unpacking box after box of odds and ends and just carrying them back and forth from room to room, but carrying the heavy shit into the bedroom takes a good hour or so - the dressers, the pieces of the bed, and Ray's big computer desk. Putting the bed and the dressers back together is the last thing they do, sometime around 1 am, when Bob has long since started to feel the twinges in his back and Ray's voice has dropped half an octave the way it does when he's tired. Mikey's long since abandoned ship.

Frank is the only one who still seems to have plenty of energy, which is probably due to all the Coke he drank, and the way he went back at like, eleven and ate an entire second pizza. Also, Frank is kind of like a wind-up toy: he'll keep bouncing around, running and carrying and calling people and breaking down stages or unpacking comic books, until his time is up, even if he has to do it with a deep line of concentration between his eyebrows.

"It's okay," says Bob to him, when they're both out in the living room briefly, Frank carrying out a box of records to set under the stereo and Bob looking for the box with the keyboard and computer speakers in it. "Go home, get some sleep, man. I think you've earned it."

Frank rubs his eyes and smiles tiredly. "Are you sure, man? What about Ray?"

Bob shakes his head. "I'll take the flak if there's anything, but it's no big deal. You worked hard, he's not gonna be mad."

Frank pats Bob absently on the back, stretching one of his arms all the way around Bob's shoulder like a bizarre half of a hug, and presses his face into the front of Bob's shirt for a second. "Thanks, man," he says. "Gimme a call if you guys need anything." When he pulls back, he's yawning.

"Are you okay to drive?" says Bob.

"The caffeine'll last until I get back," says Frank. "Besides, I drive to work asleep every morning. It can't be that much harder, right?"

"Frank go home?" says Ray absently when Bob walks back into the bedroom. He's finished attaching the headboard and wrestled the mattress into place, now, and is staring tiredly at a pile of folded sheets.

"Yeah. It's getting late," says Bob. "Here, I'll do it, you go find the pillows."

"Right," says Ray, rubbing his forehead, "pillows. Do you want a shower? I'm gross. I also don't know where the soap is..." he wanders out of the room.

When he comes back with their pillows clutched to his chest, Bob says, "The bathroom shit's in the bathroom, but it's still in boxes."

"Whatever," says Ray, "Tomorrow we can." He tosses the pillows on the bed and suddenly grabs for Bob, so unexpectedly that Bob makes a surprised "oof" and drops the blanket in his hand. Ray's arms go tight around his back, dragging him close, and Ray sighs and buries his face in Bob's neck.

Bob gets it. He slides his arms carefully around Ray's back too, one low down and one higher up, and moves his hands idly, feeling the thin t-shirt sliding between his hand and the muscles of Ray's back. It's been a long day. "Tired?" he says, halfway whispering.

"It's just such a big deal," Ray says, as quietly as if he wants to keep it a secret from anyone listening out in the hall. Maybe it's more than that - a secret from them. "All this. The apartment. A big deal."

He's leaning on Bob just the tiniest bit, careful not to put too much on him but relaxed enough to let Bob be the one to worry about whether they're going to fall over. Bob considers a bunch of things that he could say, all the way from that it is a big deal (because it's Ray) to that it's not a big deal at all for him, that he'd have bought a house with Ray if he wanted, that he'd have done it years ago.

Finally he just says, "Yeah." He knows what Ray means, anyway. It is exciting. Then he says, "C'mon," and tips Ray gently into the bed.

Ray blinks up at him for a second, then reaches up and pulls Bob down with him by the wrist. "Great idea, genius," he says. "We've still got our clothes on."

"Don't worry about it," says Bob. "I'll handle that." And he does.

They wake up at like ten because there's still tons of shit to do, but it's not too urgent for them to make out in bed for twenty minutes first, still all excited. Ray keeps grinning into Bob's mouth while he humps his leg.

"Did moving make us horny?" says Bob.

"Probably," Ray groans. "You can't really put a bed together without, um, thinking about -" and Bob bites down very lightly on his nipple, and he immediately shuts up and arches up into Bob's mouth.

They've already kicked Ray's boxers out of bed and are in the process of shoving Bob's out of the way, Ray sliding his big hands up and down on Bob's thighs, when their doorbell rings.

They keep going for a second, because they've never actually lived here before and it sounds totally different from Ray's old place, where the doorbell hasn't even worked for a year. Then it rings again, and then the knocking starts and there's a faint, muffled sound of a voice. The knocking's coming in a particular annoying rhythm, too, and Bob's head drops back on the pillow.

"Fuck," says Ray. "That sounds like Gerard." He stands up and shimmies into the worn jeans Bob threw on the floor last night, buttoning the fly without any underwear, and goes out in the hall.

"Fuck," says Bob to the empty room, and gets up.

Gerard's standing in the living room, pushing their used pizza boxes over to make room for a bag full of fresh bagels and - yes - fresh-mixed sun-dried tomato cream cheese - and a little cardboard carrying thing full of coffee. He's also wearing a pair of black jeans with no knees covered in smudges and spatters of white and yellow paint, a short-sleeved dress shirt buttoned up to his chin, and one big fucking pair of sunglasses. There's paint in his hair and blue smears all over the knuckles of the left hand that he's waving around as he explains to Ray what traffic was like on his way over here.

"Crazy, just crazy," he's saying, "you'd think it was rush hour or something - but oh, I stopped at this yard sale on the way where they had one of those big tarps all over the front yard, you know, and I got this old broken lawnmower for a buck. It's partly rusted through, but I think it's mostly iron, you know? And I'm thinking I can get some more pieces of old, like, metal stuff, and build some kind of sculpture out of it. I want to do Godzilla, or else a piano. Oh, hey, Bob! Do you want a bagel? There's um... I think there's sourdough in there. And I got one cinnamon one. And some plain ones. I don't really remember. We just need to - you guys do have a toaster, right? Mikey said you were settling in all right."

Gerard beaming under his giant black-framed sunglasses looks a little like a serial killer. If the paint on his hands were red, the image would be complete. Actually, he's looking a little sunburned right now, which is a change from his usual vampire shtick. He's probably been painting in the sun.

"Hey," says Bob. "Thanks for breakfast."

Ray's head is in the cabinets over the sink. "We do have a toaster, don't we?"

"You told Mikey not to touch it," Bob reminds him, "so it's probably still in the box."

Ray finds the toaster on top of the washing machine, and they have a quick breakfast of bagels and cream cheese and coffee and bacon, which Ray fries up because he really likes it with bagels for some reason. Gerard prowls around the living room and the dining place in front of the kitchen, pulling on his hair and talking about murals, portraits, still lifes, and how cool it would be if they just hung a fucking wheel on the wall.

"That sounds kind of heavy," says Ray timidly.

Gerard just stares at him blankly. "No, no, it's an exterior wall, so there's totally, like, brick on the other side of this. There's gotta be some insulation and some beams."

"We don't have a wheel," says Bob. "But we do have a fuckload of music posters, so..."

"Oh yeah," says Gerard, "that Slayer poster, that's your favorite, huh, Ray?"

"Draw me something cooler and I'll hang it there," says Ray.

"As long as it doesn't have like, vomit or blood in it," says Bob. "Or intestines."

"Or spiders," Ray mutters.

Gerard looks confused.

"We have to look at it when we eat," Bob explains.

Despite taking numerous breaks to stare at the walls, go outside and smoke, make coffee, and spill coffee all over the neon-astro-turf-green carpet, Gerard is actually a pretty big help. He puts up all Ray's posters in a way that looks a lot better than the way it did in the old place, leaves cigarette butts sitting on paper towels on the table, puts all their sheets and towels in the hall closet, and most importantly, sorts and arranges all of Ray's old comic books and squeezes all their DVDs into the shelves.

When Ray and Bob are done unloading their cars and come inside, ready to finally take their showers, they even find the cardboard boxes gone from the bathroom, although Gerard's done about as good at putting away the bathroom stuff as you'd expect from a guy who washes himself every two weeks, need it or not. The toothpaste and the toilet bowl cleaner and the wood soap are lying in the tub; all Ray's hair-styling things are lined up like a regiment of alarmingly neon-colored little rocket ships along the back of the counter. Also, the living room looks about as clean as their living room ever looks, except for Gerard stretched out on the floor under Ray's ugly coffee table, his socked feet wiggling near the fireplace.

"Showering together doesn't really save water," Ray says, kind of sadly, as he's climbing in after Bob.

"I don't care," says Bob, and pins Ray up against the side of the tub enclosure to kiss him.

Ray squeaks, but then he relaxes into Bob's touch and winds his arms around him, slippery with soap, and they have a very, very long shower. Bob finally gets to feel Ray's soft amazing mouth wrapped around his cock - not that he's not very used to it, but he was sort of counting on it this morning, and the week or so since his last blowjob seems like forever.

Ray wouldn't even have to be especially good at sucking Bob off with a mouth like that. Just thinking about Ray's big mouth, his full, pouty lower lip, his wide smile, his top lip curved or pursed or his frown of concentration when he bites his lips, used to be enough to get Bob off, before he got to sample those lips for himself. Ray's mouth is still Bob's favorite fantasy, when he's off on tour by himself - his mouth because it's faster than thinking about his cock and how incredibly wonderfully he uses it and those tight perfect hips to fuck Bob into a blissful, thoughtless headspace of touch-overload, how intimate it is to feel himself stretched around Ray's cock and the sore, empty throb the day after.

Ray is pretty good, though, which might be because of all the cock he sucked before they met or might just be some kind of cosmic completion. The natural skill goes a lot farther with Ray's mouth than it would with a hundred other mouths Bob can think of, anyway. The things he does with his tongue, the flickers under the head, the way he slurps the water running down over Bob's body like he's thirsty and can only drink from Bob's cock, the sleepy flutter of his eyelashes as he slides his mouth up and takes Bob into his throat... it's not just practice, Bob thinks, clenching his hands into fists, there's no way that's just practice. He almost chokes on the water that gets in his mouth when he comes.

"Fuck," Ray says, standing up to kiss him. "Are we too old to do it standing up in the shower?"

"I hope not," says Bob, "but maybe we should save it for another time," and brings Ray off with his hand in a few more minutes.

Gerard is on their couch, reading the latest Batman and drinking coffee and constantly twitching, twirling dirty paint-spattered hair around his fingers, when they get out. Behind him is, like, a big... picture, made out of a cardboard box that he's ripped apart and pressed flat, a cartoon of Ray and Bob with ominous glares that make them look like they're about to take out some guys for the mob and black ribbons across their eyes that probably mean they are superheroes. Cartoon Bob has giant shoulders like a gorilla and a tiny body, and cartoon Ray has bowlegs, a huge jutting chin, and a halo of black afro around his head. They're both wearing weird little capes and ties and, like, striped vests. Cartoon Ray is holding a guitar over his shoulder like a club, and the whole thing is spattered with exaggeratedly large blood drops that Gerard's carefully colored red with... crayon? The whole thing is like three feet long and is leaning precariously against the wall, balanced along the back of the couch.

"Whoa, whoa," says Bob, "cool."

"What is - oh, awesome!" says Ray.

"I know you said no intestines," Gerard says, sounding worried. He's taken his shades off and he looks about ten when he grins hopefully up at them. He looks like a ten-year-old girl.

"Yeah, and I don't think I really expected you to make your masterpiece on a ripped-up cardboard box, either," says Ray.

Gerard says, "You know, the box was like, there."

"Some day you're going to draw the Mona Lisa on a napkin and then your brother's going to set it on fire or something," says Bob.

Gerard shrugs cheerfully. "For all I know it's happened already. I always used to draw stuff when I was wasted, so."

"Well, that's a relief."

Gerard looks confused, like he can't really tell if Bob is being sarcastic or not. He starts smiling again once he decides that he doesn't care. "So listen, you guys, it's been great, but I've gotta - hey, what time is it? Shit, is it already three?"

So they get rid of Gerard in plenty of time to throw away his cigarette butts and for Ray to start cooking before his mom drops in. It seems like some people might find the blood disturbing, so Bob takes the big cartoon Bob and Ray picture into the bedroom.

When Ray's mom gets there at like, dinner time, they're down to just a couple of stacks of empty boxes in the living room and a few boxes of computer stuff and bags of clothes to unpack in the bedroom. Then there's the music room, of course.

Mrs. Ortiz hugs Ray and kisses his forehead and hugs Bob without kissing his forehead, just like usual, and catches them up on all the news in Ray's family. Bob doesn't know who Emilio is, and most of the story seems to be about him, except for the part about Ray's youngest niece, Charity, and how she's learning to talk. Mrs. Ortiz is sure, and Ray agrees as many times as she wants, that Charity is extremely pretty, smart, and well-behaved for a three-year old, and that she talks a lot and knows what she wants are examples of how great she is. Bob doesn't really know anything about when babies are supposed to start talking, although he's heard enough conversations like this over the years that if he'd ever paid attention he probably would by now.

Bob likes kids more when they're in front of him, being funny, than talking about them long-distance, but what can you do? And besides, Ray's mom has brought them two entire shopping bags full of food, including a lasagna she cooked last night, a pasta salad she made the day before yesterday, and some enchiladas she whipped up this morning that are still warm in their insulated bag and their glass dish.

Ray puts the stuff he was cooking in the fridge and they put his mother's enchiladas in the oven instead. It's really not necessary to exaggerate how much they love her cooking, although they totally would anyway - or at least Bob would - because it makes her so obviously happy, but her enchiladas are seriously like a tiny orgasm for your mouth. A tiny orgasm that ends with some fireworks and leaves the top of your tongue scalded, sure, but there's plenty of melted cheese and that makes it all worth it.

"I think I like it here," says Ray's mom, "do you like it here? It's very... big-feeling. Bigger inside the living room than out. Too bad about the carpet."

"It adds character," Bob says.

"It's ugly," says Ray's mom sympathetically. "Maybe Gerard will paint it for you, honey."

"I don't think we're allowed, mom," says Ray. "It's in the lease."

She shrugs, philosophically. "You have a fireplace, at least."

"We're going to get a bearskin to go in front of it," says Ray. "And a log table."

"To help get through the long, cold Jersey winters," says Bob. "A fireplace, a bear, and your cooking."

Ray's mom laughs, delighted, and leans over to kiss Bob's cheek. (She uses some kind of scary permanent lipstick, he's determined, because he used to check after she did this, but it never makes a mark.) "I can't help with the bear, but I can always make some more enchiladas."

"You can always use more enchiladas," says Bob sincerely.

She beams. Then she says the dreaded words - "Now that you've moved out and gotten a nice, big apartment, I hope that means you're going to stop serving everyone dinner on these mismatched plastic plates and things all the time."

"We hadn't really thought about it," says Ray, freezing with his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyes practically bugging out of his head.

"I don't know!" says his mom with dignity. "I was just wondering. But if you aren't ready... "

Bob gets up to get a carton of juice from the refrigerator and pours a glassful, then sets it on the table for the others. Ray is chewing cautiously, like he thinks his enchilada might handcuff him and drag him off to Macy's to look at dishes, too. Bob just sits and watches as he slowly, slowly relaxes, until suddenly his mom delivers the killing blow:

"It's just that you're getting to be almost thirty, now, Raymond."

Ouch. Ray isn't too self-conscious about his age - and he's not actually almost thirty, anyway; he's still twenty-eight - but the way she says that his mom clearly cares about it a lot. Bob keeps drinking his juice.

So now they have to buy some plates even though Mrs. Ortiz didn't actually order them to and Ray didn't say he was going to, because in Ray's family, Mama is always right. Bob would rather not spend the day shopping, but they settle on Target instead of Macy's because at least Target also has a music department.

The really surprising thing about all this moving, and Bob didn't expect to be surprised at all by Ray at this point, is that Ray isn't stingy about it at all. It's not really that Ray is stingy, exactly, so much as that Ray really hates to spend money on things that aren't guitars, or related to guitars, or music, or related to music, or, sometimes, comics. Or DVDs. But it can be hard for him to spend money on clothes, or shoes, or his car, or, like, his hair, or food (unless he's really, really hungry).

Bob didn't know exactly what to expect when they were moving, but it didn't really surprise him that Ray liked this place, even if it cost more than the last one, because it was a lot nicer, and it's not like they can't afford it. He wasn't surprised by Ray's willingness to eat pizza several days in a row, especially when some of it was for Frank and Mikey, because Ray will spend a surprising amount of money stuffing food down those skinny little fuckers' throats. He'll bitch about it all the way, sometimes, but he doesn't really mind.

No, the surprising thing is that things that seemed to be fine in Ray's old shitty little apartment, things he'd never have spent more money on - things like dishtowels, and the orange crate they've been using as a spare bedside table, and the bare light bulb they had in the kitchen, and the ancient, grimy broom that's like 12,000 years old and matted solid with dust - all go at once, like it's spring cleaning time or something. Ray threw away a fuckton of stuff without ever carting it over to the new apartment at all.

"Do we really need dishwasher detergent?" says Ray, "or shouldn't we just use up that bottle of Dawn first doing the dishes by hand? I don't want it to go to waste," (but he buys detergent when Bob says yes, they need it).

"Wait, this one's cheaper - we don't need a dustpan," says Ray.

"I don't know, nevermind, I don't even need to wear socks in the summertime," says Ray.

But even though Bob sees him look at the price tags on the shelves when they're picking up dishes, he doesn't say anything about it, just firmly picks up six white plates and holds them up for Bob's inspection.

"Sure, if you're sure you don't want this Winnie-the-Pooh plate," Bob agrees.

Ray puts the plates down - "Six, you think? How about coffee cups?" And he picks up, like, four blue coffee cups, too. With saucers.

"Your mom might have a heart attack from joy," says Bob, stacking the cups up in the cart.

"Not unless I buy cloth napkins," says Ray, and makes a face. "Oh - dishtowels."

Dishtowels? Ray grabs a handful of the the nearest ones that don't have geese on them, which might turn out to be one or two, and then a skillet with a lid, even a lamp and a small table. Then he says grimly, "We need some washcloths. Let's get this all over with at once and then get some video games." They leave with what seems like half the bathroom aisle and then pick up an expansion pack for the Sims, a new pair of headphones for Ray's iPod, and a bunch of DVDs from the clearance bin. This even though Ray vetoed maple syrup in favor of maple-flavored syrup because it's a waste to put the good stuff on Eggo waffles anyway.

"I didn't feel almost thirty until now," says Ray with a kind of pathetic grimace while he's tearing the tags off the new towels and stacking them in the linen closet in the little hall.

"You're right," says Bob. "It's the terry cloth. I'm starting to feel almost twenty-eight."

"At least you've still got your looks," says Ray. "You should weigh three hundred pounds with all the enchiladas we eat."

Bob shrugs. He doesn't like to talk about being relatively skinny - which he is, now, because he was always the fat kid, and he's kept off pretty much all the weight that he first started losing a year ago - because there's just no way that conversation can go that won't make him uncomfortable. The only good thing that sometimes comes out of it is sex, but he's pretty sure Ray won't go for that on a night when they're going to the Loop Lounge, because he has to have time to make dinner first.

Ray can tell what he's thinking, because he makes a face and elbows Bob in the side. "Bryar, if we didn't have a mortgage now I'd dump your ass for a guy with some meat on his bones."

"We don't have a mortgage," says Bob.

"I guess you'd better eat up, then," says Ray, and presses up against his back, running his hands inside Bob's shirt to squeeze the flab on his belly.

It's kind of hard to remember what he was originally planning to say with Ray rubbing up against his ass and breathing on his neck, then leaning forward and nuzzling his ear peacefully. Bob can feel curls tickling the side of his face; he can't even remember if he had a witty comeback or not, he realizes. "Um," he says, "what?"

"Dinner," Ray sighs, and pulls away. It's while he's cooking a quick primavera sauce, banging cabinets and singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in his best falsetto, that he says without even looking at Bob, "This is really - this is just, you know, thanks."

"Thanks?" says Bob.

"I've never moved in with anyone before," explains Ray. Which explains what he's thanking Bob for not at all, but Bob stops moving anyway and turns to stare at him.

"We have been living together for two and a half years," Bob tells him slowly.

"That was you moving in with me," says Ray. "I dunno, I'm not talking about living together, I'm talking about... moving. You know, moving in. When I moved from my first apartment into the last one, I still had unpacked boxes lying around for a year afterwards. And I didn't have anybody staying around to help me unpack." (When your choice of free labor at short notice consists of high school kids, scene guys who may or may not have sucked you off at a recent party, or Gerard Way, that's understandable, thinks Bob.)

"Oh. Well, no problem," says Bob. "All part of the service."

Ray giggles and turns back to the stove, and bends his big head of curls down over the pot. His shoulders are maybe a little tense with embarrassment, no big surprise when you've just said something as nauseatingly cute as that. Bob's even embarrassed a little, and he really never gets enough of Ray Toro being nauseating about anything at all, like, even guitars (and for frequency it would be that if you're going to get sick at all), let alone about Bob.

"So are you getting paid in Girl Scout cookies tonight?" says Ray.

"Nope. Cash or check," says Bob. "Because I have a family now."

Ray snorts, but says, "Well, that's probably a good idea, until we get settled in, anyway. But I wonder if you can get some cookies anyway."

"You could get some. Just find a Girl Scout somewhere in the bar..."

Ray rolls his eyes. "Come on, you know they're not selling them anymore. You can only get them from people who stockpile them."

Ray's quest for Girl Scout cookies - they just ran out of Thin Mints two weeks ago, and he's been trying to hold out - makes the trip to the Loop Lounge a little more exciting. Bob's full of pasta and beer and he mostly hangs around the sound equipment while Ray chills with the other guys and their instruments and haunts the bar, looking for guys who have kids.

"Hey," he says, coming over and leaning hip-first into the wall. Bob wonders if his hips will still do that when he's thirty or forty. He's not looking forward to the time when they stop. Ray hands Bob a fresh beer, still sweating, still in the bottle, and Bob takes a long pull. "How's it going?"

A guy named Jack who does front-end sound sometimes is lurking over Bob's shoulder. He nods at Ray with his chin and says, "Toro." He doesn't talk very much, but he always says something to Ray.

"Oh, Jack, hey, I didn't see you back there," says Ray. "How are you? How's the kids?"

Jack nods, twice. His mouth is closed tightly and he looks a little suspicious, like he hasn't decided if telling Ray how his kids are is worth the risk of opening his mouth. Finally he takes the plunge. "Fine. They're fine." There's a pregnant pause while they all try to decide if Jack is done talking, but an unexpected encore surprises them then: "Growing up."

"Yeah," says Ray, crossing his arms and tilting his head. His hair's grown out almost to his shoulders and the curls are sort of halfway lying down tonight, from all the mousse he put in them fresh from the shower. "Hey, your little girl a Girl Scout?"

Jack says "No" so quietly that Bob barely hears him, and he's standing halfway between them.

"What's that?" says Ray. "Do you know where I can get some Girl Scout cookies?"

He was about to repeat himself, but this further question causes Jack to seize up in confusion. His face goes thoughtful. Bob takes another drink of beer and watches it play out.

"No," Jack finally says. "Not a Girl Scout. Never was."

Ray's face falls a little. "Oh - well, thanks." He reaches out and pats Bob on the back. "Keep up the good work, buddy."

Bob raises an eyebrow behind his bangs. "Thanks for the drink."

Ray turns back to grin over his shoulder, big white teeth flashing in the darkness, big round eyes crinkling happily, like Bob thanking him for a beer was an unexpected treat that's really touched him. "You're welcome," he calls, and shoves elbow-first through the crowd back up to the bar in pursuit of Joey Montoya.

Bob's phone rings after a little while, and he leaves Jack surveying the room and ducks off into the back to answer it. He's expecting Donny wanting his truck back, or one of the thirty people with bars, bands, and clubs who keep his phone ringing regularly. But instead it's a guy who says his name is Chris. "Listen, you don't know me," he says, "but Paula Warner gave me your number, and I understand you do work in sound. I wondered if you'd be interested in a slightly more regular position."

Chris is some rich guy who has something to do with a stadium or something like that in Newark - Bob is listening and nodding along, but he's not really sure about the whole hockey thing, and he's never even been in Newark before sundown, if you don't count driving away at 10 am the morning after with a headache or unloading straight from the back of trucks into the venue (Bob doesn't).

Bob doesn't have anything against hockey, per se, but there's no question that he likes it even less than he likes, like, almost any kind of music he can think of. It might be tied with country music in his mind. (Which Bob would never do for love or money, but was once talked into for some kind of church fund raiser by his mom back home. That wasn't for love, though, it was for guilt, pretty much.) He tells the guy he'll call him and walks away without any intention of agreeing. They're not broke.

But when he's returning Donny's truck, Donny says, "I hear you might be looking for work in the area." Bob looks at him, surprised, and Donny says, "Was that wrong?"

It was totally wrong; Bob's been turning down well-intentioned offers from bars and the occasional record store for pretty much the whole time he was here, because even though he's got a few free months to kill a year, he can afford to spend his time doing gigs on his breaks. He probably wouldn't be able to say no in good conscience if someone tried to hire him, like, at Marvel or DC, but barring that, Bob has remarkable willpower. (Besides, even though he's thought about it a lot of times, he can't see any way they'd need a sound guy for Batman or Spider-Man.)(He'd totally do it for Spider-Man if they did, though, even if he is a whiny bitch. Fuck Iero anyway.)

"Dave said he'd been working on you and he thought he was making progress," says Donny.

That's right: Ray's buddy Dave works for this cheesy coffee shop/book store/bar/art gallery place over in East Orange and he's constantly trying to hire Bob. Bob's not sure if he's supposed to be hired for sound (sound for... the coffee?) or for drumming, since he has also asked Bob what he knows about bongos, as well as how he feels about street teams (they're great for other people), Columbian coffee (good stuff), Starbucks (great stuff, which produced a disappointed face), and pinochle. Although that last one might not have been related. Possibly he's trying to hire Bob to replace him as the place's biggest fan. If he wants someone to put up fliers, Bob has told him, he's looking at the wrong guy. (Mikey Way would probably be the guy to ask, but he wouldn't thank Bob for the referral. Bob's saving it up for an emergency.)

"Oh, that," says Bob. "I don't know why he thought he was making progress."

"In his dreams, huh? I told him Bob Bryar was more stubborn than he's giving you credit for."

Bob just smiles. He doesn't have to take credit for being stubborn. They both know it's true.

"So, I heard wrong?" says Donny. He's rooting around in the glove compartment and emerges with Joy Division, which has to be Mikey's. Bob doesn't even remember him riding in the truck. He sticks it in his pocket.

"Nah, not exactly," says Bob. "Hey, Dave has a daughter, right?"

"Yeah," says Donny. "Yeah, his ex has custody, but he has a little girl. She must be about, oh, nine?"

"Do you think she's a Girl Scout?" Bob asks.

"She sure is," says Donny. "We bought some cookies from her last year."

"Cool," says Bob. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet," Donny cautions. "I know a lady who might be looking for some help just from time to time. I gave her your number, and she needs all the help she can get. She's just taken over as the music director for a private school and the poor kid's straight out of college and they've given her a big Christmas play."

Bob starts laughing. "You're right. I take it back."

"I know you're a softie on the inside, Bryar. Think about this poor kid trying to wire speakers all by herself."

"I'm not an electrician," says Bob dryly.

"But neither is she!" Donny protests.

"Fuck you, man." Bob's laughing, though, and Donny pats him on the shoulder when he leaves.

Bob walks the few blocks in the sweltering sun to the record store near Donny's house. It's a crappy one, but it's air-conditioned, and it's always worth looking in the sale bin. He calls Dave on the way.

"Hello?" says Dave.

"Hi, Dave. It's Bob."

"Bob! What can I do for you?"

"Tell me more about your little coffee shop," says Bob.

"Really?" there's some noise in the background, then a door slamming. "That's great, man. Aw, I knew you'd - "

"Five minutes," Bob interrupts.

"Great. Well, we're actually a really employee-directed place. The founders of the shop, Bill and Shirley, they decided to build it in their old house, because they had a really good location in a zoned commercial district. They've turned the whole downstairs into a bar and coffee shop and an art gallery, with a lot of stuff from local artists in the front, and they combine jazz nights and different kinds of gigs - a little goth, for some reason, a little hardcore - with the new art openings. The acoustics are pretty bad, but the coffee is excellent. And there's also a bookstore - "

"About the sound," says Bob. "Unless you're trying to recruit me to work in a bookstore."

Dave laughs. "You're such a hardass, man."

"That's right," Bob agrees. "Bad acoustics?"

"I told them you're a wizard. Bill's heard a couple of shows you did - they were at a show when you were touring with the Used, man, and he was really impressed. I think I get a raise if I talk you into coming in."

"Hmmm."

"So how about it?" says Dave. "You'll get free coffee out of it." He keeps going, and Bob doesn't bother interrupting to say he was sold after 'free coffee'. Nothing to lose just going to look at the place, and who's going to say no to free coffee?

"How much time are we talking about?" Bob asks him.

Dave doesn't actually know exactly how much time would be involved, but then, Dave has a hard time being on time to a gig he's playing in, so that's no big surprise.

"I'll do a month's worth if you can get me some Girl Scout cookies," Bob says when his five minutes are up. He's pretty much run out of CDs in the sale bin, anyway, and there's nothing exciting.

"What kind?" says Dave cautiously.

"Thin mints."

"I'm already out of that kind, man," says Dave.

"Oh, well - "

"Wait! Wait! I'll call around, okay, see what I can do. Maybe some of Haley's friends still have some."

"Cool," says Bob. "How's tomorrow?"

Just about then is when Ray's car pulls into the parking lot in front of the record store. All the windows are down, and he's wearing a pair of big sunglasses, Bob can see all the way from inside the store, and bobbing his head absently along to his music. Bob goes outside to meet him - no sense wasting Ray's time in the shop today - with a little wave for the guy behind the counter, even though it's no one Bob recognizes from the gigs around town.

Ray's car speakers are shitty - not what Bob would have expected when he first got to know Ray, because sound equipment seems, at least to Bob, to come under the general heading of music, and when it comes to music Ray never skimps. Half the reason Frank Iero comes over to their place so often is to play with Ray's guitars and amps and mixing board. (The other half is probably because it's rare for anyone to let him climb on them as much as Bob and Ray do, and he's one climby little fucker. It probably seriously hurts him to stay on the ground.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that stereo equipment is music, but car stereo equipment is a piece of his car, so it's fairly shitty. It has to be a CD player so he can play his CDs in it, or it'd probably be a tape deck. But the speakers don't have to be any good. Bob's thought about giving him some before, but he has a feeling Ray would be more upset about how much they cost than pleased by the sound quality.

Bob doesn't say anything about the sound quality in Ray's car, ever. He might just wince occasionally.

Today when Bob sticks his head through the passenger-side window, Ray's head-bobbing along to The Who. He must be feeling extra mellow, or have flipped past CSI and got an earworm. "You goin' my way?" says Bob.

"Belleville Heights," says Ray automatically, naming his old digs.

Bob leans on the window and tips his sunglasses down. "Really?"

"Really," says Ray absently.

Bob waits for a second, then sighs. "You really aren't."

"What? Oh!" says Ray. "Oh! No. I mean - out by the - are you laughing at me?"

Bob climbs in the car, still laughing. "Me? No."

"I know where we live," Ray explains, as he pulls out of the parking space.

"Would you have driven there?" Bob asks. "Or just gone to the old place on autopilot?"

"I turned the wrong way out of the parking lot by the Hole in the Wall a few days ago," says Ray thoughtfully. "But I noticed right away, and I just drove around the block."

"I haven't done it yet," says Bob, leaning back and tilting his face so the gritty, warm wind can blow through his hair. It's actually probably really unsanitary. It smells like asphalt and gasoline, and occasionally you get a whiff of sewer or garbage or roadkill. No wonder Ray is so careful about washing his hair.

"One day you'll slip up," says Ray, "one day, Bryar. And I'll be there, waiting."

"Waiting to fuck standing up?" says Bob. "You know, you are one kinky bastard, Toro. But I'd do it for some of that stuff Frank's mom makes."

"Eggplant parma is the shit you're nuts for," says Ray. "Sorry. She won't give me the recipe." Then he adds, thoughtfully, "It's so hot right now, though. It probably wouldn't be a good idea, anyway. Too uncomfortable."

Bob closes his eyes to keep from rolling them. "So you're okay with fucking lying down for now?"

There's a little silence. "Hey," says Ray. "That was totally a come-on."

Bob opens his eyes and looks hard at Ray. "Really? You think?"

Ray looks over at him, a curious wrinkle between his eyebrows. "You mentioned having sex with me twice in a row," he says. "That's pretty much got to be a come on, right?" This reasoning gives him more confidence in his judgment, and he smiles. "Hey, I totally beat you at Mario Kart the other day, and you topped."

Bob snorts. "Because you begged me to fuck you."

"Well, sure," says Ray reasonably, "but don't I get a raincheck?"

"For Mario Kart?" says Bob doubtfully. "You might as well flip a coin. What is that? I mean, Mario Kart. We've both been playing it since we were kids."

Ray doesn't like that argument. "So that means it's not a game, because it's easy? Mario Kart still counts. You play it enough. I just think that to be fair, if we're counting games-"

"Okay," says Bob. "You're right."

Ray stops and thinks about this for a second, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally Ray says, "Are you saying you want me to take my raincheck now?"

"You can if you want to," Bob says with a shrug. They're at the five-way intersection now, just a few blocks from home.

It takes Ray the whole intersection to reply, but when they're on the road to their apartment he says, "What do you mean?"

"Just that you don't have to beat me at anything to top," says Bob. "At least not today. Come on, park near the door."

Ray does.

Bob tries to stop him in the living room, grabbing him by the belt loops and kissing him, slipping his hands under Ray's t-shirt while Ray's getting into kissing.

"The blinds are open," Ray says. "And we don't want rug burn," and tugs free and backs away, watching to make sure Bob is coming, but Bob isn't going to stop now. They've been busy lately, and he's been waiting for Ray to fuck him since they moved in, a whole four days now, and their new bedroom hasn't seen any more action than a few blowjobs.

"When's your next lesson?" Bob asks as he's kicking off his shoes and shorts.

"Not until five," says Ray. He's only halfway out of his jeans when Bob drops to his knees in front of him, because he likes to wear them tight, while Bob goes for clothes that are basically about the same as sweats, except with more buttons and zippers and pockets. And Bob likes Ray's jeans tight, too.

He grabs one of Ray's thighs, feeling the curly hair tickle his hands and the muscles tense in his grip, and leans forward while he's tugging the jeans down over Ray's calves. Ray's cock is only a little hard, mainly because he's such an airhead that he didn't even realize Bob was flirting with him and has just barely gotten on board the sex train.

That's fine with Bob, though - he'd go for surprise sex every time if it meant he got more time one-on-one with Ray's cock first, and when it's just starting to harden is when he can bury his face in Ray's groin and fill his lungs up with the sweaty, funky sex smell. It's probably totally gross, but it's totally turning Bob on right now. He cups Ray's balls in his hand and moves his mouth down to the base of Ray's cock, opens it and drags his lip ring down towards the tip.

"Oh, oh," Ray's saying, spreading his legs and shifting his ass on the bed, "fuck, come on." He gasps and tenses when Bob sucks the head into his mouth. Bob slides his hand around the base, spreading the spit around a little, feeling Ray's cock thickening in his mouth, hot and hard, its musky flavor sharpening until Ray starts going "Whoa, whoa, slow down, God," and Bob pulls off with a flick of his tongue.

"Yeah?"

"Fuck." Ray tilts his head back; from his position on the floor Bob sees his neck getting longer, his chin pointing up at the ceiling and his cloud of hair moving a little, and of course, the long muscles of his thighs, his pale tense belly and his cock, red and wet, standing up in its nest of curls.

"All right," Bob grins. "But you're still wearing your pants."

"Fuck." Ray pushes himself back upright and kicks his foot a little. "Get them off me?"

It takes Bob a second because he has to dodge Ray's feet at first, but finally the jeans and underwear are on the floor, and then Bob's sitting on the edge of the bed and Ray doesn't even wait for him to sit down all the way before he's throwing himself at him, leaning in at this awkward angle that's twisting both their backs and shoulders around. He holds Bob's head with both hands and kisses him like he thinks Bob's going to try to get away, his hands firm and gripping tight and his mouth gentle, warm and dry and closed until Bob licks his way in.

Ray makes a soft turned-on noise in his throat and drags Bob into bed by the shoulders, so he ends up sideways, almost with his elbow in Ray's groin, and they squirm around a little until they bump knees a couple of times, and then Bob tears his mouth free from the kiss and says, "Lie down!"

"Hey," says Ray, "I'm topping," like he's just remembered it, and throws his arms around Bob and rolls over, and Bob ends up with his feet probably on the bed and his head sort of near a pillow, and sheets under him and Ray on top of him, staring breathlessly down at him and straddling his thighs, and he's not going to be picky. This looks good to him.

"Hey," says Bob.

"Hey," says Ray softly, even though he just said it a second ago, and lowers his head while he's shifting his weight on his elbows, and nudging one thigh between Bob's legs, and he grinds down and pushes Bob's thighs apart and kisses the corner of Bob's mouth, his cock hard and hot on Bob's hip, Bob's cock trapped against his stomach. "How's that?" he whispers.

Bob nods, hard, and thrusts up, trying to get some friction. "Mmmmm" is about the only word he can come up with.

"Okay, good," says Ray, and lines up carefully and thrusts again, and again, good but not quite good enough. Bob wants to get a rhythm going or something, but Ray is a motherfucking tease and he keeps rubbing his big, hairy thighs and his stomach and his big cock all over Bob and it's like, getting sweaty, and their cocks are rubbing against each other, but every time it starts to feel really awesome, just the friction he wants, Ray moves again and it stops.

"Come on, fuck," Bob begs.

Ray's fucking mouth is on his neck, though, hot and wet and silky-smooth. Bob can feel Ray's hair tickling his face and Ray sucking a bit of skin into his mouth instead of answering, rubbing his cock on Bob's stomach, rubbing the tip of his nose on Bob's neck until Bob thinks he's going to go crazy, and he finally says, "You're never going to fucking top again if you don't fuck me right fucking now."

"Okay, okay, when you put it that way," Ray mumbles, and reaches out for a condom.

Of course Bob put the condoms back in the drawer, but there are none on the top of the nightstand, and it's not exactly to the inch where it was sitting before in relation to the bed, so it takes Ray a minute to get lube and a condom out - a long, long minute that Bob spends counting the freckles on Ray's chest for the millionth time.

"Here." He fumbles with the lube and then he's pulling Bob's legs up, his cool, wet fingers teasing behind Bob's balls and tracing the cleft of his ass. Ray's look of intense concentration clears a little, and he looks up, right into Bob's eyes, right before he pushes a finger - no, two at once, fuck - inside. He's watching Bob's face, and Bob's either frowning or making some kind of orgasm face, fuck it, he doesn't even know - two at once was unexpected, that's for sure, but he can take it, it doesn't hurt, and Ray's right, Bob is hungry for it.

Bob wriggles and Ray turns his face a little and kisses Bob's knee. He probably doesn't even realize he did it, but it turns Bob on even more because it's so ridiculous, such a Ray thing to do, his delicate gentle hands and his fluffy bushy head and his huge, innocent eyes, and Bob lifts up impatiently and says, "Come on, I'm ready. Do it now."

"You want to go slow?" says Ray, breathless, crooking his fingers in Bob's ass.

Bob barely processes that he's asking a question; he couldn't care less how they do it right now, and he definitely doesn't get why Ray is wasting time with questions at a time like this. "However you want, yeah," says Bob.

"I want - to go - slow," Ray sighs, getting into position and finally, so carefully, pushing in. He pauses with the head in and flexes his shoulders a little, shakes his head so his curls bounce and the light catches the gleam of sweat on his face, and catches Bob's eyes. Bob is surprised that his eyes are open. He feels like a ball of nerves, like a string stretched tight, like the only part of his body that works right, right now, is the part of his ass where he can feel Ray's cock stretching him open, slowly and gently pushing inside and setting more and more nerves on fire.

"Slow," Ray reminds him, and he does something - shifting his weight, maybe moving his thighs, God - that feels amazing, just nudges his cock and it moves, just a little, inside Bob.

Bob opens his eyes and looks at Ray, his open mouth, his frown of concentration, and forces himself not to move yet, not to push it. He relaxes, and Ray reaches Zen or something, because he leans forward and pushes deeper with a deliberate slow thrust this time, right until he's up against Bob's ass. Bob blinks at the ceiling a couple of times, relishing that tight stretch for a long moment before Ray slides out, then back in, in what seems like one long, smooth roll of his hips.

He's got a definite rhythm in mind, and when Ray gets like this Bob knows he's going to be going out of his mind because Ray is so thorough and so careful, and fucking slow doesn't mean Bob's ass won't be feeling it tomorrow, doesn't mean he won't be so fucked he can't move when they're done, and Ray keeps touching him, and looking at him, and his fucking cock keeps moving all smooth and fucking gentle in him. Every thrust is a little nudge of awesome, like a hundredth of an orgasm or something, and every fucking time he feels every inch of Ray's cock throbbing in him it's exactly as fucking incredible, and Bob says "Harder, fuck," and Ray ignores him, always, like harder is exactly what he wanted to hear, and adjusts the angle so he hits Bob's prostate and Bob sees stars and claws at the bed.

"Hold on," Ray mumbles, shifting his weight around for some better leverage, please, God, thinks Bob, "okay," and then he leans forward and slides back in, hard and fast, and Bob's speechless with, like, half his brain fried and he seriously can't even take a breath. Then Ray's pulling out just as fast and really fucking Bob, finally, hard enough to fucking feel it, too fast to catch his breath, panting and biting his lip, saying "fuck, fuck, Bob, Bob," and Bob's toes are curling so hard they cramp and he's lifting himself up off the bed onto Ray's cock and he's totally about to come without Ray even touching his cock when Ray pulls out, gasping.

"Fuck," says Bob, "Motherfucking cocksucking son of a-"

Ray lets out a tiny hiccup of laughter and says, "Shut up, I'm driving," and pushes Bob over onto his face.

"You'd better touch my fucking cock," says Bob, but he's with the program now that he gets it, putting his weight on his elbows and lifting his ass and Ray holds onto his hips with both hands and lines up and just slides straight in, and oh, fuck, that was the angle, all right, and God, it's just the angle, it's not that Ray's cock is actually bigger now, but it fucking feels like - and then Ray pulls him up higher and twists his hips and Bob's right on the edge - three more good thrusts, and Ray says:

"Oh - sorry - " like he actually might have forgotten and wraps his hand around Bob's cock, and Bob's coming, like, so hard his eyeballs turn inside out.

Ray makes a satisfied noise and wraps an arm around his waist, pulling him in tighter, and then goes for it - which is good because if he stopped then Bob might have had to take out a hit on him, and then he'd have no choice but to go back to Chicago. But Ray's bizarre thing about taking it slow feels really fucking amazing when you've just come your eyeballs out and you didn't know you could actually come for that long and he's holding you up by the hips and still fucking you, all careful and gentle, with these long smooth rolls of his hips.

"Fuck, yeah," Bob says. "Slow is good sometimes," and Ray mumbles something he can't understand at all behind him, that might be Spanish or just gibberish, and his breathing is uneven - that's how you can tell he's going to come, because he doesn't speed up until the very end, and then he stiffens all along Bob's back, thighs against Bob's thighs, and his hips snap twice like he's dancing - except if he ever takes that rhythm near the dance floor, Bob will make him wear baggy jeans - and then he's coming too, and he sighs and nuzzles the back of Bob's neck coming down.

"You're really sweaty, man," he mumbles after a second, not even taking the time to pull out and toss the condom yet, which is kind of dirty, Bob thinks, in a good way.

"So are you," says Bob.

When Ray lets go of him, he kind of oozes down into the bed. He can't even remember what it felt like to not be covered in sweat. Ray tosses the condom, then drops down in the space next to Bob and moves close, heedless of the way the sweat sticks them together, and kisses his shoulder because Bob's face is buried in the pillow. Bob turns his head and Ray kisses the corner of his mouth, messily.

They can't really get any grosser than they are, both covered in sweat and Bob covered in come, even though he did kind of roll out of the wet spot a little, so they cuddle for a while even though it's too hot to. Ray usually wants to cuddle a certain amount after sex - not too much, or not too intense, unless he's feeling romantic for some reason - and Bob likes cuddling more the more fucked-out he is. Right now with his inability to remember how to make his legs work is pretty much the perfect time. He dozes off covered in sticky bodily fluids and wakes up a little chilled, because the fan has dried all the sweat and come into a kind of crust on different parts of his body.

Ray is jerking away from him reluctantly, muttering, "Fuck."

"Gig?" Bob mumbles, and gropes around for the nearest pillow. It's Ray's, and he buries his face in it and absorbs the smell of Ray's shampoo.

"Lesson," Ray corrects, and runs his hand over Bob's back and ass before he gets out of bed.

"I'm just going to stay here," says Bob. "Toss a blanket at me?" He hears the sheets moving and then one of Ray's five million cotton summer blankets settles over him. Ray closes the blinds before he leaves and Bob falls asleep to the sound of the shower.

Bob is very well-rested when he goes to check out Dave's bookstore with bad acoustics the next day, but his ass is a little sensitive in a good way.

Dave wasn't lying about the acoustics in The Freedom of Mind Bookstore, Drinkery, and Gallery, as Bob finds out.

"What's a drinkery?" says Bob.

"See, it's like an eatery," says Dave, "and it has both a café and a bar."

Bob gives up.

The owner of the place isn't a flake like Dave, though, he's a big old guy in a white suit, which, seriously, what? He's even got a straw hat sitting around.

He's aware of the acoustics problems, though, and he's willing to lay out some money on equipment. It turns out they're looking at two to three nights a week of live sound and an unspecified number of daytime things related mainly to the art gallery.

"It depends how long a show is open and what kinds of arrangements we've made. We've had bands five afternoons a week sometimes, and sometimes we just have them at the opening."

This all sounds possibly okay to Bob, given that he's only promised a month, but there is the matter of the music scene. He can't see himself committing to three nights a week in the same place to anyone except Ray. But that's negotiable, Bill says quickly, of course they can find other people, but they'd love for Bob to take over managing that stuff, because Bill, he says with a gold-toothed smile, "Honestly doesn't even know who to call." If it works out, he adds.

"Dave here says I get free coffee?" says Bob.

"You absolutely are welcome to free coffee," says Bill. "Let me show you our coffees." He's rubbing his hands together in a way Bob has seen no one ever treat coffee, not even Gerard. He reminds Bob of a wine taster.

Bob's sipping something vanilla-flavored and something dark-roasted and something called "Jungle Smoke" out of tiny paper taster cups when Dave sidles up to him and says, "About the cookies, I could only get one case, I hope that's enough."

"How many in a case, again?" says Bob.

"Um." Dave squints. "Eight, maybe? Six? Ten?"

Now they really will weigh three hundred pounds. Each. "That's fine," says Bob. The Jungle Smoke coffee is surprisingly good, even if the name is unfortunate. Endangered animals dying a fiery death isn't what you like to think about over your coffee. Unless you're Gerard Way.

Before he leaves, Bob finds himself shaking hands with Bill, and it doesn't really occur to him until he's in the car that that's pretty much a binding contract in New Jersey. Also, the guy was wearing a suit. He didn't seem too Connected, but Bob's going to have to honor his contract anyway just to be safe.

So if Ray isn't totally thrilled about having Bob around all the time, that's tough luck. Could get awkward, though.

Bob spends the drive home thinking about how little sense it makes for him to be worried about Ray Toro, who could probably host a children's television show if his pants weren't so tight, being unhappy about Bob being around. Everyone likes some time alone, sure, but Ray's idea of time alone is shutting himself in a room and writing guitar music for an hour or two. Bob's not stupid enough to seriously worry about that, but it doesn't stop him from drumming his fingers on the steering wheel on the way back.

Donny's friend calls him the next day and says something about her son, which at least means she's probably not as young as the average college student - as Ray likes to say, they're getting younger every year - but it doesn't make her immune from taking a single look at Ray and trying to get into his pants, as he knows from long experience. Bob figures that this quality of Ray's has a lot to do with his pants and also a lot to do with his personality, and he can't really blame all the moms. As long as Ray doesn't go on any dates with them, they're fine. It might be better for simplicity's sake to keep them apart, though. Bob agrees to talk with her about it if she drops by the Crimson on Thursday and possibly give her some advice, at least.

Then it's rich-Chris-with-the-stadium again, and Bob says he's going to be in the area and allows himself to be put on a list of go-to guys, but he has to put his foot down at the idea of regular hockey sound, and plus, he feels like there's probably a limit to the number of jobs you should accept in one week.

When his mom calls him, he buries his face in a couch cushion and says, "Please tell me you're not calling to offer me a job."

She doesn't think that's very funny. "I hope that's not how you always answer the phone," she says sternly.

"It might save me a lot of trouble," says Bob, "but honestly, Mom, it's just because I knew it was you."

Then he has to explain how he knew, and he's pretty sure she doesn't actually believe him. He knows she has a cell phone, so it's a little scary to think she's missed a basic feature all these years. Maybe her sight is going. Finally he has to give up and promise that he's never answered the phone that way before and never will again, and say that he's already taken a job and two half-jobs this week.

Bob has a week's grace before he has to start showing up in East Orange and arranging the sound system in the Freedom of Mind, and he spends most of it playing video games - storing it up for when he has less time, maybe. Ray's okay with this plan, and when he calls Bob on the way home from a lesson at 8 pm on Wednesday and hears what he's doing, he stops for takeout and brings it back to the coffee table, collapsing on the couch and slumping over against Bob's shoulder without even taking his shoes off first.

"I would be so happy if Mrs. Bryant just fired me," he moans. "Seriously, her kids are great, but it's the worst time... I had an early lunch, and now I think I'm actually too hungry to eat." He curls closer to Bob's side, pulling his feet up and hunching over and latching onto his arm.

Bob pauses the game one-handed and reaches over to brush the hand lightly over Ray's bushy hair, springy and airy and woolly against his palm. "Good thing you've got a stay-at-home wife who always has dinner ready and on the table," he murmurs.

"I know," says Ray, the words muffled in the shoulder of Bob's t-shirt. "Here, hand me one of those sandwiches?"

They watch sitcoms and inhale their sandwiches and chips happily, until Ray says, through a mouthful of bread and lettuce, "You know, with all the times we've eaten on this couch, it still feels new because the living room is different." He swallows and continues thoughtfully, "When you're back on tour again it'll be strange all over again, eating in this big room all on my own."

Bob selects a potato chip more carefully than he really needs to. "Yeah," he says. That totally wasn't what he was planning to say, either.

The thing is that he doesn't know what he is planning to say. Not mentioning things often works well for him. He guesses he could go with that now too, because Ray's bound to notice eventually that he hasn't left yet, but that isn't really Bob's ideal solution, anyway. Usually he feels it's all self-explanatory. He never had to tell Ray, I like you. But there's a frustrating sense that he's missing something now: there's something that he wants to say to Ray.

And he doesn't know what.

So he goes with nothing, and he meets the new music teacher, Maria, in between sets at the Crimson the next night while Ray is playing with his buds in Newark.

She's really, really short, like shorter than Frank, and she's wearing these giant cat eye-shaped glasses and a strange, giant purple shirt, and she kind of has trouble reaching the bar when she's sitting on the stool - not serious trouble, just that she can't really get her arms up on it.

Apparently she's dealing with an auditorium built in the 1950s in what used to be a gymnasium, in a brick building that's almost a hundred years old. "It looks pretty from the outside, but God, give me a crappy cement box with exposed rafters as long as there's wiring, you know? It never hurt all the kids who go to public school. Well, except the ones who get killed, I guess," she says.

"Jersey," says Bob, and lifts his beer at her. She shakes her head and lifts hers back. "Are you sure it's fair to blame their deaths on the buildings, though?" Bob asks.

"What? Oh! No, oh no. Just on public school in general," Maria says, matter-of-fact. "So here's the thing. I've got twelve hundred bucks of yearly music budget and it's possible I can talk the principal into buying something if I get a proposal form in advance, but I have to know what I want. And I can't hire anybody to install it?"

Bob gives her a doubtful look. "I'm a tech - with equipment, though," says Bob. "Not without equipment. Is there anyone you can get to lend you some? Do you have electrical outlets?"

She goes from looking like a competent young teacher - the weird clothes help with the looking adult thing, since she can't be more than like, twenty-five - to looking like a kid when her face falls. "I'm not from the area," she says, sadly. "But if you don't have the time, I mean, that's fine - I'd just really appreciate if you could give me some general kinds of tips. I do have electricity, at least."

Bob sighs. If he's going to be sticking around for a month anyway, though, he might as well go and look at the inside of this school auditorium. It's not like his afternoons are really overbooked, anyway. "I might know someone who could lend us something," he says. "I can't promise anything."

Her eyes widen when she's surprised, but nothing like Ray's, Bob notices. It's kind of funny, when you're used to looking at that expression on Ray's big, expressive face, his huge round eyes and his curly eyelashes, to see it on just any old face.

Maria's covering her mouth with her hand and she clinks her beer against Bob's. "I can never thank you enough for this," she gushes.

Bob shrugs. "No problem." And he hopes he isn't wrong.

Bob's gotten a few text messages from guys he was friends with back in Chicago and their agents, including one from Pete Wentz when Patrick apparently refused to act as his messenger boy, asking Bob to "prty plz :(" help out The Academy Is because their most reliable sound guy changed his mind at the last minute. Bob calls Patrick to catch up and thank him for keeping Wentz off the streets and turn him down via proxy, and isn't exactly surprised when Pete's manic nasal giggle cuts off Patrick's soothingly sane voice.

"Hey, is the sex worth it?" says Pete.

"Fuck you, man," says Bob.

"I guess it isn't if you want to fuck me then," says Pete, with a donkey-like snicker. Then he pauses and says, "Although I guess that's not technically true. There's no accounting for taste. Maybe I'm just that good. Or maybe it's the fame."

"That's it," says Bob. "Can you give Patrick back the phone?"

"You don't just love me for my fame, do you?" says Pete. "It's cool if you just don't kiss and tell, man. The modern gentleman. Patrick says your boyfriend is hot." (Bob can hear Patrick in the background, saying tiredly, "I didn't say that, Pete.")

"Who says I don't kiss and tell, Wentz?" says Bob. "That doesn't mean I'm telling you. And I'm hanging up now."

The last thing he hears is, "Patrick, does that mean he said no?"

"You kiss and tell?" says Ray. Bob totally thought he was still napping on the couch after their very late night Friday.

"No," says Bob. "Don't worry; nobody knows."

"Mm, my reputation is safe?" Ray asks, and there's a shifting noise behind Bob and then Ray's head tipping over the edge of the couch and craning around to look at him.

"I guess so," says Bob.

"What did Fall Out Boy want?" says Ray curiously. "It's Fall Out Boy, right?"

"Yeah, that was Pete. It wasn't for them, though," says Bob. "He's calling around for some guys on his label."

Ray yawns. "Oh. Not going?"

Bob shakes his head and his mouth goes a little dry, but Ray just uses Bob's shoulder to lever himself up off the couch, and doesn't ask anything else. Of course he doesn't - he doesn't know that there's anything to ask.

They've both gotta be at the Latin Lounge tonight, and they both have to shower because of their Saturday-morning-cartoons-and-blowjobs routine. When Bob opens the bathroom door and walks out in a wave of steam, Ray's waiting there in the hall, with his jeans rolled up a little over his bare feet to keep the cuffs off the wet floor, and no shirt at all, his hair still wet from his shower before, and he catches Bob around the waist and pulls him up against the wall next to the bathroom door.

"Oof," says Bob, bemused, and Ray rests his hands over Bob's hips through his towel and kisses him slow and so long Bob kind of thinks he's going to fall over when Ray ducks around him and into the bathroom.

"Adam called while you were in the shower," says Ray, spreading shaving cream over his jaw.

"Which Adam?" says Bob. He's going to stop watching Ray in the mirror and go put on his clothes any minute now, honestly.

Ray's mouth is twisted to one side as he spreads the shaving cream. He takes his hands away to say, "Lazarra."

"Oh, okay," says Bob.

"He called to ask you one last time to reconsider," says Ray, reaching for the razor. "I told him I didn't know what you were planning."

"Mmmm," says Bob. It looks like Ray's figured out there are questions to ask. He's not one hundred percent focused on the questions, though. He loves watching Ray shave.

"You know, it's funny - I thought you were going on tour with Taking Back Sunday this fall."

"No," Bob says, stupidly.

"No, I mean, it's just," says Ray, "the last time we talked about it. I don't know, maybe at Christmas, I just thought you mentioned something about it."

"I did? Oh, yeah," says Bob. "I mean, I was going to. I was thinking about it when they first told me the dates and all." He's starting to feel like he really needs some clothes.

Ray drags the razor through the shaving cream and down over his throat and Bob, like usual, wants to lick that stripe of fresh uncovered skin even though he knows that at this point it would just taste like shaving cream. "A couple of weeks ago," says Ray, "when the phone rang during breakfast - I guess I thought you were talking to Quinn, from The Used? And you said you couldn't and I just assumed you were talking about touring and you were going to be with Taking Back Sunday -"

"I think I'm going to stay around here for a while," says Bob.

Ray stops moving. Their eyes meet in the mirror.

"Here," says Bob, and gestures between the two of them. Ray blinks, slowly, or else time just seems to be slowing down. "I mean, here in Jersey. I've been thinking I'd take it easy for a while," he stumbles. "Maybe the rest of the year."

Ray's eyes have been round and wide, staring straight at Bob in the mirror, wondering, but his expression changes at that, a spark of surprise or recognition, and he opens his mouth. No sound comes out at first, and then Ray clears his throat and says, "Really?"

Bob would be the biggest loser ever for being afraid to talk about moving in with his boyfriend who he already lives with, who is clearly happy about the idea, but on the other hand, he could still be living in his mother's basement, so he's not quite the dullest tool in the shed.

"Yeah, you know, I just..." Bob finds his voice trailing off and thinks, the hell with it. He rubs his hand through his wet hair. "Fuck. I love touring, but I don't want to do it all the time forever. I thought - a few months a year, maybe, is what I'd like, you know?"

"Shit," says Ray, awed, "yeah! I mean, that's - that's great! Just let me - ow," as he nicks himself with the razor and drops it in the sink and turns around. The Ray in the mirror is a blur of eyes and dark, wet curls, and then it seems like Bob's whole face is full of Ray's eyes, like he can't even see anything else.

Ray grabs him by the jaw and Bob feels Ray's hands wrapping around the back of his neck, rubbing shaving cream on the damp skin, no doubt. His nose fills up with the smell of the shaving cream when Ray pushes their mouths together, careful not to miss - his lips are warm and full and they kind of taste like shaving cream anyway, but Bob doesn't even care anymore when Ray parts his mouth, carefully, and licks into Bob's mouth and around his teeth, all precise and meticulous and wet, his hands going tight on Bob's jaw and his neck, Ray's bare chest pressing up against him, even their toes touching on the floor, and Bob can feel Ray's toes wriggling against his, nudging, petting, the way they do in bed late at night.

"Mm," says Bob, and Ray sighs and pulls back.

When they look in the mirror, the shaving cream is smeared all over both their faces. That's something Bob hasn't seen in a long time - he's had a short beard for over a year now.

The little cut on Ray's jaw is still bleeding, a bright red spot in the foamy white. Ray splashes water over his face and starts over with the side of his throat he didn't finish with before, and Bob hands him a little piece of toilet paper to stick to the cut.

"So I've been looking around, a little bit," says Bob, "for more work in the area, you know, something that could maybe keep me occupied and help pay the bills."

"Did you find anything?" says Ray, leaning close to the mirror to get the last corner of his jaw.

Bob watches Ray's reflection and says, "Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's going to be a problem."

When they get to the Latin Lounge, two of the guys fussing around with the cables onstage are wearing black velvet mariachi hats and the third one's wearing a big straw hat. It looks a little out of place in a grimy low-ceilinged place like the Latin Lounge where every single piece of furniture could have come straight out of any other bar in town, except for the plaster cactus by the door and the plaster donkey yard sculpture behind the bar, next to the taps. The hats actually look like they might have come straight off the walls. Ray's carrying his big acoustic case over to the stage, and the last thing Bob hears him say before he goes to the bar to ask in English for some ordinary white guy salsa is "No no no, por favor no."

The dudes really aren't listening, though, and he's got a straw hat stuck on top of his hair when they start playing.

There are about three guitar players with acoustics on stage along with a couple of trumpets and some tambourines and a keyboard and a drum set and, yes, some bongos, so maybe that's what Dave was asking him for - Dave is one of the other guitar players, and he's good, but Bob can tell, watching them all critically, that he's not as good as Ray. Part of the appeal of Ray on guitar is how he gets all into it, bracing his legs apart and playing as much with his hips as with his hands. It's really hot, and it's not exactly the standard method. He tones it down a little for this music, probably because he has to - it's no Brian May, more like Santana, but there's a lot of fancy fingerwork for all three of the guitarists.

The dancing doesn't stop when the music stops, because someone almost immediately drops in a Spanish pop CD behind the bar - it's that Juanes song that's been on the radio all over recently, "La Camisa Negra", and if Bob never hears it again at this point it might be too soon, but he's enjoying watching Ray and the rest of the band trying to fight their way through the crowd from the stage in the corner back to the bar. Ray's hair is sweaty under the hat, when he takes it off and shakes his head vigorously. Bob takes the hat and hands it to Sergio behind the bar, who accepts it and solemnly sets it on the donkey.

Then Dave comes up behind them and throws an arm around Bob's shoulder. "Bob!" he yells, over the wailing of Juanes. "I've got something for you - it's in the back!"

"You guys made a great mariachi band," Sergio yells over the music, and pumps his fist in the air a little.

Half the band applauds; the other half tells him to hurry up with the beer, and he grabs the first glass and turns the tap on.

"You were great," says the oldest guitarist to Ray. He's a tiny little Mexican dude who actually does look a bit like Santana. He mimes the finger movements and nods firmly. "Good job. I'll be proud to play with you any time." Then he says something in Spanish that Bob doesn't catch, but it makes Ray beam and shake his head and say the honor was all his.

One of the black velvet mariachi hats comes off one of the trumpet players, and Bob recognizes him right away as the bassist from Criminal Typography, Ben. "He can't help it, Papa Ignacio," Ben says, and reaches up to ruffle Ray's hair. Ray, who's busy with his first beer, doesn't have enough warning to duck away. "It's in the blood! Toro's the man!" Ray is definitely the man, but Bob remembers he's always thought Ben was kind of a tool.

Ray sets his beer down quickly and then jerks away, scowling. "It's not in the blood," he says. "Mariachi bands aren't from Puerto Rico."

Luckily they're saved by providence in the form of Dave, standing by the back room door and waving furiously. Ray follows Bob over, and Dave bends over to grab something from the shadows at his feet.

"Happy birthday," he says to Bob, and deposits a long cardboard box in his arms.

"It's not Bob's birthday," says Ray.

"I know," says Dave. "Just a joke. See you at work Monday, man! I hope it was worth it." He waggles his eyebrows and adds, "You might want to put those in the car - that's forty-eight bucks you're holding, and a lot more on E-bay!" Then he grins and claps Ray on the shoulder and pushes past them, back to the bar.

Bob looks down at the box in his arms, and of course, it's the cookies. Ray, standing a little behind him, has a harder time. "What?" he says. "What's he talking about? What's in - what does that say?"

Bob turns to the side a little and holds the box up for inspection. It's brown paper, printed bright and colorful with those beautiful words, "Thin Mints."

"It's your cookies," says Bob. "I found some more."

"You - is that - is that whole box full of Girl Scout cookies?" says Ray eagerly. He doesn't even wait for Bob to answer before he rips it out of his hands and tears one of the flaps open. It was still glued shut. "Oh, awesome." After that he's speechless for a little while, stroking his fingertip through the open flap over the shiny green cardboard of the individual cookie boxes inside.

Bob watches him and thinks, yeah, it was definitely worth it.

Then Ray looks up and says, serious and quiet, "You have no idea how much I want to blow you right now." It's fucking dark in the Latin Lounge, but Bob's used to Ray's face in the dim light of bars, and there's enough to make out the awed "o" of Ray's mouth and the wet glimmer of his eyes.

"Uh," Bob chokes.

Ray grabs his arm and tugs him out onto the dance floor, weaving in and out between the slow-dancers, the bump-and-grinders, and the salsa dancers, to grab Ray's guitar case from the edge of the stage and then escape out into the night air, without even saying goodbye to anyone. Bob feels a little dizzy, out in the parking lot all of a sudden, under the buzzing street lights and the moon.

"I know there's no rush now," says Ray as he unlocks the car, all matter-of-fact, "since you're going to be sticking around for a while, but -" he shrugs. "Like I said, I really want to blow you."

"That's fine," says Bob, settling back in his seat a little. Fuck, yes, it was worth it.

End