S-I-N, I, S-I-N || Priest!Gerard

Chapter 30: Don't You Worry

"It's like there's a heartbeat in my stomach," Iris said, her hand tightening on my arm as we waited for the music to start up; she'd been grabbing at me like that ever since the meet and greet ended and we hurried from the other room to the front of the stage before everyone else got there.

"Wait till the music starts, it's gonna get worse," I promised her, it had been ages since I last went to a concert but it didn't mean I'd forgotten what it was like, I still remember how my heart would sync up with the drums and it felt like my head was going to explode from how loud the music was; afterwards my feet hurt like hell and I couldn't hear anything but it was so totally worth it.

"How can it get worse?" Her voice easily went up by a couple of octaves and she had to reach out to grab the barricade to steady herself.

"It's not really worse so much as better but it'll take you a couple of minutes to figure it out and get used to it." I couldn't count the number of times I've felt like I wanted to throw up at a concert, or the times I could have sworn I was having some kind of heart attack that I'd never recover from. "Don't worry, once the band starts you'll forget all about it."

The lights in the dimmed hall began to change, cycling through all the colors of the rainbow before stopping on green, the spotlights shifting to all the vital parts of the stage where everyone in the opening band would stand. With the shifting colors in the room the crowd began to get more excited and I automatically moved Iris and myself closer to the barricade before the audience could.

"Why is everyone so close together?" Iris asked nervously and a faint part in the back of my mind remembered hearing her once mention that she didn't like closed spaces too much; I can't imagine that a fully packed music hall would feel too comfortable for her.

"Because everyone wants to be as close to the stage as you and I. You should probably brace yourself because there's gonna be more pushing when Pierce The Veil come on but so long as you don't fall over or suddenly have to go to the bathroom then you shouldn't have any problems." I'd given a similar brand of advice to Iris earlier on, telling her that it would be easier for her to keep her footing if she stood with her feet shoulder width apart and put both her hands on the barricade so she could push back if she had to.

I wanted to hope for Iris to have as much common sense when it came to concerts as I did but I knew not to expect too much, she was the kind of girl that could get freaked out easily which more or less guaranteed a panic attack at some point tonight. Someone will make an attempt to push to the front of the stage and she'll start hyperventilating, I've already played the situation out in my head a couple of times; I think I should have snuck some sedatives from the nurse to give to her in case things get really bad.

"And what if I have to go to the loo?"

"Then I can nearly say for sure that there is no way you'll make it to the bathroom then back here." What I kept myself from mentioning was that she probably wouldn't even be able to make it out of the crowd with how tightly everyone was packed together.

The air in the room seemed to change and I could feel the smile on my face instantly grow wider, we'd been waiting for Gerard's band to come onstage for ages and to be perfectly honest I couldn't wait to see Iris' expression when Gerard started singing. She had taken it surprisingly well when she found out that we had secretly been hooking up for a while and acted as if it were nothing when she was suddenly told that he was also in a band.

From the angle I stood on I could see Gerard looking through the curtain for a brief second before Bob walked onto the stage, his eyes only directed at the ground as he made his way over to the drum-kit and sat down, instantly picking up the drumsticks and ignoring the cheers from the crowd.