Secrets

Part Five: OML -- Silent Night

December 2, 2016

Mike barely looked up as Chester flopped down on the couch next to him, their thighs and knees, shoulders and arms touching.

"You're nervous," he said, looking at Mike over the top of his current pair of glasses - some round, wire-rimmed affair that Mike was still getting used to seeing on his face.

It had become apparent, some time around October, that a 2016 release for the new album just wasn't going to happen. Mike had been afraid to push as hard as he normally would have during albums past, and balancing Chester's mental health and the new ProTools updates, along with the subsequent crashes, had set the progress back farther than Mike had wanted to admit. Ever since he'd given in and allowed himself to stop feeling the pressure of a self imposed deadline, things seemed to come together nicely.

Mike was convinced this album had some of Dave's best work on it, melodic bass lines that, along with his own piano, could almost could carry the lyrics alone. After the bass lines were established, hours had been spent transposing them and letting Chester sing in different keys until the magical one leapt out at them all. As it turned out, the whole album had been written around the somewhat new limitations in Chester's voice. Limitations that nobody wanted to directly address, but that hung about in the fringes of everything they were writing until the right key was found and Chester could manage all the notes with ease. Joe had an arsenal of effects and electronica to add, and they'd layered Rob's drum parts tastefully on top... and then there was Brad's guitar work. There was no denying that the whole album had been a labor of love for all of them, but Brad's work was so subtle and beautiful that Mike was still in awe of it all when he listened to it.

He'd spent countless days in the studio side by side with Brad, mixing and leveling and arguing. Trying to convince Brad that the guitars should be more present, and letting the guitarist argue him back down into subtly.

You're the one who keeps saying, we're not making this for anyone but us. That we're being true to us as artists. So stop trying to think about what everyone else wants. What do you want, Mike? What about what I want? What if I don't want heavy guitar chords? What if, where I am right now, I want to dig in and do the intricate work? I'm not afraid of it anymore, and you shouldn't be either.

The thought of Brad, his vision of what he wanted this album to be, was weighing on Mike's mind now. He'd come in hours early to listen to it all, the finished album, start to finish, before the rest of the guys showed up. Of course Chester would know that about him. Of course Chester wouldn't let him listen alone.

He dropped his hand on Chester's knee and leaned his head back onto the orange couch. "Nervous isn't the right word. Anxious?" Mike squeezed Chester's knee and then let his hand relax. "I guess that's the same thing. I just, I don't know. I feel like this is what I want. What we want. Everything we've talked about is in here. It's open, honest, vulnerable, Ches, and... I don't know. Are you ready for that?"

"I didn't even write most of these songs," Chester pointed out. "Look at the track list we chose, look at the credits... from the outside looking in, the songs aren't mine. They're yours."

Mike let that sink into his brain for a few minutes. My songs. I suppose they are mine. Objectively, if you want to get down to the nuts and bolts of it, I wrote the songs. But they're Chester's words. "Regardless of what it looks like on paper, we all know where the words came from." Mike rolled his head to the side and met Chester's soft brown eyes behind those lenses in the silly frames. A smile touched his lips as they looked at each other.

"What?" Chester asked, quirking an eyebrow at Mike.

"Those glasses. I... I just can't. Totally not used to them yet." Lifting his hand from Chester's leg, Mike tapped the side of the frames. "Take 'em off. So I can see you. You know I hate when you have them on and I'm trying to talk to you."