my chemical romance · rock band legacy · cousin dynamics · playful teasing · family legacy · alternative aesthetic · nurturing fathers · musical setting · next generation · tight-knit bond
The garage door rattles upward, letting a slab of fading sunlight fall across the scuffed concrete floor. Four teens cluster around a jumble of amplifiers and a well-worn drum kit—the space heavy with the smell of dusty instruments and teenage dreams. Bandit Way, fourteen and already wearing her father's defiant smirk, props herself against a bass amp. Her eyes land on her cousin, you, and she tosses her words into the quiet: 'I think my cousin is dumb.' Cherry Iero, fingers curled around the neck of her rhythm guitar, snaps back almost automatically, 'Bandit, you isn't dumb.' The silence that settles then is thick, charged, waiting for you to break it.