fic: We're Like Magnets
Title: We're Like Magnets
Author: adellyna
Pairing: Bill/Gabe
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4000
Disclaimer: Fiction
Summary: Opening a record store when most cars come standard with a jack to plug an iPod in is probably stupid, but everyone said basing a band off a drug-fueled hallucination was stupid, too, and those were some of the best years of his life.
Author's Notes: This is Secret Solstice fic for airgiodslv, who dragged me into bandom with pictures of William Beckett, and who continues to make it a wonderful place to be. I love your faaaaace, Jen. ♥♥♥ Happy Solstice, bb! ♥ Much thanks to gobsmackit for her wonderful beta services and for her general awesomeness. Title and cut text shamelessly stolen from Jack's Mannequin.
It ends in the way these things always do: a final show, a far-from-final party, a few hugs that go on too long, and goodbyes said in voices just a little too tight. Gabe is thirty-five. He's been in bands for as long as he can remember, from the first time he banged a wooden spoon against a pot while his brother jumped up and down on a warped old cookie sheet, to this, to Cobra Starship, six albums and more tours than he can count under their belts.
He's not old, but he is too old for the road. His knees hurt all the time (too much crawling across the stage to an ever younger audience) and his voice is different, raspier, like he's been smoking for decades instead of just singing. He kept a heating pad rolled up under his pillow for the last three tours; it was the only thing that would keep his spine from hunching up in protest.
They talk about it for approximately forever first. They do a sixth and final album, and they write a goodbye song, and they record it last, put it last on the album, play it last at every show of the last tour.
Afterward, Ryland goes back to acting, Suarez spends hours in the kitchen trying to convince his kid to like mushrooms, Victoria follows Patrick around his latest set, and Nate starts a new band with that one Alex kid left from The Cab who's still hanging around. Gabe tries writing, but he doesn't seem to have anything left to say, really, and the only shit he can think of has been said so many times already, it hardly seems worth the effort.
Without anything left to say, he decides he might as well sell something, and since what he knows is music...
Opening a record store when most cars come standard with a jack to plug an iPod in is probably stupid, but everyone said basing a band off a drug-fueled hallucination was stupid, too, and those were some of the best years of his life. He rents a little space in SoHo, rejects all of Pete's outlandish name suggestions, spends three months wading through all the complexities of turning an empty space into a fully-stocked retail location, and opens 44walk with more cash sunk into it than even the most generous estimates project he'll make in the first six months.
"You have to have a grand opening," Pete insists, his voice thick with fuzz and static, some glitch of their connection making him sound as far away as he actually is. "Like, grand, bro. Saporta-style."
"You can send a band," Gabe says. "One of your little pet projects. Someone small enough to think my counter can double as a stage."
What Pete does is get everyone he can to show up and do an acoustic set. He and Patrick come out and do five songs by request, William clambers up next to the cash register and does his latest moderately-successful, lyrically-gorgeous single by himself, with just an acoustic guitar to accompany him. Kanye happens to be in town, so Pete sends a cab for him and talks him into climbing up on the counter and doing "Careless Whisper" as a duet with Patrick. Pete has some baby band making the YouTube video rounds, and they come, too, but they're confused when they get there.
"Where's the, um, stage?" the singer asks, turning in place, searching the walls like he could possibly spot an outlet for his amp in between the packed-in bodies.
"Counter," Pete says cheerfully, pushing an acoustic into the bassist's hands and shoving them towards the narrow space. "We're doing this guerrilla-style."
They sell out of the expected records within the hour, but Pete keeps texting him with the litany of unrelated albums he's suggesting kids buy, and then signing: dark side of the moon, purple, in utero, revolver, stripped. Gabe sells a lot more albums in that one night than he expected to sell all month, basically, and later, once the mass of kids has simmered down to a trickle of exhausted twenty-somethings clutching their autographed gear to their chests and waiting patiently for someone to check them out, he retreats to the faded couch in the cellar storage area and kicks his feet up on the cooler currently serving as a coffee table.
"I'm surprised," William says, curling his legs under him and sipping from his beer bottle. "I thought you'd name it Cobra Starshop or something."
"Or Midtown Records?" Gabe asks. He tips his head back against the sofa and rolls it to the side so he can watch William. "Nah. Using the address was more practical."
"I saw Ryland," William says. He takes another sip and offers the rest of the bottle to Gabe. "You guys could've done a song or two."
"We had a last show," Gabe says, shrugging. He takes the beer, though, and drinks half of it in one gulp. He's getting old enough that the beer goes straight to his gut instead of straight to his head. "I want to leave it at that, you know? I just want to sell some kids some CDs to scratch up."
William says, "Yeah," and tips his head against the couch, too. He doesn't get another beer, and there's not nearly enough light in the cellar to see clearly, but he left the door open, and they can still hear the weary chatter of lingering customers.
"We had a good run," Gabe says, when the silence has stretched long enough that he thinks anything he says next will sound profound. "And Victoria couldn't come. It would be weird without everyone."
"Yeah," William says again. Upstairs, someone laughs too loudly, but William just slides sideways on the couch until his head is on Gabe's shoulder. They've been apart too long; Gabe doesn't recognize the smell of William's shampoo anymore, and the shirt he's wearing is battered but entirely unfamiliar.
...
Retail means spending his days in a mostly-empty store, on a stool behind the counter, flipping through the newest AP and, when he's feeling productive, the textbook for the business class he's taking. He has a catalogue of music equipment, too, and Pete keeps promising that if he puts a studio in the cellar, he'll send every aspiring musician he knows to Gabe to record a demo.
It also means that he talks to William more. Something about knowing Gabe is right there, landlocked next to a land-line, means William is helplessly compelled to call him every day. It's practically a routine by now: nine in the morning, Starbucks and the New York Times; ten in the morning, direct some tourist to the closest subway station; eleven in the morning, answer the phone.
"Music and shit," Gabe says, pinning the phone between his ear and his shoulder.
"My world is upside-down," William says. He does not sound particularly affronted about this.
"That must be unsettling," Gabe says calmly. "How much did you drink last night?"
"Adam Siska has impregnated a woman," William says. "Upside-down."
"He did it upside-down?" Gabe asks. "That sounds interesting. Did he take pictures?"
"What am I doing with my life?" William says, humming. Now he sounds a little affronted. "I am facilitating a world where young, impressionable boys can impregnate women."
"He's twenty-six," Gabe says, and flips to the next page in his textbook. "Answer the question, Bill."
"A lot," William says. "We celebrated."
"I figured. Give him my congratulations, yeah?"
"Adam," William says. There's a rustle, the particular sound of William's phone sliding over his stubble, and a muffled thump. "Gabe says congratulations."
Gabe tugs his catalogue over his textbook and doodles in the corner while William, muffled and hung-over, argues over whether or not anyone actually congratulated Adam last night. "It was implied," he hears William say. "It was implied in the many shots I bought you."
"Shots count," Gabe says, idly, and ponders the price of soundproofing part of the cellar for recording vocals. "Tell him if I was there, I'd just pour tequila down his throat and assume he got the message."
...
He puts in a recording studio-despite the fact that it costs him an arm and a fucking leg and maybe his left testicle, too-and is promptly buried under a deluge of high school kids with a dream, and a few girls who just want to get their Britney on.
Most of them are absolute shit, of course, but he likes it anyway. His life is quieter these days, and he likes their enthusiasm. He even likes the way half of the bands are more into making music than making music. He likes that they dress up and drag their attitudes down into his rough cellar, with its dark navy walls and its battered orange couch.
"Can you imagine?" William says, his head on Gabe's shoulder, his feet on the low bench that serves as a coffee table, his eyes narrowed at the gaggle of nouveau-punks pressing buttons and fucking off the melody to stand out. "If we'd had a place like this when we were kids?"
"We weren't kids together," Gabe points out. He tilts his head so his cheek is against the top of William's head. William has gone back to the same shampoo Gabe remembers from years ago; it's reassuring, knowing that the unfamiliarness of it at his opening was an aberration. "You smell good."
"Can you imagine?" William says again, turning his face in a little so he can rub his nose against Gabe's shirt. "If we were kids together?"
"We would've had a band," Gabe says. He picks up a few strands of William's hair and rubs them between his fingers idly. "I would've let you sing."
"What's it like?" William asks. "Off the road? The store, like this?"
Gabe's not really sure how to answer that. All of the things he wants to say, he thinks they'll sound bad. It's lonely, a little. He's spent so many years surrounded by so many people, and now sometimes he goes whole days without seeing enough people to put together a single band. It's quiet, too, and he finds himself moving slower. There's less rush, he never has to get somewhere hundreds of miles away in dauntingly few hours; it could be weird, but it's nice. When he goes to Starbucks now, the staff all remember his regular order. He knows that his postman builds birdhouses for his grand-kids, and he knows that the woman who just opened the bath and frilly-shit shop on the corner got divorced six months ago.
Of course, there's the studio, and the bands that come in for that. There are also the fans who still come in and buy shit; two kinds, for the most part: the ones who admit it, and the ones who act like they had no idea he ran this record shop. Gabe gets a bunch of "I'm looking for this album? Save the World, Lose the Girl?", which is exactly as convincing as it seems like it would be.
"It's good," he says, instead of any of that. "I keep discovering bands. I'm going to be Pete Wentz when I grow up."
"I think Pete's going to be Pete Wentz when he grows up," William says. Gabe wraps the strand of hair he's claimed around his knuckles, and watches the kids across the room high-five each other with more enthusiasm than they'd played their instruments.
"You want to write something?" he asks, giving William's hair a last tug and letting it drop. "For the band that never was?"
They record some indie-type shit that neither of them could ever claim publicly, all acoustic, with Gabe singing and William humming softly in the background and chiming in as low as he can in harmony. Later, Gabe listens to it five or six times in his kitchen, on his laptop, with his take-out containers stacked high next to him, and he thinks it's fitting. It works with the new him. It's quiet.
...
Some seventeen-year-old girl wanders into his shop one day and browses nervously for half an hour before she works up the nerve to approach him. He's thinking she's going to name-drop Cobra Starship or something, ask if he's that Gabe, but instead she tucks her hair behind her ear in a classic William twitch and says, "I heard you have a studio?"
Days later, when William calls from Milwaukee or some shit, Gabe says, "I met this girl."
William pauses. "A girl?" he says carefully. "Like, uh, a girl?"
"Like she came in," Gabe says, talking faster than he has in months. "For the studio. And she can sing, bro. It's like...talent. It's like talent, you know?"
"That's awesome," William says. "Is she recording?"
"Yeah," Gabe says. His counter is clear of textbooks and catalogues and magazines for once. He just has a notebook today. "She can't write for shit. I'm helping her."
"Awesome," William says again. He sounds farther away than the Midwest, though. "Is she, like-"
"Amazing," Gabe supplies. "Like, it reminds me of the first time I heard you sing. Same shitty lyrics, too."
"Fuck you," William says. "I gotta go. Carden's attacking me with a camera."
...
Gabe writes a lot of lyrics, backs her up on the guitar while she records and plays the keyboard, and once they've cut a few tracks, he sends them to William.
"She sounds young," William says, when he calls. "And you didn't make her say fuck at all. What's that about?"
"She's seventeen," Gabe says. He has a bunch of kids lined up, but William hasn't called for a few days, so fuck it. He can ring shit up and talk, too. "She loves Jesus and unicorns or something, I don't know. She'll have to corrupt herself. I'm too old to do it for her, they could take me to jail just for thinking about it."
"I might visit," William says. "I have a week."
"I have a couch," Gabe says, and gives the kid buying the old *NSYNC album a thumbs-up. "Timberlake is a god," he tells the kid, and gropes under the counter for the box of random reward-type shit he keeps for just these occasions. "Here. Have a...pair of purple shoelaces."
"Appropriate," William says dryly. "Friday?"
"I'll hire someone off the street to watch the store if I have to," Gabe says. The next kid hands him an album by some new rapper who can't even rhyme and whose performing name sounds like some new strain of STD. Money is money, though, so he rings it up. "Just text me your flight."
...
Gabe's couch is narrow, so by the time they've found the bottom of their first bottle of tequila and have each fallen off of the couch and onto the floor approximately four times, they move to the bedroom.
"I think this might be our last album," William confesses. His hair is everywhere. Gabe keeps humming Dashboard Confessional, but he thinks William is too drunk to place it. And thus, he figures, too drunk to punch him in retaliation.
"Indefinite hiatus?" Gabe asks. His mattress is too old, and too soft, so they've somehow migrated to the center, both far too drunk to fight the stubborn drag of gravity. "Or, like. Calling it quits?"
"Like you did," William says. He puts his hand on Gabe's chest, watching his fingers trace the vee of Gabe's neckline. "Goodbye song and everything."
"You're not in trouble until you actually write it," Gabe says. He puts his hand on William's hip, sweeping his thumb up until it hits skin. Warm, sweaty, smooth William-skin. He's never lost that ounce or two of baby fat, no matter how little he ate or how maniacally he moved around onstage.
"Yeah," William says, skimming his fingertips over the base of Gabe's neck. "It goes a little like, uh-" he pauses, hums a few bars, and whispers out the first verse of something way more melancholy than anything he's written in at least three years.
"Carden?" Gabe asks.
"Some of it," William says. "I've been thinking."
"Dangerous pastime," Gabe says solemnly. He drags his fingers a little higher, because the bedroom is dark and cool and the only heat to speak of is William's proximity, and because he doesn't exactly miss touring, but he misses the easy physicality of it all. "About what?"
"Why didn't you open 44walk in Chicago?" William asks. He shifts closer, until all Gabe can really see of him are his eyes, large and dark and serious.
Gabe is very drunk, and it's been a very long time, and William is very close, so he mumbles, "Dunno," and scoots forward the inch or two left between them so he can push his mouth clumsily against William's. "I was already here," he says, thickly, with their mouths still pressed together.
"Okay," William says. He stays very still for a moment, long enough that Gabe thinks maybe he's up for a drunken mistake, too, but then he rolls away and pats ineffectually at his hair. "Okay. Water. I don't want to puke."
...
In the morning, after Gabe wakes up half-sprawled on William, and after he lies very still and encourages his stomach to retain its contents, he stumbles into his kitchen and presses the little green button on his old coffee maker.
His kitchen is very small, and it's getting late enough in the year that the tiles are sharply cold against his bare feet. He'll have to wear socks, soon, until he can feel the cold through those, and then he'll have to surrender and start turning on his heater at night.
The cupboards are equally cool when he rests his forehead against one of them and listens to his coffee maker reluctantly start percolating.
"You've always been a bad influence," William mutters. He trudges in-he's wearing socks, Gabe can hear the cotton making slippery noises against the tile-and presses himself to Gabe's back, wrapping his arms around Gabe's waist and yawning into his shoulder blade. "I thought you'd settled down."
"I had." He hasn't opened his eyes for long minutes, but he can tell by the mellow drip of coffee that it's about halfway done. "I blame you for this. You and your rock 'n' roll lifestyle."
"Taught me everything I know," William mumbles. He yawns again, and drags his mouth over Gabe's shoulder blade, leaving a slick, cooler stripe of wet.
"So hey," Gabe says. He staggers more upright and turns, jostling William as little as possible so he can lean again, against Gabe's chest this time. "What you said last night?"
"Sorry," William mumbles. His forehead is against Gabe's collarbone, and his hair is all fucked up, and he smells like mint and sick, like maybe he did throw up. "I was wrong. You were totally the hottest Cobra."
"The other thing," Gabe says. William's ear is close and peeking out from his hair, and Gabe considers biting it, but in the long run, moving his head that much is just asking for a migraine. "About the new album."
William doesn't answer, at first; the only noise comes the dripdripplink of the coffee maker and the traffic outside and the faint hum of Gabe's refrigerator.
"Nothing's final," Gabe says, when no fewer than six cabs have honked their way past his window and William still hasn't said anything. "You guys could record the album, see you how feel. Try new things."
"Coffee's done," William says. He slowly straightens, and wipes absently at the little spot of spit left on Gabe's chest. "No major life decisions before coffee."
...
William doesn't sleep on the couch. He's too tall, for one thing, and the couch is too far from the bedroom for them to curl up, not quite touching, and talk too late into the night about old memories they can't agree on.
He lets William sleep later in the mornings, of course, climbs carefully out of bed and washes his face in the sink, makes coffee quietly, and spends a full twenty seconds closing the front door so it won't squeak and wake him up.
Gabe remembers coming off tour and wanting nothing more than to sleep until dusk every day; his life is just different now.
He gets one of his part-time college kids to open the store on William's last day, though, so they can sleep until mid-morning. He carries William's guitar down, staying a few steps behind on the stairs so William can kick his suitcase down them. "Not enough sleep," William grumbles. He almost topples, but Gabe gets a hand on his shoulder and steadies him just in time. "I could reschedule my flight."
"Carden would kill me," Gabe says easily. "He texted me yesterday with a list of ways I might die if you weren't in the studio tomorrow morning."
They take a cab to the airport, and William spends most of the ride with his head on Gabe's shoulder and his hands limply stacked on Gabe's thigh. William smells like Gabe's favorite detergent, and the last of the hazelnut coffee creamer from the fridge, and he's very still even though his eyes are open.
Gabe is trying very hard not to think about his earlier failed attempt to kiss him. "Everything's okay," he says, and covers William's stacked hands with one of his own. "Band or no band, everything will be okay."
"I've been thinking about trying new things," William says. He blinks, which is as much as he's moved in the eleven blocks since Gabe's apartment.
"New things can be good," Gabe says agreeably. He drags his thumb over William's knuckles and nuzzles at his hair. "Unless by 'new things' you mean 'one-man white-boy rap act,' in which case I will have to stop you for the good of all mankind."
Instead of answering, William tips his head up and kisses Gabe's jaw. Instead of laughing it off, Gabe tips his face down more and opens his mouth a little, so that when William's mouth drags against his own, he can lick out and catch William's bottom lip. "New things," William mumbles, and shifts higher, so Gabe can slide his hand into William's hair, so William is close enough to unbalanced that his breath is unconsciously labored, so that they can tilt their heads a little and kiss hesitantly, breathing too hard, pausing too often to make sure it's still okay.
It's not that new, as far as new things go, but it's new enough. They've kissed before, but usually for show, and once or twice maybe just because the tequila told them to.
It's never been like this, though. Gabe is a different kind of guy now, and this is a different kind of kiss, he thinks. The others had always been coming from somewhere, but this one feels like it's going somewhere, maybe, which is a weird enough thing that Gabe stops worrying William's bottom lip between his teeth and pulls back.
He leaves his hand tangled up in William's hair, though, and kisses the corner of his mouth. "I'll be your rebound band," he says, still too close, enough that he can taste his toothpaste on William's breath. "I have this recording studio, see."
"We'll have to use stage names," William says solemnly. "If we want to stay incognito."
"Washed-up undercover rock star indie duo," Gabe agrees. He brushes their mouths together again, slowly, and hums when William's eyelids fall shut. "Eugene and Eduardo."
"E-squared," William says. "We're moving awfully slowly."
Gabe blinks out the window at the rows of buildings going sedately by. Traffic is a bitch, for some reason, and their cab driver is doing the smug finger-drum against the steering wheel that means he's pleased with the escalating fare, but Gabe's not sure if that's what he's really talking about when he answers. "We'll get there," he says, and tightens his fingers in William's hair until he leans in close again.
Author: adellyna
Pairing: Bill/Gabe
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4000
Disclaimer: Fiction
Summary: Opening a record store when most cars come standard with a jack to plug an iPod in is probably stupid, but everyone said basing a band off a drug-fueled hallucination was stupid, too, and those were some of the best years of his life.
Author's Notes: This is Secret Solstice fic for airgiodslv, who dragged me into bandom with pictures of William Beckett, and who continues to make it a wonderful place to be. I love your faaaaace, Jen. ♥♥♥ Happy Solstice, bb! ♥ Much thanks to gobsmackit for her wonderful beta services and for her general awesomeness. Title and cut text shamelessly stolen from Jack's Mannequin.
It ends in the way these things always do: a final show, a far-from-final party, a few hugs that go on too long, and goodbyes said in voices just a little too tight. Gabe is thirty-five. He's been in bands for as long as he can remember, from the first time he banged a wooden spoon against a pot while his brother jumped up and down on a warped old cookie sheet, to this, to Cobra Starship, six albums and more tours than he can count under their belts.
He's not old, but he is too old for the road. His knees hurt all the time (too much crawling across the stage to an ever younger audience) and his voice is different, raspier, like he's been smoking for decades instead of just singing. He kept a heating pad rolled up under his pillow for the last three tours; it was the only thing that would keep his spine from hunching up in protest.
They talk about it for approximately forever first. They do a sixth and final album, and they write a goodbye song, and they record it last, put it last on the album, play it last at every show of the last tour.
Afterward, Ryland goes back to acting, Suarez spends hours in the kitchen trying to convince his kid to like mushrooms, Victoria follows Patrick around his latest set, and Nate starts a new band with that one Alex kid left from The Cab who's still hanging around. Gabe tries writing, but he doesn't seem to have anything left to say, really, and the only shit he can think of has been said so many times already, it hardly seems worth the effort.
Without anything left to say, he decides he might as well sell something, and since what he knows is music...
Opening a record store when most cars come standard with a jack to plug an iPod in is probably stupid, but everyone said basing a band off a drug-fueled hallucination was stupid, too, and those were some of the best years of his life. He rents a little space in SoHo, rejects all of Pete's outlandish name suggestions, spends three months wading through all the complexities of turning an empty space into a fully-stocked retail location, and opens 44walk with more cash sunk into it than even the most generous estimates project he'll make in the first six months.
"You have to have a grand opening," Pete insists, his voice thick with fuzz and static, some glitch of their connection making him sound as far away as he actually is. "Like, grand, bro. Saporta-style."
"You can send a band," Gabe says. "One of your little pet projects. Someone small enough to think my counter can double as a stage."
What Pete does is get everyone he can to show up and do an acoustic set. He and Patrick come out and do five songs by request, William clambers up next to the cash register and does his latest moderately-successful, lyrically-gorgeous single by himself, with just an acoustic guitar to accompany him. Kanye happens to be in town, so Pete sends a cab for him and talks him into climbing up on the counter and doing "Careless Whisper" as a duet with Patrick. Pete has some baby band making the YouTube video rounds, and they come, too, but they're confused when they get there.
"Where's the, um, stage?" the singer asks, turning in place, searching the walls like he could possibly spot an outlet for his amp in between the packed-in bodies.
"Counter," Pete says cheerfully, pushing an acoustic into the bassist's hands and shoving them towards the narrow space. "We're doing this guerrilla-style."
They sell out of the expected records within the hour, but Pete keeps texting him with the litany of unrelated albums he's suggesting kids buy, and then signing: dark side of the moon, purple, in utero, revolver, stripped. Gabe sells a lot more albums in that one night than he expected to sell all month, basically, and later, once the mass of kids has simmered down to a trickle of exhausted twenty-somethings clutching their autographed gear to their chests and waiting patiently for someone to check them out, he retreats to the faded couch in the cellar storage area and kicks his feet up on the cooler currently serving as a coffee table.
"I'm surprised," William says, curling his legs under him and sipping from his beer bottle. "I thought you'd name it Cobra Starshop or something."
"Or Midtown Records?" Gabe asks. He tips his head back against the sofa and rolls it to the side so he can watch William. "Nah. Using the address was more practical."
"I saw Ryland," William says. He takes another sip and offers the rest of the bottle to Gabe. "You guys could've done a song or two."
"We had a last show," Gabe says, shrugging. He takes the beer, though, and drinks half of it in one gulp. He's getting old enough that the beer goes straight to his gut instead of straight to his head. "I want to leave it at that, you know? I just want to sell some kids some CDs to scratch up."
William says, "Yeah," and tips his head against the couch, too. He doesn't get another beer, and there's not nearly enough light in the cellar to see clearly, but he left the door open, and they can still hear the weary chatter of lingering customers.
"We had a good run," Gabe says, when the silence has stretched long enough that he thinks anything he says next will sound profound. "And Victoria couldn't come. It would be weird without everyone."
"Yeah," William says again. Upstairs, someone laughs too loudly, but William just slides sideways on the couch until his head is on Gabe's shoulder. They've been apart too long; Gabe doesn't recognize the smell of William's shampoo anymore, and the shirt he's wearing is battered but entirely unfamiliar.
...
Retail means spending his days in a mostly-empty store, on a stool behind the counter, flipping through the newest AP and, when he's feeling productive, the textbook for the business class he's taking. He has a catalogue of music equipment, too, and Pete keeps promising that if he puts a studio in the cellar, he'll send every aspiring musician he knows to Gabe to record a demo.
It also means that he talks to William more. Something about knowing Gabe is right there, landlocked next to a land-line, means William is helplessly compelled to call him every day. It's practically a routine by now: nine in the morning, Starbucks and the New York Times; ten in the morning, direct some tourist to the closest subway station; eleven in the morning, answer the phone.
"Music and shit," Gabe says, pinning the phone between his ear and his shoulder.
"My world is upside-down," William says. He does not sound particularly affronted about this.
"That must be unsettling," Gabe says calmly. "How much did you drink last night?"
"Adam Siska has impregnated a woman," William says. "Upside-down."
"He did it upside-down?" Gabe asks. "That sounds interesting. Did he take pictures?"
"What am I doing with my life?" William says, humming. Now he sounds a little affronted. "I am facilitating a world where young, impressionable boys can impregnate women."
"He's twenty-six," Gabe says, and flips to the next page in his textbook. "Answer the question, Bill."
"A lot," William says. "We celebrated."
"I figured. Give him my congratulations, yeah?"
"Adam," William says. There's a rustle, the particular sound of William's phone sliding over his stubble, and a muffled thump. "Gabe says congratulations."
Gabe tugs his catalogue over his textbook and doodles in the corner while William, muffled and hung-over, argues over whether or not anyone actually congratulated Adam last night. "It was implied," he hears William say. "It was implied in the many shots I bought you."
"Shots count," Gabe says, idly, and ponders the price of soundproofing part of the cellar for recording vocals. "Tell him if I was there, I'd just pour tequila down his throat and assume he got the message."
...
He puts in a recording studio-despite the fact that it costs him an arm and a fucking leg and maybe his left testicle, too-and is promptly buried under a deluge of high school kids with a dream, and a few girls who just want to get their Britney on.
Most of them are absolute shit, of course, but he likes it anyway. His life is quieter these days, and he likes their enthusiasm. He even likes the way half of the bands are more into making music than making music. He likes that they dress up and drag their attitudes down into his rough cellar, with its dark navy walls and its battered orange couch.
"Can you imagine?" William says, his head on Gabe's shoulder, his feet on the low bench that serves as a coffee table, his eyes narrowed at the gaggle of nouveau-punks pressing buttons and fucking off the melody to stand out. "If we'd had a place like this when we were kids?"
"We weren't kids together," Gabe points out. He tilts his head so his cheek is against the top of William's head. William has gone back to the same shampoo Gabe remembers from years ago; it's reassuring, knowing that the unfamiliarness of it at his opening was an aberration. "You smell good."
"Can you imagine?" William says again, turning his face in a little so he can rub his nose against Gabe's shirt. "If we were kids together?"
"We would've had a band," Gabe says. He picks up a few strands of William's hair and rubs them between his fingers idly. "I would've let you sing."
"What's it like?" William asks. "Off the road? The store, like this?"
Gabe's not really sure how to answer that. All of the things he wants to say, he thinks they'll sound bad. It's lonely, a little. He's spent so many years surrounded by so many people, and now sometimes he goes whole days without seeing enough people to put together a single band. It's quiet, too, and he finds himself moving slower. There's less rush, he never has to get somewhere hundreds of miles away in dauntingly few hours; it could be weird, but it's nice. When he goes to Starbucks now, the staff all remember his regular order. He knows that his postman builds birdhouses for his grand-kids, and he knows that the woman who just opened the bath and frilly-shit shop on the corner got divorced six months ago.
Of course, there's the studio, and the bands that come in for that. There are also the fans who still come in and buy shit; two kinds, for the most part: the ones who admit it, and the ones who act like they had no idea he ran this record shop. Gabe gets a bunch of "I'm looking for this album? Save the World, Lose the Girl?", which is exactly as convincing as it seems like it would be.
"It's good," he says, instead of any of that. "I keep discovering bands. I'm going to be Pete Wentz when I grow up."
"I think Pete's going to be Pete Wentz when he grows up," William says. Gabe wraps the strand of hair he's claimed around his knuckles, and watches the kids across the room high-five each other with more enthusiasm than they'd played their instruments.
"You want to write something?" he asks, giving William's hair a last tug and letting it drop. "For the band that never was?"
They record some indie-type shit that neither of them could ever claim publicly, all acoustic, with Gabe singing and William humming softly in the background and chiming in as low as he can in harmony. Later, Gabe listens to it five or six times in his kitchen, on his laptop, with his take-out containers stacked high next to him, and he thinks it's fitting. It works with the new him. It's quiet.
...
Some seventeen-year-old girl wanders into his shop one day and browses nervously for half an hour before she works up the nerve to approach him. He's thinking she's going to name-drop Cobra Starship or something, ask if he's that Gabe, but instead she tucks her hair behind her ear in a classic William twitch and says, "I heard you have a studio?"
Days later, when William calls from Milwaukee or some shit, Gabe says, "I met this girl."
William pauses. "A girl?" he says carefully. "Like, uh, a girl?"
"Like she came in," Gabe says, talking faster than he has in months. "For the studio. And she can sing, bro. It's like...talent. It's like talent, you know?"
"That's awesome," William says. "Is she recording?"
"Yeah," Gabe says. His counter is clear of textbooks and catalogues and magazines for once. He just has a notebook today. "She can't write for shit. I'm helping her."
"Awesome," William says again. He sounds farther away than the Midwest, though. "Is she, like-"
"Amazing," Gabe supplies. "Like, it reminds me of the first time I heard you sing. Same shitty lyrics, too."
"Fuck you," William says. "I gotta go. Carden's attacking me with a camera."
...
Gabe writes a lot of lyrics, backs her up on the guitar while she records and plays the keyboard, and once they've cut a few tracks, he sends them to William.
"She sounds young," William says, when he calls. "And you didn't make her say fuck at all. What's that about?"
"She's seventeen," Gabe says. He has a bunch of kids lined up, but William hasn't called for a few days, so fuck it. He can ring shit up and talk, too. "She loves Jesus and unicorns or something, I don't know. She'll have to corrupt herself. I'm too old to do it for her, they could take me to jail just for thinking about it."
"I might visit," William says. "I have a week."
"I have a couch," Gabe says, and gives the kid buying the old *NSYNC album a thumbs-up. "Timberlake is a god," he tells the kid, and gropes under the counter for the box of random reward-type shit he keeps for just these occasions. "Here. Have a...pair of purple shoelaces."
"Appropriate," William says dryly. "Friday?"
"I'll hire someone off the street to watch the store if I have to," Gabe says. The next kid hands him an album by some new rapper who can't even rhyme and whose performing name sounds like some new strain of STD. Money is money, though, so he rings it up. "Just text me your flight."
...
Gabe's couch is narrow, so by the time they've found the bottom of their first bottle of tequila and have each fallen off of the couch and onto the floor approximately four times, they move to the bedroom.
"I think this might be our last album," William confesses. His hair is everywhere. Gabe keeps humming Dashboard Confessional, but he thinks William is too drunk to place it. And thus, he figures, too drunk to punch him in retaliation.
"Indefinite hiatus?" Gabe asks. His mattress is too old, and too soft, so they've somehow migrated to the center, both far too drunk to fight the stubborn drag of gravity. "Or, like. Calling it quits?"
"Like you did," William says. He puts his hand on Gabe's chest, watching his fingers trace the vee of Gabe's neckline. "Goodbye song and everything."
"You're not in trouble until you actually write it," Gabe says. He puts his hand on William's hip, sweeping his thumb up until it hits skin. Warm, sweaty, smooth William-skin. He's never lost that ounce or two of baby fat, no matter how little he ate or how maniacally he moved around onstage.
"Yeah," William says, skimming his fingertips over the base of Gabe's neck. "It goes a little like, uh-" he pauses, hums a few bars, and whispers out the first verse of something way more melancholy than anything he's written in at least three years.
"Carden?" Gabe asks.
"Some of it," William says. "I've been thinking."
"Dangerous pastime," Gabe says solemnly. He drags his fingers a little higher, because the bedroom is dark and cool and the only heat to speak of is William's proximity, and because he doesn't exactly miss touring, but he misses the easy physicality of it all. "About what?"
"Why didn't you open 44walk in Chicago?" William asks. He shifts closer, until all Gabe can really see of him are his eyes, large and dark and serious.
Gabe is very drunk, and it's been a very long time, and William is very close, so he mumbles, "Dunno," and scoots forward the inch or two left between them so he can push his mouth clumsily against William's. "I was already here," he says, thickly, with their mouths still pressed together.
"Okay," William says. He stays very still for a moment, long enough that Gabe thinks maybe he's up for a drunken mistake, too, but then he rolls away and pats ineffectually at his hair. "Okay. Water. I don't want to puke."
...
In the morning, after Gabe wakes up half-sprawled on William, and after he lies very still and encourages his stomach to retain its contents, he stumbles into his kitchen and presses the little green button on his old coffee maker.
His kitchen is very small, and it's getting late enough in the year that the tiles are sharply cold against his bare feet. He'll have to wear socks, soon, until he can feel the cold through those, and then he'll have to surrender and start turning on his heater at night.
The cupboards are equally cool when he rests his forehead against one of them and listens to his coffee maker reluctantly start percolating.
"You've always been a bad influence," William mutters. He trudges in-he's wearing socks, Gabe can hear the cotton making slippery noises against the tile-and presses himself to Gabe's back, wrapping his arms around Gabe's waist and yawning into his shoulder blade. "I thought you'd settled down."
"I had." He hasn't opened his eyes for long minutes, but he can tell by the mellow drip of coffee that it's about halfway done. "I blame you for this. You and your rock 'n' roll lifestyle."
"Taught me everything I know," William mumbles. He yawns again, and drags his mouth over Gabe's shoulder blade, leaving a slick, cooler stripe of wet.
"So hey," Gabe says. He staggers more upright and turns, jostling William as little as possible so he can lean again, against Gabe's chest this time. "What you said last night?"
"Sorry," William mumbles. His forehead is against Gabe's collarbone, and his hair is all fucked up, and he smells like mint and sick, like maybe he did throw up. "I was wrong. You were totally the hottest Cobra."
"The other thing," Gabe says. William's ear is close and peeking out from his hair, and Gabe considers biting it, but in the long run, moving his head that much is just asking for a migraine. "About the new album."
William doesn't answer, at first; the only noise comes the dripdripplink of the coffee maker and the traffic outside and the faint hum of Gabe's refrigerator.
"Nothing's final," Gabe says, when no fewer than six cabs have honked their way past his window and William still hasn't said anything. "You guys could record the album, see you how feel. Try new things."
"Coffee's done," William says. He slowly straightens, and wipes absently at the little spot of spit left on Gabe's chest. "No major life decisions before coffee."
...
William doesn't sleep on the couch. He's too tall, for one thing, and the couch is too far from the bedroom for them to curl up, not quite touching, and talk too late into the night about old memories they can't agree on.
He lets William sleep later in the mornings, of course, climbs carefully out of bed and washes his face in the sink, makes coffee quietly, and spends a full twenty seconds closing the front door so it won't squeak and wake him up.
Gabe remembers coming off tour and wanting nothing more than to sleep until dusk every day; his life is just different now.
He gets one of his part-time college kids to open the store on William's last day, though, so they can sleep until mid-morning. He carries William's guitar down, staying a few steps behind on the stairs so William can kick his suitcase down them. "Not enough sleep," William grumbles. He almost topples, but Gabe gets a hand on his shoulder and steadies him just in time. "I could reschedule my flight."
"Carden would kill me," Gabe says easily. "He texted me yesterday with a list of ways I might die if you weren't in the studio tomorrow morning."
They take a cab to the airport, and William spends most of the ride with his head on Gabe's shoulder and his hands limply stacked on Gabe's thigh. William smells like Gabe's favorite detergent, and the last of the hazelnut coffee creamer from the fridge, and he's very still even though his eyes are open.
Gabe is trying very hard not to think about his earlier failed attempt to kiss him. "Everything's okay," he says, and covers William's stacked hands with one of his own. "Band or no band, everything will be okay."
"I've been thinking about trying new things," William says. He blinks, which is as much as he's moved in the eleven blocks since Gabe's apartment.
"New things can be good," Gabe says agreeably. He drags his thumb over William's knuckles and nuzzles at his hair. "Unless by 'new things' you mean 'one-man white-boy rap act,' in which case I will have to stop you for the good of all mankind."
Instead of answering, William tips his head up and kisses Gabe's jaw. Instead of laughing it off, Gabe tips his face down more and opens his mouth a little, so that when William's mouth drags against his own, he can lick out and catch William's bottom lip. "New things," William mumbles, and shifts higher, so Gabe can slide his hand into William's hair, so William is close enough to unbalanced that his breath is unconsciously labored, so that they can tilt their heads a little and kiss hesitantly, breathing too hard, pausing too often to make sure it's still okay.
It's not that new, as far as new things go, but it's new enough. They've kissed before, but usually for show, and once or twice maybe just because the tequila told them to.
It's never been like this, though. Gabe is a different kind of guy now, and this is a different kind of kiss, he thinks. The others had always been coming from somewhere, but this one feels like it's going somewhere, maybe, which is a weird enough thing that Gabe stops worrying William's bottom lip between his teeth and pulls back.
He leaves his hand tangled up in William's hair, though, and kisses the corner of his mouth. "I'll be your rebound band," he says, still too close, enough that he can taste his toothpaste on William's breath. "I have this recording studio, see."
"We'll have to use stage names," William says solemnly. "If we want to stay incognito."
"Washed-up undercover rock star indie duo," Gabe agrees. He brushes their mouths together again, slowly, and hums when William's eyelids fall shut. "Eugene and Eduardo."
"E-squared," William says. "We're moving awfully slowly."
Gabe blinks out the window at the rows of buildings going sedately by. Traffic is a bitch, for some reason, and their cab driver is doing the smug finger-drum against the steering wheel that means he's pleased with the escalating fare, but Gabe's not sure if that's what he's really talking about when he answers. "We'll get there," he says, and tightens his fingers in William's hair until he leans in close again.