More Self-Indulgent Bandom Future!Fic
Title: Snapshots From A Possible Future [9-13]
Author: tigs
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Don't know or own.
Author's Notes: Still so very self-indulgent. Many thanks to amy13 for reading these through and evenings of plot talking and general encouragement. Thanks, also, to fairestcat for letting me talk character at her a few times. Previous parts can be found here.
9. The Phone Call
Usually, Pete is the one to call. At least once a week, sometimes hitting the noon hour, with the excuse of making Patrick take a real break, or if he's in the mood to be fucking annoying, dialing Patrick at something like six in the morning, after Pete has had his coffee, and saying, 'Ha! Did I wake you?'
Mostly he calls late at night, though, between eleven and one, LA time, because for the most part, Patrick's around, and if he is, he always answers.
This time, Patrick calls Pete.
Wednesday evening, and he's home before eight, and Patrick maybe had plans to watch TV for the evening, some crime procedural maybe, or if all else failed, the still-enduring after all these years Law & Order reruns, but he finds himself curling up on his couch, the latest issue of People in his hand, Pete's name highlighted on his cell-phone screen.
Pete answers halfway through the second ring, almost crowing when he says, "What the fuck's up, man?"
Patrick starts to say, "Hello to you, too," but even as he does, Pete's saying, "Hey, hold on a sec, will you?" Then, more quietly, obviously speaking to other people in whatever room he's in: "Hey, dudes, I'm gonna take this. I'll catch you later, a'right?" Patrick hears hand-slapping, then Pete's chin scraping over the mouthpiece, and then Pete's back.
"Hi," he says, and it's suddenly quieter, as if he's shut a door. Maybe he has, Patrick thinks. Maybe he's still at the DecayDance offices, despite the fact that it's ten o'clock there.
This is the thing: Pete gives Patrick crap about staying at the studio for hours on end, but Patrick knows that Pete might very well put in longer hours than any of the rest of them. It may look like tabloid-fodder to the rest of the world-travel and parties and smiling for the paparazzi with a friend or four at his side-but there's a reason DecayDance is still around.
There's a reason Pete's bands very rarely get signed away from him.
"What's going on?" Pete asks. Through the phone, Patrick hears the creak of a chair leaning back, then a thumping noise that's maybe feet coming to rest on a desk and yeah, definitely still at the office.
Patrick is silent for a moment. He could just say he was bored, he knows, wasting time before… well, something. Possibly a nine o'clock TV show, or a trip out for dinner with some other music person. Or he could say that he was calling to regale Pete with the latest Last Bastion of Sanity story-because seriously, the fun just never stops with those four-but he's silent maybe a moment too long, because Pete says, "Patrick?" and they may be three-quarters of the fucking country away from each other right now and they might not have seen each other for longer than a weekend at a time in six months, but Pete can still read him better than anyone else in the whole fucking world.
It's really fucking annoying sometimes.
"Patrick," Pete says again, this time sort of half-sighed, and so Patrick says, "I made People Magazine's Star Tracks this week. Did you see?"
It's obviously not what Pete's expecting him to say, and maybe he's just humoring Patrick, or maybe he just trusts that Patrick will get to the point eventually, because Pete says, "Yeah, I saw. I found it taped to my door when I came in this morning. I'm thinking Dirty's the guy to blame. And just so you know: I'm not slipping in my best friend duties here. I was totally going to give you all sorts of shit about it tomorrow, I just wanted to wait a day, to lull you into a false sense of security, so you'd think I maybe hadn't heard." Pete pauses for a moment, then continues. "What was the caption again? Wait, here, let me find it."
Patrick, of course, could simply open his magazine and read it to Pete, but he hears Pete moving papers, a soft "ah, shit," then an "a-ha!" A moment later, Pete is back. "Here we go. 'Stars, they're just like us.'" He makes a sort of sniffling noise, and Patrick can almost picture him wiping a tear away. "They go to concerts! Exclamation point!"
"Fuck the exclamation point," Patrick growls, but Pete just laughs.
"Let's see. It says, 'Thursday, September 21st-' On a school night, Patrick? I'm ashamed of you. 'Music producer Patrick Stump made an appearance at hot-spot The Gateway in the company of Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith, formerly of Panic at the Disco, to watch the Aqua Angel show.' And there you and Ross and Smith are, all posed and smiling for the camera. Should I be feeling jealous, dude? Am I being replaced as your one true sidekick in gossip magazine fame?"
"Oh, fuck off," Patrick says, but he's laughing, too. "It's not my fault that the kids' manager decided it could only help his clients if he leaked the picture to the press." Because that's what the picture was, a shot of Patrick, Ryan, Spencer, and the band in the venue's closet of a green room, the product of the lead singer's, 'hey, would you guys mind…?'
"Well, he's a smart man," Pete says.
There's a pause then, and Patrick almost expects Pete to fill it with some joke at Patrick's expense. Something to make him say 'fuck off' again, laugh, distract him into stories about Ryan and Spencer and Pete's groups and Patrick's latest collaborations, but Pete's a smart man, too. He knows there's a reason Patrick called.
He knows Patrick will eventually clue him in as to why that is.
"I'm going back down to Riverside next week," Patrick says. "For Frank and Jaima's Grand Opening Celebration, or whatever they're calling it. The 'we survived the first week of business and aren't dead and/or bankrupt yet' celebration? Something like that."
"Uh huh?" Pete says, thoughtful enough that Patrick's pretty sure Pete realizes it wasn't a complete non-sequitur, that his brain is already working. Sixteen years of friendship, after all, and Pete's pretty good at following where Patrick's train of thought goes and ending up in the same location. "That should be fun. I think Mikey said that he and Alicia were planning on flying out for it."
"Yeah, yeah they are," Patrick says. "And Gerard's coming down from Portland and Bob apparently has that night off-"
"…and it seems that you know more about the lives of the My Chem folk than I do," Pete says. "I'm sort of feeling out of the loop here, dude." He's laughing, though, a happy sound.
"Hey, you try living within driving distance of Frank Iero and not know what's going on with his band."
Granted, Patrick's only talked to Frank once since their dinner, a confirmation that he actually is going to attend the Grand Opening, and yeah, Ray'll be there, too, because he's the fucking man, and Mikey and Alica were still trying to decide whether or not to leave the cats in the care of the high school kid next door or whether to hire a professional pet sitter, and Bob's coming in that afternoon and leaving late-late that night, because he, also, is the fucking man, and-
"Yeah," Pete says. "Yeah, I'm sure."
There's silence then; Patrick can hear Pete breathing, a steady, even sound, and it's comfortable, still as familiar to Patrick's ears as the sound of his own breath, and if he closes his eyes, it reminds him of nights spent on tour busses, like Pete's only a few feet away, instead of thousands of miles.
"So I was talking to Joe the other night," Pete finally says, understanding in his voice, and Patrick knows it's not a non-sequitur either. "And do you remember that time in Albuquerque, what, six years ago? With the flame thrower?"
Patrick laughs, because yeah he remembers and also flame thrower and he settles back against the couch cushion, closing his eyes again, picturing it, and as Pete keeps talking, he doesn't even really register the People Magazine slipping from his fingers and falling to the floor.
10. The Grand Opening
"So," Patrick says, fifteen minutes into the party, standing between a mannequin in a gold lamé hoodie, a platter of crackers surrounding a bowl of artichoke dip, and Mikey Way. "I feel I should ask: did you end up leaving the cats with the high school kid next door or the professional cat sitter?"
Mikey stares at him for a moment, blinking once, then again, then asks, "Pete?"
"Frank, actually," Patrick says. "He called to double-check I'd be able to come tonight, then spent the next half hour filling me in on your cats and Bob's car troubles and how Gerard was feeling as if his publisher was just not comprehending his artistic vision. It was an enlightening conversation."
Mikey laughs at that, high-pitched and reedy. "I'm surprised you didn't hang up on him. If I'd been in your shoes, I probably would have. Preferably before he started discussing my pet-sitting options."
"Actually," Patrick says, "he led with that. Probably because when we had dinner a few weeks ago, I started talking about Andy's refusal to leave Beast behind. Ever." At Mikey's raised eyebrow, Patrick says, "Beast is his Chihuahua. But it's not that big an issue, because his guitar player is pretty fucking attached to his own two teacup poodles. So, you know, when they tour, they plan for pets."
Mikey ducks his head, possibly to hide his smile-although why, Patrick doesn't know; he laughs pretty much every time he thinks of Beast in his little studded Clandestine collar-then they both turn back out to face the sales floor.
Most of the display racks have been pushed away from the center of the room to give the group space to mingle, and there's a table with sparkling cider and beer and a bowl full of bright red punch off to the left. The food, obviously, is next to Patrick.
He reaches for another handful of chips, watching as Alica and Jamia walk the perimeter of the store, arms linked. Gerard and Ray and Karen are standing near the punch, while Bob is sprawled out in one of the winged chairs that's scattered around the sales floor. He's got his head tipped back, eyes closed.
"I give it thirty seconds before Frank pounces," Mikey says, his gaze apparently following Patrick's. He raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction, an almost challenge, and Patrick nods, accepting.
It takes twenty. One second people are standing around talking, then next Frank is letting out a whoop, vaulting around the back of the chair, and landing in Bob's lap. He's practically cackling with laughter, which only increases when Bob says, "Fuck off, Iero," and dumps him on the floor.
"Help!" Frank says, hooking a hand around Bob's calf, then ducking out of the way of Bob's half-hearted kick. "He's abusing me! Help!"
"Uh huh," Gerard says, before turning back to Karen, and Patrick sees that off to the side of the room, Jamia's just shaking her head fondly.
"Somebody!" Frank says, and Patrick watches as Bob extends a hand, as if to help Frank up, then stands himself, drawing his hand out of reach, and stepping over Frank to get to the drink table.
"Be glad you weren't ever trapped on a bus with us for longer than an afternoon," Mikey says. "This was pretty much an hourly part of the Frank show. "
Patrick nods. He remembers. But also-
"I lived with Pete for pretty much a decade," he says. "And Joe. And Andy. I know how this goes."
The door to the shop opens again, then, letting in two people that Patrick doesn't know, but everyone else seems to, because there are hugs and arm punches and Ray saying things like, "Fuck, man, it's fucking awesome to see you! How the hell have you been? Man, look at you!"
"Cortez," Mikey says by way of explanation. "And Josh, one of our other techs. A lot of people have made their way out to LA over the years, you know?"
"Some even stay," Patrick says, and Mikey nods.
Patrick thinks maybe they're both thinking of Pete at the end of Fall Out Boy, with his plans, his house in Santa Monica, his cars, his nights of schmoozing at the hotspots, making the covers of gossip magazines just as frequently as ever. A year later, though, he showed up on Patrick's stoop, fresh from the airport, from a few days back home, and the first words out of his mouth were, "So, I, uh. I sort of put in an offer on this place just outside of Chicago yesterday…"
"Like you," Mikey says, breaking Patrick's train of thought, and Patrick shrugs his shoulders. "Like me."
More people show up then, two girls and a guy, and this time Mikey stands up a little straighter. Patrick sees Alicia already heading towards the door and Mikey says, "Hey, if you'll excuse me, I want to go say hi to-" and Patrick says, "Sure, yeah, of course. I need to go say hi to Gerard anyway."
*
He finishes the night sitting on the floor next to Bob's chair, head leaning back against one of the display cases. He's got an empty glass in his hand, a plate with three crackers on it on his knee, and he thinks he should be starting to drag, because it's Sunday, because he was at the studio for four hours that afternoon and he still has an hour and a half drive to get back home.
Bob is playing the air drums, though, complete with vocal sound effects, and Frank is standing in front of them, head banging while Gerard screams lyrics to some song Patrick's never heard before. They're all laughing, though, Patrick, too, and there's a shout of triumph when they're done. It just seems to be a par-for-the-course moment in My Chemical Romance time, though, because then Gerard turns back to Jamia and Frank points out one of the t-shirts on the wall to Ray, and Bob says, "This is pretty awesome, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Patrick says, unsure whether he means the gathering or the store or something else entirely, but whatever it is, he agrees. "It is."
"It's been a year since we were all together like this in one place, but even then Cortez wasn't there, Josh wasn't there. It's been fucking years since everyone- And, I mean, you wouldn't think it, right, what with Ray and Frank in New Jersey and Mikey in New York and Gerard's mom always on his case to come home, you know? But Frank moves out here, and suddenly we all make the time."
"That's how it happens," Patrick says. "That's how it is." Except it's really not for him, them, because Pete and Joe and Andy are all in Chicago still-still see each other all the fucking time, he knows. In their group he's the only one that needs to make any sort of effort at all for the four of them to get together.
There's a moment of silence then, not quite uncomfortable, before Patrick says, "So I drove past our old apartment the other day, and you know? Someone actually had a cactus out on the porch."
"Ha, really?" Bob asks, and Patrick says, "Yeah, it was fucking gigantic. Like, taller than I am, with this fucking hideous pink flower sprouting out the top of it, absolutely huge, right? Like, larger than my head."
To which Bob says, "So basically, they were copying our style. Except failing, since they went with real cacti rather than the ever-classy inflatable plastic."
"Exactly," Patrick says. "I mean, where's the fun in real? You can't punch them, 'cause they don't bounce back up at you, and also, you'd end up with a fist full of little needles. Which: ouch. And you actually need to water them-"
"Except Trohman watered ours," Bob says, and Patrick laughs.
"Oh, fuck, I forgot about that. He was so fucking high that day."
Bob shakes his head, then grunts a little as Gerard sits down on the arm of his chair, foot kicking lightly at Bob's ankle.
"Who?" he asks, head tilted slightly to the side, and he's closer to 41 now than 40, but he still looks young to Patrick, face round, hair still jet black.
"Trohman," Bob says. "Joe. He watered our plastic cacti at that Fourth of July picnic we had, remember? Or tried to? But he was using a hose and had the pressure turned up high enough that it knocked the thing off our balcony? And he ended up spraying that model who lived next door instead because he didn't think to lower the damn thing?"
"Joe," Gerard says fondly, and Patrick says, "Yeah, Joe. I'll have to remember to tell that story to his girls when they're older. He plays at being respectable now, but they'll have to know the truth eventually."
"Most of us play at being respectable," Gerard says. "Some of us even mostly succeed."
"And some of us don't even try," Frank says, flopping down onto the ground in front of Bob and Patrick. Ray's pulling over another chair now, and it's then that Patrick realizes that pretty much everyone else has gone: Matt Cortez and the other tech, the rest of Frank and Jamia's friends. It's just him and the guys and, well, Jamia and Alica and Karen, and-
Mikey and Alica join their circle, sharing a chair, and Jamia lies down so that her head is on Frank's stomach, and Karen sits on the arm of Ray's chair, and if Patrick doesn't think about it too hard, it could almost be a scene from eleven years before, all of them sprawled out in Patrick and Bob's apartment, Joe and Andy and Pete out getting ice, just gone for a few minutes.
Except that Patrick knows they aren't.
Patrick starts when a foot kicks lightly at his thigh, and he looks across the circle to see Frank grinning at him. "Hey," he says, "no spacing out. The party's just getting started, dude."
Patrick opens his mouth to say, 'I wasn't', or possibly, 'I should really start thinking about going…' because he does have to be at work the next morning, but Gerard says, "Hell yeah. We haven't even started the 'Do you remember when?' part of the evening yet."
"Except Stump and I totally already did," Bob says. "We were recalling fond memories of inflatable cacti. You all are just lagging behind here."
"Well we'll have to catch up then," Gerard says, and for a moment, Patrick really wants to leave, because this is not his band, these are not his stories, but then Gerard is launching into a story that involves Mikey and Ray and a plastic reindeer and maybe, Patrick thinks, it's really not so different after all.
Especially when Mikey says, "Hey, Stump, didn't Pete have some sort of adventure with one of those lawn flamingos once upon a time? What was that all about?"
Patrick laughs. "Ha, yeah, yeah he did. But it was actually Andy that started that one."
"Andy?" Jamia asks, and Patrick nods, grinning. "See," he says, "we were driving through this little town in Indiana and this house on the outskirts had this, like, flock of pink plastic flamingos in their yard and-"
And by the end of the story, when Bob's picked up the narrative thread, telling some story from his latest tour that also involves flamingos, and possibly garden gnomes, Patrick's leaning back against the display case, relaxed. He looks across the circle and sees Frank grinning at him, completely happy, and yeah, Patrick thinks, really not so different at all.
11. The Words
Patrick smiles, just a little, when he checks his email the next morning and finds the message waiting in his inbox. It's flagged with an exclamation point-important!-because Pete always flags his emails that way. Even the forwards: pictures of dogs nursing tiger cubs and freaky cloud formations and the sort of dirty jokes that Patrick can't read at work, because, well, they're usually pretty fucking disgusting. Also because Amanda has some sort of weird dirty joke radar, and she'll inevitably read it over Patrick's shoulder and then for the next two days, she'll try telling it to anyone who will stand still for longer than ten seconds.
This isn't a forward, though, or a dirty joke. The subject line reads tomorrows are starting to taste like yesterdays and Patrick knows what he'll find inside: a few lines, paragraphs, pages of Pete's babbling, the long distance equivalent of the notebook pages that Pete used to give him.
It's no coincidence, he knows, that Pete sent this to him last night, while he was in Riverside, laughing at Frank's antics, Bob's dry jokes, Gerard's over-the-top theatrics. It's no coincidence he's getting the message this morning, when he's going off of five hours of sleep, when he can still almost hear the echo of laughter in his ears. Because Pete is Pete and always will be Pete, no matter that they're three-quarters of the way across the country from each other.
Patrick wouldn't have it any other way, though.
He wants to click, open it up, read-his mouse is already hovering over the link, ready-but he knows how easy it is for him to get lost in Pete's words, how he'll look up and it will be noon and Last Bastion will have been waiting for him in the studio for, oh, two hours at that point.
He's still tempted to say 'fuck it', though, and open the message up, might even do it, but then Amanda knocks on the door of his office, leans her head in, and says, "So, do we want to place bets on whether Last Bastion survived their weekend or not? I didn't see any mentions of inter-band homicide on the Rolling Stone website this morning, but still. It might not have made the morning papers…"
Patrick laughs as he closes his inbox, stands. He says, "Ha, yeah. Who knows, though, maybe they'll be on their best behavior, and, you know, speaking?"
Amanda arches one of her eyebrows, then tugs at one of her pigtails, looking overly confused. "Last Bastion of Sanity? On speaking terms? And what is this 'best behavior' that you speak of? I do not understand."
"Yeah," Patrick says as he makes his way around the desk. "That's just crazy talk, isn't it? It doesn't hurt to be optimistic, though."
Amanda giggles at that, stepping out into the hall. "There's optimistic, Stump, and then there's delusional. You don't want to be labeled as delusional, do you?"
With one last look back at his computer, Patrick shuts his door and turns towards Last Bastion's preferred studio.
"Yeah, yeah," he says. "I know."
*
Patrick resists opening the email until he gets back to his house that night, until he's got his takeout curry on a plate on his coffee table, silverware and napkins and a can of Pepsi there, too. He's also got his guitar on the couch cushion beside him, a notebook and pen at the ready. He is prepared.
Then he opens up his laptop.
Then he clicks on Pete's email.
He should just print it out right there, right then, he knows, but as valiantly as he resisted that morning, it's habit to start reading as soon as the words are in front of him. To try to understand what's going on in Pete's head at any given moment.
So he reads.
It's about six paragraphs worth of type, maybe a page in total: cracks in sidewalks; windows left open overnight, curtains blowing in the wind; roads changing from paved to dirt. Different thoughts, but all variations on a theme of friendship, distance stretching out, but the heart not growing any less fond, and Patrick wonders if this is what Pete was doing last night, while Patrick was sitting on Frank's floor, laughing at Bob's squeaky-voiced imitation of the lead singer of the band he's doing sound for.
He can picture Pete curled up on the couch in his DecayDance office, door closed, notebook balanced on his knees, pen caught between his teeth as he thought through what he wanted to say. Patrick can picture it, and wonders if Pete was picturing him at the Grand Opening party, feeling just as out of place as he ended up feeling a few times. If Pete knew how wrong moments of the night before felt, how there were times Patrick started looking around the room for Pete, Joe, Andy, before he remembered where exactly he was.
He wonders if right now, Pete's picturing Patrick sitting here like this, looking over Pete's words.
Patrick can almost picture Pete standing in front of him, shifting awkwardly, waiting for Patrick's reaction.
Except, if Pete really was there right now, he'd probably be on his way out the door, because as much as Patrick knows Pete trusts him to understand his words, Pete's rarely been able to stay silent enough for Patrick's liking during the first read-through.
'Are you at the part where-', Pete would ask, or, 'When I was writing that line, I was thinking about-' and Patrick would be forced to kick him out of the lounge or the hotel room or Patrick's car.
After the first read-through, though, on those rare occasions Pete was still around, Pete would usually leave on his own, because by the time Patrick finished the first reading, notes and chords and key changes would be starting to appear in his head, and he'd already be getting lost in the creative process. Sometimes, then, Pete would leave immediately, sometimes he'd stay for ten minutes, maybe half an hour; Patrick was never really sure because he rarely heard him go.
When Pete came back, though, an hour, two, three later, he'd say, 'So?', looking nervous, excited, and Patrick would strum a few chords, sing a line or two. Pete would always nod along with the beat, eyes shining, grin widening.
Pete may not be in LA, but his words are, and nothing's changed with this at least, because one read-through down and Patrick's already seeing fragments that are practically chorus-ready, two lines from paragraph two, one from paragraph six, and there's a rhythm to them already: solid enough that he can almost hear the music in his head.
He prints Pete's email off then, finally, picks his guitar up off of the couch beside him, and his fingers instinctively go to the strings, strumming lightly, echoing the chords in his head. Chord, chord, riff, and as the printer in the corner of the room whirrs, he pauses to jot the sequence down on the notebook beside him, not noticing as his curry slowly grows cold on the table in front of him.
12. The Visitor (II)
There's a host at the door, suit and tie, a bow of the head as he says, "If you'll follow me, gentlemen?" and Spencer motions for Patrick to go first, following the man's winding path through the tables. They end up at one to the far left of the stage, near the front, an older couple in evening dress to one side of them, a few kids to the other, dressed in t-shirts, barely looking old enough to even be sitting there.
Compared to them, Patrick doesn't feel so out of place in his sweater and jeans. He's here for three days of studio work with a solo artist, one song's worth of time, and that's what he packed for. Still, he glances over at Spencer and says, "You said this was a small place. You said it was pretty casual."
Spencer raises an eyebrow at him, pushing hair away from his forehead. "It is."
And yeah, okay, Patrick guesses that in the grand tradition of Las Vegas glitz, this probably is small and casual, what with there only being about 25 tables, maybe 60 people in the room.
"Still, though," he says, wiping his hands on his jeans, and Spencer rolls his eyes.
"This is Vegas," he says, like that explains it all, and maybe, Patrick thinks, it does.
Still, he's glad when the lights over the table area dim, at the same time brightening at the front of the room. From his vantage point, he can see girls hovering in the wings of the stage, mostly hidden from view by the curtains. They're wearing something akin to can-can outfits: bright red satin, black netting, feathers in their hair.
"Ladies and gentlemen," a familiar voice says, edged with laughter, a smirk, and then Brendon is there, walking onto the stage from the side that Patrick can't see. "Welcome, welcome! I think I can safely say, you all are in for a show tonight."
And he's wearing a top hat, tails. He's got a silver-handled cane in his hands and he twirls it as he walks the stage, and he grins almost wickedly when his dancers make their way out to join him. Patrick sneaks a glance at the older couple sitting beside them, wondering what they'll think of the girls' clothing, which looks even more risqué underneath the spotlights: corsets done up tight, cut low enough that they're showing a whole fuck load of skin, high-heeled boots over fish-net stocking covered legs that seem to stretch on forever.
The band starts up, a mix of brass and strings and electric vibes, reminiscent of Panic's first album, and Patrick had always thought that Ryan was the driving force behind most of their early showmanship, but maybe he was wrong. Or maybe Ryan was just able to tell, even back then, exactly what sort of showman Brendon was. He spares another glance back to Spencer, who's staring at the stage, an almost fond look on his face, before he turns his attention back to Brendon.
The girls are mostly dancing with each other, something akin to a waltz spliced together with high kicks, but Brendon's got one of them on each arm, and his eyes are so bright, his mouth spread into such a wide smile as he sings, Patrick can't help losing himself in the show.
*
A few members of the crowd are still lingering when Brendon finally makes it out to their table, dressed in his street clothes. He turns one of the chairs around, plopping down in it and resting his arms along the back, like this was Jon's bar, back in Chicago, not a dinner theatre with gold paint on the walls.
"Hi!" Brendon says, grin wide, and there's still sweat on his forehead, smudges of makeup around his lips and eyes. The girls are coming out the door from the back in groups of two or three, most of them making their way by Patrick and Spencer's table, laying hands on Brendon's shoulder, a few leaning down to kiss his cheek.
Brendon wiggles his eyebrows at Patrick the third time this happens and says in a stage whisper, "I fucking love my job. Seriously."
"He really does," Spencer says, nodding so solemnly that Patrick laughs.
"I keep telling Spence that he's welcome to get up on stage with me any night he wants," Brendon says, "but he keeps turning me down."
"Because I know you, Urie. I get up on stage with you, you'd talk the girls into getting me into the middle of a fucking can-can line or something, and believe me, that's the last thing any of us want."
Patrick watches as Brendon opens his mouth, but the denial that he's expecting to hear never comes. Instead, Brendon closes his mouth, then starts to open it again, but before he can speak, Spencer says, "See? I know you!" and Brendon says, "No, Spencer Smith, you don't. I wouldn't make you do the can-can. I was thinking something more along the lines of, of-"
"The can-can," Spencer says, and Brendon sighs, says, "Fine, yes, the can-can, but it's really not bad! The girls and I do it five nights a week!"
"And thus the reason I will never be joining you on stage," Spencer says. Then he turns to Patrick. "Be thankful Brendon was never in your band. Then you'd have to put up with things like this."
Brendon pouts, of course, almost batting his eyes in Spencer's direction, then Patrick's, undoubtedly trying to look adorable in the way they all became immune to a decade ago.
"You don't have a Pete in your band, though," Patrick says. "Believe me, the can-can is pretty fucking tame compared to some of the stuff he's tried to get me to do over the years. And no, I'm not going to go into details," he says when Brendon's eyes light up, pout miraculously disappearing. "I don't want to give you ideas."
"Please, please don't," Spencer says. "Ryan and Jon egg him on from a distance, but I'm the one who has to deal with him on a daily basis."
"And you know you'll miss me when you're gone," Brendon says, sighing deeply, and Patrick's nodding along before his brain truly registers what Brendon said. He says, "Wait, what?"
Spencer shrugs, an almost lackadaisical gesture, and leans back in his chair.
"He's going to be leaving me," Brendon says, and if it were five years ago, or maybe even three, Patrick is pretty sure that Brendon would have been up and out of his chair then, arms wrapped tightly around Spencer, holding on for dear life.
As it is, he's back to leaning his head on his arms again, and he actually does look sort of pathetic.
"I'm not leaving you," Spencer says. "I'm just going to be taking a small break from Vegas for a few weeks. In two months."
"Leaving me," Brendon repeats. "Leaving me," and Spencer actually leans forward to slap lightly at the side of Brendon's head. Brendon ducks out of the way, of course, giggling in that way he has. "Leaving, leaving!"
Spencer turns to Patrick and shakes his head, and Patrick nods in sympathy.
"One of my kids, from Sweet Midori, is already panicking about their next tour-it's their first national tour and they tried some new stuff on the album, and it's one thing to create in the studio, you know, and another to do it on stage every night. So, long story short, I said I'd come out to LA for a few weeks, give him some extra lessons, if he needed them."
"Also, Ryan's always trying to get him out there," Brendon says. "Because Ryan is trying to steal Spencer from me."
"Because Ryan is evil like that," Spencer says, tone serious, even as he raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction. "It is all part of his grand master plan, right?"
"Exactly," Brendon says. "Because that is a very Ryan Ross thing to do."
Patrick says, "You could be right. He did learn the business at the hands of Pete Wentz, after all."
Brendon sits up straight again. "See, Spence? Patrick knows! Patrick sees Ryan's plan for what it really is!"
Spencer, of course, just sighs, but Patrick and Brendon laugh in tune.
13. The Bass Line
Patrick's been in the studio for about half an hour, running the same five stanzas over and over again, moving a chord up a third here, down a fifth there, and he's concentrating: on the guitar that's balanced across his knees, on the strings beneath his fingers. He's focused deeply enough that he doesn't notice Adam standing in the doorway until he stops playing for longer than a beat. Until he hears a "Sounds good."
Patrick doesn't jump. He spent too many years living with Pete and Joe to be startled so easily, but he does blink at Adam once, twice, before he shakes his head and says, "Oh, yeah, hey." Then, "Thanks."
Adam ducks his head a little, running his fingers through his bangs, pushing them back along his scalp, before dropping his arms and crossing them over his chest. He's fidgeting a little, looking a little unsure as to what he's actually doing there, but he stands his ground, says, "Can I ask what it is?"
"Oh," Patrick says. "Just this song I'm, uh. Working on."
"Who for?" Adam asks, and Patrick can tell he's thinking about Last Bastion, or one of the other artists Patrick's been working with, so he starts shaking his head. "No one, it's not for anyone. It's just. For fun. This is just me… playing."
Now Adam grins, widely enough that Patrick is forced to ask, "What?"
"Nothing," Adam says, flipping one of his hands where it's pinned under his crossed arms. Then, after Patrick arches one of his eyebrows, maybe high enough that it disappears under the bill of his hat, "You know, most people, when they 'play', they record their song in fucking Garage Band, or something. You use a fully equipped studio and mixing board."
If Pete was here, Patrick thinks, he would have said something along the lines of, 'well, duh.' Patrick just shakes his head, though. Or starts to, anyway, before he grins and says, "Well, you know. I do fucking own the place. Might as well use it for my own purposes once in awhile, right?"
"Right," Adam says, and Patrick drops his gaze back to his fingers, strumming the last chord he'd played again, again, again, then he backs up two stanzas and moves forward from there, once, repeat, and when he opens his eyes again-although he doesn't remember closing them-Adam's still standing there, watching him.
He shifts when Patrick meets his gaze, then glances over his shoulder, back out into the hallway. He was working with Gary earlier, Patrick knows, sitting in on a session with one of the new age-y bands that Gary's producing, and when Patrick walked by a few hours ago, he'd seen the lead singer sitting in a lotus position on the floor, Adam off in the corner, playing two notes on the piano one after the other, over and over again.
"Hey, I'm sorry," Adam says. "You're working. Or playing. And I'm interrupting. I just. Saw you in here and wanted to say hi. So I'll just be go-" He turns towards the hallway, shifts his weight like he's going to leave, but then Patrick says, "Hey, hold up a sec."
Because he's pretty much been playing the same five stanzas over and over again for the last half hour and something isn't flowing correctly, and maybe, he thinks, hearing someone else play it will help. Maybe it'll let him pretend he's in the sound booth, sitting in front of his mixing board. He'll be able to say, 'yeah, no, not working. Try taking it up a key, down a step, speeding up the tempo,' instead of just hearing the notes in his head, the way they're written on the page in front of him.
Adam's stopped, is standing halfway out the door, and he looks confused when Patrick stands up from his stool and motions for Adam to grab one of the guitars from the stand off to the side of the room.
"If you have some time," Patrick says. "I could, well, use some help. There's this part in this song that I'm-"
Adam looks even more confused, but he's also stepping back into the room, walking over to the guitar stand and grabbing one of the acoustics, before pulling a second stool over next to where Patrick is sitting. Patrick has a music stand set up in front of him, several sheets of staff paper laid out across it, the once neatly printed notes now sloppy with his notations.
He twists the stand in Adam's direction, then says, "This is what I've been-" before trailing off, because Adam's eyes are already scanning the music, reading Pete's words. He's had those together for two weeks, the chorus together for just as long, but then he had to work on the next two Last Bastion songs, then there was Vegas, and he's only been able to doodle on this in his spare moments since.
Adam's already tuning the guitar though, then moving his fingers over the first row of chords, feeling the sound of them. He doesn't mouth the words, though, for which Patrick is grateful, because they are Pete's words, and while he's okay sharing his music, because it's his, the words are-
The words are different.
A moment later, Adam looks up at Patrick expectantly, and Patrick points to a stanza about halfway down the second page, just before the chorus, and says, "There's something in here that's just not-" Flowing, working, sounding right at all, but he waves his hand in a small circle, instead of saying the words.
Adam nods. "Do you want me to start there?" he asks, already tracing his finger across the staff that Patrick had pointed to, but Patrick shakes his head.
"I actually think from the beginning would be best. Then you can see how it flows and I'll be able to-"
"To see what's not working?"
"Exactly."
He sits back on his stool and he thinks, maybe, he should put his guitar down, but he holds it on his lap instead, and as Adam starts, his fingers start moving over the strings, too, soundlessly. His eyes slip closed again, and it does help, he realizes, hearing it instead of playing it, because he can almost see the chords flow from one to the other, smooth and arcing, but then there's the catch, a sharp drop-off, like a cliff, except from this end, Patrick can almost picture the bridge to the other side.
He opens his eyes and notices that Adam's watching him, curious, and Patrick gestures for him to stop. He plays the problem chords again, except this time, moves the notes up a third, the next chord up another one, and it peaks, crescendos, and then winds downwards into the chorus.
Patrick catches Adam's gaze, quirks his eyebrow upwards in an unspoken 'yes?' and Adam is nodding.
He apparently was watching Patrick's fingers, too, because he picks up two stanzas from where Patrick had stopped him before, and continues on, incorporating in Patrick's changes, and then he keeps on going, further, into the chorus, and Patrick joins in. He matches Adam chord for chord, or maybe it's the other way around, since this is Patrick's music, Patrick's song. Either way, their fingers are moving in unison, the song building around them, and Pete's words are going through Patrick's head, and he doesn't realize that he's mouthing them, singing them until he hears his own voice in his ears, and Adam is nodding along, and Patrick thinks, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Continued.
Author: tigs
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Don't know or own.
Author's Notes: Still so very self-indulgent. Many thanks to amy13 for reading these through and evenings of plot talking and general encouragement. Thanks, also, to fairestcat for letting me talk character at her a few times. Previous parts can be found here.
9. The Phone Call
Usually, Pete is the one to call. At least once a week, sometimes hitting the noon hour, with the excuse of making Patrick take a real break, or if he's in the mood to be fucking annoying, dialing Patrick at something like six in the morning, after Pete has had his coffee, and saying, 'Ha! Did I wake you?'
Mostly he calls late at night, though, between eleven and one, LA time, because for the most part, Patrick's around, and if he is, he always answers.
This time, Patrick calls Pete.
Wednesday evening, and he's home before eight, and Patrick maybe had plans to watch TV for the evening, some crime procedural maybe, or if all else failed, the still-enduring after all these years Law & Order reruns, but he finds himself curling up on his couch, the latest issue of People in his hand, Pete's name highlighted on his cell-phone screen.
Pete answers halfway through the second ring, almost crowing when he says, "What the fuck's up, man?"
Patrick starts to say, "Hello to you, too," but even as he does, Pete's saying, "Hey, hold on a sec, will you?" Then, more quietly, obviously speaking to other people in whatever room he's in: "Hey, dudes, I'm gonna take this. I'll catch you later, a'right?" Patrick hears hand-slapping, then Pete's chin scraping over the mouthpiece, and then Pete's back.
"Hi," he says, and it's suddenly quieter, as if he's shut a door. Maybe he has, Patrick thinks. Maybe he's still at the DecayDance offices, despite the fact that it's ten o'clock there.
This is the thing: Pete gives Patrick crap about staying at the studio for hours on end, but Patrick knows that Pete might very well put in longer hours than any of the rest of them. It may look like tabloid-fodder to the rest of the world-travel and parties and smiling for the paparazzi with a friend or four at his side-but there's a reason DecayDance is still around.
There's a reason Pete's bands very rarely get signed away from him.
"What's going on?" Pete asks. Through the phone, Patrick hears the creak of a chair leaning back, then a thumping noise that's maybe feet coming to rest on a desk and yeah, definitely still at the office.
Patrick is silent for a moment. He could just say he was bored, he knows, wasting time before… well, something. Possibly a nine o'clock TV show, or a trip out for dinner with some other music person. Or he could say that he was calling to regale Pete with the latest Last Bastion of Sanity story-because seriously, the fun just never stops with those four-but he's silent maybe a moment too long, because Pete says, "Patrick?" and they may be three-quarters of the fucking country away from each other right now and they might not have seen each other for longer than a weekend at a time in six months, but Pete can still read him better than anyone else in the whole fucking world.
It's really fucking annoying sometimes.
"Patrick," Pete says again, this time sort of half-sighed, and so Patrick says, "I made People Magazine's Star Tracks this week. Did you see?"
It's obviously not what Pete's expecting him to say, and maybe he's just humoring Patrick, or maybe he just trusts that Patrick will get to the point eventually, because Pete says, "Yeah, I saw. I found it taped to my door when I came in this morning. I'm thinking Dirty's the guy to blame. And just so you know: I'm not slipping in my best friend duties here. I was totally going to give you all sorts of shit about it tomorrow, I just wanted to wait a day, to lull you into a false sense of security, so you'd think I maybe hadn't heard." Pete pauses for a moment, then continues. "What was the caption again? Wait, here, let me find it."
Patrick, of course, could simply open his magazine and read it to Pete, but he hears Pete moving papers, a soft "ah, shit," then an "a-ha!" A moment later, Pete is back. "Here we go. 'Stars, they're just like us.'" He makes a sort of sniffling noise, and Patrick can almost picture him wiping a tear away. "They go to concerts! Exclamation point!"
"Fuck the exclamation point," Patrick growls, but Pete just laughs.
"Let's see. It says, 'Thursday, September 21st-' On a school night, Patrick? I'm ashamed of you. 'Music producer Patrick Stump made an appearance at hot-spot The Gateway in the company of Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith, formerly of Panic at the Disco, to watch the Aqua Angel show.' And there you and Ross and Smith are, all posed and smiling for the camera. Should I be feeling jealous, dude? Am I being replaced as your one true sidekick in gossip magazine fame?"
"Oh, fuck off," Patrick says, but he's laughing, too. "It's not my fault that the kids' manager decided it could only help his clients if he leaked the picture to the press." Because that's what the picture was, a shot of Patrick, Ryan, Spencer, and the band in the venue's closet of a green room, the product of the lead singer's, 'hey, would you guys mind…?'
"Well, he's a smart man," Pete says.
There's a pause then, and Patrick almost expects Pete to fill it with some joke at Patrick's expense. Something to make him say 'fuck off' again, laugh, distract him into stories about Ryan and Spencer and Pete's groups and Patrick's latest collaborations, but Pete's a smart man, too. He knows there's a reason Patrick called.
He knows Patrick will eventually clue him in as to why that is.
"I'm going back down to Riverside next week," Patrick says. "For Frank and Jaima's Grand Opening Celebration, or whatever they're calling it. The 'we survived the first week of business and aren't dead and/or bankrupt yet' celebration? Something like that."
"Uh huh?" Pete says, thoughtful enough that Patrick's pretty sure Pete realizes it wasn't a complete non-sequitur, that his brain is already working. Sixteen years of friendship, after all, and Pete's pretty good at following where Patrick's train of thought goes and ending up in the same location. "That should be fun. I think Mikey said that he and Alicia were planning on flying out for it."
"Yeah, yeah they are," Patrick says. "And Gerard's coming down from Portland and Bob apparently has that night off-"
"…and it seems that you know more about the lives of the My Chem folk than I do," Pete says. "I'm sort of feeling out of the loop here, dude." He's laughing, though, a happy sound.
"Hey, you try living within driving distance of Frank Iero and not know what's going on with his band."
Granted, Patrick's only talked to Frank once since their dinner, a confirmation that he actually is going to attend the Grand Opening, and yeah, Ray'll be there, too, because he's the fucking man, and Mikey and Alica were still trying to decide whether or not to leave the cats in the care of the high school kid next door or whether to hire a professional pet sitter, and Bob's coming in that afternoon and leaving late-late that night, because he, also, is the fucking man, and-
"Yeah," Pete says. "Yeah, I'm sure."
There's silence then; Patrick can hear Pete breathing, a steady, even sound, and it's comfortable, still as familiar to Patrick's ears as the sound of his own breath, and if he closes his eyes, it reminds him of nights spent on tour busses, like Pete's only a few feet away, instead of thousands of miles.
"So I was talking to Joe the other night," Pete finally says, understanding in his voice, and Patrick knows it's not a non-sequitur either. "And do you remember that time in Albuquerque, what, six years ago? With the flame thrower?"
Patrick laughs, because yeah he remembers and also flame thrower and he settles back against the couch cushion, closing his eyes again, picturing it, and as Pete keeps talking, he doesn't even really register the People Magazine slipping from his fingers and falling to the floor.
10. The Grand Opening
"So," Patrick says, fifteen minutes into the party, standing between a mannequin in a gold lamé hoodie, a platter of crackers surrounding a bowl of artichoke dip, and Mikey Way. "I feel I should ask: did you end up leaving the cats with the high school kid next door or the professional cat sitter?"
Mikey stares at him for a moment, blinking once, then again, then asks, "Pete?"
"Frank, actually," Patrick says. "He called to double-check I'd be able to come tonight, then spent the next half hour filling me in on your cats and Bob's car troubles and how Gerard was feeling as if his publisher was just not comprehending his artistic vision. It was an enlightening conversation."
Mikey laughs at that, high-pitched and reedy. "I'm surprised you didn't hang up on him. If I'd been in your shoes, I probably would have. Preferably before he started discussing my pet-sitting options."
"Actually," Patrick says, "he led with that. Probably because when we had dinner a few weeks ago, I started talking about Andy's refusal to leave Beast behind. Ever." At Mikey's raised eyebrow, Patrick says, "Beast is his Chihuahua. But it's not that big an issue, because his guitar player is pretty fucking attached to his own two teacup poodles. So, you know, when they tour, they plan for pets."
Mikey ducks his head, possibly to hide his smile-although why, Patrick doesn't know; he laughs pretty much every time he thinks of Beast in his little studded Clandestine collar-then they both turn back out to face the sales floor.
Most of the display racks have been pushed away from the center of the room to give the group space to mingle, and there's a table with sparkling cider and beer and a bowl full of bright red punch off to the left. The food, obviously, is next to Patrick.
He reaches for another handful of chips, watching as Alica and Jamia walk the perimeter of the store, arms linked. Gerard and Ray and Karen are standing near the punch, while Bob is sprawled out in one of the winged chairs that's scattered around the sales floor. He's got his head tipped back, eyes closed.
"I give it thirty seconds before Frank pounces," Mikey says, his gaze apparently following Patrick's. He raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction, an almost challenge, and Patrick nods, accepting.
It takes twenty. One second people are standing around talking, then next Frank is letting out a whoop, vaulting around the back of the chair, and landing in Bob's lap. He's practically cackling with laughter, which only increases when Bob says, "Fuck off, Iero," and dumps him on the floor.
"Help!" Frank says, hooking a hand around Bob's calf, then ducking out of the way of Bob's half-hearted kick. "He's abusing me! Help!"
"Uh huh," Gerard says, before turning back to Karen, and Patrick sees that off to the side of the room, Jamia's just shaking her head fondly.
"Somebody!" Frank says, and Patrick watches as Bob extends a hand, as if to help Frank up, then stands himself, drawing his hand out of reach, and stepping over Frank to get to the drink table.
"Be glad you weren't ever trapped on a bus with us for longer than an afternoon," Mikey says. "This was pretty much an hourly part of the Frank show. "
Patrick nods. He remembers. But also-
"I lived with Pete for pretty much a decade," he says. "And Joe. And Andy. I know how this goes."
The door to the shop opens again, then, letting in two people that Patrick doesn't know, but everyone else seems to, because there are hugs and arm punches and Ray saying things like, "Fuck, man, it's fucking awesome to see you! How the hell have you been? Man, look at you!"
"Cortez," Mikey says by way of explanation. "And Josh, one of our other techs. A lot of people have made their way out to LA over the years, you know?"
"Some even stay," Patrick says, and Mikey nods.
Patrick thinks maybe they're both thinking of Pete at the end of Fall Out Boy, with his plans, his house in Santa Monica, his cars, his nights of schmoozing at the hotspots, making the covers of gossip magazines just as frequently as ever. A year later, though, he showed up on Patrick's stoop, fresh from the airport, from a few days back home, and the first words out of his mouth were, "So, I, uh. I sort of put in an offer on this place just outside of Chicago yesterday…"
"Like you," Mikey says, breaking Patrick's train of thought, and Patrick shrugs his shoulders. "Like me."
More people show up then, two girls and a guy, and this time Mikey stands up a little straighter. Patrick sees Alicia already heading towards the door and Mikey says, "Hey, if you'll excuse me, I want to go say hi to-" and Patrick says, "Sure, yeah, of course. I need to go say hi to Gerard anyway."
*
He finishes the night sitting on the floor next to Bob's chair, head leaning back against one of the display cases. He's got an empty glass in his hand, a plate with three crackers on it on his knee, and he thinks he should be starting to drag, because it's Sunday, because he was at the studio for four hours that afternoon and he still has an hour and a half drive to get back home.
Bob is playing the air drums, though, complete with vocal sound effects, and Frank is standing in front of them, head banging while Gerard screams lyrics to some song Patrick's never heard before. They're all laughing, though, Patrick, too, and there's a shout of triumph when they're done. It just seems to be a par-for-the-course moment in My Chemical Romance time, though, because then Gerard turns back to Jamia and Frank points out one of the t-shirts on the wall to Ray, and Bob says, "This is pretty awesome, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Patrick says, unsure whether he means the gathering or the store or something else entirely, but whatever it is, he agrees. "It is."
"It's been a year since we were all together like this in one place, but even then Cortez wasn't there, Josh wasn't there. It's been fucking years since everyone- And, I mean, you wouldn't think it, right, what with Ray and Frank in New Jersey and Mikey in New York and Gerard's mom always on his case to come home, you know? But Frank moves out here, and suddenly we all make the time."
"That's how it happens," Patrick says. "That's how it is." Except it's really not for him, them, because Pete and Joe and Andy are all in Chicago still-still see each other all the fucking time, he knows. In their group he's the only one that needs to make any sort of effort at all for the four of them to get together.
There's a moment of silence then, not quite uncomfortable, before Patrick says, "So I drove past our old apartment the other day, and you know? Someone actually had a cactus out on the porch."
"Ha, really?" Bob asks, and Patrick says, "Yeah, it was fucking gigantic. Like, taller than I am, with this fucking hideous pink flower sprouting out the top of it, absolutely huge, right? Like, larger than my head."
To which Bob says, "So basically, they were copying our style. Except failing, since they went with real cacti rather than the ever-classy inflatable plastic."
"Exactly," Patrick says. "I mean, where's the fun in real? You can't punch them, 'cause they don't bounce back up at you, and also, you'd end up with a fist full of little needles. Which: ouch. And you actually need to water them-"
"Except Trohman watered ours," Bob says, and Patrick laughs.
"Oh, fuck, I forgot about that. He was so fucking high that day."
Bob shakes his head, then grunts a little as Gerard sits down on the arm of his chair, foot kicking lightly at Bob's ankle.
"Who?" he asks, head tilted slightly to the side, and he's closer to 41 now than 40, but he still looks young to Patrick, face round, hair still jet black.
"Trohman," Bob says. "Joe. He watered our plastic cacti at that Fourth of July picnic we had, remember? Or tried to? But he was using a hose and had the pressure turned up high enough that it knocked the thing off our balcony? And he ended up spraying that model who lived next door instead because he didn't think to lower the damn thing?"
"Joe," Gerard says fondly, and Patrick says, "Yeah, Joe. I'll have to remember to tell that story to his girls when they're older. He plays at being respectable now, but they'll have to know the truth eventually."
"Most of us play at being respectable," Gerard says. "Some of us even mostly succeed."
"And some of us don't even try," Frank says, flopping down onto the ground in front of Bob and Patrick. Ray's pulling over another chair now, and it's then that Patrick realizes that pretty much everyone else has gone: Matt Cortez and the other tech, the rest of Frank and Jamia's friends. It's just him and the guys and, well, Jamia and Alica and Karen, and-
Mikey and Alica join their circle, sharing a chair, and Jamia lies down so that her head is on Frank's stomach, and Karen sits on the arm of Ray's chair, and if Patrick doesn't think about it too hard, it could almost be a scene from eleven years before, all of them sprawled out in Patrick and Bob's apartment, Joe and Andy and Pete out getting ice, just gone for a few minutes.
Except that Patrick knows they aren't.
Patrick starts when a foot kicks lightly at his thigh, and he looks across the circle to see Frank grinning at him. "Hey," he says, "no spacing out. The party's just getting started, dude."
Patrick opens his mouth to say, 'I wasn't', or possibly, 'I should really start thinking about going…' because he does have to be at work the next morning, but Gerard says, "Hell yeah. We haven't even started the 'Do you remember when?' part of the evening yet."
"Except Stump and I totally already did," Bob says. "We were recalling fond memories of inflatable cacti. You all are just lagging behind here."
"Well we'll have to catch up then," Gerard says, and for a moment, Patrick really wants to leave, because this is not his band, these are not his stories, but then Gerard is launching into a story that involves Mikey and Ray and a plastic reindeer and maybe, Patrick thinks, it's really not so different after all.
Especially when Mikey says, "Hey, Stump, didn't Pete have some sort of adventure with one of those lawn flamingos once upon a time? What was that all about?"
Patrick laughs. "Ha, yeah, yeah he did. But it was actually Andy that started that one."
"Andy?" Jamia asks, and Patrick nods, grinning. "See," he says, "we were driving through this little town in Indiana and this house on the outskirts had this, like, flock of pink plastic flamingos in their yard and-"
And by the end of the story, when Bob's picked up the narrative thread, telling some story from his latest tour that also involves flamingos, and possibly garden gnomes, Patrick's leaning back against the display case, relaxed. He looks across the circle and sees Frank grinning at him, completely happy, and yeah, Patrick thinks, really not so different at all.
11. The Words
Patrick smiles, just a little, when he checks his email the next morning and finds the message waiting in his inbox. It's flagged with an exclamation point-important!-because Pete always flags his emails that way. Even the forwards: pictures of dogs nursing tiger cubs and freaky cloud formations and the sort of dirty jokes that Patrick can't read at work, because, well, they're usually pretty fucking disgusting. Also because Amanda has some sort of weird dirty joke radar, and she'll inevitably read it over Patrick's shoulder and then for the next two days, she'll try telling it to anyone who will stand still for longer than ten seconds.
This isn't a forward, though, or a dirty joke. The subject line reads tomorrows are starting to taste like yesterdays and Patrick knows what he'll find inside: a few lines, paragraphs, pages of Pete's babbling, the long distance equivalent of the notebook pages that Pete used to give him.
It's no coincidence, he knows, that Pete sent this to him last night, while he was in Riverside, laughing at Frank's antics, Bob's dry jokes, Gerard's over-the-top theatrics. It's no coincidence he's getting the message this morning, when he's going off of five hours of sleep, when he can still almost hear the echo of laughter in his ears. Because Pete is Pete and always will be Pete, no matter that they're three-quarters of the way across the country from each other.
Patrick wouldn't have it any other way, though.
He wants to click, open it up, read-his mouse is already hovering over the link, ready-but he knows how easy it is for him to get lost in Pete's words, how he'll look up and it will be noon and Last Bastion will have been waiting for him in the studio for, oh, two hours at that point.
He's still tempted to say 'fuck it', though, and open the message up, might even do it, but then Amanda knocks on the door of his office, leans her head in, and says, "So, do we want to place bets on whether Last Bastion survived their weekend or not? I didn't see any mentions of inter-band homicide on the Rolling Stone website this morning, but still. It might not have made the morning papers…"
Patrick laughs as he closes his inbox, stands. He says, "Ha, yeah. Who knows, though, maybe they'll be on their best behavior, and, you know, speaking?"
Amanda arches one of her eyebrows, then tugs at one of her pigtails, looking overly confused. "Last Bastion of Sanity? On speaking terms? And what is this 'best behavior' that you speak of? I do not understand."
"Yeah," Patrick says as he makes his way around the desk. "That's just crazy talk, isn't it? It doesn't hurt to be optimistic, though."
Amanda giggles at that, stepping out into the hall. "There's optimistic, Stump, and then there's delusional. You don't want to be labeled as delusional, do you?"
With one last look back at his computer, Patrick shuts his door and turns towards Last Bastion's preferred studio.
"Yeah, yeah," he says. "I know."
*
Patrick resists opening the email until he gets back to his house that night, until he's got his takeout curry on a plate on his coffee table, silverware and napkins and a can of Pepsi there, too. He's also got his guitar on the couch cushion beside him, a notebook and pen at the ready. He is prepared.
Then he opens up his laptop.
Then he clicks on Pete's email.
He should just print it out right there, right then, he knows, but as valiantly as he resisted that morning, it's habit to start reading as soon as the words are in front of him. To try to understand what's going on in Pete's head at any given moment.
So he reads.
It's about six paragraphs worth of type, maybe a page in total: cracks in sidewalks; windows left open overnight, curtains blowing in the wind; roads changing from paved to dirt. Different thoughts, but all variations on a theme of friendship, distance stretching out, but the heart not growing any less fond, and Patrick wonders if this is what Pete was doing last night, while Patrick was sitting on Frank's floor, laughing at Bob's squeaky-voiced imitation of the lead singer of the band he's doing sound for.
He can picture Pete curled up on the couch in his DecayDance office, door closed, notebook balanced on his knees, pen caught between his teeth as he thought through what he wanted to say. Patrick can picture it, and wonders if Pete was picturing him at the Grand Opening party, feeling just as out of place as he ended up feeling a few times. If Pete knew how wrong moments of the night before felt, how there were times Patrick started looking around the room for Pete, Joe, Andy, before he remembered where exactly he was.
He wonders if right now, Pete's picturing Patrick sitting here like this, looking over Pete's words.
Patrick can almost picture Pete standing in front of him, shifting awkwardly, waiting for Patrick's reaction.
Except, if Pete really was there right now, he'd probably be on his way out the door, because as much as Patrick knows Pete trusts him to understand his words, Pete's rarely been able to stay silent enough for Patrick's liking during the first read-through.
'Are you at the part where-', Pete would ask, or, 'When I was writing that line, I was thinking about-' and Patrick would be forced to kick him out of the lounge or the hotel room or Patrick's car.
After the first read-through, though, on those rare occasions Pete was still around, Pete would usually leave on his own, because by the time Patrick finished the first reading, notes and chords and key changes would be starting to appear in his head, and he'd already be getting lost in the creative process. Sometimes, then, Pete would leave immediately, sometimes he'd stay for ten minutes, maybe half an hour; Patrick was never really sure because he rarely heard him go.
When Pete came back, though, an hour, two, three later, he'd say, 'So?', looking nervous, excited, and Patrick would strum a few chords, sing a line or two. Pete would always nod along with the beat, eyes shining, grin widening.
Pete may not be in LA, but his words are, and nothing's changed with this at least, because one read-through down and Patrick's already seeing fragments that are practically chorus-ready, two lines from paragraph two, one from paragraph six, and there's a rhythm to them already: solid enough that he can almost hear the music in his head.
He prints Pete's email off then, finally, picks his guitar up off of the couch beside him, and his fingers instinctively go to the strings, strumming lightly, echoing the chords in his head. Chord, chord, riff, and as the printer in the corner of the room whirrs, he pauses to jot the sequence down on the notebook beside him, not noticing as his curry slowly grows cold on the table in front of him.
12. The Visitor (II)
There's a host at the door, suit and tie, a bow of the head as he says, "If you'll follow me, gentlemen?" and Spencer motions for Patrick to go first, following the man's winding path through the tables. They end up at one to the far left of the stage, near the front, an older couple in evening dress to one side of them, a few kids to the other, dressed in t-shirts, barely looking old enough to even be sitting there.
Compared to them, Patrick doesn't feel so out of place in his sweater and jeans. He's here for three days of studio work with a solo artist, one song's worth of time, and that's what he packed for. Still, he glances over at Spencer and says, "You said this was a small place. You said it was pretty casual."
Spencer raises an eyebrow at him, pushing hair away from his forehead. "It is."
And yeah, okay, Patrick guesses that in the grand tradition of Las Vegas glitz, this probably is small and casual, what with there only being about 25 tables, maybe 60 people in the room.
"Still, though," he says, wiping his hands on his jeans, and Spencer rolls his eyes.
"This is Vegas," he says, like that explains it all, and maybe, Patrick thinks, it does.
Still, he's glad when the lights over the table area dim, at the same time brightening at the front of the room. From his vantage point, he can see girls hovering in the wings of the stage, mostly hidden from view by the curtains. They're wearing something akin to can-can outfits: bright red satin, black netting, feathers in their hair.
"Ladies and gentlemen," a familiar voice says, edged with laughter, a smirk, and then Brendon is there, walking onto the stage from the side that Patrick can't see. "Welcome, welcome! I think I can safely say, you all are in for a show tonight."
And he's wearing a top hat, tails. He's got a silver-handled cane in his hands and he twirls it as he walks the stage, and he grins almost wickedly when his dancers make their way out to join him. Patrick sneaks a glance at the older couple sitting beside them, wondering what they'll think of the girls' clothing, which looks even more risqué underneath the spotlights: corsets done up tight, cut low enough that they're showing a whole fuck load of skin, high-heeled boots over fish-net stocking covered legs that seem to stretch on forever.
The band starts up, a mix of brass and strings and electric vibes, reminiscent of Panic's first album, and Patrick had always thought that Ryan was the driving force behind most of their early showmanship, but maybe he was wrong. Or maybe Ryan was just able to tell, even back then, exactly what sort of showman Brendon was. He spares another glance back to Spencer, who's staring at the stage, an almost fond look on his face, before he turns his attention back to Brendon.
The girls are mostly dancing with each other, something akin to a waltz spliced together with high kicks, but Brendon's got one of them on each arm, and his eyes are so bright, his mouth spread into such a wide smile as he sings, Patrick can't help losing himself in the show.
*
A few members of the crowd are still lingering when Brendon finally makes it out to their table, dressed in his street clothes. He turns one of the chairs around, plopping down in it and resting his arms along the back, like this was Jon's bar, back in Chicago, not a dinner theatre with gold paint on the walls.
"Hi!" Brendon says, grin wide, and there's still sweat on his forehead, smudges of makeup around his lips and eyes. The girls are coming out the door from the back in groups of two or three, most of them making their way by Patrick and Spencer's table, laying hands on Brendon's shoulder, a few leaning down to kiss his cheek.
Brendon wiggles his eyebrows at Patrick the third time this happens and says in a stage whisper, "I fucking love my job. Seriously."
"He really does," Spencer says, nodding so solemnly that Patrick laughs.
"I keep telling Spence that he's welcome to get up on stage with me any night he wants," Brendon says, "but he keeps turning me down."
"Because I know you, Urie. I get up on stage with you, you'd talk the girls into getting me into the middle of a fucking can-can line or something, and believe me, that's the last thing any of us want."
Patrick watches as Brendon opens his mouth, but the denial that he's expecting to hear never comes. Instead, Brendon closes his mouth, then starts to open it again, but before he can speak, Spencer says, "See? I know you!" and Brendon says, "No, Spencer Smith, you don't. I wouldn't make you do the can-can. I was thinking something more along the lines of, of-"
"The can-can," Spencer says, and Brendon sighs, says, "Fine, yes, the can-can, but it's really not bad! The girls and I do it five nights a week!"
"And thus the reason I will never be joining you on stage," Spencer says. Then he turns to Patrick. "Be thankful Brendon was never in your band. Then you'd have to put up with things like this."
Brendon pouts, of course, almost batting his eyes in Spencer's direction, then Patrick's, undoubtedly trying to look adorable in the way they all became immune to a decade ago.
"You don't have a Pete in your band, though," Patrick says. "Believe me, the can-can is pretty fucking tame compared to some of the stuff he's tried to get me to do over the years. And no, I'm not going to go into details," he says when Brendon's eyes light up, pout miraculously disappearing. "I don't want to give you ideas."
"Please, please don't," Spencer says. "Ryan and Jon egg him on from a distance, but I'm the one who has to deal with him on a daily basis."
"And you know you'll miss me when you're gone," Brendon says, sighing deeply, and Patrick's nodding along before his brain truly registers what Brendon said. He says, "Wait, what?"
Spencer shrugs, an almost lackadaisical gesture, and leans back in his chair.
"He's going to be leaving me," Brendon says, and if it were five years ago, or maybe even three, Patrick is pretty sure that Brendon would have been up and out of his chair then, arms wrapped tightly around Spencer, holding on for dear life.
As it is, he's back to leaning his head on his arms again, and he actually does look sort of pathetic.
"I'm not leaving you," Spencer says. "I'm just going to be taking a small break from Vegas for a few weeks. In two months."
"Leaving me," Brendon repeats. "Leaving me," and Spencer actually leans forward to slap lightly at the side of Brendon's head. Brendon ducks out of the way, of course, giggling in that way he has. "Leaving, leaving!"
Spencer turns to Patrick and shakes his head, and Patrick nods in sympathy.
"One of my kids, from Sweet Midori, is already panicking about their next tour-it's their first national tour and they tried some new stuff on the album, and it's one thing to create in the studio, you know, and another to do it on stage every night. So, long story short, I said I'd come out to LA for a few weeks, give him some extra lessons, if he needed them."
"Also, Ryan's always trying to get him out there," Brendon says. "Because Ryan is trying to steal Spencer from me."
"Because Ryan is evil like that," Spencer says, tone serious, even as he raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction. "It is all part of his grand master plan, right?"
"Exactly," Brendon says. "Because that is a very Ryan Ross thing to do."
Patrick says, "You could be right. He did learn the business at the hands of Pete Wentz, after all."
Brendon sits up straight again. "See, Spence? Patrick knows! Patrick sees Ryan's plan for what it really is!"
Spencer, of course, just sighs, but Patrick and Brendon laugh in tune.
13. The Bass Line
Patrick's been in the studio for about half an hour, running the same five stanzas over and over again, moving a chord up a third here, down a fifth there, and he's concentrating: on the guitar that's balanced across his knees, on the strings beneath his fingers. He's focused deeply enough that he doesn't notice Adam standing in the doorway until he stops playing for longer than a beat. Until he hears a "Sounds good."
Patrick doesn't jump. He spent too many years living with Pete and Joe to be startled so easily, but he does blink at Adam once, twice, before he shakes his head and says, "Oh, yeah, hey." Then, "Thanks."
Adam ducks his head a little, running his fingers through his bangs, pushing them back along his scalp, before dropping his arms and crossing them over his chest. He's fidgeting a little, looking a little unsure as to what he's actually doing there, but he stands his ground, says, "Can I ask what it is?"
"Oh," Patrick says. "Just this song I'm, uh. Working on."
"Who for?" Adam asks, and Patrick can tell he's thinking about Last Bastion, or one of the other artists Patrick's been working with, so he starts shaking his head. "No one, it's not for anyone. It's just. For fun. This is just me… playing."
Now Adam grins, widely enough that Patrick is forced to ask, "What?"
"Nothing," Adam says, flipping one of his hands where it's pinned under his crossed arms. Then, after Patrick arches one of his eyebrows, maybe high enough that it disappears under the bill of his hat, "You know, most people, when they 'play', they record their song in fucking Garage Band, or something. You use a fully equipped studio and mixing board."
If Pete was here, Patrick thinks, he would have said something along the lines of, 'well, duh.' Patrick just shakes his head, though. Or starts to, anyway, before he grins and says, "Well, you know. I do fucking own the place. Might as well use it for my own purposes once in awhile, right?"
"Right," Adam says, and Patrick drops his gaze back to his fingers, strumming the last chord he'd played again, again, again, then he backs up two stanzas and moves forward from there, once, repeat, and when he opens his eyes again-although he doesn't remember closing them-Adam's still standing there, watching him.
He shifts when Patrick meets his gaze, then glances over his shoulder, back out into the hallway. He was working with Gary earlier, Patrick knows, sitting in on a session with one of the new age-y bands that Gary's producing, and when Patrick walked by a few hours ago, he'd seen the lead singer sitting in a lotus position on the floor, Adam off in the corner, playing two notes on the piano one after the other, over and over again.
"Hey, I'm sorry," Adam says. "You're working. Or playing. And I'm interrupting. I just. Saw you in here and wanted to say hi. So I'll just be go-" He turns towards the hallway, shifts his weight like he's going to leave, but then Patrick says, "Hey, hold up a sec."
Because he's pretty much been playing the same five stanzas over and over again for the last half hour and something isn't flowing correctly, and maybe, he thinks, hearing someone else play it will help. Maybe it'll let him pretend he's in the sound booth, sitting in front of his mixing board. He'll be able to say, 'yeah, no, not working. Try taking it up a key, down a step, speeding up the tempo,' instead of just hearing the notes in his head, the way they're written on the page in front of him.
Adam's stopped, is standing halfway out the door, and he looks confused when Patrick stands up from his stool and motions for Adam to grab one of the guitars from the stand off to the side of the room.
"If you have some time," Patrick says. "I could, well, use some help. There's this part in this song that I'm-"
Adam looks even more confused, but he's also stepping back into the room, walking over to the guitar stand and grabbing one of the acoustics, before pulling a second stool over next to where Patrick is sitting. Patrick has a music stand set up in front of him, several sheets of staff paper laid out across it, the once neatly printed notes now sloppy with his notations.
He twists the stand in Adam's direction, then says, "This is what I've been-" before trailing off, because Adam's eyes are already scanning the music, reading Pete's words. He's had those together for two weeks, the chorus together for just as long, but then he had to work on the next two Last Bastion songs, then there was Vegas, and he's only been able to doodle on this in his spare moments since.
Adam's already tuning the guitar though, then moving his fingers over the first row of chords, feeling the sound of them. He doesn't mouth the words, though, for which Patrick is grateful, because they are Pete's words, and while he's okay sharing his music, because it's his, the words are-
The words are different.
A moment later, Adam looks up at Patrick expectantly, and Patrick points to a stanza about halfway down the second page, just before the chorus, and says, "There's something in here that's just not-" Flowing, working, sounding right at all, but he waves his hand in a small circle, instead of saying the words.
Adam nods. "Do you want me to start there?" he asks, already tracing his finger across the staff that Patrick had pointed to, but Patrick shakes his head.
"I actually think from the beginning would be best. Then you can see how it flows and I'll be able to-"
"To see what's not working?"
"Exactly."
He sits back on his stool and he thinks, maybe, he should put his guitar down, but he holds it on his lap instead, and as Adam starts, his fingers start moving over the strings, too, soundlessly. His eyes slip closed again, and it does help, he realizes, hearing it instead of playing it, because he can almost see the chords flow from one to the other, smooth and arcing, but then there's the catch, a sharp drop-off, like a cliff, except from this end, Patrick can almost picture the bridge to the other side.
He opens his eyes and notices that Adam's watching him, curious, and Patrick gestures for him to stop. He plays the problem chords again, except this time, moves the notes up a third, the next chord up another one, and it peaks, crescendos, and then winds downwards into the chorus.
Patrick catches Adam's gaze, quirks his eyebrow upwards in an unspoken 'yes?' and Adam is nodding.
He apparently was watching Patrick's fingers, too, because he picks up two stanzas from where Patrick had stopped him before, and continues on, incorporating in Patrick's changes, and then he keeps on going, further, into the chorus, and Patrick joins in. He matches Adam chord for chord, or maybe it's the other way around, since this is Patrick's music, Patrick's song. Either way, their fingers are moving in unison, the song building around them, and Pete's words are going through Patrick's head, and he doesn't realize that he's mouthing them, singing them until he hears his own voice in his ears, and Adam is nodding along, and Patrick thinks, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Continued.