Possessed by Colour: A Series of Ficlets (Nick/Tyson)
Title: Possessed by Colour (Series Title)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Occasional bad language, kissing in later parts
Pairing: Nick/Tyson
Summary: Tyson emotionalises colour - that is, he associates certain feelings with certain colours in his head. He doesn’t know whether it’s some kind of psychological thing to help him deal with them, or whatever, he’s just always done it, that’s the way it is. And it sure does make the inside of his head a prettier place to be sometimes.
Disclaimer: These are real people presented here; I’m not affiliated with them and none of these events took place. If you got here by googling yourself or your famous friends, abandon all hope, ye who enter here please hit the back-button now.
AN: Based on the first few my bandom_100 prompt table here, where I claimed ‘Nick/Tyson’. I hope this isn't against any rules, and that you enjoy!
Blue:
It’s probably predictable, Tyson thinks, that his down periods are ‘blue’ in his mind. He likes to compare himself to Monet, going through ‘blue periods’, because that’s a hell of a lot easier to explain than ‘I don’t know, man, when stuff goes wrong everything goes blue inside my head’. Pretty much everyone - though probably not Nick, maybe not Mike and Chris - would think he was being metaphorical. But it’s true. Inside his head, he associates colours with his moods, he always has. Not the other way round, not seeing a colour and feeling sad, that would be easy to explain. This, whatever this is, isn’t half so easy.
Blue periods bring angsty lyrics with them, hooks which don’t so much stick in his mind as rake across it, and he turns to Nick most of the time because he’s really fucking bad at dealing with it. Nick’s good at dealing with him nowadays, after twelve years of this, and he can normally turn Tyson’s moods round into something brighter, yellow or cream or something. Blue makes for good lyrics - It Ends Tonight came out of a blue period, as well as a couple of other songs, so Tyson has pretty mixed feelings towards them - but he’s pretty acid when he’s in the middle of one. He’s no fun to be around, that’s for sure, so normally when Nick steps in either to cajole him into a good mood or to smack him round the head and tell him to stop acting like a dick, it’s a relief to everyone, not just Tyson.
(Tyson won’t lie, he likes that Nick takes the time. It’s stupid to be jealous of the time he spends with Nick, but it’s not often just them anymore, so. He might hate the downturns, but he’s not going to complain about the time he gets with Nick, even if he is in a shitty mood. He likes having the excuse when they’re not working or on stage or crammed together in a tour bus.)
Blue isn’t a happy colour, unless it’s that really bright electric blue which almost hurts to look at. But bright colours don’t mean anything to Tyson, so he’s pretty safe with bright blue. No, blue’s not happy, but sometimes it’s useful, and they get on - Tyson and the colours inside his head, fuck he’s got issues - pretty well most of the time. And anyway, the inside of his head is probably prettier than most people’s. Tyson figures he wins and loses some, but he’s tentatively claiming his colour thing as a win.
**
Red
Tyson’s a little hazy on red, he’ll be honest. It confuses him, it’s associated with too many things at once - passion, anger, sickly Valentine’s-Day love, the unreal kind. He and blue can get along, blue has a clear-cut meaning, he knows where he is with blue. And he can say “I’m feeling blue” and everyone’ll get it. If he said “I’m feeling red” he’d get some pretty weird looks. Anyway, he doesn’t know whether red is a happy colour or sad or just strong, or whatever. It confuses him.
Red is the colour of the decorations he used to make at kindergarten for his mom, which she hung on the tree even though they were ugly-ass things he can’t stand to see now. (And she should really have retired those when he and Zach hit eighteen, because, man. And then she wonders why he didn’t go home for Christmas this year?) Red is the colour of passion, of arousal, but it also makes sense to him when people talk about feeling ‘red-hot fury’. He wishes it would just settle down and pick an emotion, any emotion. As it is, it’s all tangled up, a mish-mash of his very own, right there inside his head.
It is, though, for what it’s worth, a colour he associates with Nick.
**
Black
(assumes knowledge of the twitter!fight, details of which can be found here. Basically just a maybe!real falling out with dramatic tweets.)
He’s never felt ‘black’ before, but he finds out how that feels when he and Nick fall out. They haven’t fought like this since they were teenagers, when it didn’t really matter and things were worth fighting about the whole time. They’ve never actually really fought, though, so this is a bit of a shock.
He can’t even remember what it’s about, their fight, but he’s got enough pride not to want to be the first to back down, even though sometimes he feels like he’s wallowing in black. It’s a powerful colour he realises dully - nothing else seems to so much as scratch the surface. Even the blues of his lower days can’t seem to get in the edges. He never realised Nick was so essential to him before, and he’s a little confused as to when that happened. All he can think is that it must have happened pretty gradually, and it’s a scary thought.
At least, it is when set alongside all the black inside his head right now.
**
White
Tyson’s pretty sure he’s never felt “white” before. He’s never felt that blank and washed out about anything - there’s always an overlay of something, whatever colour it might be. He’s not that good at being indifferent to stuff. Everything’s interesting, everything’s got a colour. Even when something’s boring, it’s beige or that flat, bland sort of colour hotels like to use for bathrooms - magnolia, or whatever.
Sometimes, when he’s really tired, his mind kind of whites out, but that’s as near as he gets to it. In any case, Tyson lives his life around Nick, and it’s impossible for Tyson to feel blank and white around Nick. And then there’s modelling or shows or whatever. Tyson defies anyone who lives like he does to feel bland and bored and white. Surely, it’s just not possible.
**
Green
Green’s a tough colour for Tyson to get straight in his head. He doesn’t remember much of his time in hospital - too busy being drugged and feeling awful - but he thinks he probably felt pretty green then. Still, normally, green is all the bad, anti-social emotions he knows he shouldn’t feel. It might be the colour of freshness to some people, but not for Tyson: for him, it’s an ‘off’ colour, the colour of a bad day (not a low day, just a bad day, Tyson differentiates between them), jealousy and hurt. Green is how he feels when he sees Nick chatting to someone else; not blue and low, but green - off-colour and off-kilter. It makes him nervous and jealous and stupid when he sees Nick with other people, because he’s a little frightened that Nick will realise what he’s missing out on by hanging around with Tyson.
He’s never told Nick what green means, content just to pretend it means nothing, because he’d hate to have to explain that he’s jealous, of people being around Nick. It’s just fucking stupid, he knows it is, but the knowledge doesn’t make him any more rational. He can’t shove Nick in an ivory tower and hop that no one will come looking - Tyson’s stupid about Nick, but not unreasonable. Nick’s a sociable kind of guy, he likes people. Tyson’s just not enough of a dick to do anything that’ll make Nick feel uncomfortable acting the way he always does; he’s not going to make Nick second-guess himself. He’ll act bitchy and difficult, sure, but he’ll never tell Nick why, because that would be the real crime. He’s not enough of a dick to go up to Nick and tell him that watching him with other people turns a good day around. It just wouldn’t be fair.
Green’s not a great colour, but he can live with it. He’s not sure he could live with it if he screwed Nick over like that.
**
Grey
Tyson has plenty of grey days. If nothing else, being on tour is boring as sin, and grey is a kind of default setting in his mind. He’s bored and grumpy, but not low, and the chance to stretch his legs will cure him of the grumpiness. Boredom, though, is pretty inescapable on the long stretches of freeway between one venue and the next.
Grey’s not too bad. Grey can switch round. If they’re playing a show at the end of the journey, Tyson can guarantee he won’t end the day feeling grey and bored. Or Chris’ll get equally bored and they’ll start spouting nonsense at each other. Or Toad will tapdance down the short aisles at the gas station and Tyson’ll be left grinning and amused for the next few miles. Or Nick will slap him on the shoulder and offer an inside joke, and that’ll cheer him up for a while.
So grey isn’t so bad. It’s a little - low and dreary, but it’s not so bad. His bandmates can help him with grey, and that’s kind of awesome.
**
Orange
The only association for orange that Tyson has in his head is modelling. It’s not a colour he emotionalises automatically - if he had to think about it, he’d make it affection, warm and bright and occasionally overpowering. The point is, though, that he’d have to think about it, so it doesn’t count.
Modelling is an awkward clash with the band, sometimes. He doesn’t want people to think he’s just that pretty model, but then he also doesn’t want to be the band-dude who got the model shoot because people might recognise his face. He hadn’t wanted to model at all, in fact, but Nick had talked him into it. (Tyson suspects this may have been because he was annoying the hell out of Nick during their downtime, but he gives Nick the benefit of the doubt.) Orange isn’t, honestly, a colour he’s all that fond of, but he likes it well enough. Clearly, though, his psyche doesn’t like it enough to want it inside his mind for all that long. The only reason he thinks about it at all is because of modelling - because of Nick.
A lot of things are only in Tyson’s head because of Nick. That’s pretty OK, though. They’re mostly awesome things, like music and words and lives lived out together. And sometimes it’s the colour orange. Tyson’s figures that’s a pretty fair pay off.
**
Khaki
Khaki is entirely Nick’s fault.
Not the entire colour - Tyson won’t blame him for an entire army’s worth of colouring - but the fact that Tyson thinks about it at all. They’d been pretty drunk when Tyson confessed to the colour-thing, and not unreasonably, but with drunk-logic, they’d started going through the colours. They’d been kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel - Chris’ suggestion had been a rather lazy “aquamarine?”, which they all mocked him for ruthlessly - before Nick sat up, clicked his fingers and pointed at Tyson, crowing “khaki!”
Then they all cracked up.
Khaki doesn’t really exist outside clothes, Tyson thinks privately. Military clothes or ‘outdoors’ clothes, the kind where the dirt shouldn’t show too much - or the kind that’re worn by city-dwellers who want to look like they spend a lot of time outside. Like orange, it’s not inside his head, but it is kind of an automatic association now, with this colour-thing. He thinks about it and has a little image of Nick sitting bolt upright and saying triumphantly “khaki!”
Tyson’s moderately convinced he needs new friends. He’s just pretty fond of the old ones, is all - in all their insanity.
**
Bronze
Tyson likes bronze, though it’s less an emotion than a state of being for him. When he thinks about where they are right now, he thinks ‘bronze’, and that’s awesome.
Bronze is an brilliant colour. He wouldn’t want to wear it 24/7 - he’ll leave the metallics to Lady Gaga - but he likes living in it. It’s warm, exotic, not too outstanding... Tyson has to stand out, and mostly he loves it. Point is, with bronze, he’s still up there, him and Nick still made it with the crazy dreams they had as kids, but there’s always more to strive for, further to go. That’s never not good.
Further to go means more to keep Nick with him. Tyson appreciates things like that.
**
Silver
If bronze is a state of being, silver is an idea - a wish, maybe. It’s the idea that he and Nick will grow old together (though Tyson personally thinks that he’d be rather bad at the silver-haired look, so he’ll let Nick have that one), and have a lawn they can tell the damn kids to get off. And preferably a house and - stuff.
Tyson’s a little hazy on the details, if he’s honest. He mostly just wants Nick, and the rest of it can fall as it will. Ideally, he’d keep them in the now forever, doing what they love together, always. But that’s not really possible, so Tyson will accept the alternative of growing old together and chasing kids off their damn lawn with walking sticks. He’ll take whatever he can get.
**
Gold
Nick clearly brings out the extremes of emotion in Tyson. He can send him spiralling down faster than anyone else Tyson knows, or he can do this.
Tyson never thought he’d feel like this. There was a time there when he was pretty certain they were just circling round an inevitability, but then Nick got wrapped up in his new dog and his girlfriend and other things, so Tyson just left it, because he didn’t want to rock the boat. (Tyson’s fine with rocking most boats, for the record; it’s just this one he’s a bit worried about capsizing.)
With Nick kissing him like he can hardly bear to stop, though, Tyson’s not worried about boats or lawns or khaki or Impressionist painters, or anything, in fact. Privately he thinks that life right now, right at this second, is pretty fucking golden.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Occasional bad language, kissing in later parts
Pairing: Nick/Tyson
Summary: Tyson emotionalises colour - that is, he associates certain feelings with certain colours in his head. He doesn’t know whether it’s some kind of psychological thing to help him deal with them, or whatever, he’s just always done it, that’s the way it is. And it sure does make the inside of his head a prettier place to be sometimes.
Disclaimer: These are real people presented here; I’m not affiliated with them and none of these events took place. If you got here by googling yourself or your famous friends, abandon all hope, ye who enter here please hit the back-button now.
AN: Based on the first few my bandom_100 prompt table here, where I claimed ‘Nick/Tyson’. I hope this isn't against any rules, and that you enjoy!
Blue:
It’s probably predictable, Tyson thinks, that his down periods are ‘blue’ in his mind. He likes to compare himself to Monet, going through ‘blue periods’, because that’s a hell of a lot easier to explain than ‘I don’t know, man, when stuff goes wrong everything goes blue inside my head’. Pretty much everyone - though probably not Nick, maybe not Mike and Chris - would think he was being metaphorical. But it’s true. Inside his head, he associates colours with his moods, he always has. Not the other way round, not seeing a colour and feeling sad, that would be easy to explain. This, whatever this is, isn’t half so easy.
Blue periods bring angsty lyrics with them, hooks which don’t so much stick in his mind as rake across it, and he turns to Nick most of the time because he’s really fucking bad at dealing with it. Nick’s good at dealing with him nowadays, after twelve years of this, and he can normally turn Tyson’s moods round into something brighter, yellow or cream or something. Blue makes for good lyrics - It Ends Tonight came out of a blue period, as well as a couple of other songs, so Tyson has pretty mixed feelings towards them - but he’s pretty acid when he’s in the middle of one. He’s no fun to be around, that’s for sure, so normally when Nick steps in either to cajole him into a good mood or to smack him round the head and tell him to stop acting like a dick, it’s a relief to everyone, not just Tyson.
(Tyson won’t lie, he likes that Nick takes the time. It’s stupid to be jealous of the time he spends with Nick, but it’s not often just them anymore, so. He might hate the downturns, but he’s not going to complain about the time he gets with Nick, even if he is in a shitty mood. He likes having the excuse when they’re not working or on stage or crammed together in a tour bus.)
Blue isn’t a happy colour, unless it’s that really bright electric blue which almost hurts to look at. But bright colours don’t mean anything to Tyson, so he’s pretty safe with bright blue. No, blue’s not happy, but sometimes it’s useful, and they get on - Tyson and the colours inside his head, fuck he’s got issues - pretty well most of the time. And anyway, the inside of his head is probably prettier than most people’s. Tyson figures he wins and loses some, but he’s tentatively claiming his colour thing as a win.
**
Red
Tyson’s a little hazy on red, he’ll be honest. It confuses him, it’s associated with too many things at once - passion, anger, sickly Valentine’s-Day love, the unreal kind. He and blue can get along, blue has a clear-cut meaning, he knows where he is with blue. And he can say “I’m feeling blue” and everyone’ll get it. If he said “I’m feeling red” he’d get some pretty weird looks. Anyway, he doesn’t know whether red is a happy colour or sad or just strong, or whatever. It confuses him.
Red is the colour of the decorations he used to make at kindergarten for his mom, which she hung on the tree even though they were ugly-ass things he can’t stand to see now. (And she should really have retired those when he and Zach hit eighteen, because, man. And then she wonders why he didn’t go home for Christmas this year?) Red is the colour of passion, of arousal, but it also makes sense to him when people talk about feeling ‘red-hot fury’. He wishes it would just settle down and pick an emotion, any emotion. As it is, it’s all tangled up, a mish-mash of his very own, right there inside his head.
It is, though, for what it’s worth, a colour he associates with Nick.
**
Black
(assumes knowledge of the twitter!fight, details of which can be found here. Basically just a maybe!real falling out with dramatic tweets.)
He’s never felt ‘black’ before, but he finds out how that feels when he and Nick fall out. They haven’t fought like this since they were teenagers, when it didn’t really matter and things were worth fighting about the whole time. They’ve never actually really fought, though, so this is a bit of a shock.
He can’t even remember what it’s about, their fight, but he’s got enough pride not to want to be the first to back down, even though sometimes he feels like he’s wallowing in black. It’s a powerful colour he realises dully - nothing else seems to so much as scratch the surface. Even the blues of his lower days can’t seem to get in the edges. He never realised Nick was so essential to him before, and he’s a little confused as to when that happened. All he can think is that it must have happened pretty gradually, and it’s a scary thought.
At least, it is when set alongside all the black inside his head right now.
**
White
Tyson’s pretty sure he’s never felt “white” before. He’s never felt that blank and washed out about anything - there’s always an overlay of something, whatever colour it might be. He’s not that good at being indifferent to stuff. Everything’s interesting, everything’s got a colour. Even when something’s boring, it’s beige or that flat, bland sort of colour hotels like to use for bathrooms - magnolia, or whatever.
Sometimes, when he’s really tired, his mind kind of whites out, but that’s as near as he gets to it. In any case, Tyson lives his life around Nick, and it’s impossible for Tyson to feel blank and white around Nick. And then there’s modelling or shows or whatever. Tyson defies anyone who lives like he does to feel bland and bored and white. Surely, it’s just not possible.
**
Green
Green’s a tough colour for Tyson to get straight in his head. He doesn’t remember much of his time in hospital - too busy being drugged and feeling awful - but he thinks he probably felt pretty green then. Still, normally, green is all the bad, anti-social emotions he knows he shouldn’t feel. It might be the colour of freshness to some people, but not for Tyson: for him, it’s an ‘off’ colour, the colour of a bad day (not a low day, just a bad day, Tyson differentiates between them), jealousy and hurt. Green is how he feels when he sees Nick chatting to someone else; not blue and low, but green - off-colour and off-kilter. It makes him nervous and jealous and stupid when he sees Nick with other people, because he’s a little frightened that Nick will realise what he’s missing out on by hanging around with Tyson.
He’s never told Nick what green means, content just to pretend it means nothing, because he’d hate to have to explain that he’s jealous, of people being around Nick. It’s just fucking stupid, he knows it is, but the knowledge doesn’t make him any more rational. He can’t shove Nick in an ivory tower and hop that no one will come looking - Tyson’s stupid about Nick, but not unreasonable. Nick’s a sociable kind of guy, he likes people. Tyson’s just not enough of a dick to do anything that’ll make Nick feel uncomfortable acting the way he always does; he’s not going to make Nick second-guess himself. He’ll act bitchy and difficult, sure, but he’ll never tell Nick why, because that would be the real crime. He’s not enough of a dick to go up to Nick and tell him that watching him with other people turns a good day around. It just wouldn’t be fair.
Green’s not a great colour, but he can live with it. He’s not sure he could live with it if he screwed Nick over like that.
**
Grey
Tyson has plenty of grey days. If nothing else, being on tour is boring as sin, and grey is a kind of default setting in his mind. He’s bored and grumpy, but not low, and the chance to stretch his legs will cure him of the grumpiness. Boredom, though, is pretty inescapable on the long stretches of freeway between one venue and the next.
Grey’s not too bad. Grey can switch round. If they’re playing a show at the end of the journey, Tyson can guarantee he won’t end the day feeling grey and bored. Or Chris’ll get equally bored and they’ll start spouting nonsense at each other. Or Toad will tapdance down the short aisles at the gas station and Tyson’ll be left grinning and amused for the next few miles. Or Nick will slap him on the shoulder and offer an inside joke, and that’ll cheer him up for a while.
So grey isn’t so bad. It’s a little - low and dreary, but it’s not so bad. His bandmates can help him with grey, and that’s kind of awesome.
**
Orange
The only association for orange that Tyson has in his head is modelling. It’s not a colour he emotionalises automatically - if he had to think about it, he’d make it affection, warm and bright and occasionally overpowering. The point is, though, that he’d have to think about it, so it doesn’t count.
Modelling is an awkward clash with the band, sometimes. He doesn’t want people to think he’s just that pretty model, but then he also doesn’t want to be the band-dude who got the model shoot because people might recognise his face. He hadn’t wanted to model at all, in fact, but Nick had talked him into it. (Tyson suspects this may have been because he was annoying the hell out of Nick during their downtime, but he gives Nick the benefit of the doubt.) Orange isn’t, honestly, a colour he’s all that fond of, but he likes it well enough. Clearly, though, his psyche doesn’t like it enough to want it inside his mind for all that long. The only reason he thinks about it at all is because of modelling - because of Nick.
A lot of things are only in Tyson’s head because of Nick. That’s pretty OK, though. They’re mostly awesome things, like music and words and lives lived out together. And sometimes it’s the colour orange. Tyson’s figures that’s a pretty fair pay off.
**
Khaki
Khaki is entirely Nick’s fault.
Not the entire colour - Tyson won’t blame him for an entire army’s worth of colouring - but the fact that Tyson thinks about it at all. They’d been pretty drunk when Tyson confessed to the colour-thing, and not unreasonably, but with drunk-logic, they’d started going through the colours. They’d been kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel - Chris’ suggestion had been a rather lazy “aquamarine?”, which they all mocked him for ruthlessly - before Nick sat up, clicked his fingers and pointed at Tyson, crowing “khaki!”
Then they all cracked up.
Khaki doesn’t really exist outside clothes, Tyson thinks privately. Military clothes or ‘outdoors’ clothes, the kind where the dirt shouldn’t show too much - or the kind that’re worn by city-dwellers who want to look like they spend a lot of time outside. Like orange, it’s not inside his head, but it is kind of an automatic association now, with this colour-thing. He thinks about it and has a little image of Nick sitting bolt upright and saying triumphantly “khaki!”
Tyson’s moderately convinced he needs new friends. He’s just pretty fond of the old ones, is all - in all their insanity.
**
Bronze
Tyson likes bronze, though it’s less an emotion than a state of being for him. When he thinks about where they are right now, he thinks ‘bronze’, and that’s awesome.
Bronze is an brilliant colour. He wouldn’t want to wear it 24/7 - he’ll leave the metallics to Lady Gaga - but he likes living in it. It’s warm, exotic, not too outstanding... Tyson has to stand out, and mostly he loves it. Point is, with bronze, he’s still up there, him and Nick still made it with the crazy dreams they had as kids, but there’s always more to strive for, further to go. That’s never not good.
Further to go means more to keep Nick with him. Tyson appreciates things like that.
**
Silver
If bronze is a state of being, silver is an idea - a wish, maybe. It’s the idea that he and Nick will grow old together (though Tyson personally thinks that he’d be rather bad at the silver-haired look, so he’ll let Nick have that one), and have a lawn they can tell the damn kids to get off. And preferably a house and - stuff.
Tyson’s a little hazy on the details, if he’s honest. He mostly just wants Nick, and the rest of it can fall as it will. Ideally, he’d keep them in the now forever, doing what they love together, always. But that’s not really possible, so Tyson will accept the alternative of growing old together and chasing kids off their damn lawn with walking sticks. He’ll take whatever he can get.
**
Gold
Nick clearly brings out the extremes of emotion in Tyson. He can send him spiralling down faster than anyone else Tyson knows, or he can do this.
Tyson never thought he’d feel like this. There was a time there when he was pretty certain they were just circling round an inevitability, but then Nick got wrapped up in his new dog and his girlfriend and other things, so Tyson just left it, because he didn’t want to rock the boat. (Tyson’s fine with rocking most boats, for the record; it’s just this one he’s a bit worried about capsizing.)
With Nick kissing him like he can hardly bear to stop, though, Tyson’s not worried about boats or lawns or khaki or Impressionist painters, or anything, in fact. Privately he thinks that life right now, right at this second, is pretty fucking golden.