FIC; nothing stays together when you're making noise [part one]
tell me about the road you’re on
and maybe we could meet
It takes four months of planning and writing songs and twenty-six painful cover shows until they can head to the studio to record the next album. Five figures, and Penny’s never seen that much money in her bank account ever, until it’s gone and tucked safely away in the band account. This album’s different, Sheldon keeps telling them, as patience wears thin and drunk college girls call out endlessly for Lady Gaga and Don’t Stop Believing, this album is worth it. It’s something the band has told itself after every gig, every record, every interview with a blog or a college newspaper-this will get us noticed, or the record deal, this will be the big break, this will be the one thing that changes it all. It hasn’t yet-not that it’s entirely a bad thing. They make enough money to get by, they have fans, they still have their artistic integrity mostly intact. But it’s so hard not to hope for something more. What’s worse is feeling like they deserve it.
She doesn’t really talk about it with Sheldon, but they both know. If this album doesn’t come together, doesn’t do something for them, this could be it. Time for real world lives and real world jobs, waking up at six in the morning to beat rush hour, and bed by eleven. Penny doesn’t want any of that life, of watching calluses fade and guitar cases and keyboard stands collecting dust in a closet.
She fixates on it the entire drive up to Portland, which lasts almost eighteen hours. When she stumbles off the bus, she’s cranky and full of a nervous energy she’s entirely unfamiliar with. She’s always been the one in the band that’s good at this, at being on stage, or navigating through an awkward interview, or kicking the boys’ asses into gear to make it to a gig on time. (Except for Sheldon of course, who’s typically already planted in his seat on the bus, his keyboards safely stowed.) It’s not the first time she’s been in a new city with music to play, and it’s definitely not the first time she’s felt as if she has something to prove. But there’s something off, and she’s not the only one feeling it.
Usually they record someplace local, the cheapest place they can find with Pro Tools and an engineer who’s sober enough to work the board, or at least flexible enough to let Sheldon or Leonard work the board. This time though, Stuart’s really come through for them. He’s hooked them up with a real-deal producer, a guy that comes to see them live and have sit-downs with each of them, a guy with a notebook labeled “Jupiter Logic.” Colby’s actually invested in them and their future. And that’s how they end up driving to Portland to record in a proper studio with proper equipment and a reputation in a good way, with an engineer that was actually up for a Grammy.
Colby had emailed her, just the link and the words: “Start saving.” Penny had seen the price per day, clicked back into the tab where she had fortunately not yet clicked to confirm her purchase, and canceled her order. Payless from here on out, kiddo, she had told herself. It had sucked, and for all of them. Four months of scraping by and extra shows and staying up all night to tweak bass lines or rewrite lyrics.
They pull in at Five Star after two in the morning with bleary faces and a disturbing amount of empty coffee cups and Red Bull cans. The engineer had emailed her the spot to find the key to the back door, and it’s exactly where he said it is. The band settles into the familiar routine of the back and forth between bus and equipment dumping spot. The neat stack of Howard’s drums, the impressive line-up of Leonard’s electrics and her acoustics, the pedal boards and keyboards and Raj’s single contribution of his bass.
Of course Howard is the first one to start talking when they’re finally done loading in when he whines for (and this is an approximation on her part, but still) the thirty-seventh time that he doesn’t understand why Penny and Sheldon get to sleep in a nice comfy hotel room but the rest of them are stuck on bunk beds at Colby’s house.
“Howard.” She says, a smile on her face but in her special Howard voice, which she imagines is something like putting on steel toes to kick him in the crotch if he misbehaves. “Howard, we’ve gone over this.”
“I know, but I just-”
“We are paying for the hotel room. You guys had the option to do it, and then Colby said he has bands crash at his place all the time, he has bunk beds, it’s totally fine! And then you realized you wouldn’t need an extra grand or two, so you decided that bunk beds were awesome, and that you wanted the top, and it would be just like Camp Tawonga, whatever the hell that is.”
Howard frowns, and replies, “Jewish summer camp. With actual camping.”
“Then weren’t you in a tent?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Howard, there are some days where I think that I might actually have finally figured out the strange way your brain functions, and then you take it to an entirely new level.”
Raj steps in and puts his arm around Howard’s shoulders. “I think it’s time to declare defeat, Howard. Mostly because I would like to drop off Mr. and Mrs. Fancy Pants over here off at their fancy pants hotel so I can go to sleep.”
Sheldon glances down, always charmingly literal. “These pants are not fancy, Raj. They’re jeans.”
When they all pile back onto the bus, they’re laughing and back to normal, or at least what passes for normal between them. Penny leans into Sheldon’s shoulder, and notices he’s got a smile on his face that she knows to translate to mean he’s proud of himself. That sneaky bastard, she thinks. He’s learning.
Leonard’s been filming the whole first morning on his new little camera, one of those Flip things that costs way too much money but shoots in HD and fits in a pocket. He’d apparently started back at Colby’s house, catching Howard and Raj asleep on the bunk beds, the bleary intake of coffee. Once he’s at the studio, he zooms up Raj’s nose and leans up to film Sheldon looking annoyed in his general direction. He interviews Timmy about some of the equipment, and tells Penny that he’s going to edit it all into a documentary they can put on YouTube or a bonus disc or both. Penny will believe in when she sees it, but she hopes Leonard’s catching the little stuff too, like Howard already asleep on the couch downstairs outside of the big recording space. Penny’s half-tempted to dig out a Sharpie from one of the gear bags and give him a handlebar mustache.
The first days are always pretty easy in the studio. Recording scratch tracks feels like being back home in the apartment, rehearsing the song and adjusting bits here and there, but just playing it through as a group from start to finish. Colby and Timmy kick them out of the studio after they do the scratches for the first four songs, so they can listen and assess where to start and what needs fixing before they can move ahead. They have two hours for lunch, and they wander until they find a hole in the wall that sells hot dogs and chili cheese fries. They sit outside against the brick wall and try to people watch, but it’s mostly cars that pass by, Volvos and mud-covered SUVs. They haven’t even killed an hour, so Leonard, Raj and Howard decide to go back to the house. Apparently Colby has an X-Box. Penny’s not really in the mood for Halo though, and Sheldon seems inclined to stick with her.
She watches the three of them head off down the street, then leans her head against Sheldon’s shoulder. “Any ideas, good looking?”
“Nothing springs to mind. I assumed you had something planned, or a particular location you wanted to investigate.”
“No, not really. Just not in the mood for shooting things, you know?”
“An hour is hardly enough time for Halo. I’m not sure what exactly they think they’ll accomplish.”
“Mm, it’s not really enough time for what I was thinking of either.” She tilts her head and gives him a quick peck on the lips, then hauls herself up to her feet before he can protest. He’s not really one for public displays of affection, at all, but sometimes Penny likes to push his buttons. OK, she likes to push them all the time, but some more than others.
Sheldon gets to his feet and brushes at his pants. “I’m assuming that you wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”
She hmms in pleasure. “It is Portland. And the caffeine-monster that lives inside me is always hungry for more.”
Sheldon rolls his eyes, but there’s no real annoyance behind it. She takes his hand and leans her shoulder against his. “I don’t see you badmouthing caffeine when it’s in your tea.”
“You know I primarily drink decaffeinated green tea.”
“Yeah, but every once in a while you drink the real thing and then you’re up all night banging at your keyboards until you have seventeen new songs, and I’m just saying you don’t seem to mind it when,” she digs for the scientific gibberish he tends to throw at her whenever she’s on a particularly bad caffeine high, “oh, yeah, when the caffeine in your system has bound itself to your adenosine receptors in your brain, causing you to have elevated levels of neuron firing.”
“It has its place. I simply choose not to be an addict.”
“Uh huh, sure thing, Sheldon. Now please bring your girlfriend to the closest espresso machine and proceed to charm her with other tales of caffeine-addicted woe. The monster inside is so hungry. His name is Henry. He yearns for a cappuccino, Sheldon. Positively yearns.”
After they call it a wrap on the first day, Colby drags them out to a bar and they all toast to the recording session over a couple of pitchers of beer and burgers. She gets challenged to a round of Skee-Ball by Timmy, and she beats him handily by cheating and bouncing the balls off the rails to nail the 100 spots almost every time. She digs some more quarters out of her purse and gives them to Sheldon and Raj, and Sheldon manages a perfect score, despite Raj’s constant stream of shit-talking.
When she asks how the hell he managed it, he just shrugs and says, “Physics.”
She makes a mental note to see how he is playing pool. There could have been a far more entertaining way to fund this recording session.
Howard takes over the jukebox, and plays his favorite game of deciding what songs will either drive absolutely everyone crazy or get them kicked out, or just get the damn machine unplugged. Tonight, he picks a marathon of Spice Girls, although tonight it backfires on him when Penny turns it into a singalong to Wannabe at the bar. She has powers to defeat Howard Wolowitz at every turn, she’s convinced of it.
They hole up back in their booth underneath a moosehead (Penny remarks that this shit just would not fly in California), and drain a few more pitchers as they toast to new beginnings, no crashes in Logic, and no clogs in the studio toilet (gross). She’s pleasantly drunk and Sheldon has his arm on the back of her chair. Not quite close enough to touch, but she could, if she wanted to. It’s enough. The discussion morphs into the studio guys describing the craziest diva moments they’ve had to suffer through, and the boys describing the worst openers they’ve ever had to put up with. Like the kids they got paired up with once in Bakersfield, that had spray painted all their gear in neon and attached doll heads to their guitar knobs, with a lead singer that had been completely incomprehensible.
Leonard’s in one-upsmanship mode, so of course he adds, “Don’t forget the time that Bernadette decided it would be hilarious to enter us in that contest to open for that dude from Making the Band. And then he picked us.”
Penny puts her hands over her face, but catches Timmy making a face of pure glee through her fingers. “We’ve destroyed all the photographic evidence of that night, Timmy. You’re shit out of luck.”
“Which one was it? O-Town or LMNT? That Hawaiian kid?”
“You know a disturbing amount of information about this for a heterosexual male,” Raj butts in.
Penny points at him and nods emphatically. “It was the blond one from O-Town. And that’s the end of this discussion, Leonard.”
Timmy flings his coaster at her. “You gotta give me some of the details, at least. Tell me you fucked with him, at least a little bit.”
Penny can’t help but smile a little at that, even if she does still feel a little guilty about it (and the guy had ended up being a total good sport about it too). “We might have tossed a cover of Liquid Dreams into our set.”
She’s pretty sure Timmy actually falling out of his chair laughing is what gets them shut off at the bar.
Ten minutes later, Sheldon and her watch as the guys all pile into a cab, with Howard practically on Raj’s lap, and Leonard squeezed into the middle to head back to Colby’s house. She thumps the top of the cab as they drive off, and she can hear Raj complaining about Howard’s bony ass through the windows until they take the turn at the corner. They only have to wait another couple of minutes for another cab to pass by, and she curls up against Sheldon’s side in the backseat and watches the sleeping city pass by under streetlights on the way back to the hotel. There’s really only time for a few hours of sleep before they wake up and do it all over again.
The rough mixes turn out better than the ones they record on GarageBand back at home, but she knows Sheldon’s already starting to internally freak out about how recording is going, even though it’s only the second day. The first four they tracked are probably going to end up being the easiest part of the process, since now Sheldon seems constantly on guard for any tiny flaw that he might deem a problem too great to go on. They start tracking the next three songs, and Sheldon starts overcompensating by giving a million directions to them, rather than Timmy or Colby. The only problem is, he's not even in the same room as them - he's in the one next over, while they're all in the big room with the drum kit. Timmy's got a piano room, filled with an upright, an organ, and a stack of keyboards, and now Sheldon's rig haphazardly assembled in the middle, with a veritable maze of wires running to whatever outlets were still available. (She's hoping that Sheldon comes up with an organ part for one of the songs. Maybe one of the slower ones, although, on second though, there's nothing really like a rousing organ bit to really kick up a song's tempo.)
So, basically every time Sheldon wants to complain that they're not hitting the right chord, or that they need to make some minute adjustment, he's got to either shout through the sliding glass door, which never works since they've all got on their headphones, and if Sheldon hasn't noticed, drums are really fucking loud, or he has to get up and stick his head in the room and wave for their attention before berating them.
It ends up being a tense afternoon, especially since Timmy can obviously hear all of Sheldon's complaints through the mics in the room, and while he's obviously trying to make it easier on him, they still end up doing the songs way more than they actually should have to. Leonard starts snapping back at Sheldon, and Howard makes his awful jokes to try and relieve the tension, while Raj just looks at her while she’s trying to play peacemaker. It’s one thing if it happens at the apartment and she can just chuck something at one of them to get them to stop and settle it like adults, but here they’re supposed to be professionals, and not only that, a band that has its shit together so they might get mentioned to someone important. And it’s not even something new, since it’s not really a Jupiter Logic practice without a Sheldon lecture, but there’s this edge to the way Sheldon’s snapping at them now that she’s never really seen before. So much for looking like a united front.
Day three starts with Penny acquiring the largest cup of coffee the convenience story carries in an attempt to be ready to head Sheldon off at the pass, so to speak. She asks Timmy if it would be ok if she moved her stuff into the piano room, just for the day. The last four songs can live without her acoustic on the choruses in the rough mixes, and she’s trying to get her point across without really doing much of anything but raising her eyebrow at Timmy and hoping he catches on. Which thank god, he does. It delays them by about half an hour, while they move her gear into the piano room and find her a free corner that has enough space for a stool.
Sheldon sighs at increasingly loud levels every time they jostle his keyboard setup, until finally she tells Timmy she’s just going to take a quick smoke break, and she grabs Sheldon by the wrist and drags him outside with her. Raj calls out behind her that her pack and lighter are upstairs, but she ignores him. She swings the big basement door shut, and prays it won’t lock behind them.
Sheldon pulls one of his faces, but stays silent and waits for her to lob the first volley. So she tries to catch him off guard. “I’m going to make you a deal, and I want you to shut up until all the terms have been presented. Then you get thirty seconds to decide if you agree or not, and then depending on your answer, we either go back in and pretend like your ongoing shitfit never actually happened, or we stay out here and I kick your ass.”
Sheldon simply crosses his arms, and nods her head for her to proceed.
“Good. OK. So here’s the deal. You calm the fuck down and stop getting the rest of them, especially Timmy, riled up. You stay quiet, play, and if you have any comments, you run them by me first. In exchange, you get last say on song order and the cover for the b-side.”
“Do I get to add terms, or is this truly nonnegotiable?”
She eyes him for a second. “I’m willing to hear a reasonable proposal.”
“Fine. Here are my terms: Stop pretending like you’re in charge of this band, and I’ll stop mentally composing our new ad for a lead singer that can sing and keep her opinions to herself.”
Jesus, even Sheldon’s never hit that far below the belt. “They’re not-you wouldn’t-”
“Artistic differences, Penny. We wouldn’t be the first band to lose a lead singer and lump it into that all-purpose euphemism.” He shrugs, and while he looks uncomfortable, he doesn’t say anything else.
“Fine. Keep digging your fucking hole, Sheldon. I was only trying to help.”
When she heads back inside, she pretends like she doesn’t notice that the rest of them were obviously trying to eavesdrop, and by the looks on their faces, that they heard most of it.
The rest of the morning passes in a haze of uncomfortable silence that even Howard doesn’t dare break, although by the time they’re done tracking the rough mix of the second song and break for lunch, Sheldon’s almost looking her in the eyes again and she’s pretty much chalked it up to him being zealously overprotective about the band, as per usual, just to a new terrifying degree. She just doesn’t get why he’s so much crazier than usual, and why he’s suddenly locked himself away in what he likes to call his Fortress of Solitude, but what she’s ready to rename as the Fortress of Being a Giant Cunt. He’s never ever even seemed like he was threatened by her before, or her role in the band. And based on the past couple of years, all the evidence even points to the contrary, that he had welcomed her direction and considered them a team. Why would he even be dating her (and this isn’t just dating anymore, not by a long shot) if he’s been secretly harboring thoughts of how to oust her from the band if she made some kind of coup? To be fair though, she’s about sixty percent sure the guys would actually chose her over Sheldon. She’s nicer and frequently brings baked goods. She’s also not, you know, absolutely insane.
She clings to the thought that this is just a phase he’ll manage to work through, especially if she can actually get through to him. That he’ll open his eyes up and see that everything’s already on edge and already at risk to fall apart, only three days in. She’s still got faith that deep down, Sheldon does have the self-awareness to realize that it’s all him just turning phantoms into monsters of his own creation, that he knows he’s fucking up, but her calling him out is just making him dig his heels in harder. That he’s clutching his songs to his chest even harder and making everything worse, when all he has to do is trust her, and not even let go, just share some of the load.
She chews on these thoughts for the rest of the day at the studio, and when they get back to the hotel, she waits for Sheldon to say something, anything, to confide in her or even to complain again. But he doesn’t. Instead they shower separately, and go to bed quietly. Normal people would pretend to fall asleep, but Sheldon’s not normal and she’s feeling slightly resentful, so they just listen to each other breathe for an hour or so in the dark until she finally drifts off.
The day that Howard starts tracking drums is when she finally gets a little help from Sheldon in settling things down. No one really enjoys tracking drums except for Howard, and Raj has volunteered to stay and listen in. Leonard’s sleeping in back at the house, which is close enough to an invitation for her and Sheldon to head over there to start working on some of the new instrumentation that Colby had suggested. She’d wanted an organ part, and he’d come through on that one. He’d also hooked her up with the rough mixes on her iPod so all she had to do was dock it in his stereo equipment, and now it’s just her and Sheldon trying to pretend like they’re not in the middle of this weird fight sitting next to each other behind Sheldon’s Nord, like they’ve done a million times before in their apartment or in hotel rooms or backstage in dressing rooms waiting to go on. Except this time they’re just listening to the same mix over and over and neither of them has even struck a single key.
She’s tired, she sort of has to pee, she’s completely blocked on coming up with anything for this song, and most of all, she just wants this thing between them to be over. And unlike Sheldon, who might want to lay down arms but has no clue how to do it without sacrificing his pride, she’s willing to throw in the towel. Or at least make it look enough like she’s giving in to convince him he’s won, whatever that means.
That doesn’t mean she has to apologize, though.
“I shouldn’t have tried to shut you down in the studio.” That much is true at least. Sheldon’s got just as much right as she does to his opinions. It’s just the method he chooses to express them is where they all have a problem.
She watches as he spreads his hands across his knees. “No, you should not have.”
Jesus, he can’t even give her an inch. Fine. “I just wanted to say that I’m not trying to overrule you, or vote against you, or whatever it is you think I’m doing. I want this to work. So I wanted to let you know that I respect your opinions, and I’ve been thinking them over.”
“All right. I may have been influenced by my emotions when I spoke to you the other day.”
“Sheldon Cooper, are you dancing around something that might be considered an apology?” His mouth twitches, and before he says anything, she takes pity on him. It’s not easy for him. She knows things aren’t back to normal, probably not even by a long shot, but they seem to have a working truce, and she definitely doesn’t want to push too hard. Not yet. “A joke, Sheldon. OK? We’ll be fine.” She nudges his shoulder a little. “So, handclaps on the chorus?”
She’s starting to wonder if this is going to end up as their Hansa situation, except (a) they’re not U2, (b) she doesn’t have a song like One sitting in her back pocket, (c) their fight centered mostly on warring musical styles and not everything suddenly shitting the bed between their songwriters, and (d) U2 ended up surviving and coming out with the start of Achtung Baby. She’s starting to lean toward them not making it out of Portland with anything usable at this rate, even if her and Sheldon seem to at least be on somewhat steady ground again. There’s already a part of her brain that’s steeling itself for another few months of saving, of picking up shows they don’t really want to play, and ending up hating all the songs they’ve been working on for months. Starting over. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, to just wipe the slate clean and forget all the bullshit that’s happened so far, write new songs that will have newer, easier memories.
It would still feel like giving in. And that’s something she’s not particularly good at.
masterpost | part one | part two | part three