Fic: Grace - chapter 2
Title: Grace
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: P!atd
The first film I ever starred in was a C-grade Hollywood chick-flick which I doubt even the most devoted of fans would’ve heard of.
Then again, with the amount you all seem to know about my before-fame- life, it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t one of my best-kept secrets.
The film was called Sweethart, and yes, they did spell it that way. I acted alongside an actress by the name of Monique Ableu, a skinny, dark-haired, pretty thing, who couldn’t act so much as she could pout at the camera like a porn star.
I’ll get back to her.
*
When I was very young, my mother told me that first impressions were very important. First impressions, she said, would tell you what you needed to know most about a person. It told you what they wanted you to think about them. It told you what they weren’t afraid to hide.
I never tried to be anything but myself when I met someone new, something that probably got me further than it should have. In reality, my problem lay with trying to be something I wasn’t around people that I had known for a long time…I tried to be what I knew they wanted me to be.
I tried to be the perfect son for a bit, the caring little brother, I tried to be the best friend that would never, ever leave her side. I tried to be so many things to so many different people, that if I hadn’t left, my head would’ve imploded with the shadows of a thousand different personas.
Ka-BOOM!
Brendon-personalities splattered across the hallway at school, dripping down my bedroom walls, sprayed across the windows of Catherine’s apartment.
Attractive image, huh?
If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t really remember how I met Pete Wentz, thus I have no idea what first impression he cast on me. What first impression I cast on him.
I like to think he strode into my life like a hero, out to rescue the 16-year-old idiot who had suddenly found himself with no home, no money and no friends in a city he didn’t know. Up shit creek and all that jazz. I like to think that he cast a good first impression.
In reality, it was probably less than inspiring.
I bet he was trashed.
By the time I arrived in Los Angeles, I was tired, sweaty and so fucking emotionally drained that I was half-ready to call Catherine to pick me up and take me back to the home I’d ditched some five hours earlier.
“Take me home, Cate!” My head screamed at her, praying that maybe there was some truth behind the X-Men…that maybe I had mutated genes that suddenly would allow me the ability of telepathy.
Stan Lee let me down. I wasn’t telepathic.
I didn’t call her either. I never called Catherine.
So I kept driving around the city till my car ran out of gas. The rest of that night was such a fucking whirlwind, all booze and drugs and bodies and oozing sweat. Men and women and girls and boys and some who were a bit of both, and somewhere in there was Pete Wentz.
Peter fucking Wentz.
In reality, I got lucky.
By the end of the night, I had an agent, and he had a new client that would make him fucking millions.
So scratch that, we both got lucky.
*
In a week, I had a manager. A curvy girl by the name of Loretta Narrell. Tall and snarky with glasses as big as her head and a smile that shone with every tiny ounce of her cynical soul.
In two weeks, I had a personal assistant, his name was Jon Walker, and in four days, I would have dubbed him the greatest person I had ever known. Seriously.
In three weeks, I had the deal for Sweethart signed, sealed, delivered. Pete assured me it would get better. His assistant at the time had just rolled her big blue eyes.
*
“Fuck, this script is terrible.”
I glanced over at Jon, who sat with his legs propped against the sofa in my tiny hotel suite, wad of paper in his hands.
“No shit.”
“Yea,” he said again, flicking through the pages, eyes half-lidded and blatantly unimpressed. “I know it’s your first film and all, but…seriously.”
I rolled my eyes, “I know, Jon.”
“And, I know you’re 16, but-“
“I know, Jon.”
He stared at me, forehead furrowed, “You should really lift your standards.”
“What standards? Seriously, I’m nobody, I’m amazed Pete got me any gig, let alone a starring role.”
“Yea, starring role as Danny, pin-up quarterback, hopelessly devoted to his lover Courtney Dallas, only to have her whisked away to the other side of the country by her evil stepfather.” Jon was standing by this point, casting huge gestures with his big hands. “How ever will they reconnect and rekindle their romance? But of course! MSN messenger! A love so strong-“
“For fucks sake, Jon.”
So the story was trashy, and the script was atrocious and, well, the whole thing was just bad. But it was a taste of something that I’d been wanting and it was the only option I had.
By this point, Jon was in near hysterical laughter, going back over parts of the script that were particularly…lacking.
I moved into the kitchenette, hunting through the fridge for something that didn’t look like it had been spat up by Jon’s cat.
“Hey,” Jon called from the other room, “who’s playing Courtney?”
*
I met Monique Ableu two days before the start of the shoot.
Allegedly, she was Canada’s rising star. Their answer to the flood of trashy American bimbos. Loretta was telling me this 15 minutes before I was scheduled to meet Monique, running me through how famous this girl would be, how much support she had back in Canada.
Monique was every bit a ditsy diva as was to be expected.
Which was very much so.
“Hi.” She said, running perfectly manicured fingers through her long, dark hair.
“Hi.” I said, eyeing her boobs. Pretty small, really.
“They’re dying my hair blonde for the film.” She said.
“Oh.” I replied, “Why?”
“Stereotypes.” She said, “don’t want to confuse the audience.”
“Oh.” I said again, and to be polite, I pretended that what she said had made perfect sense.
*
Loretta was right, Monique was a rising star - one that would fall, so don’t worry if you have no clue as to who she is - which became apparent faster than I could comprehend. Suddenly, everyone knew who I was.
I was Brendon Urie. I was Monique’s latest trinket.
The film was a disaster upon cinema release, and was quickly covered up. Monique’s name wasn’t even attached, and her hair was swiftly dyed back to its original colour so as to lose whatever connection still existed.
Her publicist made up a fairytale on the spot, so as to not reveal the film. We’d known each other since we were very young of course, met in elementary school, grown up on the same street and all. In fact, I’d been insanely in-love with her since I was 9.
I am not ashamed to say that I used Monique, and yes, that is a terrible thing to say.
I am slightly more ashamed to say that in the seven months I dated Monique, that I used a lot of people.
Used hundreds of heads and hearts and souls so as to claw my way to the top of the LA circuit. Socialite by evening, bitch the rest of the goddamn day.
Script after script poured through my door, desperate directors seeking newest Hollywood star. Likes long walks on the beach and snorting cocaine.
Suddenly I was famous, famous in my own right. Not Brendon Urie, Monique’s trinket, Brendon Urie, LA’s newest star, stealing the spotlight from Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Ashton fucking Kutcher.
I was it.
*
“Loretta.”
“Yea?” She said, pencil tucked behind her ear, deep, red polish on the table as she painted her nails with the intense care that she took with all her actions.
“How would you go about breaking up with someone who you can’t really ever remember agreeing to date?”
Loretta looked up at me with a quirked eyebrow and an upturned lip, “What the fuck are you going on about?”
“Monique.”
“What about her?”
“Do you actually ever remember me saying that we were dating?”
“Am I supposed too?”
“You’re my manager.”
“So?”
I gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes, placing the tiny brush delicately back into the glass bottle. “You breaking up with her?”
“Looks like.” I replied, staring at her as she blew on her fingers.
“’bout goddamn time, that bitch annoys the fuck outta me.”
“You should try dating her.”
Loretta shot me a grin. A month ago she’d cut her hair, so it now fell in soft dark curls around her face. She might’ve been pretty if she wasn’t such a snarky whore.
“Glad I don’t really.”
I threw myself back into the sofa across from her, letting her sigh in that condescending way that only intelligent women can really pull off.
“Brendon, when it first became apparent that you and slutty were ‘together’, do you remember what I told you?”
Shrugging, I tilted my head to look her in the eye, “I think I recall hysterical cackling.”
“As your friend, I said that you needed someone smarter than her. As your manager, I listed the advantages of dating someone like Monique in this industry. Hatred of the bitch aside, Monique is a teen-starlet, by dating her you made a name for yourself. Now you are a teen starlet. Either dump her or impregnate her. That’s all that’s really left to do.”
I stared at her for a bit, and Loretta just shrugged and let loose an insane little grin.
“You’re shit at giving advice.”
“I’m your fucking manager, Bren, what did you expect? Want love advice or a pity fest then go to fucking Jon.”
So I did.
He told me to dump her. Getting her pregnant probably wasn’t worth the trouble.
*
With the scandal that leaving Monique caused, it seemed my notability in the tabloids doubled. Now, not only was I a hot, teen-starlet, but I was a single, hot teen-starlet.
My fanbase doubled instantly, as did the scripts pouring through my LA flat.
So I did all that was left for me to do, I worked. Acted. I delved in the good and the bad and the teen and the horror and in the everything that peeked my interest.
I was a star, and really, that’s all there was to it.
*
To my mother, first impressions were very important.
My mother said that my father gave a good first impression. That he was strong and kind and wore the imprint of his good heart on his sleeve. She said that the moment she met him, she knew he was the man she was going to marry.
She told me this when I was 12, and I wasn’t really sure what she meant. I asked Catherine.
Catherine told me that Dad had two hearts, a good one and a bad one.
She told me that Mom knew she was going to marry Dad.
She told me that just because she knew, didn’t mean she wanted too.
*
TBC