This is extremely self-indulgent
So in my Big Bang Fic there's a band I made up as a plot device. One night while I was procrastinating on school work I wrote fic about them. I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but then inlovewithnight asked why I didn't post it with my Big Bang when I'd said I was going to.
So just for fun, here is my imaginary band fic. It probably only makes sense in context.
Just Enough
Lindy wakes up when Kate steps on her hair, close enough to her scalp to pull it. She hisses in pain and sits up, glaring.
Kate, who was apparently trying to maneuver her way off the couch and over where Lindy was lying on the floor, flinches in sympathy and whispers, "Sorry!" She drops to her knees next to Lindy, smoothing her disheveled hair back from her face and then kissing her in the middle of the forehead. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep, babe." She's always doing that, unthinking terms of endearment and easy, meaningless touches that make Lindy's skin burn.
Lindy's slept for maybe eight hours tops in the last two days. She's exhausted to the point of being nauseous and shaky with it, though admittedly that could also be the perpetual hangover. She sort of feels like her body's giving out completely. She's pretty sure she wouldn't be able to fall asleep on Steve's ratty carpet to begin with otherwise. Even with a sleeping bag it's like sleeping on concrete. She sort of idly wishes that she hadn't been too drunk to drive home, but she's always too drunk to drive home. It's an occupational hazard.
The clock says 4. Lindy rubs at her eyes and her fingers come away smeared black and chalky from what's left of her eye makeup. Kate looks wide awake and her eye makeup looks perfect, but that's because her eyeliner is fucking tattooed on. Lindy taps her fingers on Kate's arm and whispers, "What's up?"
Kate shrugs. "J wants to write." Like that isn't what they spent most of the day doing when they should have been practicing what they've already got for...the Cobra tour or whateverthefuck. The tour that's not the Panic tour. Lindy's not even sure what's going on anymore. She just works here.
"Does he ever sleep?"
"You know he's having a hard time of it." There's a note of chastisement in Kate's voice that Kate herself probably doesn't even know is there; she and Jake are protective of each other on instinct. Most siblings are, Lindy assumes (she doesn't know, she doesn't have any), but there's an added defensiveness now. Maybe it's that they're twins, maybe it's just that they've shared the same dream and goals for so long that they're held even tighter together now that it's finally happening.
Maybe it's that Kate is fairly clearly equal parts worried about Jake and actually kind of pissed that he wanted to pull out of the Panic tour. It's one of those things where she's allowed to say snarky things about her brother, but nobody else is, ever.
Lindy nods and says, "Tell him I'm not playing an entire album's worth of songs about Ryan Ross."
Kate rolls her eyes. "I'll tell him."
"Seriously. He gets two and if there are more than that you're doing the rest of them without a drummer."
Kate says, "Do you really think I'm going to sing an entire album's worth of songs about Ryan Ross?" Lindy shrugs because yeah, actually. She thinks Kate would do exactly that if Jake asked her to. She thinks Kate would do just about anything Jake asked her to. Kate laughs softly and kisses her on the forehead again and Lindy bats her away. When Kate heads outside (so their plan is to sit on the porch with guitars? The neighbors are going to love that), Lindy gets up and steals the couch.
***
No one's totally sure where the pictures of Jake and Ryan that are plastered all over the internet come from, but it doesn't really matter. It's done, and it does give them publicity right before the album drops. According to Jake it's Ryan's fault because, quote, "He's the one with stalker fans. No one cares who we are."
"...Yet," Kate says, sitting up on her knees on the couch next to Jake and throwing her arms around his neck.
Lindy's sitting on the floor scrolling through the comments from Panic fans on Jake's blog. It's...interesting.
She's not really much of a lyricist. She's a science person. She was chem pre-med before Kate and Jake Scott came along and tipped her world over. However, considering that the rest of her band has been churning out angsty, emo lyrics for weeks now, you really would have thought that Jake would have posted those instead of (mis)quoting "Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off."
Except that Jake lashes out, impulsively and melodramatically, so maybe you would think he would do exactly what he did.
Steve is in the other room ignoring them by pointedly tuning every guitar in the house and doing that thing he does where he's going to have whatever opinion Kate and Jake want him to have because he doesn't actually care but he doesn't want them to know that. When Lindy joined the band he told her that this shit happens and best thing to do is ignore it until it goes away. She was warned. She'll give him that. But he's been dealing with this since he was twelve. Lindy's been dealing with it since she was nineteen. She hasn't had the same kind of time to develop coping mechanisms.
Also, Steve, at his best, is a) the smartest person Lindy knows b) probably objectively the best musician in Just Enough and c) almost completely without social skills. And currently he's been smoking a lot of pot and reading about string theory for fun again so he hasn't really said anything all that relevant to the actual world for a couple of days now.
When Spencer texts her with a link to Jake's blog, Lindy ducks into the other room. She's tempted to take pity and call him. It's got to suck for them too, though there's nothing she can say, really. It's a crap situation all around and she's not thrilled with Ryan either. Jake may be prone to melodrama, but he's also legitimately hurt. Still, it's really not fair that band solidarity seems to mean that they're all forbidden from speaking to any member of Panic at the Disco for the foreseeable future. Lindy likes Spencer. He's always gone out of his way to be encouraging to her.
Kate calls from the other room, "Linds! Who is it?" Lindy sighs. Band solidarity. Even if they're dumb and dramatic, they're hers. She texts back its out of my hands, there's nothing I can do, dont even talk to me right now I cant be caught fraternizing with the enemy.
***
The tour goes well. It really does. Gabe (and his entire band) is insane and also now her band has someone to translate when she yells at them in Spanish, so she's had to curb that impulse a bit, but she probably should have been curbing it anyway.
And yeah, on stage, in front of the crowd, it's a rush.
This wasn't her plan. She'd done marching band in high school, sure. She'd even had a band for awhile with some other kids and they'd had fun, but it had never been more than that. It had never been a real world option. It hadn't been something she knew she wanted until it was actually on offer.
One day during the second semester freshman year she'd ended up talking to Steve, who back then was only the hot (for a boy), scruffy sci-fi nerd boy in her physics class who was constantly stoned and always blew the curve anyway and she'd happened to mention in passing that she was an All-State percussionist in high school
His eyes had gone wide when she'd said that yeah, she still played, but only for fun; the kids she used to play with had gone out of state for school. It had only ever been a hobby; she was over the marching band bullshit, though yes, she missed it, of course she did. What? Yes, of course she was good.
Steve said, "Our drummer went out of state too." Then he dragged her home to meet his roommates.
They're a daunting united front when you're not used to them, and sometimes when you are; Kate had perched on the back of the couch, popping her gum and grinning and Jake had leaned back with his arms crossed and said, "Okay, let's hear her."
And Lindy had rolled her eyes because seriously whatever, but then they actually played together and then there was the band, which was only a hobby until it wasn't anymore, until suddenly it was this, everything.
Lindy's a year shy of her undergrad degree and it'll be years before she goes to med school, if she ever does. That's okay. It's so far from the plan that sometimes she can't breathe when she thinks about it, but it's okay. Most of the time.
***
Kate drops onto the bench across from Lindy and steals a handful of her French fries. Lindy pushes the plate toward her; she's not going to finish them anyway. She's about to the point where she would commit band-icide for a vegetable. She says, "I think you should know that you are everything that is wrong with my life."
Lindy woke up in the van with gum in her hair this morning. She barely sleeps anymore. There are multiple empty condom wrappers under the seat so she's pretty sure Jake and Lauren-the-merch-girl, who have been flirting heavily for days, had sex in the van last night after the show, even though there is a strict no sex in the van rule. Her back aches, she's getting sick again, she's been hung over since early May (or maybe since sometime in 2009 depending on how you want to measure it) and doesn't remember the last time she showered or slept in a bed, except that oh yeah, she does remember that; it was the last hotel night when she shared a bed with Kate and woke up to platonic cuddling. She's spent the last week pretending she's not watching Kate make out with some new guy (or girl, there are girls now, which is brand new levels of uncomfortable) every night, she has to talk to Gabe Saporta every day and at no point today has she even been able to get a stable internet connection to make a post to fmylife.
"I'm sorry," Kate says, and smiles without any real apology in her voice.
"No, you're not."
"No, I'm not. Would you rather be a doctor or a rock star?" Kate asks. There's not a lot of doubt there, but it's still a real question couched in Kate's customary playfulness. For the other three of them, this was plan A, anything else was just a backup. Lindy'd had her life mapped out and this wasn't on the map.
Lindy sighs, thinks about the pulse of the rhythm in her veins under the stage lights, and watches the spark of confidence that's still genuine curiosity in Kate's eyes. Kate's enthusiasm is constant and always a little bit contagious and Lindy loves her stupid band even when she doesn't like them. Like right this second she doesn't like them much, but she really can't imagine what her life would have looked like if she hadn't commented on Steve's unironic Star Trek t-shirt and struck up a conversation that day. She rolls her eyes and fights the smile, but admits, "Rock star."
Kate laughs and it's edged with something that Lindy kind of thinks is relief. She stands up, holding out her hand until Lindy takes it and then dances around the table tugging Lindy to her feet. "Then come on, Rock Star. We've got places to be."
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I still haven't read any Big Bangs /o\. My toread tag on delicious is getting SO LONG. Next weekend when I am finally, finally completely done with school, I'm just going to sit down and have a days long fic binge.
So just for fun, here is my imaginary band fic. It probably only makes sense in context.
Just Enough
Lindy wakes up when Kate steps on her hair, close enough to her scalp to pull it. She hisses in pain and sits up, glaring.
Kate, who was apparently trying to maneuver her way off the couch and over where Lindy was lying on the floor, flinches in sympathy and whispers, "Sorry!" She drops to her knees next to Lindy, smoothing her disheveled hair back from her face and then kissing her in the middle of the forehead. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep, babe." She's always doing that, unthinking terms of endearment and easy, meaningless touches that make Lindy's skin burn.
Lindy's slept for maybe eight hours tops in the last two days. She's exhausted to the point of being nauseous and shaky with it, though admittedly that could also be the perpetual hangover. She sort of feels like her body's giving out completely. She's pretty sure she wouldn't be able to fall asleep on Steve's ratty carpet to begin with otherwise. Even with a sleeping bag it's like sleeping on concrete. She sort of idly wishes that she hadn't been too drunk to drive home, but she's always too drunk to drive home. It's an occupational hazard.
The clock says 4. Lindy rubs at her eyes and her fingers come away smeared black and chalky from what's left of her eye makeup. Kate looks wide awake and her eye makeup looks perfect, but that's because her eyeliner is fucking tattooed on. Lindy taps her fingers on Kate's arm and whispers, "What's up?"
Kate shrugs. "J wants to write." Like that isn't what they spent most of the day doing when they should have been practicing what they've already got for...the Cobra tour or whateverthefuck. The tour that's not the Panic tour. Lindy's not even sure what's going on anymore. She just works here.
"Does he ever sleep?"
"You know he's having a hard time of it." There's a note of chastisement in Kate's voice that Kate herself probably doesn't even know is there; she and Jake are protective of each other on instinct. Most siblings are, Lindy assumes (she doesn't know, she doesn't have any), but there's an added defensiveness now. Maybe it's that they're twins, maybe it's just that they've shared the same dream and goals for so long that they're held even tighter together now that it's finally happening.
Maybe it's that Kate is fairly clearly equal parts worried about Jake and actually kind of pissed that he wanted to pull out of the Panic tour. It's one of those things where she's allowed to say snarky things about her brother, but nobody else is, ever.
Lindy nods and says, "Tell him I'm not playing an entire album's worth of songs about Ryan Ross."
Kate rolls her eyes. "I'll tell him."
"Seriously. He gets two and if there are more than that you're doing the rest of them without a drummer."
Kate says, "Do you really think I'm going to sing an entire album's worth of songs about Ryan Ross?" Lindy shrugs because yeah, actually. She thinks Kate would do exactly that if Jake asked her to. She thinks Kate would do just about anything Jake asked her to. Kate laughs softly and kisses her on the forehead again and Lindy bats her away. When Kate heads outside (so their plan is to sit on the porch with guitars? The neighbors are going to love that), Lindy gets up and steals the couch.
***
No one's totally sure where the pictures of Jake and Ryan that are plastered all over the internet come from, but it doesn't really matter. It's done, and it does give them publicity right before the album drops. According to Jake it's Ryan's fault because, quote, "He's the one with stalker fans. No one cares who we are."
"...Yet," Kate says, sitting up on her knees on the couch next to Jake and throwing her arms around his neck.
Lindy's sitting on the floor scrolling through the comments from Panic fans on Jake's blog. It's...interesting.
She's not really much of a lyricist. She's a science person. She was chem pre-med before Kate and Jake Scott came along and tipped her world over. However, considering that the rest of her band has been churning out angsty, emo lyrics for weeks now, you really would have thought that Jake would have posted those instead of (mis)quoting "Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off."
Except that Jake lashes out, impulsively and melodramatically, so maybe you would think he would do exactly what he did.
Steve is in the other room ignoring them by pointedly tuning every guitar in the house and doing that thing he does where he's going to have whatever opinion Kate and Jake want him to have because he doesn't actually care but he doesn't want them to know that. When Lindy joined the band he told her that this shit happens and best thing to do is ignore it until it goes away. She was warned. She'll give him that. But he's been dealing with this since he was twelve. Lindy's been dealing with it since she was nineteen. She hasn't had the same kind of time to develop coping mechanisms.
Also, Steve, at his best, is a) the smartest person Lindy knows b) probably objectively the best musician in Just Enough and c) almost completely without social skills. And currently he's been smoking a lot of pot and reading about string theory for fun again so he hasn't really said anything all that relevant to the actual world for a couple of days now.
When Spencer texts her with a link to Jake's blog, Lindy ducks into the other room. She's tempted to take pity and call him. It's got to suck for them too, though there's nothing she can say, really. It's a crap situation all around and she's not thrilled with Ryan either. Jake may be prone to melodrama, but he's also legitimately hurt. Still, it's really not fair that band solidarity seems to mean that they're all forbidden from speaking to any member of Panic at the Disco for the foreseeable future. Lindy likes Spencer. He's always gone out of his way to be encouraging to her.
Kate calls from the other room, "Linds! Who is it?" Lindy sighs. Band solidarity. Even if they're dumb and dramatic, they're hers. She texts back its out of my hands, there's nothing I can do, dont even talk to me right now I cant be caught fraternizing with the enemy.
***
The tour goes well. It really does. Gabe (and his entire band) is insane and also now her band has someone to translate when she yells at them in Spanish, so she's had to curb that impulse a bit, but she probably should have been curbing it anyway.
And yeah, on stage, in front of the crowd, it's a rush.
This wasn't her plan. She'd done marching band in high school, sure. She'd even had a band for awhile with some other kids and they'd had fun, but it had never been more than that. It had never been a real world option. It hadn't been something she knew she wanted until it was actually on offer.
One day during the second semester freshman year she'd ended up talking to Steve, who back then was only the hot (for a boy), scruffy sci-fi nerd boy in her physics class who was constantly stoned and always blew the curve anyway and she'd happened to mention in passing that she was an All-State percussionist in high school
His eyes had gone wide when she'd said that yeah, she still played, but only for fun; the kids she used to play with had gone out of state for school. It had only ever been a hobby; she was over the marching band bullshit, though yes, she missed it, of course she did. What? Yes, of course she was good.
Steve said, "Our drummer went out of state too." Then he dragged her home to meet his roommates.
They're a daunting united front when you're not used to them, and sometimes when you are; Kate had perched on the back of the couch, popping her gum and grinning and Jake had leaned back with his arms crossed and said, "Okay, let's hear her."
And Lindy had rolled her eyes because seriously whatever, but then they actually played together and then there was the band, which was only a hobby until it wasn't anymore, until suddenly it was this, everything.
Lindy's a year shy of her undergrad degree and it'll be years before she goes to med school, if she ever does. That's okay. It's so far from the plan that sometimes she can't breathe when she thinks about it, but it's okay. Most of the time.
***
Kate drops onto the bench across from Lindy and steals a handful of her French fries. Lindy pushes the plate toward her; she's not going to finish them anyway. She's about to the point where she would commit band-icide for a vegetable. She says, "I think you should know that you are everything that is wrong with my life."
Lindy woke up in the van with gum in her hair this morning. She barely sleeps anymore. There are multiple empty condom wrappers under the seat so she's pretty sure Jake and Lauren-the-merch-girl, who have been flirting heavily for days, had sex in the van last night after the show, even though there is a strict no sex in the van rule. Her back aches, she's getting sick again, she's been hung over since early May (or maybe since sometime in 2009 depending on how you want to measure it) and doesn't remember the last time she showered or slept in a bed, except that oh yeah, she does remember that; it was the last hotel night when she shared a bed with Kate and woke up to platonic cuddling. She's spent the last week pretending she's not watching Kate make out with some new guy (or girl, there are girls now, which is brand new levels of uncomfortable) every night, she has to talk to Gabe Saporta every day and at no point today has she even been able to get a stable internet connection to make a post to fmylife.
"I'm sorry," Kate says, and smiles without any real apology in her voice.
"No, you're not."
"No, I'm not. Would you rather be a doctor or a rock star?" Kate asks. There's not a lot of doubt there, but it's still a real question couched in Kate's customary playfulness. For the other three of them, this was plan A, anything else was just a backup. Lindy'd had her life mapped out and this wasn't on the map.
Lindy sighs, thinks about the pulse of the rhythm in her veins under the stage lights, and watches the spark of confidence that's still genuine curiosity in Kate's eyes. Kate's enthusiasm is constant and always a little bit contagious and Lindy loves her stupid band even when she doesn't like them. Like right this second she doesn't like them much, but she really can't imagine what her life would have looked like if she hadn't commented on Steve's unironic Star Trek t-shirt and struck up a conversation that day. She rolls her eyes and fights the smile, but admits, "Rock star."
Kate laughs and it's edged with something that Lindy kind of thinks is relief. She stands up, holding out her hand until Lindy takes it and then dances around the table tugging Lindy to her feet. "Then come on, Rock Star. We've got places to be."
--------
I still haven't read any Big Bangs /o\. My toread tag on delicious is getting SO LONG. Next weekend when I am finally, finally completely done with school, I'm just going to sit down and have a days long fic binge.