[FIC] Far Side of the Sun
Far Side of the Sun
Author: Riastarstruck
Pairing: VAM of course. Bam/Missy in the background.
Summary: They used to be everything to each other, their friendship was looked on with envy by all those that watched them. But then something happened, they grew apart, became separated by distance and history.
This is the story of them finding each other again, dealing with the problems that stand between them and finding more then they’d left behind.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own nothing, just the order of the words and the idea
Authors Note: This is my take on Bam’s time in LA during the making of Screamworks. Yes, I started it right when Bam’s tattoo came out, yes, over a year ago this was started. So some of the more recent revelations might be absent.
So ultimately this fic is about them re-realising their friendship, dealing with sobriety and the how’s and whys of Bam’s portrait tattoo of Ville.
Chapter One
[NOTE] some of you may have read this previously as a oneshot i posted a couple of months back called "Cigarettes"
Chapter Two
There had always been a stillness to Ville, Bam mused as he eyed him across the small outdoor table. The stillness hadn’t ever been really noticeable when they both swayed drunkenly and leant against each other to stay upright; even when they were sitting down. But now with the ever present elephant of sobriety the stillness was unnerving and with his own forced abstinence as a supporting friend Bam couldn’t help but notice it.
Ville fiddled absently with the spoon on his saucer staring off into the middle distance, sunglasses obscured his eyes though Bam knew he wasn’t looking at anything in particular, he hadn’t since they sat down and Bam wished desperately that he would look at him, instead of letting his eyes glide over him as though he wasn’t really there.
He sat poised in his uncomfortable chair in an imitation of effortless ease, his shoulders slumped and his long body curved elegantly like Bam had seen a thousand times before, but it just wasn’t right, the ease wasn’t natural -he was coiled tight, like an animal ready to run at the slightest provocation. But even still Bam noticed the stillness, like Ville didn’t need to breathe as much as the rest of us, or move even half as often.
Bam fiddled with his own coffee, swirled the remnants of foam around the pale brown liquid before tapping his spoon against the edge of his saucer in a way he knew must be driving the people on the tables around them mad; he wasn’t doing it maliciously like he would in other circumstances, he just couldn’t stop himself, nervous energy expelled however possible. Ville lit a cigarette and Bam breathed in with relief, this he recognised, this he knew. Ville had been sober for ages now, years so it was no excuse for the undeniable awkwardness they seemed to slump so easily into; but still Bam didn’t know how to act around this new clean Ville, he hated the lame jokes that tumbled without preamble out of his mouth, hates the humiliating stories he told because he never seemed to have anything else to say, and his own constant state of movement seemed fidgety and strange beside Ville’s stillness.
The lunch break passed slowly and they stayed as short a time as they could, if they left much earlier it would be clear to the world that there was no friendly familiarity left, just the awkwardness of almost strangers. Bam couldn’t help but feel relieved when they made their way back to the studio down the street. This unease to their relationship unsettled him, he was selfish for Ville’s attention like he always had been and no doubt always will be, but now when he had it he second guessed everything he said, often choosing silence over saying anything at all so Ville wouldn’t know how much of an idiot he really was. Now they went to cafes for lunch the rare times they saw each other, had coffees instead of Brewskies. Bam hated cafe’s he always felt claustrophobic and trapped, hated the way the waitresses’ either recognised him and gave him flirty inviting smiles, or wary untrusting looks- the connotations so much uglier in the glare and haze of daylight.
Ville never seemed to notice the looks they got, the second glances at either him or Bam, he supposed he was used to it from back home, he was still rather anonymous in America, but in Finland his fame rivalled Bam's.
Back at the studio Bam felt himself relaxing muscle by muscle, the guys joked with him like it was years ago, like nothing had changed, and he supposed for them the change in Ville was less dramatic, they basically lived with the guy so they didn’t notice him shift slowly into this new unrecognisable man. Bam saw him once every couple of months and he spent the first half of the trip trying to remember how he used to act and slot it in beside the new things he did to fit in with this new shiny Ville.
The band talked loudly, making jokes in a garbled mix of Finish and English, a casualness around each other that was always amazing to watch. Bam relaxed even more, this is what he knew, this is what he understood, sound and motion, crowds of people; this was his world, a world of noise and chaos.
Bam wasn’t good with silence, couldn’t keep still if you paid him to and he had never been alone in his life. In a small town you knew everyone, whether you wanted to or not; skateboarding was as much a social event as a sport and he’d had a procession of girlfriends since he first realised that breasts were really kinda great to look at, then later, to touch. He thinks that’s why this silence between himself and Ville was so painful for him, it was so far outside anything he’d ever had to live with, and it pained him to distance himself from Ville like this but he couldn’t stop himself from running back to the familiar.
He was moved towards the desks, Ville pressed close behind him, stretching past to flick some switches and turn some dials and then the room began to fill with sound. Bam leant back against the presence behind him, allowing his body to sway closer to the warmth that radiated from the tall Finn. He closed his eyes and let himself listen to what they had already recorded, it was different to their previous work, but then again each album was always so different -that’s what made them so constantly good; it’s how they avoided become another tired old rock band.
On the second run through Ville began to hum softly along to the music. This is what Bam lived for, Ville's warmth up close, seemingly enclosing him as his voice filled the room and the vibrations warm and close to his ear. He opened his eyes and smiled at the reflection in the sound proof glass in front of them; they were hazy and warped by the thick glass, their figures half lit by the dim studio, their bodies seemed to melt into each other he noted with a strange thill, he smiled as his torso bled into Ville's, he saw Ville smile back.
“So what do you think?” Mige broke the stillness and Bam turned with a grin already in place; Ville moved away at the same time like a choreographed dance, moving towards a pile of notebooks and old coffee cups.
“Dude, that was fucking brilliant!” Ville never stayed to listen to the praise, he was an artist and needed constructive criticism, and he sought it even when there was nothing left to critique.
Recording studios are so detached from the rest of the world; hours can pass and you wouldn’t notice except for the slow procession of the hands around the clock. There is no sound that you don’t make yourself and no lights that you don’t choose to use. Bam often thought that if the world ever ended the people in recording studios around the world would never even notice. There was something fitting in that -that the world would end and Ville would be here, creating music for the rest of eternity none the wiser.
Mige and Linde had migrated over to the chess set in the corner and were currently deeply involved with a game as Burton lounged across the couch, his headphones on but Bam had a feeling he was asleep; Gas was talking on his phone in the doorway, rapid fire Finish a buzz of background noise Bam barely even noticed. Bam himself stood motionless in front of the window and mixer, watching Ville work through the latest song. It was strange watching him like this, through a window in another room it was almost voyeuristic and Bam wasn’t sure if it was strange to anybody else, or just him.
He continued standing though, watching as the seconds passed to minutes which bled into hours. Ville hadn’t come out of the studio since they’d arrived, an acoustic on his lap, headphones covering his ears and hair tied in a messy bun at his nape, a loose strand kept falling in his face and he kept trying to tuck it behind his ear as he scribbled on the loose pages spread out in front of him. He played until his fingers bled, trying to find the perfect arrangement of cords to match the tune in his head, and Bam watched as he played on. He’d seen him like this before, so obsessed with his music it’s like the rest of the world stopped mattering, like he couldn’t breathe or think or go on living for one second more if he wasn’t somehow working towards his song.
Bam has joked about wanting Ville to stay unhappy so he will always write great songs, he’s joked about only loving Ville's for his amazing voice but he worried himself sick when Ville was like this, when his skin grew paler and his hair grew lank and untidy. He was growing a beard again, Bam noted, he remembered hearing somewhere that the fan-girls thought he looked like Johnny Depp when he had his last one; if he squinted he thought he might be able to see it. He had a feeling this beard wasn’t intentional like the last one; it was scruffy and messy and held signs of aborted shaving attempts. He looked tired he decided with a twist of his gut.
*~*
Time was liquid when he wrote; it made no sense and held no meaning. The eternal ticking of the clock worked its way into the songs as a silent track that ran underneath, unheard but vital; a hidden sense of urgency, foreboding, sadness which he alone was privy too.
He glanced up some indistinguishable time later and found himself staring at the warped image of Bam. Ville pressed against his tender fingertips as he blinked blankly at his friend; he felt the raw skin prickle and a sluggish bead of blood crept along the cracks in his fingers. He was used to being unnoticed when he created, his band so used to it from a lifetime of having seen it and nobody else ever really got to see them working besides the various producers they hired, it was too intimate, too complicated to have people wandering in and out.
There had been a tension around the two of them lately, or maybe it had always been there and he was only just noticing it now that he was sober. If he was honest the tension annoyed him, a strained silence and a predetermined space between them which was so thick in the air it was like it was gagging him sometimes. He wondered if Bam felt it, or if he was just being melodramatic again and was reading too much into everything.
He longed for the easy silence of his hotel room, the crisp impersonal sheets and the pointlessly tidied room. Bam had been in town for one day so far and it had already upset his routine. Things were different between them now, no careless ease and nothing really that tied them together besides a sordid past and Ville's music. In a way it was strange to be tied to someone through his music, even with the band he was tied to them through ‘the band’, through their careers, their love of music, but not by his music. His music was intimate, private, something he shared only part of with the rest of the world. He had twenty songs in a note book, but thirty more in his head, and those he doubted would ever be heard, parts of them maybe, a melody here, a lyric there but for the most part he was alone in his music.
But Bam wanted all of it, wanted to drown in it and hear every tune he so much as hummed. It amused him how the exuberant Bam would fall silent to listen to his version of whatever was on the radio, fall still like a spell when Ville made up a tune on the spot. He liked it, felt a thrill at that undivided attention; the adoration he wore unashamed, Ville doubted he even knew he showed his emotions so clearly across his face.
Bam would want to go out to eat, to talk and be seen together. But Ville was tired of the real world, of the people and the noise and the motion of it all. He didn’t want to have his thoughts drowned out by a cheerfully eating crowd, didn’t want to think about the stain on his top or the way he might appear to others, tired and thin and pale in the glare of LA.
And he was tired, god was he tired. He wanted to sleep for a year but each morning when he woke he was more exhausted then the night before. Each cup of coffee he downed too hot and too bitter was more and more like flavoured water. He wanted the spark back, the fire and the flare, he wanted to breathe deeply and not feel the strain on his lungs, he wanted to talk and not feel the dryness of his eyes more acutely with every word he spoke. He wanted to smile he realised with a start.
With a barely audible sigh he got up and felt his bones crack and blood rush to his limbs, he stood for a moment just staring at Bam, Bam was tanned and strong and smiling, always fucking smiling, his clothes were dirty and his beard was messy and he looked so damned comfortable it made Ville sick. He ran a hand across his face and fingered his own facial hair. He didn’t want to grow another beard, he’d been meaning to shave it off, but each time to got the razor in hand he heard a word whisper in the back of his mind which just clicked and he would gladly spare the energy to write it down then to bother with a tedious task which served no real purpose besides vanity.
He moved out of his quite safe haven and into the crowded studio. Bam grinned up at him and Ville felt something in his gut twist which might have been bitterness, might have been hatred or it might have been the thrill of adventure that used to always rock through his veins when he saw the younger man.
Chapter Three
A/N Please leave a comment, the nicest thing in the world is to hear that someone has read your work.
Author: Riastarstruck
Pairing: VAM of course. Bam/Missy in the background.
Summary: They used to be everything to each other, their friendship was looked on with envy by all those that watched them. But then something happened, they grew apart, became separated by distance and history.
This is the story of them finding each other again, dealing with the problems that stand between them and finding more then they’d left behind.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own nothing, just the order of the words and the idea
Authors Note: This is my take on Bam’s time in LA during the making of Screamworks. Yes, I started it right when Bam’s tattoo came out, yes, over a year ago this was started. So some of the more recent revelations might be absent.
So ultimately this fic is about them re-realising their friendship, dealing with sobriety and the how’s and whys of Bam’s portrait tattoo of Ville.
Chapter One
[NOTE] some of you may have read this previously as a oneshot i posted a couple of months back called "Cigarettes"
Chapter Two
There had always been a stillness to Ville, Bam mused as he eyed him across the small outdoor table. The stillness hadn’t ever been really noticeable when they both swayed drunkenly and leant against each other to stay upright; even when they were sitting down. But now with the ever present elephant of sobriety the stillness was unnerving and with his own forced abstinence as a supporting friend Bam couldn’t help but notice it.
Ville fiddled absently with the spoon on his saucer staring off into the middle distance, sunglasses obscured his eyes though Bam knew he wasn’t looking at anything in particular, he hadn’t since they sat down and Bam wished desperately that he would look at him, instead of letting his eyes glide over him as though he wasn’t really there.
He sat poised in his uncomfortable chair in an imitation of effortless ease, his shoulders slumped and his long body curved elegantly like Bam had seen a thousand times before, but it just wasn’t right, the ease wasn’t natural -he was coiled tight, like an animal ready to run at the slightest provocation. But even still Bam noticed the stillness, like Ville didn’t need to breathe as much as the rest of us, or move even half as often.
Bam fiddled with his own coffee, swirled the remnants of foam around the pale brown liquid before tapping his spoon against the edge of his saucer in a way he knew must be driving the people on the tables around them mad; he wasn’t doing it maliciously like he would in other circumstances, he just couldn’t stop himself, nervous energy expelled however possible. Ville lit a cigarette and Bam breathed in with relief, this he recognised, this he knew. Ville had been sober for ages now, years so it was no excuse for the undeniable awkwardness they seemed to slump so easily into; but still Bam didn’t know how to act around this new clean Ville, he hated the lame jokes that tumbled without preamble out of his mouth, hates the humiliating stories he told because he never seemed to have anything else to say, and his own constant state of movement seemed fidgety and strange beside Ville’s stillness.
The lunch break passed slowly and they stayed as short a time as they could, if they left much earlier it would be clear to the world that there was no friendly familiarity left, just the awkwardness of almost strangers. Bam couldn’t help but feel relieved when they made their way back to the studio down the street. This unease to their relationship unsettled him, he was selfish for Ville’s attention like he always had been and no doubt always will be, but now when he had it he second guessed everything he said, often choosing silence over saying anything at all so Ville wouldn’t know how much of an idiot he really was. Now they went to cafes for lunch the rare times they saw each other, had coffees instead of Brewskies. Bam hated cafe’s he always felt claustrophobic and trapped, hated the way the waitresses’ either recognised him and gave him flirty inviting smiles, or wary untrusting looks- the connotations so much uglier in the glare and haze of daylight.
Ville never seemed to notice the looks they got, the second glances at either him or Bam, he supposed he was used to it from back home, he was still rather anonymous in America, but in Finland his fame rivalled Bam's.
Back at the studio Bam felt himself relaxing muscle by muscle, the guys joked with him like it was years ago, like nothing had changed, and he supposed for them the change in Ville was less dramatic, they basically lived with the guy so they didn’t notice him shift slowly into this new unrecognisable man. Bam saw him once every couple of months and he spent the first half of the trip trying to remember how he used to act and slot it in beside the new things he did to fit in with this new shiny Ville.
The band talked loudly, making jokes in a garbled mix of Finish and English, a casualness around each other that was always amazing to watch. Bam relaxed even more, this is what he knew, this is what he understood, sound and motion, crowds of people; this was his world, a world of noise and chaos.
Bam wasn’t good with silence, couldn’t keep still if you paid him to and he had never been alone in his life. In a small town you knew everyone, whether you wanted to or not; skateboarding was as much a social event as a sport and he’d had a procession of girlfriends since he first realised that breasts were really kinda great to look at, then later, to touch. He thinks that’s why this silence between himself and Ville was so painful for him, it was so far outside anything he’d ever had to live with, and it pained him to distance himself from Ville like this but he couldn’t stop himself from running back to the familiar.
He was moved towards the desks, Ville pressed close behind him, stretching past to flick some switches and turn some dials and then the room began to fill with sound. Bam leant back against the presence behind him, allowing his body to sway closer to the warmth that radiated from the tall Finn. He closed his eyes and let himself listen to what they had already recorded, it was different to their previous work, but then again each album was always so different -that’s what made them so constantly good; it’s how they avoided become another tired old rock band.
On the second run through Ville began to hum softly along to the music. This is what Bam lived for, Ville's warmth up close, seemingly enclosing him as his voice filled the room and the vibrations warm and close to his ear. He opened his eyes and smiled at the reflection in the sound proof glass in front of them; they were hazy and warped by the thick glass, their figures half lit by the dim studio, their bodies seemed to melt into each other he noted with a strange thill, he smiled as his torso bled into Ville's, he saw Ville smile back.
“So what do you think?” Mige broke the stillness and Bam turned with a grin already in place; Ville moved away at the same time like a choreographed dance, moving towards a pile of notebooks and old coffee cups.
“Dude, that was fucking brilliant!” Ville never stayed to listen to the praise, he was an artist and needed constructive criticism, and he sought it even when there was nothing left to critique.
Recording studios are so detached from the rest of the world; hours can pass and you wouldn’t notice except for the slow procession of the hands around the clock. There is no sound that you don’t make yourself and no lights that you don’t choose to use. Bam often thought that if the world ever ended the people in recording studios around the world would never even notice. There was something fitting in that -that the world would end and Ville would be here, creating music for the rest of eternity none the wiser.
Mige and Linde had migrated over to the chess set in the corner and were currently deeply involved with a game as Burton lounged across the couch, his headphones on but Bam had a feeling he was asleep; Gas was talking on his phone in the doorway, rapid fire Finish a buzz of background noise Bam barely even noticed. Bam himself stood motionless in front of the window and mixer, watching Ville work through the latest song. It was strange watching him like this, through a window in another room it was almost voyeuristic and Bam wasn’t sure if it was strange to anybody else, or just him.
He continued standing though, watching as the seconds passed to minutes which bled into hours. Ville hadn’t come out of the studio since they’d arrived, an acoustic on his lap, headphones covering his ears and hair tied in a messy bun at his nape, a loose strand kept falling in his face and he kept trying to tuck it behind his ear as he scribbled on the loose pages spread out in front of him. He played until his fingers bled, trying to find the perfect arrangement of cords to match the tune in his head, and Bam watched as he played on. He’d seen him like this before, so obsessed with his music it’s like the rest of the world stopped mattering, like he couldn’t breathe or think or go on living for one second more if he wasn’t somehow working towards his song.
Bam has joked about wanting Ville to stay unhappy so he will always write great songs, he’s joked about only loving Ville's for his amazing voice but he worried himself sick when Ville was like this, when his skin grew paler and his hair grew lank and untidy. He was growing a beard again, Bam noted, he remembered hearing somewhere that the fan-girls thought he looked like Johnny Depp when he had his last one; if he squinted he thought he might be able to see it. He had a feeling this beard wasn’t intentional like the last one; it was scruffy and messy and held signs of aborted shaving attempts. He looked tired he decided with a twist of his gut.
*~*
Time was liquid when he wrote; it made no sense and held no meaning. The eternal ticking of the clock worked its way into the songs as a silent track that ran underneath, unheard but vital; a hidden sense of urgency, foreboding, sadness which he alone was privy too.
He glanced up some indistinguishable time later and found himself staring at the warped image of Bam. Ville pressed against his tender fingertips as he blinked blankly at his friend; he felt the raw skin prickle and a sluggish bead of blood crept along the cracks in his fingers. He was used to being unnoticed when he created, his band so used to it from a lifetime of having seen it and nobody else ever really got to see them working besides the various producers they hired, it was too intimate, too complicated to have people wandering in and out.
There had been a tension around the two of them lately, or maybe it had always been there and he was only just noticing it now that he was sober. If he was honest the tension annoyed him, a strained silence and a predetermined space between them which was so thick in the air it was like it was gagging him sometimes. He wondered if Bam felt it, or if he was just being melodramatic again and was reading too much into everything.
He longed for the easy silence of his hotel room, the crisp impersonal sheets and the pointlessly tidied room. Bam had been in town for one day so far and it had already upset his routine. Things were different between them now, no careless ease and nothing really that tied them together besides a sordid past and Ville's music. In a way it was strange to be tied to someone through his music, even with the band he was tied to them through ‘the band’, through their careers, their love of music, but not by his music. His music was intimate, private, something he shared only part of with the rest of the world. He had twenty songs in a note book, but thirty more in his head, and those he doubted would ever be heard, parts of them maybe, a melody here, a lyric there but for the most part he was alone in his music.
But Bam wanted all of it, wanted to drown in it and hear every tune he so much as hummed. It amused him how the exuberant Bam would fall silent to listen to his version of whatever was on the radio, fall still like a spell when Ville made up a tune on the spot. He liked it, felt a thrill at that undivided attention; the adoration he wore unashamed, Ville doubted he even knew he showed his emotions so clearly across his face.
Bam would want to go out to eat, to talk and be seen together. But Ville was tired of the real world, of the people and the noise and the motion of it all. He didn’t want to have his thoughts drowned out by a cheerfully eating crowd, didn’t want to think about the stain on his top or the way he might appear to others, tired and thin and pale in the glare of LA.
And he was tired, god was he tired. He wanted to sleep for a year but each morning when he woke he was more exhausted then the night before. Each cup of coffee he downed too hot and too bitter was more and more like flavoured water. He wanted the spark back, the fire and the flare, he wanted to breathe deeply and not feel the strain on his lungs, he wanted to talk and not feel the dryness of his eyes more acutely with every word he spoke. He wanted to smile he realised with a start.
With a barely audible sigh he got up and felt his bones crack and blood rush to his limbs, he stood for a moment just staring at Bam, Bam was tanned and strong and smiling, always fucking smiling, his clothes were dirty and his beard was messy and he looked so damned comfortable it made Ville sick. He ran a hand across his face and fingered his own facial hair. He didn’t want to grow another beard, he’d been meaning to shave it off, but each time to got the razor in hand he heard a word whisper in the back of his mind which just clicked and he would gladly spare the energy to write it down then to bother with a tedious task which served no real purpose besides vanity.
He moved out of his quite safe haven and into the crowded studio. Bam grinned up at him and Ville felt something in his gut twist which might have been bitterness, might have been hatred or it might have been the thrill of adventure that used to always rock through his veins when he saw the younger man.
Chapter Three
A/N Please leave a comment, the nicest thing in the world is to hear that someone has read your work.