Last of the tropes meme ficlets. O_________O
Truth or Dare - TAI/Cobra/FOB
Carden always picked truth because he wasn’t as stupid as the rest of them, and usually halfway through the game his answer was ‘fuck you’ and he’d be done. He’d still sit in the circle and make rude comments, but no one could ask him questions. There are times that Bill thinks he needs to be more like Carden. Or punch Carden in the face for existing and knowing way too much about him.
“No.”
Carden snorts and Bill kicks him even though they’re sitting on opposite sides of the group. There’s an advantage to long legs.
“Do I sense a party foul?” Pete’s stoned - they’re all stoned - and drunk and Travie’s been passing out magic pills that make everything pretty fucking amazing. This is their first real tourand Fall Out Boy and Midtown and Gym Class are wrapped around them like a cocoon, like steps to the top of their dreams. “Are you lyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying, Bilvy? To your good buddy, Pete?”
“I’m not lying.”
Carden leans back and takes the joint from Disashi. “He’s lying.”
Bill kicks at him again. “You’re not even playing. Shut up.”
Carden takes a deep breath, inhaling the smoke into his lungs and holding it before expelling it in Bill’s direction. “You have been jerking off to Gabe Saporta’s picture you pinned the fucking album to your wall so you could see it better.”
Before Bill can actually use the fist his hand curls into, long legs curve around him and then there’s the hard pressure of a body against his back. Familiar hands settle around his waist and he can feel the slight bulge of a dick against him. “Well, he’s got more material to work with now.” Gabe’s laugh is warm and promising in Bill’s ear. “Don’t you, Bilvy?”
Pete giggles and takes the joint from Carden. “You should go next, Gabe. Say dare so we can all watch you defile him.”
“Pietro, Pietro, Pietro.” Gabe shakes his head and stands up, tugging William to his feet as well. “it’s far too late for that. Say goodnight, Bill.”
Bill’s face is burning, but he doesn’t resist Gabe’s pull. “G’night.”
Historical AU - Gabe
Gabe hears the music inside, but he doesn’t go in. Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller are all well and good, but they’re shipping out tomorrow, and he’s not in the mood for a little bit of dancing close to a girl he can’t go home with. Seems even worse to get his hopes up for something that nothing’s going to come of just to have a sweet memory of some semi-chaste kiss on his lips and his mind when he storms the beach. He doesn’t need a reason to fight. The small metal Star of David his mom slipped onto his dog tags gives him all the reasons he needs. His dad gave him a lighter, telling him he shouldn’t smoke, and there’s a hand-etched Chai symbol in the metal. Reminders of why he’s fighting. For whom.
GI’s and their girls are moving in and out of the music hall, and he can see them all dancing. He blows smoke into the humid air and watches the skirts swirl and the light reflect of metal insignia. He knows the guys in the band, watches them as they play. The light sparks off Mikey’s glasses as he moves to the music, and Gabe smiles. Mikey’s ready for the front lines, writing letters to friends back home telling them he’s going to be a hero, going to save the world from Hitler. He’s Superman in his mind, and he’s always got a wry, sharp-edged joke for Gabe. Gabe goes to the bar and orders Mikey a drink and heads back to the barracks. He doesn’t want anything waiting at home for him. That seems too much like asking never to come back.
Huddling for warmth - Gerard/Mikey
“It’s not like they did it on purpose.”
Mikey squints at Gerard over his glasses. “Of course they did.”
“The guys wouldn’t do that.”
“They’re currently in a hotel room that they’re now sharing between three people instead of five. A hotel room that they registered under a code name. That they didn’t tell us.”
“We were asleep.”
“They left us a note that said ‘Can’t hear you snoring from here’. They left us on purpose, Gee.”
Gerard frowns, pouting. He picks up a warm, half-full beer and drains it, making a face. “They’re mean.”
Mikey tugs his hoodie tighter around him. “Frank has an overdeveloped sense of vengeance.”
“I didn’t know it was his last pack.”
“I don’t think he cares.” Mikey shivers and rubs his arms. “Where’s your heavy coat.”
“I’m using it for a pillow.”
“It’s too cold for that. Come lay on me and we can use it for a blanket.”
Gerard struggles upright and moves over Mikey, settling between his legs as Mikey stretches them out, sliding one off the seat. Gerard rests his head on Mikey’s shoulder and his hand splays over Mikey’s chest. His breath fans Mikey’s t-shirt as he sighs. Mikey tugs Gerard’s coat over them, the fur-lined hood falling in Gerard’s face.
“We need pillows,” Gerard grumbles. “You’re all bony.”
“No.” Mikey strokes Gerard’s hair. “We just need to make sure we’re awake the next time we hit a hotel.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Mikey yawns and tugs Gerard closer, wrapping his arms around him tightly. “Get some sleep, Gee. We’ll get revenge in the morning.”
Pete/Gabe - telepathy
Gabe fumbles for the phone and hits the button to dial, waiting in the foggy darkness of half-sleep until he hears the weird echo of the speakerphone. “Breathe, baby.”
“I don’t...I can’t...I...”
“You can. You can. Inhale. Exhale. C’mon.”
Eventually they find a rhythm, and Gabe closes his eyes and just listens to Pete breathe. He waits until he hears the shift that means the panic’s gone and it’s just exhaustion, mental and emotional and physical, that remains. “Thanks,” Pete whispers.
Gabe wants to tell him to go to sleep, that he’ll feel better, but they both know that’s a lie. Instead they sit in silence. They don’t need to talk. They didn’t even need the phone, but Pete likes something tangible, something real. Gabe closes his eyes and matches his breath to Pete’s, and after a few minutes the hollow, empty place in his head fills up with heaviness and hazy warmth. “Love you, baby.”
“Love you too.” Pete’s voice matches the space in Gabe’s head. “G’night.”
“Call me tomorrow.”
“You don’t like it when I use the bat signal?” There’s a shiver of a laugh in Gabe’s head, the edge of panic trying to hide in it. Pete loves and hates this thing they have because he’s afraid it means that Gabe’s there for him because he doesn’t have a choice.
“I’m here whenever and however you need me, dude.” Gabe’s laugh is real, soft-edged and sleepy. The warmth of Pete inside his head is comforting. “You don’t like it when we use the bat signal.”
“I would if I had the car that went with it.”
“You’re the rich dude, Bruce Wayne. I’m just the guy trying to hit the top 40.”
Pete snorts. “Whatever, Saporta.”
“Go to sleep, you creature of the night. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Pete’s a picture in Gabe’s head now, burrowed in and safe. “G’night, Alfred.”
He hangs up before Gabe can tell him to fuck off, but from the laughter in Gabe’s head, he knows Pete heard him loud and clear.
(inlovewithnight don’t read this next one)
Genderswap Mike Carden
They’re in some meeting room that the store’s given them to store their stuff while they’re performing. Mike’s tired because they stayed up way too late the night before after the show drinking and toasting Butcher’s last performance and drinking some more. She’s hung over and cranky and PMSing, so when Bill tells her he needs to talk to her, she’s already prone to wanting to hit him.
When he tells her he’s breaking up the band, she punches him in the face and bursts into tears. He got over not being willing to punch a girl within the first two months of the band, but he doesn’t try to punch her back. He takes it like he’s due for it - which he is, the fucking fucker - and just grabs her hands, keeping her from hitting him again and tugging her into something that’s halfway between a hug and a strait jacket. He keeps telling her to listen to him, but she can’t hear anything over the rage of her blood in her ears.
“Fuck you. Fuck you if you think you get to just fucking decide this, you fucking fucker.” She tries to shove him, to push him away from her, but he’s tenacious. She used to like that about him, but right now it pisses her off, so she does what any self-respecting woman would do.
She knees him in the balls.
Having large tits offers some sort of protection, but a large dick just means you’ve got more sensitive skin to hurt, and Michaela Carden is nothing if not proficient at hitting where it hurts. The problem is that he doesn’t let go when he goes down, so she ends up leaning into him as he goes to his knees and then her weight and height overbalance them and he goes down on his back, knees bent awkwardly until he twists them to get them out from under him. Mike scrambles to get away from him, kneeing him once or twice more before Bill realizes that letting her go means he might keep his parts in working condition.
“Fuck, Carden.” His voice is rough, hoarse with pain. That almost makes her smile until she remembers what he said.
“It’s my band too.”
“No one’s happy, Mike. The label’s not happy. Butcher left. Adam keeps looking at us like he’s afraid we’re going to go for each other’s throat.” Bill shrugs and manages to sit up, crossing his legs to hide anything Mike might be considering a target. She doesn’t tell him that all that does is make the front of his pants bulge and she could step on his dick and make him scream. “You’re not happy.”
“You don’t get to tell me whether or not I’m happy.”
“Fine.” He shrugs again and looks her in the eye. “I’m not happy. I’m tired of being told that what we’re creating isn’t good enough. I’m tired of busting our ass to make other people happy. I’m tired of fucking labels dictating what we do and where we go and what we release. I’m not having fun, and you aren’t either. We haven’t been since the KISS tour. Before that, maybe. We’ve been falling apart in pieces since the beginning.”
“So you’ve decided that you’re done making music.” She knows he hasn’t. Music is in Bill’s blood. “And since you’re done, we’re done.”
“I’m not done.”
Mike nods, surprised he admits it. It takes courage, considering he has to know that now she has no choice but to kick his ass. “You’re just done with us.” He shrugs and now he won’t meet her eyes. Which means he knows what’s coming. “With me.”
And that’s the crux of it. The thing that aches deep in her chest. The thing that he’s saying without using the words. They’ve been a team - bitter and contentious and violent sometimes - but a team since the beginning. This was their dream, and now he’s cashing it in to focus on a dream of his own.
“I don’t want to be done with you, Mike, but I honestly think TAI is done.”
“That is me, you fucking asshole. I’ve put all this time into this and you just want to walk away? You just want to do your own thing? You think you’re the only one with say in this? Or…wait. Let me guess, you’ve already talked to Adam and gotten him to sign off, because he’s not going to fucking argue with you.”
“No, Mike. Fuck you. Why do you want to be in a band with me if you think I’m that much of a fucking dick? Last night drove it home. Doing TAI without Butcher? Is that what you want? You think we can drive everyone else away and still be the same band?”
“Be honest. This isn’t about Andy. This isn’t about anyone but you.”
Bill straightens up and Mike can see the flash of anger in his eyes. He’s still hurting, but Mike hit something even more personal than his junk. His voice goes flat and whatever he’d been holding back comes to a head. “Is it so bad?” His voice has no emotion, and Mike can almost see him choking on it. “Is it bad to want something for myself? Is it wrong to want to sing the songs I want to sing? Is it wrong to want to make my music?”
“Yes.” Mike feels the fight go out of her and she slumps down into the chair. She looks around the conference room, a reminder of a life they weren’t ever going to live. “Yes, because I thought I mattered.”
“You do. You’re my friend.”
“We’re family. You don’t walk away from family. What happened to us making it? What happened to us proving to everyone that we could do this.”
“We didn’t. We couldn’t.” Bill leans against the wall, a safe distance away from her. “The golden age of emo is over and we’re not anyone now. We threw a party and no one came.”
“People came.” She can feel the hot, angry tears gathering again, and she blinks hard to push them away. “Fuck you. Peoplecame. Don’t fucking tell me that every single one of those fans doesn’t matter to you.”
“Yes. Of course. Fuck you for deliberately misunderstanding me. We missed our window of opportunity. Our headline went to Panic, and after that…after that we were just chasing what was never going to be ours. I’m not saying that I’m going to have any more success by myself, but if I’m going to do this - be on the road away from my family and working my ass off - then I have to be doing it with music I love and for reasons I can live with.”
“And you can’t live with me.”
“It’s not fucking personal.”
“It fucking is to me. This is my job, my livelihood. This is what I do, Bill. I play the fucking guitar in our fucking band. That’s mylife.”
William lets out a long slow breath. “Not anymore.”
She’s pretty sure she can garotte him with her guitar string. If she can actually get a jury of musical peers, no one would convict her. “You don’t get to decide my life.”
“No. I don’t. If you want to carry on the TAI name, you can. We’ll fight about some songs,but…”
She reaches out blindly and grabs a stapler off the table and hurls it at him. Bill ducks out of the way and it hits the wall hard enough to leave a hole in the plaster. “Call me a cab.”
“What?”
“Call me a cab.” She stands up and grabs her guitar case and the small bag she’d brought. Her flight’s direct to California. A couple hours in the airport certainly can’t make her mood worse
“We have a car coming…”
“Call me a fucking cab, god damn it.” She chokes on the words and then forces herself to look at him. “You want to be done? We’re done.”
“Mike…”
She doesn’t intend to swing the duffel bag. She acts on instinct and it hits him hard in the arm. “Shut up. You’re right. We’re never going to make it.” She shakes her head and exhales. She was pretty sure he was going to be in her life forever, a kind of de facto brother-husband-former lover hybrid, and now it’s clear she was wrong. “You’ve given up on us. Why should anyone else care?”
Bill’s known for always having the last word, for getting in the parting shot. He’s got words and wit and those have never been Mike’s strong suit. She’s good at action, so she uses that to keep him from saying anything else, walking past him and out the door.
High School AU with Travie
Chicago’s got nothing on New York. Even the tagging doesn’t live up to the city. It’s just another resentment piled on top of all the others. Bad enough that none of the bands he gives a shit about come near the fucking Midwest, but now he’s surrounded by wanna be crap from people who think they know shit about the streets.
And his first class is fucking gym, which means some douchebag is going to ask him about basketball because he’s tall and he’s black and fuck knows that’s the only shit he can care about. He sits on the bottom row of bleachers. There are a lot of white kids looking at him like he’s some kind of alien. “It’s fuckin’ Chicago. Surely you fuckers have seen a black dude before.”
“Not at school.”
Travis looks down the bench. There’s a guy with ridiculous dreads and a dark black ink tattoo bleeding color into his skin like some botched homemade job. “What?”
“School. It’s pretty white bread. You and me, we’re novelties. You’re...you and I are like rye and pumpernickel.”
“You’re carrying that bread metaphor to the end, huh?” Travis raises an eyebrow. “So you’re equating yourself with me?”
“Not doing anything.” The guy shrugs, making himself seem even smaller. “Just sayin’.”
“What’s your name, rye bread?”
“Pete. Pete Wentz.”
“McCoy.”
Pete lifts a hand and Travis can see the faint stain of yellow on his finger, the ghostly mist that doesn’t wash away. “Aw shit, man. Just tell me you ain’t Xerxes.”
Pete drops his hand and shoves it in the pocket of his hoodie. His expression gives him away though, a disgusted sneer that makes Travis laugh.
“Just checkin’, man. Can’t be seen associating with that shit.”
McCoy! Wentz! Language! Laps. Now.”
Pete tugs his jacket tighter around himself and starts jogging. It’s easy to catch up with him, fall in step with his stride. “Why are you running? You didn’t actually say anything.”
“Easier.” Pete keeps going. He’s a good runner, not even breathing hard.
“So what’s your tag?”
Pete puts on some steam, but he’s still not hard to catch given that his legs are half the length of Travis’s.
“You can’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Travis says.
“I’m not pretending.”
“Xerxes sucks.”
“I'm sure he does. Whoever he is. I mean, I assume you’re not talking about the Persian dude.”
Travis laughs and jogs ahead, turning around to face Pete. “Meet me at Reggie’s tonight at eleven. You don’t have to tell me. You can show me instead.”
Ioan/Matthew - truth or dare
“You are absolute shit at that game.”
“It’s truth or dare, Ioan. Not ramble on for hours about thinks you bloody should keep secret.”
“All you did was snog girls.”
“Yes, you daft imbecile. That’s the point.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Everyone else was making out or getting naked, Ioan. You were waxing rhapsodic about Himalayan artichokes.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Math. Artichokes don’t...” Ioan cuts himself off. “Asshole.”
Matthew smiles and unlocks the flat. “Don’t pout. Come inside and I’ll make it all up to you.”
“How?”
Matthew tugs him through the door. “Truth or dare?”
Southland - Ben/Cooper historical AU
He knows the minute he sees him that the kid’s trouble. He’s got Hollywood good looks, and Cooper can see that he wants to make a difference, wants to clean up the streets. He can see the stars and dreams in the kid’s eyes, but the thing is that he’s in Los Angeles now.
Los Angeles.
Where kids come to dream, and dreams come to die.
**
Cooper doesn’t ask the kid his story. He’ll hear it soon enough, because that’s what happens in the black and whites when the lights are low and nobody’s shot anybody yet. Cooper can guess it before it comes out. There’s a femme fatale and a big bad that done her wrong. She’s innocent and Sherman’s gonna bring her justice. Truth is that Sherman’s just going to end up with a busted jaw and a black eye and, if he’s lucky, he’ll still be breathing at the end of it. John’s heard the story with every boot in the car, and the only thing Sherman’s got that the others haven’t had is money.
John doesn’t trust money. Never did anybody any good.