Fic: Times Are Tough in Your New Age
Title: Times Are Tough in Your New Age
A/N: For 2lineschallenge, it's the bitch of living and living in your head, it's the bitch of living and sensing that God is dead by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik. Many thanks to algernon_mouse and belladonnalin for being so patient and helpful. One day I'll stop mocking Pete Wentz but that day is not today. Title is from Section 12: Hold Me Now by The Polyphonic Spree
Times Are Tough in Your New Age
Brian shows up at the Paramour a week after Mikey leaves, takes one look at them, and says, "You fuckers have got to get out of this house before I don't have a band left to manage."
Bob's not really sure about how it happens, all he knows is that Brian makes a few calls, talks to some buddies of his, and distributes them to various apartments in Los Angeles that are all within 10 miles of the recording studio.
Somehow, Bob winds up with Patrick and Bob's so fried that he doesn't really think too hard about the reasoning behind this. Bob doesn't mind Patrick - he figures if he’s going to be housed with someone from Chicago, at least it’s not someone annoying or someone loud or someone who has lots of ridiculous public sex (Pete Wentz).
Brian drops him off at the apartment on a Thursday night and tells him to be good. At the door, Bob debates between knocking and just walking in. He finally settles on knocking as he's opening the door. Patrick yells out from the living room, "Come on in!"
By the time Bob's dragged his suitcase into the hallway, Patrick's there, staring at him expectantly. "Do you need any help?" he asks.
"No, I'm good," Bob straightens up and pushes his hair out of his eyes. "Where should I put my stuff?"
"Your room's the second on the right; the first door is your bathroom," Patrick points down the hallway off the living room. "I put some fresh sheets on the bed."
"Thanks." Bob drags his stuff into the empty room and looks at the bland walls. It's a pretty ugly room and he takes a minute to think about his apartment in Chicago. Someday soon, like 2010, he's going to spend enough time there to actually decorate it.
Bob forces himself to stop thinking about his apartment and unpack his bags. By the time he's done, his stomach is growling pretty loudly and he heads into the kitchen to see if there's any food. Patrick's already in there, studying the take-out menus splayed on the counter, and Bob clears his throat.
"Hey," Patrick looks up. "Did you get settled?"
"Yeah, thanks. Are you getting food?" Bob points at the menus.
"I'm thinking about it. Part of me really wants something home-cooked though, and I know I'm just not going to be satisfied with take-out, you know?"
Bob pulls open the fridge door, notes the eggs, milk and cheese, and says, "I can make us some omelets."
Patrick stares at him like Bob just said he would pluck the stars out of the sky for him. "Really?"
"Really," Bob smiles even though it feels stiff. "Where are the pans?"
Patrick just shrugs and Bob shakes his head. Thirty minutes later, after Bob empties most of the fridge and finds some vegetables to mix in with the omelets while Patrick makes a futile effort at operating the toaster, they sit down at the table.
"So," Patrick says between bites. "It sounds like you guys have been having a rough time lately."
Bob snaps his head up. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you know, we heard about Brian and everything you guys did for him. Now Mikey's taking a breather. It's got to suck."
Bob doesn't reply, just re-focuses on his omelet.
After a few minutes of silence, Patrick says, "Okay."
They finish the meal in silence.
The next night, after a long day of practicing and recording almost nothing, Bob's walking from the bathroom to his bedroom when he stubs his toe on the corner.
"Motherfucking cunt whoreface!" he screams as he hops up and down and grabs ineffectively at his toe.
Patrick looks up from his notebook and mildly asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"About what? Stubbing my toe?" Bob puts his foot down and tries to walk. "It hurts."
"Right, because whenever I stub my toe, I usually scream loud enough to wake the neighbors." Patrick rolls his eyes. "Is there something else bothering you?"
Bob shuffles into his room. As he's closing the door, he turns and says, "My toe really hurts."
The next morning, Bob feels like an asshole and tries to apologize to Patrick. Thankfully, he just waves Bob off.
"It's cool, I understand what it's like. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
*
It's not like Bob's anti-feelings or anything.
He just believes in keeping his feelings and his people's business to himself. The only people who need to know about their fights, their breakdowns, and their addictions are them.
This is why Bob doesn't say anything to Patrick when Bob gets home from the studio at 11:30 one night, ready to rip someone's fucking head off. Just because Bob seriously contemplated punching Frank today doesn't mean that Patrick needs to know about it.
He throws his keys down on the table by the door and kicks his shoes off.
Patrick is at the living room table with his guitar and sheets of music spread all over. "Problems at the studio?"
"Don't want to talk about it." Bob storms past him into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and is, of course, disappointed.
"Why the fuck is there no meat in this place? Jesus Christ," Bob swears and slaps his palm against the fridge. "It's bad enough I have to deal with a fuckwad who doesn't know shit about drums but still thinks he can tell me how to play them. Now I can't have any meat?"
"You can have all the meat you want, dude," Patrick replies. "But you didn't buy any at the store last time so you can't have any now. I can't really help you out with the fuckwad problem, either."
Bob grabs an apple and bites into angrily. He leans against the counter and considers how fucking obnoxious recording is and wonders why he never noticed this before.
Patrick gets up from the table and leans against the doorway into the kitchen. "What happened?"
"Not talking about it." Bob waves his apple around. Patrick still has his guitar on and he looks a little silly leaning awkwardly against the wall, protecting the guitar with his body.
Patrick throws his hands in the air and turns around. "Fine, stew. Just stew quietly, I'm trying to get this chord progression down for tomorrow."
*
Bob tries to talk about it with the rest of the band when they all go out to lunch with Mikey a few days later, but they're not much help.
"Seriously, Patrick asks me if I want to talk about things every night. Like, if I say the restaurant put too much garlic in the tomato sauce, he asks me how that makes me feel." It just doesn't make sense to Bob.
"Aww," Frank snorts. "Do you put your head in his lap and talk about mean people while he braids your hair?"
Gerard cackles and high-fives Frank. While he's doing that, Bob sneaks a bunch of wasabi onto Frank's next piece of sushi. He doesn't feel bad about it at all. Sure, it's petty, but Frank shouldn't think that Bob's forgiven him for being a dick the other day.
"You've got to remember who Patrick's used to," Mikey looks up from his plate. "Pete likes to tell everyone everything. Why does it bother you so much anyways?"
"I don't know. Not every guy talks about their feelings." As he says this, Bob looks around the table and realizes that he's talking to the wrong crowd. The only one who might know where he's coming from is Ray. "Right, Ray?"
Ray shrugs and says, "Sometimes I like a good cry, Bob."
Across the table, Frank spits out his food with a squawk and grabs for his glass of water, which is unfortunately empty.
Bob smiles.
*
Patrick comes home from grocery shopping one day with some chicken. He puts it in the fridge and leaves a note for Bob. That's when Bob knows it's time to have a talk.
That night, after Bob's made possibly the best chicken stir-fry of his entire life, he sits down on the couch next to Patrick who is very pointedly eating a Morningstar fauxburger.
"Look, I'm not trying to be an asshole or anything," Bob starts. "I just think it's a little weird that you keep asking me if I want to talk about shit."
Patrick swallows and scrunches up his face. "Is it? I don't know, I've been in Pete's pocket since 2001, he talks about every single thing he's feeling as he feels it. He's pretty much trained me to ask people if they need to talk as soon as they open their mouth."
And Bob can see where Patrick's coming from. Bob barely knows Pete Wentz and yet somehow, Bob knows Pete Wentz. But Bob's not Pete Wentz and no matter how shitty and horrific things have been lately, he doesn't want to talk about it.
"That's just not me, dude. I appreciate what you're trying to do but no thanks."
"Okay." Patrick turns on the TV and says, "Oh man, I haven't seen this episode of Law and Order in forever."
*
A week later, Bob's lying on the couch drifting off to sleep when someone sits down on the floor besides the couch. He cracks one eye open only to see Pete staring intently at him.
"'S'up Pete?" Bob mumbles.
"PStump says you keep shooting him down, says you don't want to share," Pete raps his fist against Bob's chest. "You've got to let this all out, man. It's poison. The only thing you get from keeping it in is wrinkles and I'm too pretty for you to have wrinkles."
Logically, that makes no sense, but Bob has long known that logic and Pete Wentz aren't actually all that acquainted with each other.
"I'll be sure to take that under consideration." Sleep's calling Bob's name again and he can feel himself slipping back under. "Is that all?"
"Yep."
Bob rolls over and falls back asleep. When he wakes up, the apartment's dark and he has to pee. The only way he knows that he didn't dream that entire conversation is because Pete wrote a note on Bob's bathroom mirror in eyeliner. let your voice give rise to your mind.
That night, Bob's sprawled on the couch, watching MTV and tapping out the drum part for the new song on his thighs, when Patrick gets home. Patrick flops down next to him and says nothing.
At the next commercial break, Bob says, "I think Pete was here earlier."
"Yeah, he and I went out to dinner."
"He's a weird little dude."
Patrick snorts. "That he is."
They watch videos in silence for a while until they end, and some scary reality dating thing comes on. Bob is turning off the television and thinking about going to bed, when Patrick continues as if there hasn’t been couple of hours break in their conversation. "You know, if there's one thing I've learned from Pete, it's that you can't live in your head."
Maybe it's because Patrick's been wearing him down all summer. Maybe it's because Bob can't figure out how to wipe Pete's message off the bathroom mirror so Bob's going to be seeing it every time he goes to the bathroom until he moves out (seriously, the fucker must have used indestructible eyeliner or something). Whatever it is, something in Bob cracks open.
"That's how we knew something was up with Brian," Bob says quickly and decisively. Patrick is quiet and Bob purses his lips together. "He stopped checking in with us. When Gerard asked him about it, he said he was really busy. A couple of weeks later, his assistant called us, said she hadn't seen him in days and then she told us everything."
For a long time, Bob thought that talking about this stuff would make him feel like a traitor. He's surprised to find that it doesn’t.
"That sucks," Patrick shakes his head. "You guys have been friends for a long time, right?"
"He gave me my first touring job."
Bob doesn’t say that he feels like a fool for not seeing it sooner or that it’s worse because he didn't learn from that mistake and see Mikey's breakdown for what it was. He's not ready to say that.
"And now Mikey. Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but you guys have had a shitty six months."
Bob nods. "Yeah. If it's not one thing, it's another. Life's a bitch."
"God, I hate that," Patrick huffs in disagreement.
"Hate what?"
"I hate it when people say life's a bitch. C'mon, is it really that bad? Fuck, we're alive, and we're doing what we love. Everything else is relative and if it sucks, it sucks, but life's not a bitch, you know."
Bob doesn't say anything in response. He feels tired and a little raw, and Patrick's right. Things suck right now but they're not going to suck forever. And this album is going to be good, Bob knows that already. It's going to be worth every single thing they're dealing with right now.
"Were you doing the new drumline?" Patrick points to Bob's hands which are still tapping slowly against his thighs.
"Yeah. Wanna see it?"
Patrick grabs two sets of drumsticks from the coffee table, hands a pair to Bob, and says, "Let's go."
Fandom: MCR and FOB
Pairing: None, Bob and Patrick gen fic
Summary: Somehow, Bob winds up with Patrick and Bob's so fried that he doesn't really think too hard about the reasoning behind this. Bob doesn't mind Patrick - he figures if he’s going to be housed with someone from Chicago, at least it’s not someone annoying or someone loud or someone who has lots of ridiculous public sex (Pete Wentz).
A/N: For 2lineschallenge, it's the bitch of living and living in your head, it's the bitch of living and sensing that God is dead by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik. Many thanks to algernon_mouse and belladonnalin for being so patient and helpful. One day I'll stop mocking Pete Wentz but that day is not today. Title is from Section 12: Hold Me Now by The Polyphonic Spree
Times Are Tough in Your New Age
Brian shows up at the Paramour a week after Mikey leaves, takes one look at them, and says, "You fuckers have got to get out of this house before I don't have a band left to manage."
Bob's not really sure about how it happens, all he knows is that Brian makes a few calls, talks to some buddies of his, and distributes them to various apartments in Los Angeles that are all within 10 miles of the recording studio.
Somehow, Bob winds up with Patrick and Bob's so fried that he doesn't really think too hard about the reasoning behind this. Bob doesn't mind Patrick - he figures if he’s going to be housed with someone from Chicago, at least it’s not someone annoying or someone loud or someone who has lots of ridiculous public sex (Pete Wentz).
Brian drops him off at the apartment on a Thursday night and tells him to be good. At the door, Bob debates between knocking and just walking in. He finally settles on knocking as he's opening the door. Patrick yells out from the living room, "Come on in!"
By the time Bob's dragged his suitcase into the hallway, Patrick's there, staring at him expectantly. "Do you need any help?" he asks.
"No, I'm good," Bob straightens up and pushes his hair out of his eyes. "Where should I put my stuff?"
"Your room's the second on the right; the first door is your bathroom," Patrick points down the hallway off the living room. "I put some fresh sheets on the bed."
"Thanks." Bob drags his stuff into the empty room and looks at the bland walls. It's a pretty ugly room and he takes a minute to think about his apartment in Chicago. Someday soon, like 2010, he's going to spend enough time there to actually decorate it.
Bob forces himself to stop thinking about his apartment and unpack his bags. By the time he's done, his stomach is growling pretty loudly and he heads into the kitchen to see if there's any food. Patrick's already in there, studying the take-out menus splayed on the counter, and Bob clears his throat.
"Hey," Patrick looks up. "Did you get settled?"
"Yeah, thanks. Are you getting food?" Bob points at the menus.
"I'm thinking about it. Part of me really wants something home-cooked though, and I know I'm just not going to be satisfied with take-out, you know?"
Bob pulls open the fridge door, notes the eggs, milk and cheese, and says, "I can make us some omelets."
Patrick stares at him like Bob just said he would pluck the stars out of the sky for him. "Really?"
"Really," Bob smiles even though it feels stiff. "Where are the pans?"
Patrick just shrugs and Bob shakes his head. Thirty minutes later, after Bob empties most of the fridge and finds some vegetables to mix in with the omelets while Patrick makes a futile effort at operating the toaster, they sit down at the table.
"So," Patrick says between bites. "It sounds like you guys have been having a rough time lately."
Bob snaps his head up. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you know, we heard about Brian and everything you guys did for him. Now Mikey's taking a breather. It's got to suck."
Bob doesn't reply, just re-focuses on his omelet.
After a few minutes of silence, Patrick says, "Okay."
They finish the meal in silence.
The next night, after a long day of practicing and recording almost nothing, Bob's walking from the bathroom to his bedroom when he stubs his toe on the corner.
"Motherfucking cunt whoreface!" he screams as he hops up and down and grabs ineffectively at his toe.
Patrick looks up from his notebook and mildly asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"About what? Stubbing my toe?" Bob puts his foot down and tries to walk. "It hurts."
"Right, because whenever I stub my toe, I usually scream loud enough to wake the neighbors." Patrick rolls his eyes. "Is there something else bothering you?"
Bob shuffles into his room. As he's closing the door, he turns and says, "My toe really hurts."
The next morning, Bob feels like an asshole and tries to apologize to Patrick. Thankfully, he just waves Bob off.
"It's cool, I understand what it's like. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
*
It's not like Bob's anti-feelings or anything.
He just believes in keeping his feelings and his people's business to himself. The only people who need to know about their fights, their breakdowns, and their addictions are them.
This is why Bob doesn't say anything to Patrick when Bob gets home from the studio at 11:30 one night, ready to rip someone's fucking head off. Just because Bob seriously contemplated punching Frank today doesn't mean that Patrick needs to know about it.
He throws his keys down on the table by the door and kicks his shoes off.
Patrick is at the living room table with his guitar and sheets of music spread all over. "Problems at the studio?"
"Don't want to talk about it." Bob storms past him into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and is, of course, disappointed.
"Why the fuck is there no meat in this place? Jesus Christ," Bob swears and slaps his palm against the fridge. "It's bad enough I have to deal with a fuckwad who doesn't know shit about drums but still thinks he can tell me how to play them. Now I can't have any meat?"
"You can have all the meat you want, dude," Patrick replies. "But you didn't buy any at the store last time so you can't have any now. I can't really help you out with the fuckwad problem, either."
Bob grabs an apple and bites into angrily. He leans against the counter and considers how fucking obnoxious recording is and wonders why he never noticed this before.
Patrick gets up from the table and leans against the doorway into the kitchen. "What happened?"
"Not talking about it." Bob waves his apple around. Patrick still has his guitar on and he looks a little silly leaning awkwardly against the wall, protecting the guitar with his body.
Patrick throws his hands in the air and turns around. "Fine, stew. Just stew quietly, I'm trying to get this chord progression down for tomorrow."
*
Bob tries to talk about it with the rest of the band when they all go out to lunch with Mikey a few days later, but they're not much help.
"Seriously, Patrick asks me if I want to talk about things every night. Like, if I say the restaurant put too much garlic in the tomato sauce, he asks me how that makes me feel." It just doesn't make sense to Bob.
"Aww," Frank snorts. "Do you put your head in his lap and talk about mean people while he braids your hair?"
Gerard cackles and high-fives Frank. While he's doing that, Bob sneaks a bunch of wasabi onto Frank's next piece of sushi. He doesn't feel bad about it at all. Sure, it's petty, but Frank shouldn't think that Bob's forgiven him for being a dick the other day.
"You've got to remember who Patrick's used to," Mikey looks up from his plate. "Pete likes to tell everyone everything. Why does it bother you so much anyways?"
"I don't know. Not every guy talks about their feelings." As he says this, Bob looks around the table and realizes that he's talking to the wrong crowd. The only one who might know where he's coming from is Ray. "Right, Ray?"
Ray shrugs and says, "Sometimes I like a good cry, Bob."
Across the table, Frank spits out his food with a squawk and grabs for his glass of water, which is unfortunately empty.
Bob smiles.
*
Patrick comes home from grocery shopping one day with some chicken. He puts it in the fridge and leaves a note for Bob. That's when Bob knows it's time to have a talk.
That night, after Bob's made possibly the best chicken stir-fry of his entire life, he sits down on the couch next to Patrick who is very pointedly eating a Morningstar fauxburger.
"Look, I'm not trying to be an asshole or anything," Bob starts. "I just think it's a little weird that you keep asking me if I want to talk about shit."
Patrick swallows and scrunches up his face. "Is it? I don't know, I've been in Pete's pocket since 2001, he talks about every single thing he's feeling as he feels it. He's pretty much trained me to ask people if they need to talk as soon as they open their mouth."
And Bob can see where Patrick's coming from. Bob barely knows Pete Wentz and yet somehow, Bob knows Pete Wentz. But Bob's not Pete Wentz and no matter how shitty and horrific things have been lately, he doesn't want to talk about it.
"That's just not me, dude. I appreciate what you're trying to do but no thanks."
"Okay." Patrick turns on the TV and says, "Oh man, I haven't seen this episode of Law and Order in forever."
*
A week later, Bob's lying on the couch drifting off to sleep when someone sits down on the floor besides the couch. He cracks one eye open only to see Pete staring intently at him.
"'S'up Pete?" Bob mumbles.
"PStump says you keep shooting him down, says you don't want to share," Pete raps his fist against Bob's chest. "You've got to let this all out, man. It's poison. The only thing you get from keeping it in is wrinkles and I'm too pretty for you to have wrinkles."
Logically, that makes no sense, but Bob has long known that logic and Pete Wentz aren't actually all that acquainted with each other.
"I'll be sure to take that under consideration." Sleep's calling Bob's name again and he can feel himself slipping back under. "Is that all?"
"Yep."
Bob rolls over and falls back asleep. When he wakes up, the apartment's dark and he has to pee. The only way he knows that he didn't dream that entire conversation is because Pete wrote a note on Bob's bathroom mirror in eyeliner. let your voice give rise to your mind.
That night, Bob's sprawled on the couch, watching MTV and tapping out the drum part for the new song on his thighs, when Patrick gets home. Patrick flops down next to him and says nothing.
At the next commercial break, Bob says, "I think Pete was here earlier."
"Yeah, he and I went out to dinner."
"He's a weird little dude."
Patrick snorts. "That he is."
They watch videos in silence for a while until they end, and some scary reality dating thing comes on. Bob is turning off the television and thinking about going to bed, when Patrick continues as if there hasn’t been couple of hours break in their conversation. "You know, if there's one thing I've learned from Pete, it's that you can't live in your head."
Maybe it's because Patrick's been wearing him down all summer. Maybe it's because Bob can't figure out how to wipe Pete's message off the bathroom mirror so Bob's going to be seeing it every time he goes to the bathroom until he moves out (seriously, the fucker must have used indestructible eyeliner or something). Whatever it is, something in Bob cracks open.
"That's how we knew something was up with Brian," Bob says quickly and decisively. Patrick is quiet and Bob purses his lips together. "He stopped checking in with us. When Gerard asked him about it, he said he was really busy. A couple of weeks later, his assistant called us, said she hadn't seen him in days and then she told us everything."
For a long time, Bob thought that talking about this stuff would make him feel like a traitor. He's surprised to find that it doesn’t.
"That sucks," Patrick shakes his head. "You guys have been friends for a long time, right?"
"He gave me my first touring job."
Bob doesn’t say that he feels like a fool for not seeing it sooner or that it’s worse because he didn't learn from that mistake and see Mikey's breakdown for what it was. He's not ready to say that.
"And now Mikey. Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but you guys have had a shitty six months."
Bob nods. "Yeah. If it's not one thing, it's another. Life's a bitch."
"God, I hate that," Patrick huffs in disagreement.
"Hate what?"
"I hate it when people say life's a bitch. C'mon, is it really that bad? Fuck, we're alive, and we're doing what we love. Everything else is relative and if it sucks, it sucks, but life's not a bitch, you know."
Bob doesn't say anything in response. He feels tired and a little raw, and Patrick's right. Things suck right now but they're not going to suck forever. And this album is going to be good, Bob knows that already. It's going to be worth every single thing they're dealing with right now.
"Were you doing the new drumline?" Patrick points to Bob's hands which are still tapping slowly against his thighs.
"Yeah. Wanna see it?"
Patrick grabs two sets of drumsticks from the coffee table, hands a pair to Bob, and says, "Let's go."
Fandom: MCR and FOB
Pairing: None, Bob and Patrick gen fic
Summary: Somehow, Bob winds up with Patrick and Bob's so fried that he doesn't really think too hard about the reasoning behind this. Bob doesn't mind Patrick - he figures if he’s going to be housed with someone from Chicago, at least it’s not someone annoying or someone loud or someone who has lots of ridiculous public sex (Pete Wentz).