Fic: How to Be Honest Without Telling the Truth
This is one of my first attempts at something without what you'd normally call a coherent plot. I didn't spend that much time on this (comparatively); only about 3 days, but at the moment I rather like how it turned out. I apologize for any weird characterizations, and I took a few minor liberties with time and place. Whee. Originally it was a ficlet. Look how good I am at writing short pieces! Wait, no.
This came out of the author having a few too many confused, frustrating days in a row. Better out than in.
Title: How To Be Honest Without Telling the Truth
Rating: PG; Generic.
Length: 3,022 words (approx. 7 pages).
Fandom: Multiple (My Chemical Romance; Alkaline Trio; Fall Out Boy; Blink-182; Green Day).
Notes: Apologies to Motion City Soundtrack for shamelessly abusing their lyrics; apologies to various band members for possible butchering of their characters. Loads of thanks go to jou, tasyfa, and heartsxrecycled for their help in this piece of work. ♥
[ give me a reason to end this discussion :: to break with tradition, to fold and divide ]
"I swear to God, Mikey, that is the ugliest puppy I have ever seen."
"He's not ugly!" Mikey protests, tugging Gerard with him down a side-street, pulling away from the main avenue. "He's cute. He's just wrinkly."
"Did you pick him out, or did Alicia?"
"We both did. He's our baby." Mikey's prim response prompts a snort from Gerard, who suffers another moment of weird backwards deja vu, (something that's been happening a lot to him this past week, like he's stuck in a horrible dream) like he's peering sideways down a hallway and sees someone who's almost his brother, but not quite. Mikey had the eye surgery quite awhile ago, and it's not like Gerard has been anything but supportive, but it still takes him by surprise sometimes to see his brother with no glasses and a wedding band.
Just like it takes him by surprise to look at his own finger and see no engagement ring.
Gerard can feel Mikey watching him, but he doesn't look up. Instead he lapses into silence, and because his brother is better at reading him than any other person on the planet, Mikey lets him.
They walk for a while without saying anything, Gerard purposefully hanging back a little whenever they pass someone, the brothers' eyes averted so as not to catch anyone's gaze. It's something they do now without even really thinking about it, the way pretty girls learn to let their eyes slide past the faces of men whose attention they'd rather not even pretend to return. Self-defense. You do what you have to just to get by.
"So have you talked to her at all?" Mikey asks hesitantly when they've finally reached the boardwalk and are alone as they're going to get. Mikey was the first person to know when Eliza was gone, the first person Gerard called.
"No," Gerard says savagely. "Fuck no."
"Gee, I was just asking." Mikey stops, falling a few steps as his brother keeps going, and Gerard can feel his own shoulders pinch defensively, like he's expecting Mikey to shoot him in the back.
"I know," Gerard mumbles, finally, and he knows Mikey knows what he means.
[ i'm through with these pills that make me sit still ]
"What are you doing up here, dude?"
Patrick's face follows the sound of his voice a half-second later, peering at Pete through the opened sunroof of the tour bus, and Pete shifts, carefully, to allow Patrick room to heave himself up onto the roof next to him. Pete shrugs. "Waiting for the meteor shower," he says, deliberately nonchalant.
"You said you weren't gonna watch it..." Patrick doesn't do Pete the courtesy of not making eye contact; he stares at Pete's face, waiting for some kind of clue, but Pete pretends not to notice.
"Changed my mind."
"Pffffft." Now Pete does look over at Patrick, a smile breaking through his mask, and Patrick shoves Pete in the shoulder and laughs as he pretends to fall off. Pete's eyes are down again by the time he sits up, but that two-second window was all Patrick needed to get a peek inside Pete's brain. Patrick knows without asking that nothing is really wrong, nothing new anyway, which is much worse than if something had actually happened; Pete's own disasters always hurt worse when he has nothing to blame them on.
"Everything's fine, dude. I just wanted to see if I could catch a falling star."
Patrick rolls his eyes at Pete's melodrama-par for the course, but still. He flops back onto his elbows, watching Pete watch the sky. "You gonna make a wish?"
"That's the idea, isn't it?"
Patrick smiles. "Yeah, that's the idea."
[ i used to rely on self-medication :: i guess i still do that from time to time ]
Matt breathes out, watching the smoke curl towards the purpling LA skyline, blending with the haze that's the smog's younger, druggie sister. Today was a Hazy Air warning day, a thick smear of summer heat best spent inside, doing something other than staring out at the ocean from the only part of the beach you can find with any semblance of privacy.
He takes another puff on his borrowed cigarette, wrinkling his nose at the taste. Menthol. Who the fuck smokes menthol? Matt can't complain, though. His sixth borrowed cigarette for the day, and beggars can't be choosers. He's beginning to wonder when someone will think to comment on the beanstalk masquerading as a human that's been roving the city streets bumming cigarettes off various people minding their own business. The nice thing about smokers is that, being in the middle of getting their own fix, most don't seem to mind.
"There you are, you selfish son of a bitch." Heather's voice startles Matt out of his reverie, and he stands up, cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers as he hugs his best friend.
"Missed you too, princess. You get in okay? ...How'd you find me anyway?"
"Monica told me you were out here. And yeah, I got in fine, no thanks to you. What happened to meeting me at the airport?" Heather's voice is softer than her words, and Matt winces under the questioning glare she passes over him. Heather always had a way with getting right to the point, like her favorite pair of canvas-cutting scissors that Matt used to steal for other, more questionable purposes.
The same kind of questionable purposes that keeps you from meeting your best friend at the airport on her cross-country trip from Florida to California.
"Sorry," Matt says quietly, and Heather punches him in the stomach by way of hugging him again.
"This is about Danny, isn't it?" Heather grabs Matt by the elbow, steering him towards a bench sitting a few feet back from the sandbars. When Matt doesn't answer, she shoves him down onto the bench and then sits down next to him, their legs pressed against each other. "It's a damn good thing I was coming to visit you already because you are an asshole and maybe you'll listen if I tell you in person."
"Heather-!"
"Matt. It's a baby. Dan's a father now, not a born-again Christian. He's not gonna stop being your friend."
Matt sighs, flicking the remains of cigarette to the sand in irritation, scuffing it out with his boot. "I know that," he says, looking sideways at Heather's face, impatience softened with genuine concern. Heather's always been a good friend; a better one that Matt deserves, sometimes.
"Yeah, sure. Pull the other one, Matt, it plays Jingle Bells." Matt laughs and reaches down to cover Heather's hand on his leg with his own, squeezing it gently.
[ but i'm getting better at fighting the future ]
"D'you think he's watching?"
"Tom? Of course he's watching." Mark snorts, waving his hand at the sky. "Are you shittin' me, how much he loved UFO's and shit? He's probably running around outside naked in a fuckin' foil hat with a goddamn sign."
Travis snickers, reaching over to pluck the roach out of Mark's fingers and take another pull. "Maybe they'll take him home," he murmurs. "He'd love that."
Mark shakes his head and just lays back, folding his hands behind his head as he lays down on the grass. He already has a huge green stain along his backside, so there's no point in bothering with a fucking blanket at this point.
"Yeah, he would." Mark stares at the sky, the sun taking its own sweet time settling into the ocean out west. The sky darkens slowly to black, or as black as it ever damn well gets in LA. Mark wonders vaguely what it would look like if all of Hollywood suddenly suffered a power-outage, and he grins as he imagines millions of starlets screaming in simultaneous horror as their hairdryers suddenly fail.
Travis tilts his head, just a little. Just enough to see Mark's face in the crappy light. "You gonna call him back?"
Mark doesn't answer. Travis just sighs and leans back over, handing him the softly-burning roach, and Mark takes it wordlessly, sitting up to take a puff and let the smoke back out to reach up to the sky, lost in the fading light.
[ i don't wanna waste your time ]
Mike and Tre are waiting. They're waiting because Billie Joe is running late, and for that reason they are both just a little concerned.
Billie Joe does not normally run late. In fact, he's usually the first one to any given location, and the fact that he's late, today, when he's the one who asked to meet up with them out here in the park, is kind of weird.
Tre hops up on a fallen log, carelessly disregarding the sign that says to stay on the path. "So, how's Brittney?" he asks, offering Mike a slow grin that Mike can't help but return.
"She's great! She and Stella went shopping the other day and then came home and made me dinner. I felt so fuckin' domestic." Mike laughs, crossing and uncrossing his arms for lack of anything better to do with them. "How'd things go with that girl you picked up last Friday?"
"Kelly? Pffft." Tre makes a lewd gesture with his hand, smirking, and Mike levels a smack at his friend that gets deflected with one sturdy arm. "Hey, I'm just sayin', no one can resist The Cool."
"Yeah? She dig your one testicle?"
"'Course she did," Tre says swiftly. "That's not all she dug." Mike groans.
"And are you gonna see her again?" This time, Tre shrugs, balanced precariously on the edge of the log. Mike knows better than to follow up the question.
"Why the hell you think Bill asked us out here, anyway?"
Mike shakes his head. "I dunno... Kind of a weird place to talk about the record, though." Mike, of course, doesn't think that's what this is about. He's not entirely sure what they are doing here, but Billie sounded...off, over the phone. "Hey, there he is."
Tre turns his head, and sure enough, there's Billie, looking particularly unshaven and dirty. Mike notices immediately that he's wearing his oldest shirt-a Misfits t-shirt that Mike thinks he's actually owned since before Joey was born-and a ratty-lookin' pair of Levis. "Nice look you have going on there, Bill," Mike notes, and Billie rewards him with a weary smile.
"Yeah, like trailer-trash chic meets American Werewolf in Oakland," Tre smirks.
"Fuck you both." Billie flips them the bird, and all three of them laugh as Tre hops down from his perch.
"What the hell took you so long, Bill?" Tre asks, and Mike knows as soon as the words leave Tre's mouth that it was the right (or maybe wrong) question to ask. Billie goes quiet, walking past them up the hill, further into the park, and Mike and Tre exchange a glance and follow Billie at a more sedate pace, waiting patiently for their friend to decide he wants to tell them what's going on.
It takes another ten minutes of hiking, however, before Billie veers off the path to a group of rocks nestled on the hillside. The spot gives a nice view of the sky, and as far as Mike can tell it's also as secluded as they're gonna get while still being within the Bay area. Only then does Billie flop down onto the grass, digging something out of his back pocket and tossing it to Tre.
"Um...pot? You brought us out here because you scored some killer weed." Tre can't help but grin, shooting a glance at Mike before their momentary amusement gets shot by Billie's expression.
"I found that in Joey's backpack," Billie says flatly. Mike stares. Tre looks at the bag of pot in his hands, then drops it guiltily to the ground.
"Oh," says Mike.
[ one day you'll be fine :: yes i'll be just fine ]
"I still think you should call her," Mikey says evenly.
"The fuck I'm calling her! We broke up. It's over. You're married, I'm not even engaged anymore, and your hair is still better than mine." Gerard waves his hand in vague irritation, wishing like hell he had a beer right about now.
"It is not. Come on, you at least need to get your shit back! You-"
"Drop it, Mikey." Mikey opens his mouth again, but before he gets a chance to speak a sudden brightness in the corner of the sky distracts them both, and Gerard finds himself staring into a sky full of suddenly-moving stars.
"Did you bring me out here on purpose?" Gerard asks after a few stunned seconds, turning to his brother. "You did. You so did." Mikey grins.
"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't," Mikey says, and Gerard resists the urge to deck him in the ribs as they lean against the boardwalk rail, watching the sky.
* ~ * ~ *
"Look, there it is!" Patrick shoves Pete in the side and points, finger tracing the faint arc through the night sky that the first meteor makes. The tour bus roof is hard and cold and not exactly comfortable to stretch out on like he and Pete are, but Patrick suddenly isn't paying attention.
Pete whistles. "Wow, I didn't think it'd be that bright."
"There's more. Holy crap, there's so many." Patrick sits up now too, bumping Pete in the arm as he stares up at the sky. "Make a wish, dude."
"I'm gonna wish I had your voice," Pete says with relish, but something in his voice makes Patrick turn away from the stars over their heads to look at his friend's face. Pete's smiling, a real smile, not the fake, Ken doll imitation he's been using for the past two days. It looks almost painful, Patrick thinks, and that's kind of weird because Pete looks really, really happy.
"You should wish for my fantastic ass," Patrick says, and Pete laughs.
* ~ * ~ *
"Well, now at least I know why the hell you made me come find you way out here."
Matt smiles, not taking his eyes from the stars that are seemingly falling right down from heaven over their heads. "Did you forget the meteor shower was tonight?"
"I was kind of distracted with that whole eight-hour trip I was taking today," Heather remarks dryly. "Not to mention this guy I know being a real dickhead about his friend having a kid." Matt snorts, then carefully rolls over just enough to grab a handful of sand and fling it at Heather, who sputters like a fish out of water. "FUCK! You FUCKER!"
Matt's already up and on his feet, lurching as the sand shifts under his feet, then tears off down the beach, laughing his head off. He hears Heather yelling and scrambling to her feet behind him, and if he turns his head he can see the meteors still shooting by over their heads, disappearing into the ocean.
* ~ * ~ *
Mark finds himself slightly amazed. He'd almost fallen asleep before the shower finally started, and now it's been going for almost half an hour with no real sign of stopping. Travis at first tried counting each one, but had given up around forty-three when he'd sneezed all over himself and Mark.
"Do you think any of them hit the ground?" Mark tears his eyes away from the sky at the question to find Travis watching him. Mark shrugs.
"I dunno. Maybe one or two. I bet a lot of them went in the water if they made it through the atmosphere at all." Tom would know, Mark supposes. Tom would also have some obscene story to go along with it (Mark's not sure what you could find that'd be obscene in fucking rocks from space, but Tom was a master at that kind of inventive leap). Mark would bet every guitar he owns that Tom is watching the shower right now, concocting just such a story in his head.
"I'm gonna go inside, dude," Travis says after a moment, climbing to his feet. "See you in the morning." Mark waves vaguely at Travis as the drummer eclipses his line of sight for a moment before dwindling towards the front of the yard, heading for the house.
Mark counts the number of seconds between the next two meteors: ten. Then fourteen. The meteors are coming more infrequently now, which means Mark might as well follow Travis inside in a few minutes. Instead, he digs his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and holding the "1" button down to ring the voicemail. No new messages, the nameless woman's calm voice intones. First saved message: "Hi, Mark, it's Tom..."
* ~ * ~ *
"Y'know, you should get Joey to tell you where he got that stuff. So you can get some more."
"Tre!"
"Dude, I'm just saying. You can not sit here and tell me off when we just smoked your son's pot."
"He's right, Bill," Mike says mildly, and passes Billie Joe the gently-smouldering pipe. Billie scowls for a few seconds before grudgingly accepting, taking another hit before passing it over to Tre. Mike's eyes flicker up to take in the now-empty sky, the last few stray meteors having blown their little lives almost ten minutes ago.
"He's eleven," Billie says stubbornly. "That's way too young to be smoking anything." Tre snorts, and Mike reaches over to punch Billie in the arm.
"You kind of suck at this hypocrite thing, Billie," Tre says.
"Whatever," Billie mutters.
"He doesn't suck at it," Mike points out. "He's good at it. He's just bad at admitting it."
"You guys are jackasses, you know that?" Billie gets about another two seconds out of "pissed" before he relents, grinning and flopping onto his side in the grass again as Mike and Tre both start to laugh at him. "Fuck."
~ FIN ~
This came out of the author having a few too many confused, frustrating days in a row. Better out than in.
Title: How To Be Honest Without Telling the Truth
Rating: PG; Generic.
Length: 3,022 words (approx. 7 pages).
Fandom: Multiple (My Chemical Romance; Alkaline Trio; Fall Out Boy; Blink-182; Green Day).
Notes: Apologies to Motion City Soundtrack for shamelessly abusing their lyrics; apologies to various band members for possible butchering of their characters. Loads of thanks go to jou, tasyfa, and heartsxrecycled for their help in this piece of work. ♥
[ give me a reason to end this discussion :: to break with tradition, to fold and divide ]
"I swear to God, Mikey, that is the ugliest puppy I have ever seen."
"He's not ugly!" Mikey protests, tugging Gerard with him down a side-street, pulling away from the main avenue. "He's cute. He's just wrinkly."
"Did you pick him out, or did Alicia?"
"We both did. He's our baby." Mikey's prim response prompts a snort from Gerard, who suffers another moment of weird backwards deja vu, (something that's been happening a lot to him this past week, like he's stuck in a horrible dream) like he's peering sideways down a hallway and sees someone who's almost his brother, but not quite. Mikey had the eye surgery quite awhile ago, and it's not like Gerard has been anything but supportive, but it still takes him by surprise sometimes to see his brother with no glasses and a wedding band.
Just like it takes him by surprise to look at his own finger and see no engagement ring.
Gerard can feel Mikey watching him, but he doesn't look up. Instead he lapses into silence, and because his brother is better at reading him than any other person on the planet, Mikey lets him.
They walk for a while without saying anything, Gerard purposefully hanging back a little whenever they pass someone, the brothers' eyes averted so as not to catch anyone's gaze. It's something they do now without even really thinking about it, the way pretty girls learn to let their eyes slide past the faces of men whose attention they'd rather not even pretend to return. Self-defense. You do what you have to just to get by.
"So have you talked to her at all?" Mikey asks hesitantly when they've finally reached the boardwalk and are alone as they're going to get. Mikey was the first person to know when Eliza was gone, the first person Gerard called.
"No," Gerard says savagely. "Fuck no."
"Gee, I was just asking." Mikey stops, falling a few steps as his brother keeps going, and Gerard can feel his own shoulders pinch defensively, like he's expecting Mikey to shoot him in the back.
"I know," Gerard mumbles, finally, and he knows Mikey knows what he means.
[ i'm through with these pills that make me sit still ]
"What are you doing up here, dude?"
Patrick's face follows the sound of his voice a half-second later, peering at Pete through the opened sunroof of the tour bus, and Pete shifts, carefully, to allow Patrick room to heave himself up onto the roof next to him. Pete shrugs. "Waiting for the meteor shower," he says, deliberately nonchalant.
"You said you weren't gonna watch it..." Patrick doesn't do Pete the courtesy of not making eye contact; he stares at Pete's face, waiting for some kind of clue, but Pete pretends not to notice.
"Changed my mind."
"Pffffft." Now Pete does look over at Patrick, a smile breaking through his mask, and Patrick shoves Pete in the shoulder and laughs as he pretends to fall off. Pete's eyes are down again by the time he sits up, but that two-second window was all Patrick needed to get a peek inside Pete's brain. Patrick knows without asking that nothing is really wrong, nothing new anyway, which is much worse than if something had actually happened; Pete's own disasters always hurt worse when he has nothing to blame them on.
"Everything's fine, dude. I just wanted to see if I could catch a falling star."
Patrick rolls his eyes at Pete's melodrama-par for the course, but still. He flops back onto his elbows, watching Pete watch the sky. "You gonna make a wish?"
"That's the idea, isn't it?"
Patrick smiles. "Yeah, that's the idea."
[ i used to rely on self-medication :: i guess i still do that from time to time ]
Matt breathes out, watching the smoke curl towards the purpling LA skyline, blending with the haze that's the smog's younger, druggie sister. Today was a Hazy Air warning day, a thick smear of summer heat best spent inside, doing something other than staring out at the ocean from the only part of the beach you can find with any semblance of privacy.
He takes another puff on his borrowed cigarette, wrinkling his nose at the taste. Menthol. Who the fuck smokes menthol? Matt can't complain, though. His sixth borrowed cigarette for the day, and beggars can't be choosers. He's beginning to wonder when someone will think to comment on the beanstalk masquerading as a human that's been roving the city streets bumming cigarettes off various people minding their own business. The nice thing about smokers is that, being in the middle of getting their own fix, most don't seem to mind.
"There you are, you selfish son of a bitch." Heather's voice startles Matt out of his reverie, and he stands up, cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers as he hugs his best friend.
"Missed you too, princess. You get in okay? ...How'd you find me anyway?"
"Monica told me you were out here. And yeah, I got in fine, no thanks to you. What happened to meeting me at the airport?" Heather's voice is softer than her words, and Matt winces under the questioning glare she passes over him. Heather always had a way with getting right to the point, like her favorite pair of canvas-cutting scissors that Matt used to steal for other, more questionable purposes.
The same kind of questionable purposes that keeps you from meeting your best friend at the airport on her cross-country trip from Florida to California.
"Sorry," Matt says quietly, and Heather punches him in the stomach by way of hugging him again.
"This is about Danny, isn't it?" Heather grabs Matt by the elbow, steering him towards a bench sitting a few feet back from the sandbars. When Matt doesn't answer, she shoves him down onto the bench and then sits down next to him, their legs pressed against each other. "It's a damn good thing I was coming to visit you already because you are an asshole and maybe you'll listen if I tell you in person."
"Heather-!"
"Matt. It's a baby. Dan's a father now, not a born-again Christian. He's not gonna stop being your friend."
Matt sighs, flicking the remains of cigarette to the sand in irritation, scuffing it out with his boot. "I know that," he says, looking sideways at Heather's face, impatience softened with genuine concern. Heather's always been a good friend; a better one that Matt deserves, sometimes.
"Yeah, sure. Pull the other one, Matt, it plays Jingle Bells." Matt laughs and reaches down to cover Heather's hand on his leg with his own, squeezing it gently.
[ but i'm getting better at fighting the future ]
"D'you think he's watching?"
"Tom? Of course he's watching." Mark snorts, waving his hand at the sky. "Are you shittin' me, how much he loved UFO's and shit? He's probably running around outside naked in a fuckin' foil hat with a goddamn sign."
Travis snickers, reaching over to pluck the roach out of Mark's fingers and take another pull. "Maybe they'll take him home," he murmurs. "He'd love that."
Mark shakes his head and just lays back, folding his hands behind his head as he lays down on the grass. He already has a huge green stain along his backside, so there's no point in bothering with a fucking blanket at this point.
"Yeah, he would." Mark stares at the sky, the sun taking its own sweet time settling into the ocean out west. The sky darkens slowly to black, or as black as it ever damn well gets in LA. Mark wonders vaguely what it would look like if all of Hollywood suddenly suffered a power-outage, and he grins as he imagines millions of starlets screaming in simultaneous horror as their hairdryers suddenly fail.
Travis tilts his head, just a little. Just enough to see Mark's face in the crappy light. "You gonna call him back?"
Mark doesn't answer. Travis just sighs and leans back over, handing him the softly-burning roach, and Mark takes it wordlessly, sitting up to take a puff and let the smoke back out to reach up to the sky, lost in the fading light.
[ i don't wanna waste your time ]
Mike and Tre are waiting. They're waiting because Billie Joe is running late, and for that reason they are both just a little concerned.
Billie Joe does not normally run late. In fact, he's usually the first one to any given location, and the fact that he's late, today, when he's the one who asked to meet up with them out here in the park, is kind of weird.
Tre hops up on a fallen log, carelessly disregarding the sign that says to stay on the path. "So, how's Brittney?" he asks, offering Mike a slow grin that Mike can't help but return.
"She's great! She and Stella went shopping the other day and then came home and made me dinner. I felt so fuckin' domestic." Mike laughs, crossing and uncrossing his arms for lack of anything better to do with them. "How'd things go with that girl you picked up last Friday?"
"Kelly? Pffft." Tre makes a lewd gesture with his hand, smirking, and Mike levels a smack at his friend that gets deflected with one sturdy arm. "Hey, I'm just sayin', no one can resist The Cool."
"Yeah? She dig your one testicle?"
"'Course she did," Tre says swiftly. "That's not all she dug." Mike groans.
"And are you gonna see her again?" This time, Tre shrugs, balanced precariously on the edge of the log. Mike knows better than to follow up the question.
"Why the hell you think Bill asked us out here, anyway?"
Mike shakes his head. "I dunno... Kind of a weird place to talk about the record, though." Mike, of course, doesn't think that's what this is about. He's not entirely sure what they are doing here, but Billie sounded...off, over the phone. "Hey, there he is."
Tre turns his head, and sure enough, there's Billie, looking particularly unshaven and dirty. Mike notices immediately that he's wearing his oldest shirt-a Misfits t-shirt that Mike thinks he's actually owned since before Joey was born-and a ratty-lookin' pair of Levis. "Nice look you have going on there, Bill," Mike notes, and Billie rewards him with a weary smile.
"Yeah, like trailer-trash chic meets American Werewolf in Oakland," Tre smirks.
"Fuck you both." Billie flips them the bird, and all three of them laugh as Tre hops down from his perch.
"What the hell took you so long, Bill?" Tre asks, and Mike knows as soon as the words leave Tre's mouth that it was the right (or maybe wrong) question to ask. Billie goes quiet, walking past them up the hill, further into the park, and Mike and Tre exchange a glance and follow Billie at a more sedate pace, waiting patiently for their friend to decide he wants to tell them what's going on.
It takes another ten minutes of hiking, however, before Billie veers off the path to a group of rocks nestled on the hillside. The spot gives a nice view of the sky, and as far as Mike can tell it's also as secluded as they're gonna get while still being within the Bay area. Only then does Billie flop down onto the grass, digging something out of his back pocket and tossing it to Tre.
"Um...pot? You brought us out here because you scored some killer weed." Tre can't help but grin, shooting a glance at Mike before their momentary amusement gets shot by Billie's expression.
"I found that in Joey's backpack," Billie says flatly. Mike stares. Tre looks at the bag of pot in his hands, then drops it guiltily to the ground.
"Oh," says Mike.
[ one day you'll be fine :: yes i'll be just fine ]
"I still think you should call her," Mikey says evenly.
"The fuck I'm calling her! We broke up. It's over. You're married, I'm not even engaged anymore, and your hair is still better than mine." Gerard waves his hand in vague irritation, wishing like hell he had a beer right about now.
"It is not. Come on, you at least need to get your shit back! You-"
"Drop it, Mikey." Mikey opens his mouth again, but before he gets a chance to speak a sudden brightness in the corner of the sky distracts them both, and Gerard finds himself staring into a sky full of suddenly-moving stars.
"Did you bring me out here on purpose?" Gerard asks after a few stunned seconds, turning to his brother. "You did. You so did." Mikey grins.
"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't," Mikey says, and Gerard resists the urge to deck him in the ribs as they lean against the boardwalk rail, watching the sky.
* ~ * ~ *
"Look, there it is!" Patrick shoves Pete in the side and points, finger tracing the faint arc through the night sky that the first meteor makes. The tour bus roof is hard and cold and not exactly comfortable to stretch out on like he and Pete are, but Patrick suddenly isn't paying attention.
Pete whistles. "Wow, I didn't think it'd be that bright."
"There's more. Holy crap, there's so many." Patrick sits up now too, bumping Pete in the arm as he stares up at the sky. "Make a wish, dude."
"I'm gonna wish I had your voice," Pete says with relish, but something in his voice makes Patrick turn away from the stars over their heads to look at his friend's face. Pete's smiling, a real smile, not the fake, Ken doll imitation he's been using for the past two days. It looks almost painful, Patrick thinks, and that's kind of weird because Pete looks really, really happy.
"You should wish for my fantastic ass," Patrick says, and Pete laughs.
* ~ * ~ *
"Well, now at least I know why the hell you made me come find you way out here."
Matt smiles, not taking his eyes from the stars that are seemingly falling right down from heaven over their heads. "Did you forget the meteor shower was tonight?"
"I was kind of distracted with that whole eight-hour trip I was taking today," Heather remarks dryly. "Not to mention this guy I know being a real dickhead about his friend having a kid." Matt snorts, then carefully rolls over just enough to grab a handful of sand and fling it at Heather, who sputters like a fish out of water. "FUCK! You FUCKER!"
Matt's already up and on his feet, lurching as the sand shifts under his feet, then tears off down the beach, laughing his head off. He hears Heather yelling and scrambling to her feet behind him, and if he turns his head he can see the meteors still shooting by over their heads, disappearing into the ocean.
* ~ * ~ *
Mark finds himself slightly amazed. He'd almost fallen asleep before the shower finally started, and now it's been going for almost half an hour with no real sign of stopping. Travis at first tried counting each one, but had given up around forty-three when he'd sneezed all over himself and Mark.
"Do you think any of them hit the ground?" Mark tears his eyes away from the sky at the question to find Travis watching him. Mark shrugs.
"I dunno. Maybe one or two. I bet a lot of them went in the water if they made it through the atmosphere at all." Tom would know, Mark supposes. Tom would also have some obscene story to go along with it (Mark's not sure what you could find that'd be obscene in fucking rocks from space, but Tom was a master at that kind of inventive leap). Mark would bet every guitar he owns that Tom is watching the shower right now, concocting just such a story in his head.
"I'm gonna go inside, dude," Travis says after a moment, climbing to his feet. "See you in the morning." Mark waves vaguely at Travis as the drummer eclipses his line of sight for a moment before dwindling towards the front of the yard, heading for the house.
Mark counts the number of seconds between the next two meteors: ten. Then fourteen. The meteors are coming more infrequently now, which means Mark might as well follow Travis inside in a few minutes. Instead, he digs his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and holding the "1" button down to ring the voicemail. No new messages, the nameless woman's calm voice intones. First saved message: "Hi, Mark, it's Tom..."
* ~ * ~ *
"Y'know, you should get Joey to tell you where he got that stuff. So you can get some more."
"Tre!"
"Dude, I'm just saying. You can not sit here and tell me off when we just smoked your son's pot."
"He's right, Bill," Mike says mildly, and passes Billie Joe the gently-smouldering pipe. Billie scowls for a few seconds before grudgingly accepting, taking another hit before passing it over to Tre. Mike's eyes flicker up to take in the now-empty sky, the last few stray meteors having blown their little lives almost ten minutes ago.
"He's eleven," Billie says stubbornly. "That's way too young to be smoking anything." Tre snorts, and Mike reaches over to punch Billie in the arm.
"You kind of suck at this hypocrite thing, Billie," Tre says.
"Whatever," Billie mutters.
"He doesn't suck at it," Mike points out. "He's good at it. He's just bad at admitting it."
"You guys are jackasses, you know that?" Billie gets about another two seconds out of "pissed" before he relents, grinning and flopping onto his side in the grass again as Mike and Tre both start to laugh at him. "Fuck."
~ FIN ~