Fic: "Always Looking Up 1/2" (Bandom)
For lgbtfest.
Title: Always Looking Up
Author: inlovewithnight
Fandom: RPF- bandom
Pairing/characters: William Beckett/various (William/Carden, William/Gabe, not-quite William/Tom)
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know any of the people described herein and do not claim that any of this really happened.
Prompt: 196. Any fandom, any character, There's more than one way to be trans.
Summary: William Beckett is going to be a rock star. No matter what.
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to romanticalgirl, sionnain, and redbrickrose for looking at various drafts of this; all remaining errors are my own.
I've got that lefty curse/where everything I do is flipped and awkwardly reversed (We've Got A Big Mess On Our Hands)
His mom drops him off a few blocks from the venue; she doesn't like it, thinks it's silly, but he insists. "It's important," he says, worrying his fingers over the latches on his guitar case. "Please, Mom, just humor me."
"They all know how old you are," she points out. "Does it really matter if they don't see me drop you off?"
He knows perfectly well that silence is more effective than screaming, but he never quite loses hope that petulant politeness is even better. "Please?"
They have the same conversation every time, and every time she sighs and gives in.
"You know, sometime I'd like to actually hear you play," she says, leaning across the car to kiss him on the cheek. "Have a good time, honey."
"Bye, Mom." He waits for her to pull away and hurries down the block, veering into a sandwich shop as soon as she's out of sight. He balances the guitar case on his feet and orders a diet Coke, the bare minimum to let him be a customer and qualify to use the bathroom.
He strips off his shirt in the stall, digging in his guitar case for the Ace bandage. He barely has anything that needs binding, but he saw this in a movie, and it struck him as a good idea. It's an extra bit of armor, a significant step that keep his back a little straighter and reminds him that he's doing something. He's taking steps and seizing control and...acting. In both senses of the word.
He wraps it around his chest carefully, tightly but not too tight, drawing a deep breath as he does so he knows he'll be able to sing. It's a fine line. He messed it up once and sang his set sounding breathless and nervous and he knows, he knows people were laughing at him.
He puts his shirt back on and takes another breath, running his hands down his sides to check. It feels good, solid, like a shell. He already feels better, more right. He holds his shoulders differently.
A glance at his watch makes him hiss through his teeth. Shit. Shit. He unzips his jeans and shoves them halfway down his thighs, balancing on the edges of his feet in the small space as he digs into his case again.
It's down under his notebook, a pair of his stepdad's socks wrapped in masking tape, shaped as best he could by guess and touch and standing in front of the mirror, checking from this angle and that one until he was pretty sure it was right. He's been using this one for two months now, and it's starting to lose its shape a little, softening at the edges into cotton and tape. He needs to tear this one apart into its component pieces and let the illusion fall apart in his hands. He needs to make a new one. A better one.
Right now, though, he's running out of time. He works it quickly in his hands, then grabs the safety pins from his case and holds them between his teeth while he fumbles with his underwear. He wears two pairs, boxer-briefs over the ones his mom buys for him, flowered and smaller and closer to his skin. He pretends they are skin, not a barrier, not something between what he was born with and the approximation of what he should have.
He pins the socks to the briefs and the panties, top and bottom, then tugs the briefs up into place and adjusts everything. He zips his jeans and closes his eyes, counting to ten while he kneels down and blindly latches up the case. It's like doing a magic trick, count to ten and then abracafuckingdabra.
He opens his eyes and steps out into the light of the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror.
That's...better. Better. He doesn't look much different, he knows, but he feels it. It's in his shoulders, his hips, the way he holds his body as he steps forward and leans in closer to the mirror. He's much more himself.
He wets his fingers and combs them roughly through his hair, letting strands fall forward in a ragged crest over his forehead. "Hey," he whispers to his reflection. "Hey."
He has to sprint the rest of the way to the venue, balancing his guitar case awkwardly as he runs. He gets his name on the open-mic list, lower than usual but he does make it. Remember Maine--William Beckett. He signs the name with a flourish, biting his lip a little in concentration. He's practiced that signature for hours, but he still feels like it's not quite perfect, like he's still chasing the moment when it will feel exactly right in his hand.
He works the crowd a little before his turn, talking, shaking hands, trying to make eye contact and make connections. William Beckett, Bill Beckett, Bill, William, he introduces himself over and over again, smiling a little every time, reveling in how sweet it tastes. This is how it's supposed to be. Just like this.
It's a good set, not great. That asshole Mike Carden sneers at him from across the room, but he's the only one who doesn't applaud. William can't stop smiling afterward, even while he jogs the two blocks back, trying to balance the case and brush sweaty hair off his forehead without tripping over his feet. It was good. Every time he performs it's a little more good, he's getting the hang of it, and soon it's going to be better, soon he's going to be somebody.
There's no time to find another bathroom and change again, but he doesn't want to, anyway. He wants to be himself for a little bit longer, he wants to feel like this, feel like--
"Erin!"
His breath stutters in his chest and he ducks his head.
"Erin, honey!"
He forces a smile and looks up, sliding the guitar case across his hips just in case. "Hey, Mom."
"You're late, honey. Get in, we need to get home. How did it go?"
"Good," he says, climbing into the passenger seat and holding on to his guitar as tight as he can. "It was...it was really good. They liked me."
**
set back under fire/I'm only as stable as I choose to show (40 Steps)
Living in the apartment is the best and the worst thing William has ever done, better and worse than he'd thought it would be. It's awesome because they're on their own, they're doing this, they're starving musicians and they're going to be rock stars.
And it sucks because they're broke, like scary hardcore broke, and there are cockroaches the size of dogs, and he and Mike might not hate each other anymore but that doesn't mean Mike isn't a complete asshole.
And he can't go home, not unless he's willing to get on his knees and apologize for wanting music and agree to go to college. Worse than that, he'd have to be Erin again. When he'd thought through it, he always thought telling his family that he wasn't a girl was going to be what caused trouble, not that he wanted music. He'd thought music would be the minor part. Maybe he should've told them the other part first.
Well, as it is, he's broke and he's scared but he gets to have music and be William both. Nobody's called him Erin in two months, or thought of him as a girl, and as long as he can't go home, nobody's going to. Well. Mike calls him a girl all the time, but he's joking--or he thinks he's joking, or--the point is, it's okay. He doesn't mean it and that makes it okay. Mike's never known anybody but William, and he thinks William is a pretentious fuckhead but a pretentious fuckhead with talent.
They're going to be rock stars.
He turns on the kitchen light and strikes a pose, one that involves throwing his hand over his eyes until the roaches stop skittering.
"Move," Mike mumbles, pushing past him and heading for the refrigerator. "It's too fucking early for diva bullshit."
"Diva bullshit is my life." William goes to the sink, frowning when the water hisses and spits before coming on. He smacks the faucet a few times, just to see what it'll do.
"Don't hit that." Mike takes the milk and cereal out of the fridge, scratching his nose on the edge of the box. "You'll break it." He claims keeping the cereal cold makes it last longer, but at the rate he eats it, it's not like it matters. The truth is more disgusting and six-legged and Christ, there's one crawling up out of the drain.
He grabs a spoon and stabs it back down into the pipes energetically. "Hand me a Coke, would you?" Mike throws the can at his head, and thank God for quick reflexes or he'd be going to work with a black eye. "Asshole."
"Try actually eating something, stick-boy."
"It goes straight to my hips," William says with an exaggerated lisp, which makes Mike laugh his stupid high-pitched giggle and choke on his cereal. William hides his smile behind the can. Food does go to his hips, and worse, his chest. He has to be careful about it.
"I'm gonna see Rob today," Mike says, spraying cereal across the floor. "You want anything?"
"Clean that up. Christ."
"Fuck you. You want anything?"
"Can I afford anything?" William shoots back, boosting himself up onto the counter and swinging his feet slowly. Rob is the guy who has everything or knows where to get it, supplier of all goods and services, and he's the reason William and Mike don't hate each other anymore.
Mike knew Rob, had the connection, and William had had to screw his courage and ask for an introduction. Rob could get him an ID with the right name on it, one that was good enough that people wouldn't ask questions. William didn't want questions, he wanted everything to be seamless.
The price for an introduction, in Mike-currency, was a hell of a lot of beer, and with beer came conversation, and somehow by the end of it they were laughing instead of glaring. All hail the healing powers of PBR. And if things weren't quite seamless yet--God, he's working on it, piece by piece--at least Mike never asked questions, not once.
"You can't afford anything either," William says, blinking himself back into now and kicking his feet harder. "Rent's due next week."
"Fuck you, I know that." Mike rolls his eyes and tosses his bowl into the sink. "Gonna see my parents this weekend. I'll see if I can get them to kick in."
"They kicked in last month."
"Can't hurt to ask."
William shrugs and Mike shakes his head, stumbling off down the hall to the bathroom. William waits for the sound of the shower before he jumps down from the counter and hurries to the bedroom, digging through his box of clothes and then the duffel under his bed. He has to get dressed when Mike showers, hide things when Mike's distracted, rinse stuff in the sink when Mike's at his parents' house for dinner. Not seamless. Not perfect.
His hands shake a little as he zips up his jeans. He rubs his palms on his thighs and moves over to the mirror, then rakes his hair back off his face and stares at himself.
"Hey," he whispers. "Hey. Rock star, baby."
"It's gross to be that in love with yourself," Mike mumbles as he comes in, his hair sticking up in weird, wet lumps and his towel sliding low on his hips.
"Shut up." William watches him out of the corner of his eye, taunting himself with observation, with the way Mike moves easy and lazy, how he flops and sprawls and never has to check or calculate. He's...unpracticed, and that sort of makes William want to kill him, the way he wants to kill everyone who doesn't have to think through every word they say to keep from stuttering and everything they do to keep the world from seeing them wrong.
This is why all he wants to do is be a performer. He's been practicing his whole life, and he can and will be perfect.
"Earth to Bill," Mike says, smacking the back of his head. "You're going to be late."
"Fuck off," he mutters automatically, but he moves away from the mirror, going to get his jacket.
"Hey." Mike snaps his fingers at him, casually dropping his towel to the floor. "Are you still going to talk to that kid?"
William frowns, focusing on buttoning his jacket, keeping his eyes on his own fingers and nowhere else. Careful not to taunt himself, careful not to tread too close to lines. "Kid?"
"That bass player kid. We need actual people or it's not a band, you know?"
"Oh." Shit, he talks too much when he's drunk, always. What was he thinking, bringing up Jason Siska's little brother--actually, the better question is how did Mike remember that, given that William has an ironclad rule of always being the last one to pass out, and Mike is always happy to oblige?
"So you're going to talk to him?" William seriously considers punching him, because fuck, Mike is relentless and annoying when he has an idea in his head.
But they do need a bass player. They've struck out everywhere else. And Adam is decent, from what William remembers, which was a while ago, so by now he might be good.
They need him, or they don't have a band. And having a band is the most important thing, way more important than William having to explain to Jason and Adam that he's not a girl, contrary to what they and everybody else thought, oh and please don't mention to Mike that he ever was.
Then again, it's the Siskas. They're like the most easy-going people in the world ever. He actually might be able to just say "I'm going by William now, okay?" and have them blink, shrug, and ask him what he wants on his pizza. Maybe. Won't know unless he tries.
He tucks his hair behind his ears and nods, not looking at Mike. They need this. He can do this. For the band. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll call him. Today."
**
love me or leave me or rip me apart/this is the voice that I was given (Black Mamba)
They're watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, of all stupid things, on the TV that they can't afford to actually hook up and the VCR that Mike liberated from his parents' basement. They have exactly eight movies that they watch on an unvarying cycle, and it's Raiders the night William plants himself on Mike's lap and kisses him, hard and desperate and hating himself with every fiber of his being.
It's been three weeks since Mike found out, since William came home from work and Mike was sitting on the couch--this very couch--holding the packer William had barely worked up the guts to buy and yet still hadn't managed to even take out of the plastic, much less wear. He'd looked up as the door swung closed and said Bill? What the hell? and William doesn't really remember most of what got said after that. He doesn't really remember the next two days, either, after Mike stormed out and didn't come back.
Then he did come back. And things were...fine. Neutral. Not talking about it. They had a perfectly good stretch of not talking about it that William was ruining right now by kissing Mike while Indy and Marian drank each other under the table.
It's not that he wants to fuck things up. It's that he's had a lot of cheap beer that he bought with his shitty paycheck from his shitty job, and they just had to rename the band and reprint all of their merch (The Academy Is..., who knew a word and three dots could be so fucking legally required), and he's horny as hell, he aches so fucking bad, he wants so much he thinks he's going to die.
And Mike's his friend. His bandmate. He knows Mike, he trusts Mike, in a way he hadn't even realized until Mike came back again, with a pizza and a stack of illegible notes about new song ideas.
"Bill," Mike gasps. "Bill, what--"
Mike says his name with no catch, no hesitation, and even though that's just like always, right now it sends a shudder through William's body and makes him press closer, kiss harder. The worst Mike's going to do to him is push him off onto the floor and tell him to go sober up at Adam's. William can take that. He can. If he has to.
He slides his hand down between them and rubs at Mike through his jeans, something aching in his chest when he feels Mike start to get hard.
"Are you sure?" Mike's voice is rougher now, more breathless, but just as confused. William kisses him again, not willing to answer that question even if he could, even if he had an answer.
He works his hand over Mike again, hating the contrast between the wetness in his own jeans and the firmness under his palm, hating the whole unfair goddamn world. Then Mike's hands are cupping his jaw, holding him in a kiss that gets deeper, rougher, and William closes his eyes and gives up, loses himself in how much he wants it, fair or not.
They fumble through it, false starts and Mike touching him wrong and not taking the fucking hint until William actually smacks his hand away. Eventually he ends up bent over the arm of the couch, Mike fucking him from behind, panting roughly in William's ear and sliding in him deep, hard, just right and all fucking wrong, but he can push the wrong to the back of his head long enough to come.
Mike pulls away after and goes to take care of the condom, and William stares down at the couch, hands too clumsy to rebutton his jeans. Indy's still carrying on about something. It's like he's dropped back into reality after a trip to Mars.
When he looks up, Mike is staring at him, white-faced and with panic in his eyes. If William could feel his legs, he would run.
"That...that was weird," Mike says.
"Fuck you," William whispers.
"No, not...not like that, just..." Mike runs his hand through his hair sharply. "I don't want to fuck up the band."
William blinks. "What?"
"The band. I don't want to fuck up the band, Bill."
William's knees threaten to give out and he sinks carefully to the couch. He kind of wants to kiss Mike again, for that, but he won't. Never again. "Yeah. Me either." He looks up and meets Mike's eyes, and that awful cold pinch in his chest eases just a little. "So...so we won't do that again, okay?"
"Okay." Mike nods and looks at the TV. "You want to run this back? We missed a bunch of the good parts."
William nods and reaches for the remote. His hands are still shaking, but not much, not too bad.
**
attention bidders it's lot 45, he's got a decent voice, he's got that crooked smile (Classifieds)
Pete's hotel room is ridiculously swanky. William curls his hands at his sides, trying not to touch anything. There is, after all, a good chance that he's about to be ejected in a hurry.
"Okay," Pete says slowly, looking at the papers in front of him--William's real ID, his birth certificate, his Social Security card. "Um. Well. You don't actually...need to, like, show any of these to sign the contract."
"I have to sign my name." It takes him three tries to say that clearly, not stuttering so much as choking. Pete's watching him wide-eyed and uncertain, like he doesn't know if William's going to laugh or cry or bite or explode. Like he's something not quite safe.
"You've signed contracts before," Pete says. "When you recorded. Gigs. Your apartment. Um. Your fucking...forms when you file your taxes."
William shakes his head, a sharp jerk of movement that hurts. "I didn't care about lying on those."
"But you do about this."
His heart might actually explode in his chest and kill him. For some reason he had thought Pete would understand. This is all he cares about. "Yes."
"Okay, so just...I don't get what the problem is, dude, I'm sorry. If that's your legal name, then just...well, why haven't you changed your name?"
William is pretty sure he's trying to laugh, but it sounds all wrong and it hurts coming out of his throat. "Money."
"Oh."
"F-first thing I'm doing with my part of the advance."
"Your advance is for living expenses."
William meets his eyes for the first time all night. "This is a living expense."
Pete stares at him for a minute, then looks away, down at the papers again. "I could give you some money, you know, enough for that if you--"
"No." He shakes his head, slightly surprised at himself by how clearly that comes through. "I want...I want to have earned that. Myself."
"Right." Pete pushes the papers away and stands up, moving over to the minibar. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, you need to sign and I guess I don't see what the problem is, nobody has to know what name you put on the paper."
William knows better than to try to explain how much it hurts that the thing he wants more than anything else in his life is going to have the wrong name on it, forever. He won't even bother. Focus on a part Pete might understand. "The other people signing with me will."
Pete's head snaps up and he almost drops the bottle he's trying to open. "Your band doesn't know?"
It shouldn't hurt this much just to breathe. "Adam does. Carden does."
"But Mike D. and AJ don't." Pete exhales and twists the top off the bottle. "Why the hell not?"
"Because it doesn't matter," William snaps, not realizing how close it is to a shout until Pete flinches back. "It's none of their business. It doesn't have anything to do with how I write, or how I sing, or--"
"Okay. Okay." Pete takes a drink and shudders, looking at William with narrowed eyes. "Okay. You'll sign last, and I'll, I don't know, pull the fire alarm or punch somebody or something. We'll slide it by them. Don't worry about it."
William nods again and reaches for his papers. Fuck, he wants to burn the stupid things. "Okay. Thank you."
Pete keeps drinking and watching, not saying anything, and William assumes that means he's dismissed, he's done. He grabs his scarf and twists it around his neck, swallowing against the tension, and turns to the door.
"Bill."
William stops but doesn't look. He can't.
"Look. Dude. I'm not going to pretend I understand this, because...I don't. At all. But I didn't, like, start talking to you because..." William hears the bottle hit the table, loud, and he does look then. Pete's waving his hands in the air in frustration, face scrunched up and hair sticking up and eyes all intense. It's ridiculous enough that William would laugh if he remembered how, and if any of this was funny. "I'm on your team because you're really fucking awesome and you're talented and you make kickass music and that's the point, okay?"
William nods slightly. "That's what I've been trying to get people to see."
Pete grabs the bottle again and takes another drink, nodding decisively. "So fuck the rest of it." He comes over and grabs William in a too-tight hug, and if William flinches a little before he relaxes into it, Pete doesn't seem to notice. "We're cool?"
"Yeah." William hugs him back carefully and disentangles himself. "We're fine."
"Awesome." Pete steps back and turns away, dragging his hand over his hair and taking another drink. "It's gonna be awesome."
"It is."
"Do not fuck this up."
William smiles, or something like it. "I won't."
**
by all the people we are made to love and hate (Same Blood)
Mike D. and AJ leaving is out of the blue and, to William, pretty inexplicable--why would you leave when the band is signed, when they have an album laid down, when it's going to happen? It doesn't make any sense. It's stupid. They're stupid.
But they do leave, and yelling doesn't change a bit of it. William spends two days barely leaving his bedroom, not because he's depressed but because he's fuming, livid, and it seems prudent not to inflict that on too many other people or who knows what might happen. They might suddenly turn stupid and leave, too. He's not interested in starting over at zero.
When he emerges again, it's for three weeks of frantic searching for a tour guitarist and drummer. Mike says they should hold out for guys interested in joining the band for real, but the album is pressing and the tour is coming on like a freight train and William doesn't care about anything but covering those basics and getting them on the road.
He repeats this loudly and frequently until Mike and Adam throw their hands up and say have it your way (Mike with more cursing thrown in, Adam more easily, and both of those are the responses he expects and knows how to deal with).
It's sort of embarrassing how quickly he wants to reverse himself, if not as soon as they meet Tom and then Butcher, then the first time they practice with them both. William practically hears a click in his head, it's that perfect. It all fits. They're a band.
He plays it cool, though, because Adam and Mike won't hold back from saying I told you so. They are assholes of the highest order and William isn't going to hand them anything on a platter, especially not something like this, something important.
Instead he just doesn't bring the question of temporary or permanent up, at all, and neither does anyone else. Maybe Mike's a little extra-smirky, but William can rise above that.
They go on tour and it's even better than any of the practices. It's electric. It's really happening.
When they play, Tom is somehow always in the corner of William's eye, off to his right with eyes down and feet steady, playing the guitar lines that carry William's voice up and out over the crowds. It's magic, what Tom does. Alchemy that gives words wings.
And yes, he knows it's no different than when AJ was playing it, it's no different than any other guitar player who could be standing there, but fuck it, something sparks in him when he watches Tom, looking down the stage across the beat, and it's enough of a miracle that he's here, now, living this life, that he'll believe in a little extra magic if he goddamn well wants.
One night they're sitting together outside a venue, leaning back against a rough brick wall with their knees drawn up to their chests, passing a bottle of Jack back and forth and telling life stories. Something slips in his chest, a lock he thought he held more vigilant than that, and he tells his story for real. He tells Tom everything, hardly stuttering at all with adrenaline and whiskey lubricating his words.
Tom doesn't say anything, not then and not the next morning when William drags himself into the daylight an hour late, too paralyzed with fear to meet anyone's eyes. Tom doesn't say anything, but his eyes move over William, lingering the same way they do on anything he wants to see through a camera lens and pin down like lightning under glass. At their show that night, he's right where he should be, in his accustomed place where William can just catch him from the corner of his right eye, and there's one solo where William's afraid he won't be able to come in again afterward, because it sort of feels like his heart and his voice have flown away.
The thing about Tom is--he sees things. He doesn't talk everything up one side and down the other like the rest of them do, he sits back and he watches and he smiles that crooked, shy smile that makes something twist in William's chest, sometimes. Tom sees everything, and William has to check himself from asking him what, exactly, he sees. He suspects that the answer might nudge him too close to breaking that promise he made to himself back in that crappy apartment, about never doing anything that might fuck up the band. The band is first. Before anything in the world and definitely before anything his heart and his hormones might come up with.
Two weeks before the end of the tour, Adam comes up to him shamefaced and says he and Butcher got drunk and traded stories, too, and Adam had told one that wasn't his to share. Somehow, William can't bring himself to stay mad for very long. Yeah, it was a fuckup and no, Sisky better not do it again, but--
--but they're his band, they're his brothers in the wilderness, and they already hear him pour out his secrets in code, in chorus and verse, so it's...it's all right. There are no mysteries here.
**
I'll sing you something you won't forget (Season)
They're in the middle of fuck-all nowhere, at a truck stop plaza that makes William expect to see zombies around every corner. He's sitting in a booth in the far corner of the diner, trying to coax his laptop into picking up the truly shitty wireless long enough to let him check his e-mail, when Gabe slides into the seat across from him.
William has been alternating between chasing and running from Gabe the entire tour. He never misses Midtown's set, and Gabe never fails to invite him to come party, but it's just...
Sometimes his stomach twists so hard when he looks at Gabe, it makes him dizzy. Not just butterflies, he's got flying horses down there. It's ridiculous and unacceptable.
"Hey hey, Beckett," Gabe says. "What's up?"
"Not much." William keeps his eyes averted as his mailbox finally loads. "Just checking in with the outside world."
"Fuck that." Gabe grins, bright and lazy, and William only lets himself look at him sideways. If he looks head-on, he'll give way too much away.
"Never know. Could be something important." There isn't. Three spam messages, a notice that Amazon has a book he doesn't even want anymore, and two messages from Pete. The first one's a cheerful, punctuation-free paragraph about how he has to wipe his cache before the other dudes see, and then a link to a sex shop. More goddamn strap-ons. Get over it, Pete. The other is a link to an article about some anti-discrimination legislation out on the East Coast. William deletes them both without clicking the links. He knows that this is Pete's way of being thoughtful and supportive, even kind, and while he appreciates that, it's like having a parent all up in his jock, and if Pete doesn't knock it off William is going to stab him.
"Nah." Gabe stretches, his legs easily invading William's space under the table, kicking at his ankles. "Nothing's that important except what we've got out here."
William smiles a little, making sure the laptop screen is tilted enough to hide it. Gabe gets it. He'll never tell him so, but that's the thing that makes William the most crazy about him, the most...
In need of getting a grip.
"I should go back to my guys." He logs out and shrugs. "They tend to get in trouble when they're unsupervised." It's not a lie; they do get in trouble, and lately worse than ever. Especially Tom and Mike, who never seem to stop snarling at each other these days, something sharp and ugly growing between them that William doesn't want to look at too closely for fear that it's full of mirrors.
"Do you not like me or something?" Gabe's voice is mild, and he's smiling when William shoots him a startled glance, but there's something ever so slightly edged about his eyes.
"Why wouldn't I like you?"
"That's what I want to know. I'm a likeable guy."
William has to smile again. "Yeah, you are."
"So how come you're always running away from me?"
"I'm not."
"You totally are." Gabe reaches out and catches the edge of the laptop, turning it to face him. "You take off like you're afraid I'm going to do something to you."
William's breath stumbles in his chest. "Like what?"
"That's the other thing I want to know." Gabe smirks at him over the edge of the screen and types something.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking my e-mail. Quit freaking out." Gabe types something else and frowns. There's a smudge of something at the edge of his lip--chocolate, probably--and William's fingers itch to wipe it clean. "So you like me," Gabe goes on, and William blinks, forcing himself to start paying attention again. "That's cool. So you'll come to the party tonight."
"I don't want to be in the way." As soon as he says it, he starts looking for something he can use to kill himself, because what was that? Why did he say that?
Gabe looks up again, obviously surprised, and William braces himself. But Gabe doesn't laugh. "Is that what you're all worried about?" He clicks the mouse a few times. "Dude, you won't be. It'll be awesome. Come to the damn party. Case closed."
The last thing William needs is to be around Gabe at a party with this stupid crush. He can hear Mike in his head saying don't be stupid and Pete saying don't fuck this up and Tom's soft, noncommittal be careful.
"Check this out," Gabe says, turning the laptop again to show William a screenful of really improbable, slightly distressing porn. "Look at the shit the guys at home send me."
William laughs, and knows he's going to the party.
"I'm telling you, man." Gabe turns the computer back to himself, grinning. "The only people worth knowing are right here on the tour."
**
when I leave here I'm going alone/well it's not like, it not like it hurts much anyway (Attention)
Tom leaves an envelope outside William's door two days after the last time William sees him. William holds it like it's made of thorns and seriously considers pitching it directly in the trash.
Two days after the last time he saw Tom is still only a week after the horrific disaster of a meeting where he stuttered and Mike sneered and finally Butcher kicked Tom out of the band, because the rest of them couldn't do it. It's too soon. It might be too soon for the rest of their lives.
He doesn't open the envelope, just hides it under one of the pillows on his couch and doesn't think about it while they continue the slow, agonizing, shove-your-hand-in-the-garbage-disposal process of trying to write the album. Except it's not really a process so much as spinning their wheels in place, getting nowhere, producing nothing, and William feels like he's choking, like all of the fucked-up wrong words are crawling up the back of his throat and lodging there.
He can feel the others watching him with disappointment and concern and worry, and it's like those looks linger on his skin even after he goes home. Sticky residue that clings to him all the time, just in case he might think about forgetting how he's failing at this. Writing the next album, making it perfect, are the only things that matter, the only things that makes any of the rest of the shit in his life worth it, and he's fucking it up.
He doesn't touch the envelope again until he's racing out the door for the airport, blind and panicking. His throat's still raw with bile from puking up everything but his socks while the website processed his credit card for the ticket to LA. There's nothing waiting for him in LA, he has no reason to go there other than that it's not here, and suddenly the idea of being here is completely unbearable.
He swerves toward the couch on his way to the door, and there's no reason for that, either, no thought behind it. He shoves his hand under the pillow and grabs the envelope, twisting the corner of it between his fingers until he's in the cab. Then he tucks it into the duffel bag that doesn't really have half of the things a rational person would take across the country. His notebook, a pair of boxers, a t-shirt, the anxiety medication that he has a legitimate prescription for but that isn't doing shit when taken as directed.
When he gets to LA, he finds a hotel and checks in for one night. He sits cross-legged on the bed with the notebook and the envelope in front of him and calls Adam. "I won't be at practice tomorrow," he says, and hangs up before Adam finishes asking what's going on. He turns the phone off and hides it behind the TV, so it won't be staring at him accusingly, then sits down again, raking his hair off his face with both hands.
He spilled his drink on the envelope on the plane, blurring out his name on the front and leaving the paper mottled in a weird pattern. He traces it with his fingertips, the runny ink and the ruined paper, then tears it open and spills the contents out across the sheets.
Pictures, of course. He should have known. With Tom, it was always pictures. There's a scrap of notebook paper folded around one of them, and he picks it up first, turning it around in his hands until Tom's scrawled, terrible handwriting makes sense.
the duality of you
His stomach twists hard and he closes his eyes, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. He reaches for the bottle of pills and fights the cap until it opens and spills them out as well, pouring over the pictures and hiding in the folds of the blanket. He dry-swallows two before he looks again.
It's not as if he hasn't seen thousands of pictures of himself. His camera-whoring tendencies are a running joke, with the punchline being that they're remarkable even in a group that includes Pete Wentz, and he laughs it off because he can't argue with it. He likes seeing himself in pictures. He likes reading the comments that accompany them on the Internet, even, including the nasty shit, because they're seeing him, they're seeing him properly. Some of them call out his hair and his t-shirts and his jeans (girl hair, girl shirts, girl jeans--what the fuck, that guy looks like a girl), but...they're still getting it right. That guy looks like a girl. They see a guy who's failing to align, and that means he's won.
They're just pictures, that's all. He's seen thousands of pictures. But these are pictures through Tom's eyes, Tom's lens. Tom who worked his way around and under and slipped through into the parts of William's life that he wasn't taking admittance to anymore, Tom who played the melody line on the songs that poured out William's heart. Tom who was a part of the world that fit until somehow, without any of them noticing, the edges shifted and wore away until it didn't fit at all anymore, and had to go.
They're all in washed-out color, just slightly overexposed. Just moments, random and scattered, two of William on the bus and three of him out in the sun, all unaware of the camera. He's looking at his notebook in one, curled around his guitar in another, reaching for a piece of paper in Butcher's outstretched hand in a third. And in all of them he looks not quite real, not quite anything, something alien and in-between. He doesn't recognize himself.
They're beautiful pictures, and he doesn't recognize himself at all.
He chases two more pills out of the sheets and moves over to the window, forcing them down past the lump in his throat. He leans his forehead against the glass and looks out at LA. It's alien and in-between, too, half reality and half dream. He could lose himself here. It would be easy.
He looks over his shoulder at the bed. From this angle he can't quite see the scattered pictures, but he can see the notebook, pen jutting up defiantly out of the binding, waiting for him.
He sits down in the corner, shoulder pressed against the window and back tucked up against the wall. He can't stand the thought of it right now, of fighting with words, trying to write something perfect and failing. He can't do it anymore. It's too much.
In the morning. He'll try again in the morning. Right now he's just going to watch the lights go by.
Part 2
Title: Always Looking Up
Author: inlovewithnight
Fandom: RPF- bandom
Pairing/characters: William Beckett/various (William/Carden, William/Gabe, not-quite William/Tom)
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know any of the people described herein and do not claim that any of this really happened.
Prompt: 196. Any fandom, any character, There's more than one way to be trans.
Summary: William Beckett is going to be a rock star. No matter what.
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to romanticalgirl, sionnain, and redbrickrose for looking at various drafts of this; all remaining errors are my own.
I've got that lefty curse/where everything I do is flipped and awkwardly reversed (We've Got A Big Mess On Our Hands)
His mom drops him off a few blocks from the venue; she doesn't like it, thinks it's silly, but he insists. "It's important," he says, worrying his fingers over the latches on his guitar case. "Please, Mom, just humor me."
"They all know how old you are," she points out. "Does it really matter if they don't see me drop you off?"
He knows perfectly well that silence is more effective than screaming, but he never quite loses hope that petulant politeness is even better. "Please?"
They have the same conversation every time, and every time she sighs and gives in.
"You know, sometime I'd like to actually hear you play," she says, leaning across the car to kiss him on the cheek. "Have a good time, honey."
"Bye, Mom." He waits for her to pull away and hurries down the block, veering into a sandwich shop as soon as she's out of sight. He balances the guitar case on his feet and orders a diet Coke, the bare minimum to let him be a customer and qualify to use the bathroom.
He strips off his shirt in the stall, digging in his guitar case for the Ace bandage. He barely has anything that needs binding, but he saw this in a movie, and it struck him as a good idea. It's an extra bit of armor, a significant step that keep his back a little straighter and reminds him that he's doing something. He's taking steps and seizing control and...acting. In both senses of the word.
He wraps it around his chest carefully, tightly but not too tight, drawing a deep breath as he does so he knows he'll be able to sing. It's a fine line. He messed it up once and sang his set sounding breathless and nervous and he knows, he knows people were laughing at him.
He puts his shirt back on and takes another breath, running his hands down his sides to check. It feels good, solid, like a shell. He already feels better, more right. He holds his shoulders differently.
A glance at his watch makes him hiss through his teeth. Shit. Shit. He unzips his jeans and shoves them halfway down his thighs, balancing on the edges of his feet in the small space as he digs into his case again.
It's down under his notebook, a pair of his stepdad's socks wrapped in masking tape, shaped as best he could by guess and touch and standing in front of the mirror, checking from this angle and that one until he was pretty sure it was right. He's been using this one for two months now, and it's starting to lose its shape a little, softening at the edges into cotton and tape. He needs to tear this one apart into its component pieces and let the illusion fall apart in his hands. He needs to make a new one. A better one.
Right now, though, he's running out of time. He works it quickly in his hands, then grabs the safety pins from his case and holds them between his teeth while he fumbles with his underwear. He wears two pairs, boxer-briefs over the ones his mom buys for him, flowered and smaller and closer to his skin. He pretends they are skin, not a barrier, not something between what he was born with and the approximation of what he should have.
He pins the socks to the briefs and the panties, top and bottom, then tugs the briefs up into place and adjusts everything. He zips his jeans and closes his eyes, counting to ten while he kneels down and blindly latches up the case. It's like doing a magic trick, count to ten and then abracafuckingdabra.
He opens his eyes and steps out into the light of the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror.
That's...better. Better. He doesn't look much different, he knows, but he feels it. It's in his shoulders, his hips, the way he holds his body as he steps forward and leans in closer to the mirror. He's much more himself.
He wets his fingers and combs them roughly through his hair, letting strands fall forward in a ragged crest over his forehead. "Hey," he whispers to his reflection. "Hey."
He has to sprint the rest of the way to the venue, balancing his guitar case awkwardly as he runs. He gets his name on the open-mic list, lower than usual but he does make it. Remember Maine--William Beckett. He signs the name with a flourish, biting his lip a little in concentration. He's practiced that signature for hours, but he still feels like it's not quite perfect, like he's still chasing the moment when it will feel exactly right in his hand.
He works the crowd a little before his turn, talking, shaking hands, trying to make eye contact and make connections. William Beckett, Bill Beckett, Bill, William, he introduces himself over and over again, smiling a little every time, reveling in how sweet it tastes. This is how it's supposed to be. Just like this.
It's a good set, not great. That asshole Mike Carden sneers at him from across the room, but he's the only one who doesn't applaud. William can't stop smiling afterward, even while he jogs the two blocks back, trying to balance the case and brush sweaty hair off his forehead without tripping over his feet. It was good. Every time he performs it's a little more good, he's getting the hang of it, and soon it's going to be better, soon he's going to be somebody.
There's no time to find another bathroom and change again, but he doesn't want to, anyway. He wants to be himself for a little bit longer, he wants to feel like this, feel like--
"Erin!"
His breath stutters in his chest and he ducks his head.
"Erin, honey!"
He forces a smile and looks up, sliding the guitar case across his hips just in case. "Hey, Mom."
"You're late, honey. Get in, we need to get home. How did it go?"
"Good," he says, climbing into the passenger seat and holding on to his guitar as tight as he can. "It was...it was really good. They liked me."
**
set back under fire/I'm only as stable as I choose to show (40 Steps)
Living in the apartment is the best and the worst thing William has ever done, better and worse than he'd thought it would be. It's awesome because they're on their own, they're doing this, they're starving musicians and they're going to be rock stars.
And it sucks because they're broke, like scary hardcore broke, and there are cockroaches the size of dogs, and he and Mike might not hate each other anymore but that doesn't mean Mike isn't a complete asshole.
And he can't go home, not unless he's willing to get on his knees and apologize for wanting music and agree to go to college. Worse than that, he'd have to be Erin again. When he'd thought through it, he always thought telling his family that he wasn't a girl was going to be what caused trouble, not that he wanted music. He'd thought music would be the minor part. Maybe he should've told them the other part first.
Well, as it is, he's broke and he's scared but he gets to have music and be William both. Nobody's called him Erin in two months, or thought of him as a girl, and as long as he can't go home, nobody's going to. Well. Mike calls him a girl all the time, but he's joking--or he thinks he's joking, or--the point is, it's okay. He doesn't mean it and that makes it okay. Mike's never known anybody but William, and he thinks William is a pretentious fuckhead but a pretentious fuckhead with talent.
They're going to be rock stars.
He turns on the kitchen light and strikes a pose, one that involves throwing his hand over his eyes until the roaches stop skittering.
"Move," Mike mumbles, pushing past him and heading for the refrigerator. "It's too fucking early for diva bullshit."
"Diva bullshit is my life." William goes to the sink, frowning when the water hisses and spits before coming on. He smacks the faucet a few times, just to see what it'll do.
"Don't hit that." Mike takes the milk and cereal out of the fridge, scratching his nose on the edge of the box. "You'll break it." He claims keeping the cereal cold makes it last longer, but at the rate he eats it, it's not like it matters. The truth is more disgusting and six-legged and Christ, there's one crawling up out of the drain.
He grabs a spoon and stabs it back down into the pipes energetically. "Hand me a Coke, would you?" Mike throws the can at his head, and thank God for quick reflexes or he'd be going to work with a black eye. "Asshole."
"Try actually eating something, stick-boy."
"It goes straight to my hips," William says with an exaggerated lisp, which makes Mike laugh his stupid high-pitched giggle and choke on his cereal. William hides his smile behind the can. Food does go to his hips, and worse, his chest. He has to be careful about it.
"I'm gonna see Rob today," Mike says, spraying cereal across the floor. "You want anything?"
"Clean that up. Christ."
"Fuck you. You want anything?"
"Can I afford anything?" William shoots back, boosting himself up onto the counter and swinging his feet slowly. Rob is the guy who has everything or knows where to get it, supplier of all goods and services, and he's the reason William and Mike don't hate each other anymore.
Mike knew Rob, had the connection, and William had had to screw his courage and ask for an introduction. Rob could get him an ID with the right name on it, one that was good enough that people wouldn't ask questions. William didn't want questions, he wanted everything to be seamless.
The price for an introduction, in Mike-currency, was a hell of a lot of beer, and with beer came conversation, and somehow by the end of it they were laughing instead of glaring. All hail the healing powers of PBR. And if things weren't quite seamless yet--God, he's working on it, piece by piece--at least Mike never asked questions, not once.
"You can't afford anything either," William says, blinking himself back into now and kicking his feet harder. "Rent's due next week."
"Fuck you, I know that." Mike rolls his eyes and tosses his bowl into the sink. "Gonna see my parents this weekend. I'll see if I can get them to kick in."
"They kicked in last month."
"Can't hurt to ask."
William shrugs and Mike shakes his head, stumbling off down the hall to the bathroom. William waits for the sound of the shower before he jumps down from the counter and hurries to the bedroom, digging through his box of clothes and then the duffel under his bed. He has to get dressed when Mike showers, hide things when Mike's distracted, rinse stuff in the sink when Mike's at his parents' house for dinner. Not seamless. Not perfect.
His hands shake a little as he zips up his jeans. He rubs his palms on his thighs and moves over to the mirror, then rakes his hair back off his face and stares at himself.
"Hey," he whispers. "Hey. Rock star, baby."
"It's gross to be that in love with yourself," Mike mumbles as he comes in, his hair sticking up in weird, wet lumps and his towel sliding low on his hips.
"Shut up." William watches him out of the corner of his eye, taunting himself with observation, with the way Mike moves easy and lazy, how he flops and sprawls and never has to check or calculate. He's...unpracticed, and that sort of makes William want to kill him, the way he wants to kill everyone who doesn't have to think through every word they say to keep from stuttering and everything they do to keep the world from seeing them wrong.
This is why all he wants to do is be a performer. He's been practicing his whole life, and he can and will be perfect.
"Earth to Bill," Mike says, smacking the back of his head. "You're going to be late."
"Fuck off," he mutters automatically, but he moves away from the mirror, going to get his jacket.
"Hey." Mike snaps his fingers at him, casually dropping his towel to the floor. "Are you still going to talk to that kid?"
William frowns, focusing on buttoning his jacket, keeping his eyes on his own fingers and nowhere else. Careful not to taunt himself, careful not to tread too close to lines. "Kid?"
"That bass player kid. We need actual people or it's not a band, you know?"
"Oh." Shit, he talks too much when he's drunk, always. What was he thinking, bringing up Jason Siska's little brother--actually, the better question is how did Mike remember that, given that William has an ironclad rule of always being the last one to pass out, and Mike is always happy to oblige?
"So you're going to talk to him?" William seriously considers punching him, because fuck, Mike is relentless and annoying when he has an idea in his head.
But they do need a bass player. They've struck out everywhere else. And Adam is decent, from what William remembers, which was a while ago, so by now he might be good.
They need him, or they don't have a band. And having a band is the most important thing, way more important than William having to explain to Jason and Adam that he's not a girl, contrary to what they and everybody else thought, oh and please don't mention to Mike that he ever was.
Then again, it's the Siskas. They're like the most easy-going people in the world ever. He actually might be able to just say "I'm going by William now, okay?" and have them blink, shrug, and ask him what he wants on his pizza. Maybe. Won't know unless he tries.
He tucks his hair behind his ears and nods, not looking at Mike. They need this. He can do this. For the band. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll call him. Today."
**
love me or leave me or rip me apart/this is the voice that I was given (Black Mamba)
They're watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, of all stupid things, on the TV that they can't afford to actually hook up and the VCR that Mike liberated from his parents' basement. They have exactly eight movies that they watch on an unvarying cycle, and it's Raiders the night William plants himself on Mike's lap and kisses him, hard and desperate and hating himself with every fiber of his being.
It's been three weeks since Mike found out, since William came home from work and Mike was sitting on the couch--this very couch--holding the packer William had barely worked up the guts to buy and yet still hadn't managed to even take out of the plastic, much less wear. He'd looked up as the door swung closed and said Bill? What the hell? and William doesn't really remember most of what got said after that. He doesn't really remember the next two days, either, after Mike stormed out and didn't come back.
Then he did come back. And things were...fine. Neutral. Not talking about it. They had a perfectly good stretch of not talking about it that William was ruining right now by kissing Mike while Indy and Marian drank each other under the table.
It's not that he wants to fuck things up. It's that he's had a lot of cheap beer that he bought with his shitty paycheck from his shitty job, and they just had to rename the band and reprint all of their merch (The Academy Is..., who knew a word and three dots could be so fucking legally required), and he's horny as hell, he aches so fucking bad, he wants so much he thinks he's going to die.
And Mike's his friend. His bandmate. He knows Mike, he trusts Mike, in a way he hadn't even realized until Mike came back again, with a pizza and a stack of illegible notes about new song ideas.
"Bill," Mike gasps. "Bill, what--"
Mike says his name with no catch, no hesitation, and even though that's just like always, right now it sends a shudder through William's body and makes him press closer, kiss harder. The worst Mike's going to do to him is push him off onto the floor and tell him to go sober up at Adam's. William can take that. He can. If he has to.
He slides his hand down between them and rubs at Mike through his jeans, something aching in his chest when he feels Mike start to get hard.
"Are you sure?" Mike's voice is rougher now, more breathless, but just as confused. William kisses him again, not willing to answer that question even if he could, even if he had an answer.
He works his hand over Mike again, hating the contrast between the wetness in his own jeans and the firmness under his palm, hating the whole unfair goddamn world. Then Mike's hands are cupping his jaw, holding him in a kiss that gets deeper, rougher, and William closes his eyes and gives up, loses himself in how much he wants it, fair or not.
They fumble through it, false starts and Mike touching him wrong and not taking the fucking hint until William actually smacks his hand away. Eventually he ends up bent over the arm of the couch, Mike fucking him from behind, panting roughly in William's ear and sliding in him deep, hard, just right and all fucking wrong, but he can push the wrong to the back of his head long enough to come.
Mike pulls away after and goes to take care of the condom, and William stares down at the couch, hands too clumsy to rebutton his jeans. Indy's still carrying on about something. It's like he's dropped back into reality after a trip to Mars.
When he looks up, Mike is staring at him, white-faced and with panic in his eyes. If William could feel his legs, he would run.
"That...that was weird," Mike says.
"Fuck you," William whispers.
"No, not...not like that, just..." Mike runs his hand through his hair sharply. "I don't want to fuck up the band."
William blinks. "What?"
"The band. I don't want to fuck up the band, Bill."
William's knees threaten to give out and he sinks carefully to the couch. He kind of wants to kiss Mike again, for that, but he won't. Never again. "Yeah. Me either." He looks up and meets Mike's eyes, and that awful cold pinch in his chest eases just a little. "So...so we won't do that again, okay?"
"Okay." Mike nods and looks at the TV. "You want to run this back? We missed a bunch of the good parts."
William nods and reaches for the remote. His hands are still shaking, but not much, not too bad.
**
attention bidders it's lot 45, he's got a decent voice, he's got that crooked smile (Classifieds)
Pete's hotel room is ridiculously swanky. William curls his hands at his sides, trying not to touch anything. There is, after all, a good chance that he's about to be ejected in a hurry.
"Okay," Pete says slowly, looking at the papers in front of him--William's real ID, his birth certificate, his Social Security card. "Um. Well. You don't actually...need to, like, show any of these to sign the contract."
"I have to sign my name." It takes him three tries to say that clearly, not stuttering so much as choking. Pete's watching him wide-eyed and uncertain, like he doesn't know if William's going to laugh or cry or bite or explode. Like he's something not quite safe.
"You've signed contracts before," Pete says. "When you recorded. Gigs. Your apartment. Um. Your fucking...forms when you file your taxes."
William shakes his head, a sharp jerk of movement that hurts. "I didn't care about lying on those."
"But you do about this."
His heart might actually explode in his chest and kill him. For some reason he had thought Pete would understand. This is all he cares about. "Yes."
"Okay, so just...I don't get what the problem is, dude, I'm sorry. If that's your legal name, then just...well, why haven't you changed your name?"
William is pretty sure he's trying to laugh, but it sounds all wrong and it hurts coming out of his throat. "Money."
"Oh."
"F-first thing I'm doing with my part of the advance."
"Your advance is for living expenses."
William meets his eyes for the first time all night. "This is a living expense."
Pete stares at him for a minute, then looks away, down at the papers again. "I could give you some money, you know, enough for that if you--"
"No." He shakes his head, slightly surprised at himself by how clearly that comes through. "I want...I want to have earned that. Myself."
"Right." Pete pushes the papers away and stands up, moving over to the minibar. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, you need to sign and I guess I don't see what the problem is, nobody has to know what name you put on the paper."
William knows better than to try to explain how much it hurts that the thing he wants more than anything else in his life is going to have the wrong name on it, forever. He won't even bother. Focus on a part Pete might understand. "The other people signing with me will."
Pete's head snaps up and he almost drops the bottle he's trying to open. "Your band doesn't know?"
It shouldn't hurt this much just to breathe. "Adam does. Carden does."
"But Mike D. and AJ don't." Pete exhales and twists the top off the bottle. "Why the hell not?"
"Because it doesn't matter," William snaps, not realizing how close it is to a shout until Pete flinches back. "It's none of their business. It doesn't have anything to do with how I write, or how I sing, or--"
"Okay. Okay." Pete takes a drink and shudders, looking at William with narrowed eyes. "Okay. You'll sign last, and I'll, I don't know, pull the fire alarm or punch somebody or something. We'll slide it by them. Don't worry about it."
William nods again and reaches for his papers. Fuck, he wants to burn the stupid things. "Okay. Thank you."
Pete keeps drinking and watching, not saying anything, and William assumes that means he's dismissed, he's done. He grabs his scarf and twists it around his neck, swallowing against the tension, and turns to the door.
"Bill."
William stops but doesn't look. He can't.
"Look. Dude. I'm not going to pretend I understand this, because...I don't. At all. But I didn't, like, start talking to you because..." William hears the bottle hit the table, loud, and he does look then. Pete's waving his hands in the air in frustration, face scrunched up and hair sticking up and eyes all intense. It's ridiculous enough that William would laugh if he remembered how, and if any of this was funny. "I'm on your team because you're really fucking awesome and you're talented and you make kickass music and that's the point, okay?"
William nods slightly. "That's what I've been trying to get people to see."
Pete grabs the bottle again and takes another drink, nodding decisively. "So fuck the rest of it." He comes over and grabs William in a too-tight hug, and if William flinches a little before he relaxes into it, Pete doesn't seem to notice. "We're cool?"
"Yeah." William hugs him back carefully and disentangles himself. "We're fine."
"Awesome." Pete steps back and turns away, dragging his hand over his hair and taking another drink. "It's gonna be awesome."
"It is."
"Do not fuck this up."
William smiles, or something like it. "I won't."
**
by all the people we are made to love and hate (Same Blood)
Mike D. and AJ leaving is out of the blue and, to William, pretty inexplicable--why would you leave when the band is signed, when they have an album laid down, when it's going to happen? It doesn't make any sense. It's stupid. They're stupid.
But they do leave, and yelling doesn't change a bit of it. William spends two days barely leaving his bedroom, not because he's depressed but because he's fuming, livid, and it seems prudent not to inflict that on too many other people or who knows what might happen. They might suddenly turn stupid and leave, too. He's not interested in starting over at zero.
When he emerges again, it's for three weeks of frantic searching for a tour guitarist and drummer. Mike says they should hold out for guys interested in joining the band for real, but the album is pressing and the tour is coming on like a freight train and William doesn't care about anything but covering those basics and getting them on the road.
He repeats this loudly and frequently until Mike and Adam throw their hands up and say have it your way (Mike with more cursing thrown in, Adam more easily, and both of those are the responses he expects and knows how to deal with).
It's sort of embarrassing how quickly he wants to reverse himself, if not as soon as they meet Tom and then Butcher, then the first time they practice with them both. William practically hears a click in his head, it's that perfect. It all fits. They're a band.
He plays it cool, though, because Adam and Mike won't hold back from saying I told you so. They are assholes of the highest order and William isn't going to hand them anything on a platter, especially not something like this, something important.
Instead he just doesn't bring the question of temporary or permanent up, at all, and neither does anyone else. Maybe Mike's a little extra-smirky, but William can rise above that.
They go on tour and it's even better than any of the practices. It's electric. It's really happening.
When they play, Tom is somehow always in the corner of William's eye, off to his right with eyes down and feet steady, playing the guitar lines that carry William's voice up and out over the crowds. It's magic, what Tom does. Alchemy that gives words wings.
And yes, he knows it's no different than when AJ was playing it, it's no different than any other guitar player who could be standing there, but fuck it, something sparks in him when he watches Tom, looking down the stage across the beat, and it's enough of a miracle that he's here, now, living this life, that he'll believe in a little extra magic if he goddamn well wants.
One night they're sitting together outside a venue, leaning back against a rough brick wall with their knees drawn up to their chests, passing a bottle of Jack back and forth and telling life stories. Something slips in his chest, a lock he thought he held more vigilant than that, and he tells his story for real. He tells Tom everything, hardly stuttering at all with adrenaline and whiskey lubricating his words.
Tom doesn't say anything, not then and not the next morning when William drags himself into the daylight an hour late, too paralyzed with fear to meet anyone's eyes. Tom doesn't say anything, but his eyes move over William, lingering the same way they do on anything he wants to see through a camera lens and pin down like lightning under glass. At their show that night, he's right where he should be, in his accustomed place where William can just catch him from the corner of his right eye, and there's one solo where William's afraid he won't be able to come in again afterward, because it sort of feels like his heart and his voice have flown away.
The thing about Tom is--he sees things. He doesn't talk everything up one side and down the other like the rest of them do, he sits back and he watches and he smiles that crooked, shy smile that makes something twist in William's chest, sometimes. Tom sees everything, and William has to check himself from asking him what, exactly, he sees. He suspects that the answer might nudge him too close to breaking that promise he made to himself back in that crappy apartment, about never doing anything that might fuck up the band. The band is first. Before anything in the world and definitely before anything his heart and his hormones might come up with.
Two weeks before the end of the tour, Adam comes up to him shamefaced and says he and Butcher got drunk and traded stories, too, and Adam had told one that wasn't his to share. Somehow, William can't bring himself to stay mad for very long. Yeah, it was a fuckup and no, Sisky better not do it again, but--
--but they're his band, they're his brothers in the wilderness, and they already hear him pour out his secrets in code, in chorus and verse, so it's...it's all right. There are no mysteries here.
**
I'll sing you something you won't forget (Season)
They're in the middle of fuck-all nowhere, at a truck stop plaza that makes William expect to see zombies around every corner. He's sitting in a booth in the far corner of the diner, trying to coax his laptop into picking up the truly shitty wireless long enough to let him check his e-mail, when Gabe slides into the seat across from him.
William has been alternating between chasing and running from Gabe the entire tour. He never misses Midtown's set, and Gabe never fails to invite him to come party, but it's just...
Sometimes his stomach twists so hard when he looks at Gabe, it makes him dizzy. Not just butterflies, he's got flying horses down there. It's ridiculous and unacceptable.
"Hey hey, Beckett," Gabe says. "What's up?"
"Not much." William keeps his eyes averted as his mailbox finally loads. "Just checking in with the outside world."
"Fuck that." Gabe grins, bright and lazy, and William only lets himself look at him sideways. If he looks head-on, he'll give way too much away.
"Never know. Could be something important." There isn't. Three spam messages, a notice that Amazon has a book he doesn't even want anymore, and two messages from Pete. The first one's a cheerful, punctuation-free paragraph about how he has to wipe his cache before the other dudes see, and then a link to a sex shop. More goddamn strap-ons. Get over it, Pete. The other is a link to an article about some anti-discrimination legislation out on the East Coast. William deletes them both without clicking the links. He knows that this is Pete's way of being thoughtful and supportive, even kind, and while he appreciates that, it's like having a parent all up in his jock, and if Pete doesn't knock it off William is going to stab him.
"Nah." Gabe stretches, his legs easily invading William's space under the table, kicking at his ankles. "Nothing's that important except what we've got out here."
William smiles a little, making sure the laptop screen is tilted enough to hide it. Gabe gets it. He'll never tell him so, but that's the thing that makes William the most crazy about him, the most...
In need of getting a grip.
"I should go back to my guys." He logs out and shrugs. "They tend to get in trouble when they're unsupervised." It's not a lie; they do get in trouble, and lately worse than ever. Especially Tom and Mike, who never seem to stop snarling at each other these days, something sharp and ugly growing between them that William doesn't want to look at too closely for fear that it's full of mirrors.
"Do you not like me or something?" Gabe's voice is mild, and he's smiling when William shoots him a startled glance, but there's something ever so slightly edged about his eyes.
"Why wouldn't I like you?"
"That's what I want to know. I'm a likeable guy."
William has to smile again. "Yeah, you are."
"So how come you're always running away from me?"
"I'm not."
"You totally are." Gabe reaches out and catches the edge of the laptop, turning it to face him. "You take off like you're afraid I'm going to do something to you."
William's breath stumbles in his chest. "Like what?"
"That's the other thing I want to know." Gabe smirks at him over the edge of the screen and types something.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking my e-mail. Quit freaking out." Gabe types something else and frowns. There's a smudge of something at the edge of his lip--chocolate, probably--and William's fingers itch to wipe it clean. "So you like me," Gabe goes on, and William blinks, forcing himself to start paying attention again. "That's cool. So you'll come to the party tonight."
"I don't want to be in the way." As soon as he says it, he starts looking for something he can use to kill himself, because what was that? Why did he say that?
Gabe looks up again, obviously surprised, and William braces himself. But Gabe doesn't laugh. "Is that what you're all worried about?" He clicks the mouse a few times. "Dude, you won't be. It'll be awesome. Come to the damn party. Case closed."
The last thing William needs is to be around Gabe at a party with this stupid crush. He can hear Mike in his head saying don't be stupid and Pete saying don't fuck this up and Tom's soft, noncommittal be careful.
"Check this out," Gabe says, turning the laptop again to show William a screenful of really improbable, slightly distressing porn. "Look at the shit the guys at home send me."
William laughs, and knows he's going to the party.
"I'm telling you, man." Gabe turns the computer back to himself, grinning. "The only people worth knowing are right here on the tour."
**
when I leave here I'm going alone/well it's not like, it not like it hurts much anyway (Attention)
Tom leaves an envelope outside William's door two days after the last time William sees him. William holds it like it's made of thorns and seriously considers pitching it directly in the trash.
Two days after the last time he saw Tom is still only a week after the horrific disaster of a meeting where he stuttered and Mike sneered and finally Butcher kicked Tom out of the band, because the rest of them couldn't do it. It's too soon. It might be too soon for the rest of their lives.
He doesn't open the envelope, just hides it under one of the pillows on his couch and doesn't think about it while they continue the slow, agonizing, shove-your-hand-in-the-garbage-disposal process of trying to write the album. Except it's not really a process so much as spinning their wheels in place, getting nowhere, producing nothing, and William feels like he's choking, like all of the fucked-up wrong words are crawling up the back of his throat and lodging there.
He can feel the others watching him with disappointment and concern and worry, and it's like those looks linger on his skin even after he goes home. Sticky residue that clings to him all the time, just in case he might think about forgetting how he's failing at this. Writing the next album, making it perfect, are the only things that matter, the only things that makes any of the rest of the shit in his life worth it, and he's fucking it up.
He doesn't touch the envelope again until he's racing out the door for the airport, blind and panicking. His throat's still raw with bile from puking up everything but his socks while the website processed his credit card for the ticket to LA. There's nothing waiting for him in LA, he has no reason to go there other than that it's not here, and suddenly the idea of being here is completely unbearable.
He swerves toward the couch on his way to the door, and there's no reason for that, either, no thought behind it. He shoves his hand under the pillow and grabs the envelope, twisting the corner of it between his fingers until he's in the cab. Then he tucks it into the duffel bag that doesn't really have half of the things a rational person would take across the country. His notebook, a pair of boxers, a t-shirt, the anxiety medication that he has a legitimate prescription for but that isn't doing shit when taken as directed.
When he gets to LA, he finds a hotel and checks in for one night. He sits cross-legged on the bed with the notebook and the envelope in front of him and calls Adam. "I won't be at practice tomorrow," he says, and hangs up before Adam finishes asking what's going on. He turns the phone off and hides it behind the TV, so it won't be staring at him accusingly, then sits down again, raking his hair off his face with both hands.
He spilled his drink on the envelope on the plane, blurring out his name on the front and leaving the paper mottled in a weird pattern. He traces it with his fingertips, the runny ink and the ruined paper, then tears it open and spills the contents out across the sheets.
Pictures, of course. He should have known. With Tom, it was always pictures. There's a scrap of notebook paper folded around one of them, and he picks it up first, turning it around in his hands until Tom's scrawled, terrible handwriting makes sense.
the duality of you
His stomach twists hard and he closes his eyes, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. He reaches for the bottle of pills and fights the cap until it opens and spills them out as well, pouring over the pictures and hiding in the folds of the blanket. He dry-swallows two before he looks again.
It's not as if he hasn't seen thousands of pictures of himself. His camera-whoring tendencies are a running joke, with the punchline being that they're remarkable even in a group that includes Pete Wentz, and he laughs it off because he can't argue with it. He likes seeing himself in pictures. He likes reading the comments that accompany them on the Internet, even, including the nasty shit, because they're seeing him, they're seeing him properly. Some of them call out his hair and his t-shirts and his jeans (girl hair, girl shirts, girl jeans--what the fuck, that guy looks like a girl), but...they're still getting it right. That guy looks like a girl. They see a guy who's failing to align, and that means he's won.
They're just pictures, that's all. He's seen thousands of pictures. But these are pictures through Tom's eyes, Tom's lens. Tom who worked his way around and under and slipped through into the parts of William's life that he wasn't taking admittance to anymore, Tom who played the melody line on the songs that poured out William's heart. Tom who was a part of the world that fit until somehow, without any of them noticing, the edges shifted and wore away until it didn't fit at all anymore, and had to go.
They're all in washed-out color, just slightly overexposed. Just moments, random and scattered, two of William on the bus and three of him out in the sun, all unaware of the camera. He's looking at his notebook in one, curled around his guitar in another, reaching for a piece of paper in Butcher's outstretched hand in a third. And in all of them he looks not quite real, not quite anything, something alien and in-between. He doesn't recognize himself.
They're beautiful pictures, and he doesn't recognize himself at all.
He chases two more pills out of the sheets and moves over to the window, forcing them down past the lump in his throat. He leans his forehead against the glass and looks out at LA. It's alien and in-between, too, half reality and half dream. He could lose himself here. It would be easy.
He looks over his shoulder at the bed. From this angle he can't quite see the scattered pictures, but he can see the notebook, pen jutting up defiantly out of the binding, waiting for him.
He sits down in the corner, shoulder pressed against the window and back tucked up against the wall. He can't stand the thought of it right now, of fighting with words, trying to write something perfect and failing. He can't do it anymore. It's too much.
In the morning. He'll try again in the morning. Right now he's just going to watch the lights go by.
Part 2