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threedimensions
threedimensionsDimensions: [1-2]
Timeline: April 2014
Title: Moth to a Flame
Summary: Brandon hosts a party at his and Jack's apartment to celebrate the band signing a contract and playing Warped Tour soon; Andrew mingles and is excited.
~4k
Andrew laughed hard when Luke, who was trying impressively hard to get his girlfriend to agree to be the band's official groupie, received her well-aimed half-full soda bottle to the groin. He winced and fumbled for the bottle, trying not to drop it. "But we'll get to travel!" he protested.
Delta held her hand out. "Give."
Luke squinted at her, wary. "You gonna beat me with it again?"
"Of course."
"Who says you're invited?" Kylen scoffed. "If she's the groupie, she gets travel perks, and groupies don't get a plus-one unless it's another groupie. Unless you do want to apply for the position."
"Which position, though?" Andrew asked wisely.
"Doesn't matter," Luke said serenely. Andrew gave him a suspicious look and he rolled his eyes. "Doesn't matter since I'm sleeping with literally nobody in the band. Ever."
"Which is my position, and I've already got that job," Delta said.
"But it would be the best groupie position ever!" Luke insisted. "You wouldn't even have to fuck any of the band members! Brandon's gay, Mark would never touch you while you're with me, and the other two are my fuckin' almost-brothers and you said yourself you find that gross."
"Hey," Andrew protested. "I'm lethal, dude. And we're not actually brothers. She'll never go back to you."
His best friend snorted. "Not worried, bro."
"But he's in a band," Kylen said.
"One that's going to be on tour," Delta added. She clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes. "Maybe I'll rethink the almost-incest rule. I've heard bass players can hold their rhythm all night."
"You know it, baby!" Andrew grinned and then wiggled his eyebrows. She stared blankly at him. He wiggled some more. Having two brothers of her own, she continued to stare boredly at him until his eyebrows got tired.
"Oh yeah? Well...I'm an actor," Luke said while Andrew rubbed his forehead. "All those orgasms? I faked them."
Andrew laughed and walked away, sure Kylen and Delta would be able to handle that one. He headed toward the center of the big room for another drink, glancing toward the kitchen area, where Brandon was surrounded by almost all of their other friends—he was lecturing happily on what the band was going to do next: their plans when it came to recording their actual first album in a few months, how he had insisted their contract be written, where they might tour later this year or next year. All the months—years really—he had spent bent over sheets of paper with hand-drawn guitar and bass tabs, the weeks no one would see him without a guitar in his hands (unless one had a joint, and many times the two went hand-in-hand), and the full days and nights he'd spent in the studio, refusing to leave even to eat or get fresh air. Occasionally, talk of really good weed would coax him out, but only just long enough for him to smoke and then crash hard and sleep for fifteen hours. When he woke, he was back on it like a pit bull with a rope toy, his jaws clamped down on their dream.
The best part—or possibly the worst, depending on how you looked at it—was how casually Jack had accepted this. He and Brandon had been living together for only a couple of months when he was finally contacted by one of the labels that he'd been repeatedly pestering, and after Jack had fronted them the recording costs, Brandon seemed to move into the studio. (He apparently wanted all of them to move in next to him, but Mark was the only one halfway willing—Keith had nearly quit three times, and his brother would have been right behind him if Brandon hadn't let off hounding them to do it again, do it again, do it again, no that's not right, no, do it again, play it together, play it separately, play it perfectly or we'll be here forever and our ghosts will have bloody fingertips.)
But Jack seemed to be fine with Brandon being away from him for days, almost weeks at a time. Brandon was okay with this too, or at least it looked that way, as he seemed to barely remember that he even had a boyfriend during these times—which was good, Andrew maintained, because The Way Jack Is required him to have long periods of alone time, quiet time. Times when being around Brandon, who was nearly coked-up levels of energy when he had a bug up his ass about writing or recording, would likely have forced him to either shut down or get away. Andrew was impressed with the way Brandon had gotten Jack to like him, to trust him, to live with him.
Strangely, though, even though they'd been together for over two years now, Mark still didn't seem to like him. Andrew still thought that might be a problem; not only because of their What They Were Secretly Doing Before whatever, but because if Mark didn't like someone, that someone probably didn't need to be around their group. That was one cat that knew you from the second you sat down, and when Andrew sometimes noticed Mark staring at Jack with a frown on his face, or looking confused, he wondered.
He knew Jack, though— had known him longer than any of them. He was relatively sure that Their Whatever Thing had ended almost as soon as he'd introduced Brandon to Jack (so points for being successful—total of five so far!) but sometimes he still couldn't tell what the fuck they were doing, any of them.
Which was okay; they probably didn't know either.
Mark was sitting with Claudia and Matt, passing a huge joint back and forth while Melanie poured out a tray of shots, handed them each one and demanded they knock it back, then re-filled from a bottle she was keeping in a holster on some belt contraption (hot!) and headed toward the kitchen. Andrew snagged one, shook his head back and forth briskly as the bite headed down his throat, then plopped down next to Mark, who handed him the joint. He gladly hit it; then he unfortunately lost most of it while coughing his lungs out. Mark grinned, chasing his wavering hand and retrieving the roach. "Good shit, huh?"
"Who the fuck brought it?" Andrew wheezed. It didn't seem at all like what he'd gotten from Brandon the last few times.
"You want?" Claudia asked. He nodded. She pointed to the far corner of the open apartment—the corner where Jack kept most of his books and a comfortable chair. He'd been in the chair when Brandon was at the door, welcoming them to the party an hour ago, and apparently hadn't moved. "It's Jack's. Brandon got him to give us, like, a dozen for the party. But he's probably got more he can sell you if you want."
"Sweet."
"Fuck, I want some." Matt sat back against his folding chair and blinked several times. "Goddamn. Okay, I'mma go talk to him, and then me and Nikki are out of here."
"You should probably ask Brandon to go talk to him," Mark said.
"Why?"
"Jack probably won't talk to you."
"Why not?" Matt looked down at himself and shrugged. "I'm clean."
"And he's crazy," Claudia put in.
Andrew frowned and opened his mouth, but Mark was already looking at her impatiently. "That's kind of a dick thing to say," he said.
She shrugged. "He is."
Now he scowled at her. "By whose definition?"
"By, like, doctors?"
"You're telling me that you know for a fact not only what a hypothetical doctor might say, but that one has made a diagnosis and you know what it is."
Claudia rolled her eyes. "No, asshole. He's creepy and weird."
"Yeah, well, as far as I know, he doesn't see a doctor and he hasn't been diagnosed with any mental illnesses or conditions. And even if he was, that's none of your business."
"He'll never see a doctor," Andrew said. One time only he'd asked him if he'd ever tried meds or therapy for what he'd previously described as, "a highly traumatic childhood... and, I suppose, continued unfortunate circumstances during my teenaged years". He hadn't really been willing to elaborate on anything that happened when he was a kid or the reason he wouldn't seek either meds or therapy other than, "It would be... impossible."
"And you're not one, so I'm pretty sure you don't get to decide who is what," Mark said to Claudia.
She shrugged again. "I didn't mean, like, officially. It's obvious there's something wrong with him. Everyone thinks he's...off."
"Oh. If everyone thinks so, it must be true. I wonder if Brandon knows."
Claudia gave Mark a look halfway between exasperated and amused. "Whatever, you don't need to get your panties all bunched up. I'm agreeing with you—Matt, you can't just walk up to him all, 'Oh hey, can I have some drugs?' Go ask Brandon."
Matt had been sitting with his eyes closed; he opened them and jerked up in his seat when she nudged him. "Wha? Oh, shit, yeah, okay. Uhh...he's busy."
Andrew glanced over his shoulder and saw that Brandon was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, still surrounded by a group, now apparently writing some sort of list and chattering avidly. "I'll go, if you two want to be dicks and cut out early," he offered, grinning.
"Will he talk to you?" Matt grinned back. "Do you have a special invisible number on your forehead?"
"Nah, it's a membership card." Andrew took the tiny end of the joint from him, inspected it, deemed it too small to hit from, and put it into one of the ashtrays Brandon had set out. "All right, give me whatever money you've got."
He collected fifty from Matt and twenty from Claudia, and then he picked his away across the crowded floor to Jack's book corner. He was still in his chair, an e-reader in his hands, and now Andrew could see his phone and the accompanying earbuds trailing up his shirt. It was dark, but he was wearing dark sunglasses still. Andrew stopped a few feet from him and just stood there, and after a moment Jack put the tablet down and slid his finger across the phone's screen. Andrew came forward and plopped on the floor near his feet.
"Hey, Jack man," he greeted. Jack didn't respond verbally, and Andrew couldn't tell if he was even looking in his direction (it was a fair assumption that he wasn't), but after another moment, Jack closed the case of his Kindle, and Andrew knew he could talk, that he had Jack's attention. "Good book?"
"Yes." Jack's voice was low, quiet—he probably didn't want to be heard by the others. Andrew hushed his own voice to match.
"The smoke is fucking ace," he said, and remembered that Jack didn't care for or understand most slang. If you want Jack to respond, speak his language. "We really like it," he continued, speaking slowly and clearly. "Do you have any more that you can sell us? Matt and Claudia gave me fifty and twenty, and I've got forty."
Though he'd never admit it, Andrew could see how Claudia and her friends might think Jack was creepy. He never looked like he was breathing, for one, and the fact that he was so skeletal almost certainly contributed. He could be dead and the lenses of his glasses could be dark, empty sockets. It was absolutely, as Mark said, a dick thing to say, though—Jack wasn't threatening. He was threatened, by almost everyone and everything, even though most of it was unintentional and other people were unaware of it. Jack was almost as anxious about the world—about other people—as Keith was, but he was worse off because Keith had meds. Andrew thought that was a large part of why Jack and Keith were all right with each other; they recognized a kindred spirit. Andrew had learned a lot about anxiety and panic from years of bad times with Keith, and he'd seen how it could manifest in different ways, including someone freezing up instead of freaking out. Maybe there were a lot of times Jack couldn't breathe.
"All right," Jack said finally, and Andrew realized he'd been holding his own breath. Not because he was scared of or even creeped out by his friend, but because he was still mimicking him—which was stupid, because Jack obviously breathed, though Andrew had thought once that the sound of breathing might bother him when he got up and left Eddie's after Delta and Luke, who had been chasing each other outside, came back in panting. Jack didn't move for another several seconds, then he asked, "Do you mean right now?"
"That'd be awesome," Andrew said. "Matt wanted to leave with his girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure Claudia's going to go soon." He hoped this, anyway—he wasn't sure if Mark would tell Brandon what she'd said about his boyfriend, but if he did, Brandon would probably get pissed off and say something to her about it, which would cause her to leave anyway.
"All right," Jack said. He didn't move, and after a second or two Andrew got up, knowing that Jack was waiting for him to leave the area before he'd get up and go to his supply.
He wandered over to the kitchen, where most of the crowd had dispersed and only Kylen and a few others were still hanging around Brandon, who was oblivious; when he talked about the band, he forgot pretty much everything else. When Andrew pulled out the other chair and plopped down next to him, he didn't even glance up.
"...we're also going to have to travel with a bunch of the others, which means they're going to want to lump us in with them, and I have no idea what their contracts are like, but most bands that are just starting out are so desperate that they'll sign anything, especially getting Warped dangled in front of them. We're not doing that."
"Oh yeah, Brandon, fight the man!" Brett snorted.
Now Brandon looked up, but only to give their friend a contemptuous stare. "If we were blind-ass sheep that just wanted to go at our instruments on stage like a bunch of drunk monkeys trying to fuck a football, we could have been signed last September. But fuck that—the lawyer I hired took care of almost every single thing I gave her. The reason most new bands get fucked is because they don't notice that all of their merchandise profit goes back to the label and they only get sixty percent of media sales because they get what looks like a huge advance. First time being signed, recording an actual album, touring...they have no idea." He now grinned, and Andrew realized he was glad a lot of other new bands totally got shafted when they signed. Andrew didn't care, he supposed, but seeing the somewhat predatory grin on his friend made him glad they were on the same side.
"I'm surprised they all don't have contract lawyers with them when signing a deal," Kylen said. "I would."
"They do, but they probably get fucked by a lot of them too, especially if they're in with the label. That's why I hired one independently for us."
"One that was magically able to get what a brand-new band wants instead of what a major label wants," Brett said doubtfully.
Brandon shrugged. "Everything's negotiable. There really aren't that many hard lines in concrete that you can't pass... most of them just don't, or they take whatever they feel like they can grab at the first chance. I'm not being stupid about this—whatever we sign controls basically our entire lives. There were only so many lines I was willing to be pushed on, too."
"How many albums y'all gotta put up for this?"
"Three." Brandon grinned again. "That's more than a lot of new acts get. It's usually one, or sometimes two."
"Aren't you fucking lucky," Brett said sourly.
Brandon and Andrew ignored him, but Kylen rolled her eyes; it was none of their faults this dude's girlfriend had kicked him out after she found out he was cheating on her, nor that he'd spent the last month couch-surfing between his brothers and whining to everyone that would listen. Their group tended to have a fairly open-but-closed policy: they were generally pretty open and accepting of each other, but they kept their mouths shut when it was someone's personal business, especially if shit going on with them was more-or-less their own fault.
"We are lucky," Andrew said then. Sure, most of it was hard work (Brandon's hard work, he had no illusions about that), but there were surely lots of bands, thousands, probably, that worked just as hard if not harder and never played more than a local bar. That thought had more than once gotten him through the recording process before and surely would again when he was dead-ass fucking tired but needed to get his ass up and ready to play the same dozen songs night after night.
"And it helps when you pay them more," Brandon said, then grinned again. "Plus, our lawyer likes our tunes."
Andrew snorted. "Jack's paying her?"
"For now," Brandon said quickly. "He knows he's going to get all the money he's invested in us back as soon as we start turning a significant profit. Which we will."
Andrew nodded. "He can just take it out of your ass for now, right?"
Brandon grinned briefly again, then he returned his attention to the papers in front of him. "We're probably going to have to share a vehicle with at least a TM and probably a merch table person, maybe one or two others," he muttered, "but that should be fine. Some bands start out in fucking vans—we're not doing that shit. As soon as I find out what our budget's going to be, I'll need to meet with whoever's actually in charge, or at least video conference in. I think we'll have options, too, like health and accident insurance—I need to find out what we'll be responsible for and how much it'll cost and if it'll be worth it or if we should look into third-party coverage..."
Andrew noticed that he was taking notes now, seeming once again to have forgotten about the people around him. His phone chimed and he pulled it out, not surprised to find a text from Jack: It is ready. He glanced toward the back of the room and saw Jack at his computer desk, which had evidently been pushed closer to the bed he shared with Brandon (which was likely to keep the party guests as far away from him and his things as possible). Andrew decided he must be fine with being approached there, since he'd sent the message and hadn't moved yet, although he was still wearing his glasses.
He came over and stood by the end of Jack's desk, pulling out the money and laying it on the desk's surface. "That's all measured for what we wanted?"
Jack pointed. "Fifty, forty, twenty."
"Sweet, thanks." Andrew slowly reached for the three baggies and then stuffed them into his front hoodie pocket. He grinned and was about to walk back to distribute the goods, then he thought of something and paused. "Jack man, I wanted to tell you thanks again," he said. "For fronting us all that money to get started. We're all going to pay you back, of course, but it sounds like it's going to be a while. You paying for all the studio time and whatever for the EP, now this lawyer and whatever else Brandon's got in motion that we don't even know about. He's fucking rabid about this, but I guess it's really good. I mean, if he keeps at it like this, we might actually be something someday, you know? And it'll all be because of you—all of what's happened so far is because of you. So...thanks, man."
He waited a moment, and then he decided Jack wasn't going to respond to that; he hadn't expected anything, since he knew Jack had a hard time saying anything most of the time (let alone knowing how to respond to anything resembling emotion, including gratitude), but then Jack's head turned toward the kitchen, and Andrew was sure he was watching his boyfriend. "Not a problem," he said finally.
"Not coming with on the tour, huh? Sad. I haven't got to knock all the pieces off the board because of your cheating in months."
Jack smiled slightly at this, as he had never cheated and Andrew had never swiped game pieces off a board due to losing. (Well. Not since he was thirteen or so.) "It will not be long," he said.
"I guess." Warped ran for seven weeks—a hellishly intenstive seven weeks, from everything he'd heard and what he remembered from attending as a fan—and Brandon would be excited and busy enough that he'd probably basically forget about Jack not being there... but Jack would still be here, alone, after he'd gotten used to having someone, having friends. And it was almost two months, not two weeks.
He almost said something else, like are you sure you don't want to go or we'll fold you into an overhead compartment it'll be fine, but then Jack turned toward his computer, and Andrew decided that was his cue to leave him alone. He went back over to where Claudia and Matt had been, finding only Matt and Nikki, and stuffed Matt's baggie down the back of his shirt. "Members only, bro."
"Dick," Matt said amiably, twisting around and pulling at his collar.
"Where'd Claudia go?"
"Bathroom with Delta. I hope they're making out."
Nikki snorted. "Delta has a boyfriend, dumbass. And even when they are into other chicks, girls don't go randomly make out for no reason."
"Stop killing my hopes!" Matt put his hands over the top of his head. "You're wounding my dreams and I'll never recover. I'm watching porn when we get home. The nasty shit."
Nikki shrugged. "Fine, miss the live show. I can easily make love to the detachable shower head and then blue-ball you for the rest of the night."
Matt jumped up and grabbed for her hand. "Awesome, let's go! Thanks man." He clapped Andrew on the shoulder as Nikki led him back towards the door.
Andrew snorted, thinking that he really was going to miss all of their friends when their band left for a fucking tour. Fucking Warped Tour. They would all probably be too excited to miss home and the people that stayed there, at least at first (especially with all of the new, hopefully awesome people they were going to meet), but their families, and the friends that were like family, were definitely going to be missed. Mark would miss his parents, Andrew himself would miss Luke, his almost-brother that had literally been as close to him as his actual brother. Keith would miss his room at their parents' house, where it was quiet and he didn't have to constantly move around and be around a lot of new people, but they thought he'd be all right, especially with the new meds he'd started six months ago that seemed to help him more than any others ever had. He knew Brandon was going to miss Kylen—and Jack too, of course, being the only one of the band who had a serious relationship at the moment. They could all be in touch with everyone via phone, text, email, video chat...but no one was kidding themselves that it was going to be easy, not after Brandon started to get serious about researching current touring trends and talking to as many people in The Business as he could.
They were going to have a little free time, but, as Brandon had put it, "Since this is going to be our jobs, it shouldn't surprise any of us that we're going to have to actually work." That was fine—this was the fucking dream for sure, and even though it still didn't feel real, even when he'd signed on the dotted line, he knew that very soon it would. Their band was good; they all knew it, felt it, and before long, everyone else would believe it.
It was almost time to go.
Timeline: April 2014
Title: Moth to a Flame
Summary: Brandon hosts a party at his and Jack's apartment to celebrate the band signing a contract and playing Warped Tour soon; Andrew mingles and is excited.
~4k
Andrew laughed hard when Luke, who was trying impressively hard to get his girlfriend to agree to be the band's official groupie, received her well-aimed half-full soda bottle to the groin. He winced and fumbled for the bottle, trying not to drop it. "But we'll get to travel!" he protested.
Delta held her hand out. "Give."
Luke squinted at her, wary. "You gonna beat me with it again?"
"Of course."
"Who says you're invited?" Kylen scoffed. "If she's the groupie, she gets travel perks, and groupies don't get a plus-one unless it's another groupie. Unless you do want to apply for the position."
"Which position, though?" Andrew asked wisely.
"Doesn't matter," Luke said serenely. Andrew gave him a suspicious look and he rolled his eyes. "Doesn't matter since I'm sleeping with literally nobody in the band. Ever."
"Which is my position, and I've already got that job," Delta said.
"But it would be the best groupie position ever!" Luke insisted. "You wouldn't even have to fuck any of the band members! Brandon's gay, Mark would never touch you while you're with me, and the other two are my fuckin' almost-brothers and you said yourself you find that gross."
"Hey," Andrew protested. "I'm lethal, dude. And we're not actually brothers. She'll never go back to you."
His best friend snorted. "Not worried, bro."
"But he's in a band," Kylen said.
"One that's going to be on tour," Delta added. She clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes. "Maybe I'll rethink the almost-incest rule. I've heard bass players can hold their rhythm all night."
"You know it, baby!" Andrew grinned and then wiggled his eyebrows. She stared blankly at him. He wiggled some more. Having two brothers of her own, she continued to stare boredly at him until his eyebrows got tired.
"Oh yeah? Well...I'm an actor," Luke said while Andrew rubbed his forehead. "All those orgasms? I faked them."
Andrew laughed and walked away, sure Kylen and Delta would be able to handle that one. He headed toward the center of the big room for another drink, glancing toward the kitchen area, where Brandon was surrounded by almost all of their other friends—he was lecturing happily on what the band was going to do next: their plans when it came to recording their actual first album in a few months, how he had insisted their contract be written, where they might tour later this year or next year. All the months—years really—he had spent bent over sheets of paper with hand-drawn guitar and bass tabs, the weeks no one would see him without a guitar in his hands (unless one had a joint, and many times the two went hand-in-hand), and the full days and nights he'd spent in the studio, refusing to leave even to eat or get fresh air. Occasionally, talk of really good weed would coax him out, but only just long enough for him to smoke and then crash hard and sleep for fifteen hours. When he woke, he was back on it like a pit bull with a rope toy, his jaws clamped down on their dream.
The best part—or possibly the worst, depending on how you looked at it—was how casually Jack had accepted this. He and Brandon had been living together for only a couple of months when he was finally contacted by one of the labels that he'd been repeatedly pestering, and after Jack had fronted them the recording costs, Brandon seemed to move into the studio. (He apparently wanted all of them to move in next to him, but Mark was the only one halfway willing—Keith had nearly quit three times, and his brother would have been right behind him if Brandon hadn't let off hounding them to do it again, do it again, do it again, no that's not right, no, do it again, play it together, play it separately, play it perfectly or we'll be here forever and our ghosts will have bloody fingertips.)
But Jack seemed to be fine with Brandon being away from him for days, almost weeks at a time. Brandon was okay with this too, or at least it looked that way, as he seemed to barely remember that he even had a boyfriend during these times—which was good, Andrew maintained, because The Way Jack Is required him to have long periods of alone time, quiet time. Times when being around Brandon, who was nearly coked-up levels of energy when he had a bug up his ass about writing or recording, would likely have forced him to either shut down or get away. Andrew was impressed with the way Brandon had gotten Jack to like him, to trust him, to live with him.
Strangely, though, even though they'd been together for over two years now, Mark still didn't seem to like him. Andrew still thought that might be a problem; not only because of their What They Were Secretly Doing Before whatever, but because if Mark didn't like someone, that someone probably didn't need to be around their group. That was one cat that knew you from the second you sat down, and when Andrew sometimes noticed Mark staring at Jack with a frown on his face, or looking confused, he wondered.
He knew Jack, though— had known him longer than any of them. He was relatively sure that Their Whatever Thing had ended almost as soon as he'd introduced Brandon to Jack (so points for being successful—total of five so far!) but sometimes he still couldn't tell what the fuck they were doing, any of them.
Which was okay; they probably didn't know either.
Mark was sitting with Claudia and Matt, passing a huge joint back and forth while Melanie poured out a tray of shots, handed them each one and demanded they knock it back, then re-filled from a bottle she was keeping in a holster on some belt contraption (hot!) and headed toward the kitchen. Andrew snagged one, shook his head back and forth briskly as the bite headed down his throat, then plopped down next to Mark, who handed him the joint. He gladly hit it; then he unfortunately lost most of it while coughing his lungs out. Mark grinned, chasing his wavering hand and retrieving the roach. "Good shit, huh?"
"Who the fuck brought it?" Andrew wheezed. It didn't seem at all like what he'd gotten from Brandon the last few times.
"You want?" Claudia asked. He nodded. She pointed to the far corner of the open apartment—the corner where Jack kept most of his books and a comfortable chair. He'd been in the chair when Brandon was at the door, welcoming them to the party an hour ago, and apparently hadn't moved. "It's Jack's. Brandon got him to give us, like, a dozen for the party. But he's probably got more he can sell you if you want."
"Sweet."
"Fuck, I want some." Matt sat back against his folding chair and blinked several times. "Goddamn. Okay, I'mma go talk to him, and then me and Nikki are out of here."
"You should probably ask Brandon to go talk to him," Mark said.
"Why?"
"Jack probably won't talk to you."
"Why not?" Matt looked down at himself and shrugged. "I'm clean."
"And he's crazy," Claudia put in.
Andrew frowned and opened his mouth, but Mark was already looking at her impatiently. "That's kind of a dick thing to say," he said.
She shrugged. "He is."
Now he scowled at her. "By whose definition?"
"By, like, doctors?"
"You're telling me that you know for a fact not only what a hypothetical doctor might say, but that one has made a diagnosis and you know what it is."
Claudia rolled her eyes. "No, asshole. He's creepy and weird."
"Yeah, well, as far as I know, he doesn't see a doctor and he hasn't been diagnosed with any mental illnesses or conditions. And even if he was, that's none of your business."
"He'll never see a doctor," Andrew said. One time only he'd asked him if he'd ever tried meds or therapy for what he'd previously described as, "a highly traumatic childhood... and, I suppose, continued unfortunate circumstances during my teenaged years". He hadn't really been willing to elaborate on anything that happened when he was a kid or the reason he wouldn't seek either meds or therapy other than, "It would be... impossible."
"And you're not one, so I'm pretty sure you don't get to decide who is what," Mark said to Claudia.
She shrugged again. "I didn't mean, like, officially. It's obvious there's something wrong with him. Everyone thinks he's...off."
"Oh. If everyone thinks so, it must be true. I wonder if Brandon knows."
Claudia gave Mark a look halfway between exasperated and amused. "Whatever, you don't need to get your panties all bunched up. I'm agreeing with you—Matt, you can't just walk up to him all, 'Oh hey, can I have some drugs?' Go ask Brandon."
Matt had been sitting with his eyes closed; he opened them and jerked up in his seat when she nudged him. "Wha? Oh, shit, yeah, okay. Uhh...he's busy."
Andrew glanced over his shoulder and saw that Brandon was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, still surrounded by a group, now apparently writing some sort of list and chattering avidly. "I'll go, if you two want to be dicks and cut out early," he offered, grinning.
"Will he talk to you?" Matt grinned back. "Do you have a special invisible number on your forehead?"
"Nah, it's a membership card." Andrew took the tiny end of the joint from him, inspected it, deemed it too small to hit from, and put it into one of the ashtrays Brandon had set out. "All right, give me whatever money you've got."
He collected fifty from Matt and twenty from Claudia, and then he picked his away across the crowded floor to Jack's book corner. He was still in his chair, an e-reader in his hands, and now Andrew could see his phone and the accompanying earbuds trailing up his shirt. It was dark, but he was wearing dark sunglasses still. Andrew stopped a few feet from him and just stood there, and after a moment Jack put the tablet down and slid his finger across the phone's screen. Andrew came forward and plopped on the floor near his feet.
"Hey, Jack man," he greeted. Jack didn't respond verbally, and Andrew couldn't tell if he was even looking in his direction (it was a fair assumption that he wasn't), but after another moment, Jack closed the case of his Kindle, and Andrew knew he could talk, that he had Jack's attention. "Good book?"
"Yes." Jack's voice was low, quiet—he probably didn't want to be heard by the others. Andrew hushed his own voice to match.
"The smoke is fucking ace," he said, and remembered that Jack didn't care for or understand most slang. If you want Jack to respond, speak his language. "We really like it," he continued, speaking slowly and clearly. "Do you have any more that you can sell us? Matt and Claudia gave me fifty and twenty, and I've got forty."
Though he'd never admit it, Andrew could see how Claudia and her friends might think Jack was creepy. He never looked like he was breathing, for one, and the fact that he was so skeletal almost certainly contributed. He could be dead and the lenses of his glasses could be dark, empty sockets. It was absolutely, as Mark said, a dick thing to say, though—Jack wasn't threatening. He was threatened, by almost everyone and everything, even though most of it was unintentional and other people were unaware of it. Jack was almost as anxious about the world—about other people—as Keith was, but he was worse off because Keith had meds. Andrew thought that was a large part of why Jack and Keith were all right with each other; they recognized a kindred spirit. Andrew had learned a lot about anxiety and panic from years of bad times with Keith, and he'd seen how it could manifest in different ways, including someone freezing up instead of freaking out. Maybe there were a lot of times Jack couldn't breathe.
"All right," Jack said finally, and Andrew realized he'd been holding his own breath. Not because he was scared of or even creeped out by his friend, but because he was still mimicking him—which was stupid, because Jack obviously breathed, though Andrew had thought once that the sound of breathing might bother him when he got up and left Eddie's after Delta and Luke, who had been chasing each other outside, came back in panting. Jack didn't move for another several seconds, then he asked, "Do you mean right now?"
"That'd be awesome," Andrew said. "Matt wanted to leave with his girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure Claudia's going to go soon." He hoped this, anyway—he wasn't sure if Mark would tell Brandon what she'd said about his boyfriend, but if he did, Brandon would probably get pissed off and say something to her about it, which would cause her to leave anyway.
"All right," Jack said. He didn't move, and after a second or two Andrew got up, knowing that Jack was waiting for him to leave the area before he'd get up and go to his supply.
He wandered over to the kitchen, where most of the crowd had dispersed and only Kylen and a few others were still hanging around Brandon, who was oblivious; when he talked about the band, he forgot pretty much everything else. When Andrew pulled out the other chair and plopped down next to him, he didn't even glance up.
"...we're also going to have to travel with a bunch of the others, which means they're going to want to lump us in with them, and I have no idea what their contracts are like, but most bands that are just starting out are so desperate that they'll sign anything, especially getting Warped dangled in front of them. We're not doing that."
"Oh yeah, Brandon, fight the man!" Brett snorted.
Now Brandon looked up, but only to give their friend a contemptuous stare. "If we were blind-ass sheep that just wanted to go at our instruments on stage like a bunch of drunk monkeys trying to fuck a football, we could have been signed last September. But fuck that—the lawyer I hired took care of almost every single thing I gave her. The reason most new bands get fucked is because they don't notice that all of their merchandise profit goes back to the label and they only get sixty percent of media sales because they get what looks like a huge advance. First time being signed, recording an actual album, touring...they have no idea." He now grinned, and Andrew realized he was glad a lot of other new bands totally got shafted when they signed. Andrew didn't care, he supposed, but seeing the somewhat predatory grin on his friend made him glad they were on the same side.
"I'm surprised they all don't have contract lawyers with them when signing a deal," Kylen said. "I would."
"They do, but they probably get fucked by a lot of them too, especially if they're in with the label. That's why I hired one independently for us."
"One that was magically able to get what a brand-new band wants instead of what a major label wants," Brett said doubtfully.
Brandon shrugged. "Everything's negotiable. There really aren't that many hard lines in concrete that you can't pass... most of them just don't, or they take whatever they feel like they can grab at the first chance. I'm not being stupid about this—whatever we sign controls basically our entire lives. There were only so many lines I was willing to be pushed on, too."
"How many albums y'all gotta put up for this?"
"Three." Brandon grinned again. "That's more than a lot of new acts get. It's usually one, or sometimes two."
"Aren't you fucking lucky," Brett said sourly.
Brandon and Andrew ignored him, but Kylen rolled her eyes; it was none of their faults this dude's girlfriend had kicked him out after she found out he was cheating on her, nor that he'd spent the last month couch-surfing between his brothers and whining to everyone that would listen. Their group tended to have a fairly open-but-closed policy: they were generally pretty open and accepting of each other, but they kept their mouths shut when it was someone's personal business, especially if shit going on with them was more-or-less their own fault.
"We are lucky," Andrew said then. Sure, most of it was hard work (Brandon's hard work, he had no illusions about that), but there were surely lots of bands, thousands, probably, that worked just as hard if not harder and never played more than a local bar. That thought had more than once gotten him through the recording process before and surely would again when he was dead-ass fucking tired but needed to get his ass up and ready to play the same dozen songs night after night.
"And it helps when you pay them more," Brandon said, then grinned again. "Plus, our lawyer likes our tunes."
Andrew snorted. "Jack's paying her?"
"For now," Brandon said quickly. "He knows he's going to get all the money he's invested in us back as soon as we start turning a significant profit. Which we will."
Andrew nodded. "He can just take it out of your ass for now, right?"
Brandon grinned briefly again, then he returned his attention to the papers in front of him. "We're probably going to have to share a vehicle with at least a TM and probably a merch table person, maybe one or two others," he muttered, "but that should be fine. Some bands start out in fucking vans—we're not doing that shit. As soon as I find out what our budget's going to be, I'll need to meet with whoever's actually in charge, or at least video conference in. I think we'll have options, too, like health and accident insurance—I need to find out what we'll be responsible for and how much it'll cost and if it'll be worth it or if we should look into third-party coverage..."
Andrew noticed that he was taking notes now, seeming once again to have forgotten about the people around him. His phone chimed and he pulled it out, not surprised to find a text from Jack: It is ready. He glanced toward the back of the room and saw Jack at his computer desk, which had evidently been pushed closer to the bed he shared with Brandon (which was likely to keep the party guests as far away from him and his things as possible). Andrew decided he must be fine with being approached there, since he'd sent the message and hadn't moved yet, although he was still wearing his glasses.
He came over and stood by the end of Jack's desk, pulling out the money and laying it on the desk's surface. "That's all measured for what we wanted?"
Jack pointed. "Fifty, forty, twenty."
"Sweet, thanks." Andrew slowly reached for the three baggies and then stuffed them into his front hoodie pocket. He grinned and was about to walk back to distribute the goods, then he thought of something and paused. "Jack man, I wanted to tell you thanks again," he said. "For fronting us all that money to get started. We're all going to pay you back, of course, but it sounds like it's going to be a while. You paying for all the studio time and whatever for the EP, now this lawyer and whatever else Brandon's got in motion that we don't even know about. He's fucking rabid about this, but I guess it's really good. I mean, if he keeps at it like this, we might actually be something someday, you know? And it'll all be because of you—all of what's happened so far is because of you. So...thanks, man."
He waited a moment, and then he decided Jack wasn't going to respond to that; he hadn't expected anything, since he knew Jack had a hard time saying anything most of the time (let alone knowing how to respond to anything resembling emotion, including gratitude), but then Jack's head turned toward the kitchen, and Andrew was sure he was watching his boyfriend. "Not a problem," he said finally.
"Not coming with on the tour, huh? Sad. I haven't got to knock all the pieces off the board because of your cheating in months."
Jack smiled slightly at this, as he had never cheated and Andrew had never swiped game pieces off a board due to losing. (Well. Not since he was thirteen or so.) "It will not be long," he said.
"I guess." Warped ran for seven weeks—a hellishly intenstive seven weeks, from everything he'd heard and what he remembered from attending as a fan—and Brandon would be excited and busy enough that he'd probably basically forget about Jack not being there... but Jack would still be here, alone, after he'd gotten used to having someone, having friends. And it was almost two months, not two weeks.
He almost said something else, like are you sure you don't want to go or we'll fold you into an overhead compartment it'll be fine, but then Jack turned toward his computer, and Andrew decided that was his cue to leave him alone. He went back over to where Claudia and Matt had been, finding only Matt and Nikki, and stuffed Matt's baggie down the back of his shirt. "Members only, bro."
"Dick," Matt said amiably, twisting around and pulling at his collar.
"Where'd Claudia go?"
"Bathroom with Delta. I hope they're making out."
Nikki snorted. "Delta has a boyfriend, dumbass. And even when they are into other chicks, girls don't go randomly make out for no reason."
"Stop killing my hopes!" Matt put his hands over the top of his head. "You're wounding my dreams and I'll never recover. I'm watching porn when we get home. The nasty shit."
Nikki shrugged. "Fine, miss the live show. I can easily make love to the detachable shower head and then blue-ball you for the rest of the night."
Matt jumped up and grabbed for her hand. "Awesome, let's go! Thanks man." He clapped Andrew on the shoulder as Nikki led him back towards the door.
Andrew snorted, thinking that he really was going to miss all of their friends when their band left for a fucking tour. Fucking Warped Tour. They would all probably be too excited to miss home and the people that stayed there, at least at first (especially with all of the new, hopefully awesome people they were going to meet), but their families, and the friends that were like family, were definitely going to be missed. Mark would miss his parents, Andrew himself would miss Luke, his almost-brother that had literally been as close to him as his actual brother. Keith would miss his room at their parents' house, where it was quiet and he didn't have to constantly move around and be around a lot of new people, but they thought he'd be all right, especially with the new meds he'd started six months ago that seemed to help him more than any others ever had. He knew Brandon was going to miss Kylen—and Jack too, of course, being the only one of the band who had a serious relationship at the moment. They could all be in touch with everyone via phone, text, email, video chat...but no one was kidding themselves that it was going to be easy, not after Brandon started to get serious about researching current touring trends and talking to as many people in The Business as he could.
They were going to have a little free time, but, as Brandon had put it, "Since this is going to be our jobs, it shouldn't surprise any of us that we're going to have to actually work." That was fine—this was the fucking dream for sure, and even though it still didn't feel real, even when he'd signed on the dotted line, he knew that very soon it would. Their band was good; they all knew it, felt it, and before long, everyone else would believe it.
It was almost time to go.
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