Chapter Text
“Here’s the thing.”
Tyler gets seated in his studio. Paul does the same, ears alert and ready to listen.
His whole attention is set on him. Tyler's eyes bevel the floor, aiming to organize his thoughts into something cohesive.
As if he hasn't gone through their plan innumerable times already. As if the count did not matter, the amount that the plan kept circling in his head.
But that thing is, he needs to start voicing it as well or nothing will ever get moving.
That’ll make it real. Tyler gives it a thought for one last time. His fingers spread as his eyes narrow, an open cage ready to catch the words out of the thin air.
Tyler licks his lips, and breathes in. Then, he starts talking.
“We’re going dark for the entire year ahead of us. This album, Trench… I need to submerge into absolute seclusion with it. It won’t turn out the way I want if we don’t. That being said…”
He fixes his position, finally holding strict eye contact with Paul, “I’m gonna close everyone out from writing this album. Family, friends, anyone who might usually try to have an impact on how we should make our music. I’m done with that, done with them. At least for this album, I am. Um…”
He needs to clear his voice. He’s barely said anything out loud in days, spending all days alone. With Josh away in LA and barely visiting Columbus, it feels good to have someone to talk to, someone he can trust.
Trust means everything to him. Out of all people, it’s not a coincidence that he’s ready to share his studio with Paul now. When leading another person into the depths of his creating process, he wants to do it with someone who stood in the same frame of mind as him.
"So you have named the album already,” Paul aids him onward, and it takes a second for Tyler to rewind his own words, catching up soon enough.
“We toured more than four years straight,” he offers as a careful reminder, to keep himself on track. “Blurryface was written almost completely on the road. I assure you, I wouldn’t have survived that album cycle without putting some thought into what may come after it. But if I’m being honest, this story has existed for a long time already.”
Tyler smiles, if only slightly. With everything combined, it has led to the reason why he felt comfortable opening up about the future of his band, and what the year ahead of them meant.
He’s invited Paul over to his house for the first time now, after having sent out a few ideas as casually as possible over the passing winter, just to have an outsider’s reaction to the things he’s been working on.
Paul's perspective was worth valuing. Sharing highly unfinished songs wasn’t anything new between them. They have toured with Paul and his band in the past, building a strong foundation of musical friendship, something that Josh and he always wanted to establish with the artist they decided to bring out on tour with them.
There was something special about Paul though, something that immediately hit off between them upon briefly meeting the band on their separate tours one day. Their relationship doesn't wrap exclusively around music anymore, making their friendship even more momentous for him. For starters, Tyler’s always been curious about the people behind the music, the very few who managed to spark his interest. There weren't many.
He was oddly happy, having found Mutemath and catching their set together with Josh many times before the guys even knew who they were. It would be impossible these days, and sometimes made things complicated.
Traveling and playing music together was the best way to get to know someone. The interplay between him and Paul especially had come very naturally from the beginning.
Before he even knew it, Tyler found himself at the back of the bus with him, sharing differing stories of their journey with music, carefully mending their battered sanities after everyone else had called it a night.
They worked up a bad habit of staying up late, talking until the hands of the clock screamed at them, ultimately forcing them to crawl back to the bunks where the other guys were soundly asleep.
At other times, Josh would find them in the morning, sprawled on the small couch, Tyler on his back, legs thrown over the armrest while Paul slept in a sitting up position right beside him, only to complain about an achy neck for days to come.
Josh’s eyes followed them curiously. He kept spying on Tyler whenever seeing him side by side with Paul, smiling as if he knew something Tyler didn’t. Tyler could only give him a glare of his own, shaking his head in a way that revealed his annoyance at it. And as Josh turned away, so did Tyler, looking back at Paul’s laptop, hoping that he didn't catch their weird gestures at each other.
There was nothing going on between them, if that’s what Josh was after. Tyler wasn’t sure if he even wanted something there. He did think that Paul was a nice guy, a great musician, having that charisma that made him even attractive to him.
It was an alarming thought. Tyler simply liked him. He didn’t seem to need any other reason to look for his company.
Surprising to him, Josh didn’t ask about it, even when he sneaked into Tyler’s hotel room to spend the night with him. Somehow Tyler expected him to approach the topic, but found himself hugging his bandmate from behind in silence. Josh slept, while Tyler lied painfully awake, caressing the warm skin, pleading him to wake up and talk.
Nothing happened. Tyler got a feeling that he should have been the one opening his mouth.
He couldn’t. Having Josh watching them only added up to his concernment about his sickly churning feelings. At times, it got easier, only to get worse again. Then, he seemed to forget all about it.
It was a cycle. Being close to Paul seemed to both ease and amp up his anxiety. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but didn’t allow himself to think about it.
All the same, the thing that kept bringing the two songwriters together was insomnia. If they weren’t sharing a bus, the sleepless nights felt so much longer. In return, the times they did get to kill some time together made the occasion more special.
On one of the last nights between the two cities, the sleepless delirium compelled them to exchange voice memos. It might be ridiculous, but the night was one of the most memorable ones from the entire tour, good and bad.
The said section of an artist’s phone is the sacred bank of song-starts, something that they both considered to belong to their own ears only. Full of embarrassing semi-performances, it wasn’t easy for Tyler to let another musician he admired swipe through his recordings and hit play. He could only do it when Paul handed his phone in return, straight medicine to the shared sense of shame.
It didn’t take long to get over the worst uncomfortability. They could only be thankful for the thin soundproof walls in the back, quickly filled with cringed laughter, shed with tears. Despite the choking noises and blushing faces, the occasion calved some serious feedback as well, bringing back ideas they thought were doomed.
It was something that they both seemed to need at the time, bringing them even closer together. So close, Tyler had to stop himself from doing things he might have regretted later.
He'll get into that night later. Their last show together was in Madison Square Garden. The summer tour of Emotional Roadshow ended way faster than any tour before it. Tyler was reluctant to meet its termination. With Josh’s agreement, they proposed another collaboration with Mutemath, coming with a secret aim this time.
Smartly covered, the idea was presented to be all about re-imagining a few older songs that both of their fans could enjoy. It all worked seamlessly well together, but gave no relief for their slowly boiling anxiety. Soon, it was time to watch one eye close, and let another one spy the horizon. Instead of concentrating on the things they could see, they needed to give more room for the way they felt about their music.
It’s like they’ve been asleep for an eon already. Now, to the label’s horror, Tyler wants to produce the album in the privacy of his home studio. He hasn’t had the privilege of doing it ever since the music industry found value in him.
It can easily become one of the hardest challenges of their career so far. They have a lot to prove after the major success of Blurryface. Tyler was very aware of it. The pressure is taking on new dimensions as they have more skeptical eyes set on them, the outside noises telling that they only got lucky on one round, and that was all they could ever achieve.
The burning need to prove them wrong lives inside him. He wants to show them that they never had it any easier than anybody else. They have the skill, and the music they put out will always be purely them, and it could still succeed - bringing a group of songs that they could proudly put their name on and say, ‘We did it. Again.’
The cogs in his head are spinning at full speed. He’s been fortified in the basement ever since Tour De Columbus, writing, fantasizing, building this world he’s had his thoughts on for some time now - going dark as he describes to Paul now.
He’s got things to say. He’s got the songs, or rough sketches of them, to say the least. None of them have come even close to being tamed yet. He’s veiled in bitemarks of these beasts of prey, the undoubted sinister nature of them.
As always, his thoughts are both optimistic and anguished. He knew they were going to make him bleed from the beginning, but wanted nothing but to understand them, to see where they were coming from. What they wanted to pull him into— and most of all, what direction they wanted to take the story next.
There’s plenty of blood left in him before they can bleed him out. The uncharted territory doesn’t necessarily lie in the lyrics, but it had taken some time for him to admit his defeat regarding the issues that came with the production.
He needed help, and that’s when his thoughts spiraled back to Paul. Right now he was trying to find his way out from calling the resolution with ignoble names like a personal failure, when really, he was lucky to have so many competent people around him, giving him a chance to learn.
After many brain-splitting headaches, Tyler went through his options. Paul seemed like the only person who could meet his visions and do it independently and fearlessly. Self-taught and true to his work, he had all the things that Tyler had not yet acquired.
First of all, the experience. He needed someone with authentic wisdom and overall knowledge of the things he needed to learn in order to bring alive the world he had created, someone to guide their voice along the way.
At this point, the technical aspects of producing and engineering his own music required most of the attention. Trying to figure out how to catch the live drums has always caused him the hardest cramps in the past.
He had tried to be sneaky about it during their sessions with Mutemath, watching Paul and Darren work their magic in the studio while trying to absorb as much as he possibly could, without uncovering his inexperience in the art.
Thinking back to it now, he could easily see his past self’s stubbornness of never admitting his ineptness, and his attitude wasn’t fair towards Paul and his band either.
Needless to say, he barely assimilated anything without having someone actually explaining things to him. He needed to break out of his character in order to be better, and after a long talk with Josh, they both agreed that getting Paul involved would be the best thing they could do for the album.
Seeming to Tyler, Josh was even more open to the idea than Tyler himself, always encouraging him to contact him.
Of course, they didn’t just strike a deal without Paul's consent. In a way he must have anticipated that something was happening behind the curtains when Tyler started sharing his ideas, coming back to him after a bout of silence between them.
Simultaneously shining light into his hidden insecurities, it wasn’t something that musicians do just to ease the boredom. Paul knew it, and it wasn’t too long until he asked what it was that Tyler actually wanted from him.
“What is my role in all of this?” Paul had asked him on the phone with an edge of annoyance in his tone one night. It hit Tyler rather suddenly. He knew that Paul had a lot on his plate, figuring out the sudden fate of his own band, but the right moment to ask might have never come, so he had to go for it.
Tyler remembers the way his throat clicked when swallowing, the way his hand started sweating against the mouse of his computer for having to admit that he needed him, and couldn’t imagine asking anyone else.
He had to be honest. He had robbed Paul’s proficiency way too much already.
“I need you,” Tyler had finally gotten out of his mouth, swallowing the acidic taste of his pride, and getting on his knees in front of it. “This new album we’re making… I was wondering if you could help me produce a few songs for it.”
Just a few, he had thought at the time. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe then he would be good to go and do the rest on his own. Maybe, Paul had become a total asshole during their time apart, and he could be relieved to get rid of him once things wouldn’t work out between them like he had hoped they would, and then forget about it altogether.
At the end of the night, he would still own the rights to his own songs.
He didn’t believe any of his ridiculous thoughts, but his mind was prone to overflow with doubts and fears. Paul would be the right guy. And during that phone call, Tyler realized that he didn’t only need to work with him, but he really wanted to. There’s a difference between the two aspects, and that’s where the sudden nervousness must have come from.
After all, Paul could have turned him down. He had every right to do so.
In fact, he had been totally quiet at the other end of the line. It was the thing that nearly made him in. Not only that, Paul had sounded quite crossed when asking about his role, and Tyler didn’t know how to interpret it at all. And when Paul had finally answered, he’d say,
"I'll call you back,” and then cut it. As much as Tyler loved to end the phone calls without the unnecessary declarations of good-byes, Paul’s answer left a frigid pit into the bottom of his stomach.
He was nearly panicking, preparing to call Josh and share the bad news when Paul’s name appeared on the screen of his phone. Picking up, Tyler could immediately hear the way he shook at the other end of the line, and god, he was shaking too.
“The hell, man,” Paul’s usual raspy voice shook in utter excitement. “Dropping bombs the way you do. I’m in, I’m absolutely in.”
His words made him sigh in relief. Maybe, he could do this after all. No matter how badly he had fucked things up between them at the end of the tour.
Today, Paul has come to his house all the way from New Orleans, standing in the middle of his brand-new studio only moments before.
He couldn’t believe that their collaboration was about to start again. Tyler wasn’t a collaborator. And yet, he keeps pulling Paul into his projects, one after another, like he couldn’t get enough of him.
He’s confused by his muted excitement, but recognizes the uptightness all the same. To him, the two emotions walked hand in hand.
Only this time, the collaboration will last longer, and there will be no prying eyes or hungry ears to devour updates on the progress, or the fallbacks he might hit along the way.
Tyler wonders where it’ll lead. What the album will become. He’s eager to do it. He’s eager to learn. He’s ready to bend backward and put himself out for this album if he must.
He hopes he won’t fuck things up any further.
Only a small bag for Paul’s laptop rests at his feet, and whatever he packed into it seemed to be all he needed.
Everything else he brought, he left at the hotel. Everything else they required, Tyler held in his house, and his psyche.
Paul keeps nodding to his words sedulously, like he didn’t care about anything that happened between them.
It makes Tyler grow more comfortable looking at him. It’s the dawning in Paul’s eyes that encourages him to keep going as they discuss Trench, his ideas with Josh, and the world he’s created.
They were together so much during the tour, the inevitable end of it made him fear that they would have to start from nothing— that losing the connection they had managed to establish wouldn’t be easy to build up again.
His fears over the possibility that no one would understand his visions dissipate into thin air. He’s never had to worry about it with Josh, and finding someone else who could evoke the same feeling was something Tyler could have never imagined happening again.
It doesn’t seem so impossible, after all. There’s insouciance in the air, the pure intention to create, and the will to listen.
Tyler allows himself to lean into it.