Work Text:
It’s mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, and they’re sitting in a bar just outside campus and Patrick’s just ordered a beer when Pete says, “Enoch, dude, you need to cut that shit out. Go with a soda.”
Patrick, who is unlucky enough to have a fake ID that says his name is Enoch, makes a grab for the bottle. “The fuck? Give me that.”
“Seriously, you have to quit drinking. That way, when we get to L.A., you can sit in bars and tell people that before you came to town you were sober as a judge.”
“I’m not moving to L.A.,” Patrick points out, still reaching for his beer.
“Well, I’m not going alone.”
“You’re going to Hollywood?”
Pete rolls his eyes. “Duh,” he says, and chugs Patrick’s beer. “Jesus, Enoch, get with the program.”
-
Patrick, in an act of cerebral self-defence, has erased the rest of the conversation from his memory.
-
When they get to L.A., Patrick takes two jobs in shitty retail outlets and jams in a shitty band with three other guys from the second. Pete slobs around their shared apartment, eating dry cereal and claiming to be writing the great anti-American novel.
-
“It’s going to be about porn stars,” Pete says, excited. “Because they’re kind of desperate, shallow people who need attention and controlled substances in order to function, and they’re fucked up and diseased and not all that intelligent, but at the same time they’re really aspirational figures. Like, the American Dream is a wet one?”
This is, apparently, why there is a porn star sleeping on Patrick’s couch, using all Patrick’s hot water, eating all Patrick’s pop tarts and having painfully loud sex with Patrick’s room mate.
The porn star is called Jeph. He’s strangely charming, if Patrick lets him be.
-
Patrick quits his shitty retail jobs, and Jeph wrangles him a job as a sound editor at the studio where he works. The drummer leaves the band and is replaced by someone marginally less shitty. Pete slobs round their shared apartment, eating dry cereal and fucking Jeph as research for the great anti-American novel.
-
Patrick’s rise to the heady position of porn soundtrack composer can be described thusly:
Gabe writes the soundtrack
Patrick edits in it.
Gabe writes the soundtrack.
Patrick edits it in.
Gabe writes soundtrack.
Patrick edits it in.
Gabe drives down the wrong lane of the highway at one hundred and fifty miles per hour in a car full of mescaline and collides head-on with a police car.
Patrick writes the soundtrack.
Pete does not write the great anti-American novel.
-
The problem with working at the Ramrod Productions offices is that the staff are all very friendly. This is actually a problem with say, Brendon, because now every time Patrick has to score one of his movies he feels like he’s watching his little brother have group sex, and merely distracting when Patrick’s faced with someone like Frank, who comes from a remote part of New Jersey where they consider oral sex to be an acceptable form of greeting.
-
The problem with trying to work from home can be illustrated thusly:
People don’t live in L.A., Pete types, they just wait to die there.
Satisfied with this, he balls up a sheet of paper and throws it at the back of Patrick’s head.
“Patrick,” he says.
“Patrick.”
“Patrick.”
“Patrick.”
Patrick has his headphones in. Pete helpfully removes them. “Patrick,” he says.
“What?”
“How do you spell malignant?”
Patrick’s eyes narrow. “With a silent Pete,” he says, and then: “You know what? It’s early. They won’t have locked up the studio yet. I might go and try, you know, working in my workplace.”
“I thought your workplace was full of tattooed boys who kept distracting you with blowjobs.”
“It’s really the lesser of two evils,” Patrick mutters, as he switches the spell check of Pete’s laptop from French (Canada) to English (United States). “I don’t know how to spell malignant,” is what he says aloud, and then he shrugs on his coat and leaves.
-
“Oh, good, you’re still here,” Spencer says when he barges into the studio moments after Patrick has arrived.
“Hi.”
“I’m scheduled to be in here tomorrow? I’m dubbing? When I told Gabe I couldn’t work tomorrow, I didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling pretty.” Spencer is talking and ignoring Patrick simultaneously, rather than doing his usual thing of ignoring Patrick and looking prettily sullen. According to the wall chart Brendon made, this means that Spencer is upset and wants to ask for help, but is unsure how to do so.
“Can I help?” Patrick tries. “I mean, we could…” he gestures vaguely, hoping to indicate the myriad of possible solutions that he can’t quite call to mind right now but which he’s sure must exist.
“Could you fit me in now? I mean, you don’t have anywhere to be, do you?” Spencer pauses. His eyes flick down briefly, then back up to Patrick’s face. “Um,” he says, and Patrick makes a mental note to look up downward glances on the chart, “I meant if you’re not busy? As opposed to because you have no life. I’m sure you have a life. Um. You just seem very…dedicated.” He says the word cautiously, as if someone might have changed its meaning since he last used it and not told him.
“I’m avoiding my room mate,” Patrick blurts out, laughing nervously. Spencer has that effect on him.
“Oh.” Spencer considers this information. “Does this mean we can record my parts now? It’ll only take one take, I swear, I’ve done this way too often.”
Patrick glances forlornly at his laptop, then snaps it shut. “Sure,” he says. “Just let me get set up.”
Spencer almost manages to smile. “Don’t jerk off while I’m doing it, okay?”
-
Patrick wouldn’t have thought of it if Spencer hadn’t mentioned it.
Seriously, a guy standing in a vocal booth, faking an orgasm while looking bored? More ridiculous than hot. Except Spencer is kind of convincing, and, as previously stated, is sullenly pretty rather than bored-looking, and anyway, it was his suggestion.
-
Spencer does not to subscribe to the ‘Patrick’s great so let’s leave him alone like he asks except for certain occasions because yeah, exactly, that mouth’ school of thought. He’s more of a ‘Patrick’s great so I should befriend him because he doesn’t seem to know many people and also, yeah, exactly, that mouth’ kinda guy.
The problems inherent in this can be described thusly:
Spencer is terrible at befriending people.
-
Patrick writes soundtracks. Patrick is told to tone down his soundtracks because they are distracting the focus group. Patrick tones down his soundtracks. Spencer sits in the corner of Patrick’s studio, observing this process sullenly and not saying anything. Patrick fears him. The shitty band fire their shitty rhythm guitarist and replace him with someone marginally less shitty. They record a demo on an eight-track excavated from someone’s garage. It’s shitty. Jeph breaks up with Pete. Pete slobs around the apartment, eating dry cereal and not even pretending to write the great anti-American novel.
-
Tony, the shitty band’s bassist, says: “My cousin’s band want to know if we want to open a show for them.”
“What are they called?”
Tony looks thoughtful. “Something shitty,” he concludes. “The Summer League?”
-
“Patrick!” Brendon shouts, gleeful.
“Patrick?” Ryan asks, glancing up from his hand mirror. Someone has vomited an Escher painting onto his face since he left work. Patrick wonders if he’s noticed.
“Patrick,” Spencer says, looking suddenly nauseous.
“Tony, you didn’t tell me you were in a band with Patrick!” Brendon only operates at one volume.
Tony looks confused. “You guys know each other?”
“We’re colleagues.” Brendon wraps Patrick in a distinctly un-colleague-like hug and smacks a kiss on his cheek.
Tony looks appraisingly at Patrick. “Dude,” he says. “For real?”
Patrick decides God hates him.
-
It transpires that Spencer plays drums for The Summer League.
They are not shitty.
Spencer, in particular, lacks that characteristic.
God hates Patrick.
-
“I didn’t know you could actually play,” Brendon shouts later, as he attempts to jam more of the band’s gear into the back of Tony’s car. “I thought you were just, like, the porno guy. I didn’t know you could write actual music.”
“We’re really shitty,” Patrick points out. This is not a lie.
“So were we!” Brendon crows, although this is slightly less true. “But you have like, potential to not be. Seriously, come watch us practice sometime. Teach Ryan how to play the chords with three notes in.”
“I don’t think – ”
“Please,” hisses Brendon, fisting his hands in Patrick’s shirt. “Please. Or Spencer will hurt me.”
“Spencer – ”
“Stalks only out of love.” Brendon smoothes the creases out of Patrick’s shirt apologetically. “Did I not put that on the chart?”
-
It takes two weeks of Brendon’s constant nagging before Patrick works up the nerve to go to The Summer League’s practice space. When he gets there, Ryan takes him to one side and explains that he writes songs about desperation and betrayal and utter despair because the human heart is a dark and complex thing and the fact that he is not often called upon to portray its tangled mysteries in his work is frustrating to him as an artist because it inhibits his growth as both a performer and a spiritual being.
Spencer looks long-suffering.
Patrick blinks then, very slowly, smiles.
-
Ryan explains that he writes songs about desperation and betrayal and utter despair because the human heart is a dark and complex thing and the fact that he is not often called upon to portray its tangled mysteries in his work is frustrating to him as an artist because it inhibits his growth as both a performer and a spiritual being.
“People don’t live in L.A.,” Pete says, voice just a little breathy, “they just wait to die there.”
“Every time we kiss,” Ryan predicts, “feels like the death of a star.”
Pete leans forward and kills a star. Ryan kills one back. It’s not like they were visible through the smog, anyway.
-
Patrick spends a lot of time at the Ramrod offices. He winces when his band name themselves Undergod. He goes to lunch with Spencer, who winces when Patrick tells him that his band have named themselves Undergod. He goes to see The Summer League practice more often. He bitches about having to rework his soundtracks. Brendon rails against Gabe. Spencer looks long-suffering. Brendon updates the Translation of Spencer’s Invisible Expressions wall chart to accommodate this. Ryan writes songs about killing stars in burnt out cars. Pete slobs around the apartment, eating dry cereal and texting Ryan potential titles for the great anti-American novel.
-
The first time they meet, Pete greets Spencer with, “Hi! Are you HIV positive?”
“Pete’s writing the great anti-American novel,” Patrick explains. Pete grins. “His teeth are ironic.”
“Are you in porn because of some childhood thing?” Pete asks, hopefully. “I’m trying to draw parallels between like, the innocence of youth and the fact that L.A. is this big place where heinous assholes sit around making make believe worlds so that they don’t ever have to grow up and it’s like, a melting pot of sleaze which boils down to figurative child molestation. Like, the rape of America’s inner child?”
Spencer glances sideways at Patrick (an expression Patrick’s fairly sure Brendon would translate as panicked). “I’m from Vegas?” he tries.
Pete’s eyes light up. “Dude,” he says, “that’s totally better subject matter than AIDS.”
-
Spencer lives in an apartment near the beach with two of his co-workers. They’re in a band together. It’s super fun. Spencer is doing a correspondence course in media management. It’s super interesting. Porn is just a stopgap until he gets the office job of his dreams. His parents encourage him to study hard and always wear a condom. They call every week, and threw him a party when he got his first lead role.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Pete drawls, eyes still scanning Spencer’s biographical notes, “but you’re a real disappointment.”
-
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
Spencer gives an infinitesimal shrug. “They’re filming the lesbians today.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
He rolls his eyes and gives the kind of frustrated sigh Patrick thought it was physically impossible to produce once you were older than fifteen. “That’s not the kind of attitude that will get you my ass, Stump.”
“I don’t want your ass,” Patrick says, but he looks up from the screen for the first time in three hours.
Spencer raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
-
Patrick really, really wants Spencer’s ass.
-
Spencer is totally fine with that. He’s just not very good at saying so without a script.
-
“Ryan is on his way to your apartment,” Spencer coos down the phone. Patrick can hear him grinning.
“I can hear you grimacing,” Spencer says. “Luckily, I am a kind and loving friend. A kind and loving friend with a fold-out couch and Chinese food.”
Pete yells “Go get ‘em, tiger!” down the hall as Patrick leaves. Patrick makes a mental note to punch him later.
-
Pete says: “So there are these pretty young blondes who drive between parties in fast cars and have coke-fuelled orgies with one another, and Bret Easton Ellis writes snappy, minimalist prose about them and makes millions. People who are neither pretty nor blonde enough to be in this club form rock bands, whine about how they never had a fast car, make millions, meet lots of blondes and have coke-fuelled orgies with them, after which some hack writes it all down in snappy, minimalist prose and makes millions. This is what people mean when they say America is a classless society.”
“Wow,” says Ryan.
They fuck on the couch.
-
Spencer sits at one end of the couch.
Patrick sits at the other.
“So,” he says.
“So.”
“Thanks. For, you know, rescuing me.”
“Any time.”
“Hmm.”
They pretend to be watching infomercials.
“I should – ” Spencer tries eventually, and then stops, having no idea what to say.
“Yeah,” Patrick adds. “I mean, you’re filming in the morning, I shouldn’t be keeping you up.”
Spencer sits at one end of the couch.
Patrick sits at the other.
They blush.
-
Brendon removes the Translations of Spencer’s Invisible Expressions wall chart and replaces it with a Nike ad.
“Patrick,” Spencer says.
“Patrick,”
“Patrick.”
“Patrick.”
Patrick has his headphones in. Spencer helpfully removes them. “Patrick,” he repeats, and then kisses him on the mouth.
It’s bad.
Really, really bad.
The angle’s all wrong. There are more teeth involved than should be biologically possible. Spencer’s almost certain that at one point he’s actually making out with Patrick’s nose.
“Sorry,” he says. And then, sensing further explanation may be needed: “Brendon was threatening to start a betting pool. Also, the um, the poster? Was his idea of a hint. And I don’t invite you over to my house to watch Jeopardy. Not that I didn’t like that. Also having you at practice was good. Also you’re really good at what you do. Also I am. Um. I. There’s usually a script when I do this. Um.”
“Um,” Patrick agrees, and kisses Spencer on the mouth.
It’s good.
Really, really good.