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[...he was Columbus hundreds of miles off course...]
You know, nobody's summary is ever a real summary of their fic anymore. I'm tempted to quote 'Eleanor Rigby' ("THIS is where the lonely people come from, BITCH.") but on second thought, maybe not.
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serialkarma betaed, so big ups to her.
Maroon
Weezer RPS. PG13. Mikey Welsh/Brian Bell.
post-dropout: (speed bumps)(28 days later)(blood & ink)
Your veins are filled with disappearing ink.
Mikey wrote it on the wall in pencil. It would make a good lyric. The way things worked these days was, the lyrics came but no music would, or he would discover a riff on the guitar but there would be no words to attach to it. (Discover a riff, as if music was the New World and he was Columbus hundreds of miles off course.)
It made him think of his 28 Days Later DVD, watching the alternate endings in Brian's living room. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, one bag of potato chips each, legs criss-crossing in the middle and eyes transfixed on the screen. In one ending, Jim voluntarily contracted the Rage virus as some honorable act. What happened was, he and Brendan Gleeson swapped blood. All their blood, completely, so Hannah could continue having a father.
"You see why we couldn't use this ending," said the commentary. "It's scientifically impossible."
The screen showed a sketch of an infected Jim strapped down to the surgical table, twitching.
Blood signifies life. Your heart pumps it, your veins and arteries transport it, the presence of it outside your body means that something is wrong. (Except, thought Mikey in a moment of political correctness, when you're menstruating.) Blood is always in you.
"So what are you trying to say?" asked Brian after Mikey detailed all this to him. They were in Mikey's apartment and his guitar hung on a strap around his shoulders as he trailed after Brian in the kitchen, watching him open the cupboards and the refrigerator and make disappointed faces at their lack of content.
"That you're lifeless," Mikey replied. "Well, not you. The person in the song."
"Who's the person in the song?"
"I don't know. You know how it is. Sometimes you just write stuff. It isn't all clear until it's finished. I just liked how it sounded."
Brian traced the pencil markings on the wall with his fingers. "Where's the rest of it?"
"That's it."
"When did you start writing it?"
"A week ago, about."
"What have you been doing since then?"
"Hanging. The next thing you say will not be a question, please."
Brian straightened up and crossed his arms, looking into Mikey's eyes with that look. The pursed lips as if about to whistle and the furrowed brows. People would think it was a condescending look, but Mikey knew better. Mikey knew Brian. Brian was the one who tried to beat him down by caring, because Mikey was the one trying to beat everyone down with apathy. They were in a contest with each other but didn't know what they were competing for, only that it had something to do with Mikey's unique brand of nihilism.
When that song was talking about love being a verb, they were talking about people like Brian Bell.
"I know some people," said Brian. "If you just get your shit together, I can hook you up, start playing gigs around LA..."
Mikey rolled his eyes and did a 'talk to the hand'. He turned his back and, for want of something to do, opened the refrigerator knowing there were only some cheese slices, raspberry jam, and two cans of soda in there. He took the sodas and offered one to Brian.
"No, thanks," said Brian. Mikey tossed him one anyway.
"Didn't I tell you to stop bugging me with that shit?" said Mikey, pulling out a chair from the table with his foot and sitting down. "I will. Didn't I say I will? I said I'll-"
"You say you will-"
"-do it, meaning I will do it, so-"
"-but you haven't done shit about it in months-"
"-just get off my back and-"
"-and you're just decaying in here."
"-I will," snapped Mikey. "I'll get it together, fine. Just... fuck, you make me sound like a loser, making me say all that."
Brian shrugged.
"What, you think I'm a loser?"
"No."
"Is that a reflex no or a real no? Don't answer that." Mikey stared down at his feet, palming the fret so his strumming didn't sound. He inhaled, exhaled, and the seconds oozed by like the bastard child of molasses and silly putty. Mikey did his noiseless half-hearted strumming, and Brian leaned on his hip against the counter and crossed his arms.
Finally Mikey heard him sigh, saw him step forward and take his jacket off the kitchen island.
"Dramatic exits are so cliched," said Mikey.
Brian paused mid-putting-on-jacket, looking at him.
"Stay and watch a movie with me," said Mikey.
Brian pulled on his jacket. "I've watched all your movies. Most of them twice. Some three times-"
"Stay and watch a movie with me a fourth time." Mikey took off his guitar and propped it against the wall. He approached Brian with self-assured steps. "If we watch 28 Days Later again, I might be inspired to finish the song."
"I own 28 Days Later," said Brian. "And most of the other movies. We should stop liking the same things so much."
Mikey put his hands on Brian's hips, gently forced him back, and trapped him against the wall.
"Mikey..." said Brian, and his voice was breathy and apprehensive, the opposite of his body. Brian rested a hand on Mikey's waist, and when Mikey accidentally-on-purpose pressed their hips together, Brian didn't protest, but matched him. Muscle memory.
Mikey leaned forward until their mouths were only a breath apart. "Stay with me."
+
"Brian, what's the name of that thing?"
"What thing?"
"With babies. How you should get them black, white, and red toys because that'll visually stimulate them more. They're the strongest colors so they're the most visually stimulating."
"What is the name of that thing?" Brian laughed. "Post-coital conversation about babies."
"What?"
"Weird with a woman, weirder with a man."
"You're the woman," Mikey said distractedly. "The point is... black and white and red, right? They're the strongest. The most stimulating. Catalyst colors. There's even this study that says so. The point is... Life is not gray, it's black and white. The red is blood, and blood is the life force. So in this world, you either are or you aren't, black and white, but either way there is life. There is vitality, or if not then there should be."
"If you mix black, white, and red together, you get maroon."
"Oh, come on."
"No, seriously, what is the significance of the color maroon in context of overblown metaphors about the meaning of life? Tell me, please."
Mikey rolled over and gave Brian his back, not really mad and and in truth enjoying the banter, enjoying Brian's breath on the back of his neck and Brian's hands on him. The undertone of Brian's teasing voice that suggested that Mikey was so silly to think that colors and too much philosophy were more important than the Here and Now, where he was loved, where he was held.
Brian pulled him close. Mikey said, "Piss off, man."
"Woah, I'm pissing, I'm pissing."
"Not on the bed."
"Sure."
"Go to the bathroom."
"Okay."
And they didn't move, except for one second when Mikey covered Brian's hands with his own, and as they lay there, Mikey glowed. Figuratively speaking. It was the determined fulfillment that came from knowing that in a while, Brian would have to go home and Mikey would be alone again, here in his apartment with the DVDs and that one line on the kitchen wall that seemed to follow him around like a shadow in his mind.
+
This was not a slump, but a speed bump. He wasn't slowing to a stop, he was just slowing to tackle a problem and then he'd be on his way again. All in all, it was no reason to stop taking pot shots at Scott Shriner. Never in Scott Shriner's presence, of course, because Mikey never saw Scott Shriner anyway, but at Brian, who was Scott Shriner's friend, and that was almost as good.
"Why do you insist on using both his names?" asked Brian as Mikey put Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the DVD player. "It's Scott, not Scottshriner."
Mikey dropped onto the seat next to him, remote control in hand. "I don't know. It's like people never call Johnny Depp Johnny. He's always Johnny Depp."
"Yeah, but he's not Johnny Depp by any means. He's just Scott."
"And he'll probably never bang French models or make out with Christina Ricci. So. The movie's starting, fuckmook, shut up."
A speed bump. Every road had speed bumps. Well, most roads. Some roads. Specific types of roads, and Mikey's specific road had speed bumps, end of story. Someday he'd get his shit together. Someday he'd finish the song on his wall and perform at Brian's friends' clubs and people would clap and smile and cheer. Maybe he'd even get another record deal. Maybe even a better one than he got with Weezer.
"I want to have three arms," said Mikey after Cheech Marin goes off-screen, not because he really wanted to have three arms, but because he felt like saying something.
At the end of the movie, when Mikey saw Brian to the door, Brian said, "Why don't you ever give yourself a fighting chance? You know you can do more than this if you tried."
"Why don't you just ask me back into Weezer? No, don't ask me, you need to at least beg. You should get on your knees and suck my dick then ask me back into Weezer if you really want me riding that rock 'n roll tsunami again, my friend."
And Mikey almost said all that. Except, you know, he didn't. It would have been too close to the truth. Instead Mikey smirked and said, "Yeah, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
When Brian was gone, Mikey went into kitchen with a pencil and wrote lyric after lyric on the wall, trying to finish what he started, and, in the end, crossed out every last word.
+
They - whoever they were - were wrong: the past isn't prologue. The past is past and that was exactly the problem.
One day you're performing in the Royal Albert Hall, you're in lights, amplified, deified, girls shouting your name as you zip all over the place being a star. And it was so easy. And the next day you were Mikey Welsh in your LA apartment with nothing in it except a guitar, an unfinished song, and a shitload of DVDs filled with the beautiful, charismatic people you maybe had the opportunity to be, once upon a time, but not anymore, not anymore.
"I finished the song," said Mikey, sitting on the island, feet on the chair, receiver tucked between his shoulder and his ear.
"That's great," said Brian's tinny telephone voice. "When can I hear it?"
"Actually no I didn't," said Mikey, and the grin on his face felt misplaced and accounted for at the same time. "I didn't finish anything but I just wanted to see what it felt like to say it. You know. Get a taste of the alternate reality."
There was a sigh. "Mikey-"
"I know, I know, getting my shit together, getting it all together, man." He laughed. "Just for you."
"Don't do it for me, do it for you."
"I'll do it for Cillian Murphy."
"What?"
"You know. 28 Days Later."
"Oh. Right."
"The inspiration for this song. Kind of."
"Yeah. For Cillian Murphy and you."
"Brian."
"What?"
"...Yeah."
"What?"
A lot, is what. A bit of fear, a bit of desperation. Some anxiety. A need to go out on the town and celebrate life - his life, whatever that may be - in order to discover, through trial and error and an allegorical blind man's buff, just what in Mikey Welsh's life was worth celebrating. A stupid wish for people to start calling him Mikey Welsh instead of Mikey. Mikey Welsh. Mikey fucking Welsh. A question: what's going to happen to me, Brian? What'll they do to me?
But no one ever knew the answer to that anyway.
"Mikey?" said Brian. "What is it?"
Mikey shook his head even though he knew Brian couldn't see. "Nothing."
When the call ended, he went to the wall and read over the lyric again. Your veins are filled with disappearing ink. Unchanged. Static like its meaning. After a few seconds' contemplation, Mikey crossed it out, threw the pencil in the trash, and exited the kitchen.
The ink wasn't the only thing disappearing.
[end.]
serialkarma betaed, so big ups to her.Maroon
Weezer RPS. PG13. Mikey Welsh/Brian Bell.
post-dropout: (speed bumps)(28 days later)(blood & ink)
Your veins are filled with disappearing ink.
Mikey wrote it on the wall in pencil. It would make a good lyric. The way things worked these days was, the lyrics came but no music would, or he would discover a riff on the guitar but there would be no words to attach to it. (Discover a riff, as if music was the New World and he was Columbus hundreds of miles off course.)
It made him think of his 28 Days Later DVD, watching the alternate endings in Brian's living room. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, one bag of potato chips each, legs criss-crossing in the middle and eyes transfixed on the screen. In one ending, Jim voluntarily contracted the Rage virus as some honorable act. What happened was, he and Brendan Gleeson swapped blood. All their blood, completely, so Hannah could continue having a father.
"You see why we couldn't use this ending," said the commentary. "It's scientifically impossible."
The screen showed a sketch of an infected Jim strapped down to the surgical table, twitching.
Blood signifies life. Your heart pumps it, your veins and arteries transport it, the presence of it outside your body means that something is wrong. (Except, thought Mikey in a moment of political correctness, when you're menstruating.) Blood is always in you.
"So what are you trying to say?" asked Brian after Mikey detailed all this to him. They were in Mikey's apartment and his guitar hung on a strap around his shoulders as he trailed after Brian in the kitchen, watching him open the cupboards and the refrigerator and make disappointed faces at their lack of content.
"That you're lifeless," Mikey replied. "Well, not you. The person in the song."
"Who's the person in the song?"
"I don't know. You know how it is. Sometimes you just write stuff. It isn't all clear until it's finished. I just liked how it sounded."
Brian traced the pencil markings on the wall with his fingers. "Where's the rest of it?"
"That's it."
"When did you start writing it?"
"A week ago, about."
"What have you been doing since then?"
"Hanging. The next thing you say will not be a question, please."
Brian straightened up and crossed his arms, looking into Mikey's eyes with that look. The pursed lips as if about to whistle and the furrowed brows. People would think it was a condescending look, but Mikey knew better. Mikey knew Brian. Brian was the one who tried to beat him down by caring, because Mikey was the one trying to beat everyone down with apathy. They were in a contest with each other but didn't know what they were competing for, only that it had something to do with Mikey's unique brand of nihilism.
When that song was talking about love being a verb, they were talking about people like Brian Bell.
"I know some people," said Brian. "If you just get your shit together, I can hook you up, start playing gigs around LA..."
Mikey rolled his eyes and did a 'talk to the hand'. He turned his back and, for want of something to do, opened the refrigerator knowing there were only some cheese slices, raspberry jam, and two cans of soda in there. He took the sodas and offered one to Brian.
"No, thanks," said Brian. Mikey tossed him one anyway.
"Didn't I tell you to stop bugging me with that shit?" said Mikey, pulling out a chair from the table with his foot and sitting down. "I will. Didn't I say I will? I said I'll-"
"You say you will-"
"-do it, meaning I will do it, so-"
"-but you haven't done shit about it in months-"
"-just get off my back and-"
"-and you're just decaying in here."
"-I will," snapped Mikey. "I'll get it together, fine. Just... fuck, you make me sound like a loser, making me say all that."
Brian shrugged.
"What, you think I'm a loser?"
"No."
"Is that a reflex no or a real no? Don't answer that." Mikey stared down at his feet, palming the fret so his strumming didn't sound. He inhaled, exhaled, and the seconds oozed by like the bastard child of molasses and silly putty. Mikey did his noiseless half-hearted strumming, and Brian leaned on his hip against the counter and crossed his arms.
Finally Mikey heard him sigh, saw him step forward and take his jacket off the kitchen island.
"Dramatic exits are so cliched," said Mikey.
Brian paused mid-putting-on-jacket, looking at him.
"Stay and watch a movie with me," said Mikey.
Brian pulled on his jacket. "I've watched all your movies. Most of them twice. Some three times-"
"Stay and watch a movie with me a fourth time." Mikey took off his guitar and propped it against the wall. He approached Brian with self-assured steps. "If we watch 28 Days Later again, I might be inspired to finish the song."
"I own 28 Days Later," said Brian. "And most of the other movies. We should stop liking the same things so much."
Mikey put his hands on Brian's hips, gently forced him back, and trapped him against the wall.
"Mikey..." said Brian, and his voice was breathy and apprehensive, the opposite of his body. Brian rested a hand on Mikey's waist, and when Mikey accidentally-on-purpose pressed their hips together, Brian didn't protest, but matched him. Muscle memory.
Mikey leaned forward until their mouths were only a breath apart. "Stay with me."
+
"Brian, what's the name of that thing?"
"What thing?"
"With babies. How you should get them black, white, and red toys because that'll visually stimulate them more. They're the strongest colors so they're the most visually stimulating."
"What is the name of that thing?" Brian laughed. "Post-coital conversation about babies."
"What?"
"Weird with a woman, weirder with a man."
"You're the woman," Mikey said distractedly. "The point is... black and white and red, right? They're the strongest. The most stimulating. Catalyst colors. There's even this study that says so. The point is... Life is not gray, it's black and white. The red is blood, and blood is the life force. So in this world, you either are or you aren't, black and white, but either way there is life. There is vitality, or if not then there should be."
"If you mix black, white, and red together, you get maroon."
"Oh, come on."
"No, seriously, what is the significance of the color maroon in context of overblown metaphors about the meaning of life? Tell me, please."
Mikey rolled over and gave Brian his back, not really mad and and in truth enjoying the banter, enjoying Brian's breath on the back of his neck and Brian's hands on him. The undertone of Brian's teasing voice that suggested that Mikey was so silly to think that colors and too much philosophy were more important than the Here and Now, where he was loved, where he was held.
Brian pulled him close. Mikey said, "Piss off, man."
"Woah, I'm pissing, I'm pissing."
"Not on the bed."
"Sure."
"Go to the bathroom."
"Okay."
And they didn't move, except for one second when Mikey covered Brian's hands with his own, and as they lay there, Mikey glowed. Figuratively speaking. It was the determined fulfillment that came from knowing that in a while, Brian would have to go home and Mikey would be alone again, here in his apartment with the DVDs and that one line on the kitchen wall that seemed to follow him around like a shadow in his mind.
+
This was not a slump, but a speed bump. He wasn't slowing to a stop, he was just slowing to tackle a problem and then he'd be on his way again. All in all, it was no reason to stop taking pot shots at Scott Shriner. Never in Scott Shriner's presence, of course, because Mikey never saw Scott Shriner anyway, but at Brian, who was Scott Shriner's friend, and that was almost as good.
"Why do you insist on using both his names?" asked Brian as Mikey put Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the DVD player. "It's Scott, not Scottshriner."
Mikey dropped onto the seat next to him, remote control in hand. "I don't know. It's like people never call Johnny Depp Johnny. He's always Johnny Depp."
"Yeah, but he's not Johnny Depp by any means. He's just Scott."
"And he'll probably never bang French models or make out with Christina Ricci. So. The movie's starting, fuckmook, shut up."
A speed bump. Every road had speed bumps. Well, most roads. Some roads. Specific types of roads, and Mikey's specific road had speed bumps, end of story. Someday he'd get his shit together. Someday he'd finish the song on his wall and perform at Brian's friends' clubs and people would clap and smile and cheer. Maybe he'd even get another record deal. Maybe even a better one than he got with Weezer.
"I want to have three arms," said Mikey after Cheech Marin goes off-screen, not because he really wanted to have three arms, but because he felt like saying something.
At the end of the movie, when Mikey saw Brian to the door, Brian said, "Why don't you ever give yourself a fighting chance? You know you can do more than this if you tried."
"Why don't you just ask me back into Weezer? No, don't ask me, you need to at least beg. You should get on your knees and suck my dick then ask me back into Weezer if you really want me riding that rock 'n roll tsunami again, my friend."
And Mikey almost said all that. Except, you know, he didn't. It would have been too close to the truth. Instead Mikey smirked and said, "Yeah, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
When Brian was gone, Mikey went into kitchen with a pencil and wrote lyric after lyric on the wall, trying to finish what he started, and, in the end, crossed out every last word.
+
They - whoever they were - were wrong: the past isn't prologue. The past is past and that was exactly the problem.
One day you're performing in the Royal Albert Hall, you're in lights, amplified, deified, girls shouting your name as you zip all over the place being a star. And it was so easy. And the next day you were Mikey Welsh in your LA apartment with nothing in it except a guitar, an unfinished song, and a shitload of DVDs filled with the beautiful, charismatic people you maybe had the opportunity to be, once upon a time, but not anymore, not anymore.
"I finished the song," said Mikey, sitting on the island, feet on the chair, receiver tucked between his shoulder and his ear.
"That's great," said Brian's tinny telephone voice. "When can I hear it?"
"Actually no I didn't," said Mikey, and the grin on his face felt misplaced and accounted for at the same time. "I didn't finish anything but I just wanted to see what it felt like to say it. You know. Get a taste of the alternate reality."
There was a sigh. "Mikey-"
"I know, I know, getting my shit together, getting it all together, man." He laughed. "Just for you."
"Don't do it for me, do it for you."
"I'll do it for Cillian Murphy."
"What?"
"You know. 28 Days Later."
"Oh. Right."
"The inspiration for this song. Kind of."
"Yeah. For Cillian Murphy and you."
"Brian."
"What?"
"...Yeah."
"What?"
A lot, is what. A bit of fear, a bit of desperation. Some anxiety. A need to go out on the town and celebrate life - his life, whatever that may be - in order to discover, through trial and error and an allegorical blind man's buff, just what in Mikey Welsh's life was worth celebrating. A stupid wish for people to start calling him Mikey Welsh instead of Mikey. Mikey Welsh. Mikey fucking Welsh. A question: what's going to happen to me, Brian? What'll they do to me?
But no one ever knew the answer to that anyway.
"Mikey?" said Brian. "What is it?"
Mikey shook his head even though he knew Brian couldn't see. "Nothing."
When the call ended, he went to the wall and read over the lyric again. Your veins are filled with disappearing ink. Unchanged. Static like its meaning. After a few seconds' contemplation, Mikey crossed it out, threw the pencil in the trash, and exited the kitchen.
The ink wasn't the only thing disappearing.
[end.]