William is quiet for a long time before he steps forward and gently pulls Cash’s hands from his own throat and brushes gentle fingertips over the flushed skin. “You think because you were made last that you don’t matter. That you’re less of me because I didn’t choose you.”*
When Pete Wentz decides to write a soap opera, he doesn’t do it small; he does it HUGE and gets everyone involved. But is the real soap opera the one playing out for the television audience with Spanish villas and pirates and evil, sinister betrothals or the one behind the scenes that involves pill poppers, awesome partiers, live chickens, romantic gay love, wacky Three’s Company Too mix ups and betrayal of the worst and most heinous kind? Well, that’s kind of up to the crazy mix of actors, musicians, various crew and production members to decide for themselves. Even if they are the ones in the thick of it.
There’s a voice inside his head telling him that this is Bill, this is Bill in pain, he should be there, he should try to make it better, he shouldn’t leave Bill alone, and there’s another voice reminding him of how much Bill likes his privacy, that he should respect the few intact boundaries they have left.*
Gabriela Saporta isn’t some pop princess. From Humble Beginnings to Midtown to Cobra Starship, she lives life her own way and damn the consequences.*
It’s a Friday night, and the rest of Midtown is at a hot wings place trying to beat the locals at trivia. Normally Gabe would be with them, but he’d been sidestage watching the Academy set tonight when Bill had demonstrated pole-dancing with his microphone stand, so he has other plans.*
It’s about three a.m. when the guy comes in, Frank guesses, because he’s just getting the itch for a cigarette but knows he doesn’t have another break coming for a while. The guy is young, although not that young, not a college kid on his first strip joint tour or hazing for a frat, and anyway he doesn’t look like the type.* Sequel to Straight Up Chicago Style.
“Wait, you’re the psychic?” isn’t the best first impression Gabe has ever made.* In the Behind the Sea verse.
“This isn’t exactly what I thought you had in mind when you said retreat, bro,” Gabe comments, fingers digging into muscle just enough to make William’s shoulders rise.*
He’s glad he didn’t know about William’s questionable lifestyle choice before they met, because he’d had this vision in his head of what Shakespearean actors were like, and frankly he wanted nothing to do with those weirdos.*
William is not entirely certain how this happened, how he became a veritable magnet for downtrodden orphans, but he’s going to blame John.*
That’s what I think of when you say ‘snakes on a plane’. I think of unplanned pregnancies.*
Gabe’s new microphone isn’t gold and William doesn’t sing with him anymore.*
When he gets home, styrofoam cup in hand, Gabe is sitting outside his door with that ever-present cigarette between his lips. “Sorry?” he offers, though it’s distant and lacking feeling. William just shrugs and lets Gabe into his apartment. Once they’re inside, he takes a drag of Gabe’s cigarette and Gabe takes a sip of his coffee and they end up fucking on William’s old, beat-up couch.*
Again, Gabe has managed to fall asleep. It’s a miracle, he thinks, and he’s having a fabulous dream about William, naked, with a Cobra hanging from his neck, when he feels something poking at his head. He slowly opens his eyes to meet the deer-in-the-headlights face of William Beckett. He says, “Um?*
Usually, when William comes, Gabe’s vision fills with bursts of robin’s egg blue. But when Gabe really works for it, really makes William feel it, sometimes focusing so much on his lover that he himself never reaches climax, William comes and Gabe sees rainbow. William comes hard and his voice can’t pick a key, ranging from high to low as he whimpers and moans and it’s all so musical that Gabe can hardly breathe and he ends up coming anyway.*
Mike is an angry 17 year old who’s been exiled from home for the summer while his parents finalize their divorce. Shipped off to William’s place, he’s startled to find that William has somehow found himself a shifty older boy friend, and an angel in the attic.*