Categories > Celebrities > Fall Out Boy > Dead On Arrival
There was something about the way the sunlight that was shimmering uncharacteristically through the windows of the front lounge at this early morning hour, but there was even something bigger about the way the golden rays danced across her cheek bones and illuminated the golden strands within her hair. Freezing this moment forever was the first idea that came to Patrick’s mind as he stood in the doorway between the bunks and the lounge, just watching her as she sat perched at the table with a sketch book and a rainbow of pastels spread out before her. The light movement of her head to the music flowing through her headphones seemed to fall perfectly in sync with the movement of her fingers across the paper, working so diligently in such a perfect rhythm. Patrick instantly regretted every moment, decision and career choice that he had made in his life that had brought him to this very moment.
Within seconds she had recognized his sheer presence in the room, because she always had such an unexplainable talent for such recognition. As her eyes rose up to meet his, she stole away Patrick’s perfect moment and he cursed the fleeting perfection as her right hand shot to the IPOD sitting on the table, pulling it from the table top to the bench she was seated on before switching it off as quickly as she could. Patrick just didn’t need to know that his voice was the only thing that could make her mind do anything productive these days, that could stay a secret.
Usually her mind would begin to estimate how long he had been standing there; just watching her but today he moved briskly to the refrigerator and began rummaging through it quietly before placing two water bottles on the table before them and taking a seat.
“Can’t sleep?” There was a hint of distress in his voice that Ana chose to ignore as he pulled his Macbook onto the table before him, avoiding the likely hood that it was probably her fault.
Pulling the buds from her ears and discarding them carelessly onto the table, she offered a shrug as her first response before giving in and giving up the truth.
“I guess I’m just not use to being back on the bus.”
With a swift understanding nod, Patrick studied the sight before him, the rendering of the waterfall she was working so adamantly on; his eyes traveled from the paper to her hands, stained with oils, spreading from her fingertips to her forearms and somehow managing to make a few stray color marks on the flesh of her cheeks. It was hard not to smile at the nostalgia of the moment at hand, or the moments that had since passed them by.
“I forgot how good that starving artist look works for you.” His lips were curling into a smile as he pulled his eyes away forcibly and returned his attention to the computer screen; her lips curling just the same as her ears were met with the sound of his comforting voice.
“I was so consumed in high school that I think I might have even had paint and oil on my prom dress.”
See her at her creative best would always be something that Patrick admired about Ana, even from a young age because throughout their lives together, there was always something about her ragged jeans covered in paint, oil stained fingers and overjoyed shoulders always lugging around that camera that made his heart flutter in his chest. Although the camera would never leave her hand, it had been far too long since he had seen her like this with color marks on her cheeks, her hair falling gracefully into her face as she worked contently against the pages of a sketch book.
“When I was 8, my parents realized I was better at taking the family holiday pictures than my mother was; they bought me my first camera and I’ve been consumed ever since.” Ana remembered her childhood creative epiphany so fondly as she smudged a few colors together on the page with her thumb.
“You’ve got a gift” Patrick sighed happily as he tried his hardest not to stare and to keep his attention on the task before him.
“As do you” Ana smiled, gesturing to the Macbook he was fiddling away at, “You’ve been mixing sounds and banging on shit since you could fully move those stubby arms of yours.”
Patrick smiled at the recollection of how the two best friends stumbled into their respective career paths, rising so graciously from such childhood enthusiasm.
“We were doomed from the start” Ana joked lightly as an uncharacteristically comfortable silence fell over them and the lifelong best friends returned their attentions back to their respective crafts.
Andy and Joe were locked into a heated battle of NBA live when Patrick returned to the bus some hours later in the late-afternoon when Ana’s things were already cleared from the bus and she was no where in plain sight.
“I think she’s sleeping” It wasn’t that Andy wanted to outwardly taunt Patrick in such a way, it was just a given that Patrick wanted to know the answer to the question he hadn’t even posed yet, and Andy was saving himself the trouble of having to wait until Patrick asked to give the answer.
With a slightly embarrassed nod of his head, Patrick shuffled past their game, past the shouting, cursing threats of their competition and made his way through the bunks towards his bedroom. It was habit to slow down his pace when he reached the bunk she had been calling home, frowning heavily when he found the curtain pulled back and the bed left empty. Maybe she’s with Travis, or out running or taking pictures somewhere because really, there were hundreds of explanations that Patrick was running through his head at the moment, but none of them mattered the moment that the door to his bedroom slid open and he found her curled up, asleep on his bed amidst the junk that he had somehow begun collecting since she stopped sharing his home away from home with him.
The door quietly slid shut behind him and he shuffled to the bed, placing his Macbook down onto the mattress beside her before digging out his headphones and quietly climbing into bed next to her; admiring her sleeping frame as her eyes fluttered open nervously.
The sudden movement on the bed next to her pulled her from her peaceful slumber, her body shaking suddenly from sleep. The first words to fall from her lips were an apology because obviously, falling asleep in his bed, the only place she felt safe, wasn’t going to make this visit any less awkward.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t fall asleep in the bunk” Lying with a weak smile, she yawned lightly, “Joe and Andy were being kind of rowdy.”
Patrick knew her to well to ignore the way her lips curled lightly in the corners when she lied, but having her close to him and knowing that she needed him in such a way was reassuring to his broken heart.
“No big deal” Offering her a friendly smile as his fingers hit the keys in his lap as he spoke quietly, “sleep as long as you want, I’ll be quite.”
Looking at her any longer would have made that dull pounding in his chest pound just a little harder because it just wasn’t going to be easy to sit with her like this, lying next to him in his bed, what use to be their bed, so he naturally adverted his eyes to his computer screen, his holy safe haven. Plugging his headphones in, he began tweaking at the sounds and beats, arranging them in such a strategic way, hoping to drift away to his place of content happiness but moments later her head was on his shoulder and his muscles were tenser than he ever imagined they could be.
His eyes met hers now and that bright smile that spread on her lips made his heart do that fluttering beat in his chest again, cursing his weak emotional tolerance. “Can I hear?”
There was always something about the way her eyes shimmered when she was excited that would make him fall in love with her all over again each day for the rest of his life so it was obvious he had no will power against her, but to be dramatic, for effect, he forced an exaggerated sigh past his lips. “I guess so”, as he pulled the headphones from the jack, allowing the sound waves to filter through the room around them.
“New Gym Class?” Ana questioned as she watched the track run on the computer screen; Patrick shrugged in response.
“Not necessarily, just something I was playing around with.”
“I like it” Ana’s smile was genuine and she couldn’t help that fleeting feeling in her stomach as he turned to face her with a quite smile playing on his lips.
“You have fuzz from the pillow on your eyelash” His laugh was comforting as her eyelids slid shut gracefully and his middle finger brushed the stray piece of linen away from her lashes.
The feeling of his fingertips grazing her cheek was almost too much for her to handle and when her eyes fluttered back open and he seemed so much closer to her than before it took every ounce of her physical power to will herself not to kill him, not to feel his perfect lips against her own, not to fall back into everything that she had been running from for so long.
The tension in the room was hanging heavy and could be cut like butter with a hot knife and Patrick tried his hardest to bring the situation and conversation back to a friendly, social level, interjecting almost spastically as his eyes returned to the illuminated computer screen, “Did you finish any more drawings?”
“A few, actually” Ana responded nervously as she sat up straight and placed her hands awkwardly in her lap. Moments which felt like hours of awkward silence passed heavily between them before they had both come to the same simultaneous conclusion.
“We need to talk—“
“I think we—“
“Wait, what?” Patrick clarified for the sake of coherence.
Ana sighed heavily, her eyes studying the intricacies of her fingers and palms. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah, I think we, maybe, uh, we should …”
Patrick nervously stuttered out a jumbled response, searching clumsily for the words to form the thoughts that were bursting into a cloud of chaos in his mind, but before he could fully express his current feelings there was a loud knock on the door, followed closely by Joe’s booming call.
“Yo, Trick! We have to pick out our racks for the night, Diaz is flipping shit, we’ve gotta go before he blows a coronary.”
Ana’s eyes traveled from the wooden door back to the hands folded in her lap as Patrick hung his head in frustration, shutting his laptop before shuffling up from the bed. “When I get back, we’ll figure this out.”
Nodding some sort of understanding, with a heavy defeated sigh was all Ana could do as the door slide open and Patrick disappeared into the hallway of bunks. In retrospect, she should be use to this by now, after all, this is what was keeping them from what they were, and still should be.
Within seconds she had recognized his sheer presence in the room, because she always had such an unexplainable talent for such recognition. As her eyes rose up to meet his, she stole away Patrick’s perfect moment and he cursed the fleeting perfection as her right hand shot to the IPOD sitting on the table, pulling it from the table top to the bench she was seated on before switching it off as quickly as she could. Patrick just didn’t need to know that his voice was the only thing that could make her mind do anything productive these days, that could stay a secret.
Usually her mind would begin to estimate how long he had been standing there; just watching her but today he moved briskly to the refrigerator and began rummaging through it quietly before placing two water bottles on the table before them and taking a seat.
“Can’t sleep?” There was a hint of distress in his voice that Ana chose to ignore as he pulled his Macbook onto the table before him, avoiding the likely hood that it was probably her fault.
Pulling the buds from her ears and discarding them carelessly onto the table, she offered a shrug as her first response before giving in and giving up the truth.
“I guess I’m just not use to being back on the bus.”
With a swift understanding nod, Patrick studied the sight before him, the rendering of the waterfall she was working so adamantly on; his eyes traveled from the paper to her hands, stained with oils, spreading from her fingertips to her forearms and somehow managing to make a few stray color marks on the flesh of her cheeks. It was hard not to smile at the nostalgia of the moment at hand, or the moments that had since passed them by.
“I forgot how good that starving artist look works for you.” His lips were curling into a smile as he pulled his eyes away forcibly and returned his attention to the computer screen; her lips curling just the same as her ears were met with the sound of his comforting voice.
“I was so consumed in high school that I think I might have even had paint and oil on my prom dress.”
See her at her creative best would always be something that Patrick admired about Ana, even from a young age because throughout their lives together, there was always something about her ragged jeans covered in paint, oil stained fingers and overjoyed shoulders always lugging around that camera that made his heart flutter in his chest. Although the camera would never leave her hand, it had been far too long since he had seen her like this with color marks on her cheeks, her hair falling gracefully into her face as she worked contently against the pages of a sketch book.
“When I was 8, my parents realized I was better at taking the family holiday pictures than my mother was; they bought me my first camera and I’ve been consumed ever since.” Ana remembered her childhood creative epiphany so fondly as she smudged a few colors together on the page with her thumb.
“You’ve got a gift” Patrick sighed happily as he tried his hardest not to stare and to keep his attention on the task before him.
“As do you” Ana smiled, gesturing to the Macbook he was fiddling away at, “You’ve been mixing sounds and banging on shit since you could fully move those stubby arms of yours.”
Patrick smiled at the recollection of how the two best friends stumbled into their respective career paths, rising so graciously from such childhood enthusiasm.
“We were doomed from the start” Ana joked lightly as an uncharacteristically comfortable silence fell over them and the lifelong best friends returned their attentions back to their respective crafts.
Andy and Joe were locked into a heated battle of NBA live when Patrick returned to the bus some hours later in the late-afternoon when Ana’s things were already cleared from the bus and she was no where in plain sight.
“I think she’s sleeping” It wasn’t that Andy wanted to outwardly taunt Patrick in such a way, it was just a given that Patrick wanted to know the answer to the question he hadn’t even posed yet, and Andy was saving himself the trouble of having to wait until Patrick asked to give the answer.
With a slightly embarrassed nod of his head, Patrick shuffled past their game, past the shouting, cursing threats of their competition and made his way through the bunks towards his bedroom. It was habit to slow down his pace when he reached the bunk she had been calling home, frowning heavily when he found the curtain pulled back and the bed left empty. Maybe she’s with Travis, or out running or taking pictures somewhere because really, there were hundreds of explanations that Patrick was running through his head at the moment, but none of them mattered the moment that the door to his bedroom slid open and he found her curled up, asleep on his bed amidst the junk that he had somehow begun collecting since she stopped sharing his home away from home with him.
The door quietly slid shut behind him and he shuffled to the bed, placing his Macbook down onto the mattress beside her before digging out his headphones and quietly climbing into bed next to her; admiring her sleeping frame as her eyes fluttered open nervously.
The sudden movement on the bed next to her pulled her from her peaceful slumber, her body shaking suddenly from sleep. The first words to fall from her lips were an apology because obviously, falling asleep in his bed, the only place she felt safe, wasn’t going to make this visit any less awkward.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t fall asleep in the bunk” Lying with a weak smile, she yawned lightly, “Joe and Andy were being kind of rowdy.”
Patrick knew her to well to ignore the way her lips curled lightly in the corners when she lied, but having her close to him and knowing that she needed him in such a way was reassuring to his broken heart.
“No big deal” Offering her a friendly smile as his fingers hit the keys in his lap as he spoke quietly, “sleep as long as you want, I’ll be quite.”
Looking at her any longer would have made that dull pounding in his chest pound just a little harder because it just wasn’t going to be easy to sit with her like this, lying next to him in his bed, what use to be their bed, so he naturally adverted his eyes to his computer screen, his holy safe haven. Plugging his headphones in, he began tweaking at the sounds and beats, arranging them in such a strategic way, hoping to drift away to his place of content happiness but moments later her head was on his shoulder and his muscles were tenser than he ever imagined they could be.
His eyes met hers now and that bright smile that spread on her lips made his heart do that fluttering beat in his chest again, cursing his weak emotional tolerance. “Can I hear?”
There was always something about the way her eyes shimmered when she was excited that would make him fall in love with her all over again each day for the rest of his life so it was obvious he had no will power against her, but to be dramatic, for effect, he forced an exaggerated sigh past his lips. “I guess so”, as he pulled the headphones from the jack, allowing the sound waves to filter through the room around them.
“New Gym Class?” Ana questioned as she watched the track run on the computer screen; Patrick shrugged in response.
“Not necessarily, just something I was playing around with.”
“I like it” Ana’s smile was genuine and she couldn’t help that fleeting feeling in her stomach as he turned to face her with a quite smile playing on his lips.
“You have fuzz from the pillow on your eyelash” His laugh was comforting as her eyelids slid shut gracefully and his middle finger brushed the stray piece of linen away from her lashes.
The feeling of his fingertips grazing her cheek was almost too much for her to handle and when her eyes fluttered back open and he seemed so much closer to her than before it took every ounce of her physical power to will herself not to kill him, not to feel his perfect lips against her own, not to fall back into everything that she had been running from for so long.
The tension in the room was hanging heavy and could be cut like butter with a hot knife and Patrick tried his hardest to bring the situation and conversation back to a friendly, social level, interjecting almost spastically as his eyes returned to the illuminated computer screen, “Did you finish any more drawings?”
“A few, actually” Ana responded nervously as she sat up straight and placed her hands awkwardly in her lap. Moments which felt like hours of awkward silence passed heavily between them before they had both come to the same simultaneous conclusion.
“We need to talk—“
“I think we—“
“Wait, what?” Patrick clarified for the sake of coherence.
Ana sighed heavily, her eyes studying the intricacies of her fingers and palms. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah, I think we, maybe, uh, we should …”
Patrick nervously stuttered out a jumbled response, searching clumsily for the words to form the thoughts that were bursting into a cloud of chaos in his mind, but before he could fully express his current feelings there was a loud knock on the door, followed closely by Joe’s booming call.
“Yo, Trick! We have to pick out our racks for the night, Diaz is flipping shit, we’ve gotta go before he blows a coronary.”
Ana’s eyes traveled from the wooden door back to the hands folded in her lap as Patrick hung his head in frustration, shutting his laptop before shuffling up from the bed. “When I get back, we’ll figure this out.”
Nodding some sort of understanding, with a heavy defeated sigh was all Ana could do as the door slide open and Patrick disappeared into the hallway of bunks. In retrospect, she should be use to this by now, after all, this is what was keeping them from what they were, and still should be.
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