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omegalomania · 2 years

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i would like to hear more on the patrick vs brendon vocal ability discussion if you would maybe want to rant 👀 👀 (hshsgehdv also I've recently come to know that mr urie is Not that great of a Person so appreciate you for making that post <3)

all right so full disclaimer: the last time i had any notable vocal training was like about 10 years ago. i did get some vocal training but i have undergone hrt since then so most of what i did know is pretty useless since ive never taken the time to actually relearn my range. my understanding of this stuff is old and limited so if anyone whos actually up to date on this shit can weigh in thats always great. im doing this because im a salty mccuntnugget whos had too much honey jack daniels for one night and that apparently is what supercharges me to write emo bandmember cringe compilation posts. somehow.

this got long so im throwing it beneath a cut. click for more if you wanna read about one guy on the internet having Opinions about which of these two dudes sings better

so once again: this is MYYYY OPINION im not your mom you are free to disagree or whatever i literally do not care. but an anon asked so im going to answer. here we go.

FIRST NOTE. comparisons between patrick and brendon have been going on since the dawn of the fucking age but brendon his own damn self decided to act like patrick was copying him vocally so that means i can be as mean as i want cause he started it. we’re doing playground logic here cause this is my blog and i do what i want and also cause hes that much of a cunt.

so i want to start things off with a reminder that patrick stump did not set out to be a singer! he was not picked out of a lineup for his vocal ability. he mostly just wanted to write songs, and it was joe and pete who made a point of saying "no actually you should sing." and it takes patrick a while to actually grow into his range and gain confidence as a singer since his real love is composition. it's not until infinity on high in 2007 that you really hear him growing into his own as a vocalist and it's not until the hiatus/posthiatus that you really hear his vocal confidence.

brendon got to be the singer for panic because bassist brent wilson knew him in high school and he thought his vocal ability was top notch. the rest of the band agreed. it also took brendon a while to grow into his voice. in fact in the early days before panic actually took off (aka before ryan ross badgered pete wentz into signing a band of mostly high schoolers), people on old fob forums legitimately thought that brendon WAS patrick. old articles refer to panic as fall out boy clones for probably that reason.

brendon actually made his vocal debut on a fall out boy record, from under the cork tree (which was released may 5 2005, whereas panic's debut a fever you can't sweat out wouldn't release until september 27 2005). he does a little part in 7 minutes in heaven (atavan halen) on the chorus (he does the second "i keep telling myself, i keep telling myself i'm not the desperate type") and it's genuinely something a lot of people miss, because he sounds a lot like patrick here. later in 2008, this would happen again on 20 dollar nosebleed, which gave brendon a much bigger vocal part (again he splits the chorus with patrick) but in which their vocal inflections are very very similar to the point where a lot of people don’t realize he contributed vocals there.

so there are a lot of similarities, particularly when these two guys were still growing into their voices. it was during fob's hiatus that these started to diverge, and by 2017 they would be wildly different.

patrick readily admitted a lot that he never really intended to be a singer and it wasn't until infinity on high (2007) that he made a genuine attempt to be a singer in earnest. this reticence would often show live. it wasn't until the hiatus and then posthiatus that patrick, and also the rest of the band, had a consistent live presence imo. fob had a lot of infamously sloppy shows - fun to watch, but sonically kind of all over the place - and patrick wouldn't always be the most consistent vocalist. he'd be strong one night and breathy the next, and it wasn't until the hiatus that he started taking vocal lessons.

but the improvement really really shows now. patrick is a much more consistent and powerful vocalist posthiatus, and he's reportedly incredibly diligent in taking care of his voice. that's why you often see him making these kinds of faces in backstage videos; he's doing vocal trills, which are a specific kind of warmup that helps limber up the voice preshow. they look and sound a little silly, but warmups are important to make sure you dont damage your voice. patrick has specific warmup routines and also goes on vocal rest and doesn't do a lot of talking prior to doing a show.

so brendon does double shots before every show. i’ll be honest here i tried to do more research into what goes into warmup routines before panic shows but i Cannot deal with hearing this man talk about himself more than i already have tonight so if anyone else wants to source whatever he does. please do. i would not be surprised if he treats his voice fucking atrociously but even if he doesn’t...his upper register (which is basically his one party trick in live settings) is starting to sound awful strained on studio vocals as of 2022, which is not a good look.

i also want to emphasize that even if his technical ability took time to really come into its own, patrick has always been an incredibly emotionally versatile vocalist. from under the cork tree is really the first time you get to see this shine, where patrick swings from cocky tongue-in-cheek irony (our lawyer made us change the name of this song so we wouldn't get sued) to aching vulnerability (i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth) to snarling anger and accusation [get busy living or get busy dying (do you part to save the scene and stop going to shows)]. factor in the bonus tracks and you get patrick at his most ruthless (my heart is the worst kind of weapon), his most raw and desolate (star 67), and a rare appearance of some borderline unclean vocals (snitches and talkers get stitches and walkers).

posthiatus this is even more apparent. save rock and roll in 2013 demanded an incredible depth of emotional and technical range, and patrick was noticeably a little gun-shy about actually committing to doing those kinds of riffs live, since he wasn’t sure he was going to have to perform those songs live. by 2018′s mania, i want to emphasize that you can actually HEAR patrick smiling in "sunshine riptide." on mania, you also have songs that demand a diverse range of tone and vocal depth: “stay frosty royal milk tea” is a snarling, punchy opening track that reminds you that patrick was a drummer first, but this is also paired with the eclectic edm-soaked “young and menace,” the crooning doo-wop style ballad “heaven’s gate,” the reggae-flavored “HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T,” and the closing track which, full disclosure, is probably one of my favorite songs of all time, “bishops knife trick.” and patrick pulls them all off! the best display of this was that he was able to do young and menace live in both its original incarnation and in the somber, stripped-down piano version.

also, as a note: fall out boy songs are really fucking hard to sing. the vocal range they demand is absolutely insane even if you’re not some drummer who got strongarmed into being a singer. the fact that patrick can replicate these vocals live and maintain a rich emotional diversity in tone is really, really noteworthy.

panic songs are also pretty hard to sing. they require a lot of vocal acrobatics, which was an ambitious thing for a band composed of mostly high schoolers when they started out. early performances were really rough because not only was brendon struggling, the rest of the band was struggling to perform songs live that ryan ross wrote on his computer lol.

so now is the part where i start drinking heavily so i can talk about brendon vocals. brendon has the technical talent, even if, like patrick, it took him a while to grow into it. but his emotional versatility is, imo, sorely lacking, and that was evident in early days but it would only get more glaring as time went on. a fever you can’t sweat out in 2005 had a lot of really intensely emotional moments and emotionally charged songs, but it took me a few listens to really grok that because brendon sings them all with the same upbeat energy. and you can put that down on him being an inexperienced singer still figuring his way around this whole “being a frontman” gig, but the trend actively continues and in fact gets worse over time. i think 2008′s pretty. odd. gave us some insight into this due to the pronounced vocal role that ryan ross gets on that album. he takes lead vocals on “behind the sea” and gives us some audible backing vocals throughout in a way that suggests to me that, on some level, the band was aware that they needed someone with more emotional range to counter brendon’s straight-on belting.

so it’s...kind of uncomfortable seeing brendon do said full on belting and also a borderline striptease dance to “camisado” live (which, for those not in the know, is a song ryan ross wrote about his life with his abusive alcoholic father). and i’m not gonna pretend i have any say in whether or not ryan was okay with something so ruinously personal being performed in that kind of way when he was no longer in the band, but it SURE does sit kinda weird with me!

cause brendon is a belter, and that’s just kind of his one mode. this really got more apparent after vices and virtues (2011), and too weird to live, too rare to die (2013), because there was a little more emotional range there. but that pretty much dies out after those records and brendon kind of has these two moods for everything released here on out: it’s either “i love weed” or “i love my wife” and there’s not a lot of range between. he doesn’t have much in the way of moderation. my one single experience in attempting to see panic live (in 2019, no less. it wasn’t a good time lol) was just kind of...relentlessly high-energy regardless of the song, because again, that seems to be brendon’s one setting. he frantically climbs the scale and hits really high notes to keep the energy up without ever actually letting it dial down at any point. it’s not about playing to the song; it’s about reminding the audience, constantly, of what a vocal powerhouse he is, at all times. this does nothing whatsoever to counteract how emotionally flat he is as a performer.

remember that point i made about the differences between patrick’s performance of the high-energy original flavor young and menace and its acoustic piano version? well, you get a superficially similar instance in brendon’s renditions of “this is gospel” in both its original incarnation and the piano version, but i want to point out the difference in tone here. or rather, the fact that there kind of isn’t one. contextually, “this is gospel” is a pretty somber song. it was written for and about spencer smith and his struggles with addiction before his eventual departure from the band, but it’s kind of hard for me personally to reconcile that with the way brendon vocalizes it, even in what is supposed to be a slower, more intimate rendition of it.

this got more glaring in 2018 on pray for the wicked, which gave us “dying in la” which...is i guess, brendon’s attempt at some tonal diversity on an album that was basically back to front “CHECK OUT THIS WILD PARTY I’M AT” but it doesn’t really go anywhere, imo. it builds to something, but...doesn’t actually resolve. i’m gauging this all on vocals, not lyrics, because that’s the point of comparison i’m making - lyrics are a whole other kettle of fish. it’s just like, the guy cannot dial back even for a second and as a result there is NO variation in the way he performs, studio or live. after it’s been long enough, it just kind of starts to wear at you.

another very telling difference is how different patrick and brendon’s backing vocals are. backing vocals by definition need to be much more restrained than if you're taking lead. here's patrick backing travie in 2010 - he's very understated here. distinct and audible, giving us some nice vocal harmonies, but he keeps the spotlight very truly and deservedly on travie. this is also true for studio vocals, like on the lupe fiaso track "little weapon" from 2007 in which patrick isn't even one of the vocal features. he's audible if you know what to listen for, but most of his touch comes from the track's production and composition. more recently, here's patrick doing studio backing vocals in 2017 for a cover of "same drugs" with matt nathanson. once again, he's very good at dialing things back because he's not the lead here and he knows it.

let's contrast this with the cover 2010 panic did of "skid row" from little show of horrors, wherein dallon is meant to be the lead. fortunately dallon manages to shine regardless, but it's...a little jarring that brendon is ostensibly meant to be the support here but vocally and stylistically is belting like he's front and center. another telling instance is this performance of “america’s suitehearts” featuring brendon. in fairness, both patrick and brendon sound pretty rough here since this is a hard song to pull off! but brendon is supposed to be pulling support, and he’s riffing like he’s center stage. and it’s not particularly good riffing either lol.

“what a catch donnie” is the most egregious example of this though. i’ve said this before, but brendon REALLY sticks out in a not great way on what’s supposed to be a soulful, honorary vocal feature. the rest of the fueled by ramen guys singing along are doing their guest spots in a very understated, tonally consistent fashion: distinct in their own rights, if you know what to look for, but definitely doing what they can to fit into the tone of the song. brendon comes barreling in singing DANCE DANCE like this is his fucking show, and it sticks out so badly because he’s doing nothing whatsoever to conform to the tone of the piece.

a couple more points of comparison that i personally find really interesting:

“one of THOSE nights” off of the cab’s debut album whisper war (sidebar: GREAT ALBUM. i miss this band so fuckin much man) features both brendon and patrick; brendon is heard doing the post-chorus, and patrick does the final bridge and can be heard on the final chorus. both of them are belting here, but patrick’s got a strong emotion that suits the finish without being too overpowering and also crucially doesn’t just stay...flat.

patrick actually does backing vocals on a couple other tracks on whisper war, like “i’m a wonder,” and in both that track and “one of THOSE nights” you can hear how much technical and emotional dexterity he has. the former has him belting and the latter has him doing a very restrained backing falsetto.

folie a deux era gave us two gentle lullaby pieces for pete’s first kid. the first is “lullabye,” the album’s hidden bonus track. the second is “bronx’s lullaby.” patrick does the first, brendon does the second. the first sounds very gentle and tender, and the second sounds...i mean, i can tell what he’s going for. but it just kind of sounds ominous to me. so basically i can see why most people will talk about the former and ignore the latter lol lol

did you guys know brendon was on broadway. im kidding im kidding he has literally not shut up about being on broadway and seems to have made that his tertiary character trait since kinky boots. anyway here’s brendon sounding like brendon on kinky boots and basically performing the song like any other panic song. here is patrick covering rocky horror and nailing tim curry’s part. i don’t have any live covers of patrick to have a more accurate point of comparison (he’s in his studio here so he had the luxury of picking the best take) but i just think its fucking wild that patrick wasnt the one of them to go on broadway. fucks sake man.

i COULD compare the two of these guys covering queen but that just seems mean because fob was doing a whole entire studio session and brendon was just doing it over zoom and nah im just kidding i really am that petty. anyway here’s fall out boy covering under pressure and patrick dueting with himself and managing to nail both freddie mercury and david bowie’s parts without losing his own distinctive touch. here’s brendon doing his cover of under pressure and thanks i hate it.

lastly, cause i did my fuckin research here. here are some vocal coaches taking notes on live vocals for patrick and brendon respectively. you might note that they have a lot more notes to give to the latter, a lot more cautionary tales about how much brendon pushes his voice. if they do have critique to offer patrick, it’s in regards to clips of his prehiatus performances (or for that one 2013 thnks fr th mmrs performance when he was sick lol).

the bottom line for me is that patrick, stylistically, just has more range and more versatility. he can do virtually any genre - dancehall, rock, pop, rnb, hardcore, ska, funk, and SO MANY FUCKING MORE - and he can still sound distinctly himself. and for me, brendon only ever sounds like he’s singing the same song in the same genre; molding the song to suit his tastes and his range, and not the other way around.

all right thats all ive got steam for. patrick has always been a much more distinct and capable vocalist in my opinion and it kinda sucks that general public opinion seems to favor brendon so heavily cause brendon’s basically only got one emotional setting and couches the fact that he has no vocal dexterity in a lot of high notes and everyone just eats it up. it’s a diverting tactic and it’s worked. but that kinda seems to be brendon’s m.o. these days since he’s trying to shake low opinion of him by drumming up controversy and writing a song about a dude who hasn’t been in the same band as him in 13 years so

#askin hours #anon #i had to open so many incognito windows for this cause i dont want this infecting my youtubes lol #i just use youtube to watch vinesauce streams and once a month i rewatch line goes up and sherlock is garbage #ive also said this before but its really really telling to me how patrick and brendon get involved w other artists #patrick loves music. he loves composition he loves instrumentation #he loves writing songs for people and he'll sing if he's asked to but mostly he just loves music #brendon just seems to love attention. he never takes a project that doesn't put him in center stage

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ducktracy · 6 months

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What’s your favorite Patrick design?

my answer is unsurprising but i promise i’m answer if this with as much objectivity as i can, and answering as a fan of cartoons and what appeals to my sensibilities: BUT! his design in The Patrick Star Show.

i think it just brings such a great aesthetic balance and COMMUNICATES a lot about his character too! i think the inverted theming is clever with his shorts being opaque purple and his shirt green with flowers (as opposed to the green trunks and purple flowers). likewise, it makes me think back to his appearances in the earliest days—the same guy who asks SpongeBob if Sandy is putting on airs would absolutely wear a Hawaiian button up. it’s leisurely and loose, a bit “zany” even to match his endearingly off-color personality, but there’s a sort of prestige to it too! or, at least, as much prestige that can be found in a Hawaiian button up. and i feel like that prestige matches a guy who misinterprets “a hat full of air” as “putting on airs”. he looks like such a buddy, y’know? like someone who gives you that advice that you probably shouldn’t be listening to, but just has such a naturally warm conviction that its hard not to.

as for general art style.. it’s funny, i don’t have a major preference! i gravitate towards his earlier appearances in S1, but i do that with all characters… the show(s) in recent seasons have been really great at capturing a nice balance between some reserved cute charm and fun energy. i’m really not too picky because Patrick’s not too picky! i will say i do tend to gravitate to a style that has slightly bigger/taller eyes and a taller forehead… i tend not to be a fan of The Tooth, but especially when i was first starting out i could understand why it was such a crutch.

alternate, much shorter and more facetious answer: shout-out to the handful of you who remember when this was my profile pic back in early 2019!

#i’ve become so used to seeing him with a shirt—whether from TPSS or my time on Kamp Koral—that to see him in his regular design with #just the trunks always catches me by surprise #i think TPSS design has become my mental default but i mean. i’m staring at it 40 hours a week (sometimes more!) so DUH #i love Patrick. can i just say i love Patrick #SpongeBob and Plankton remain my favorites and even growing up i never had any strong feelings about him #but now he’s almost like. not even a friend but almost like a brother. he has such a brother energy to me. maybe that’s me mentally #projecting myself into Squidina’s role since i have my own older brother but a brother is a good way to describe him #i’m concerned with getting all of these characters right because its my JOB and just who i am but i do find myself really straining to do #Patrick justice and really getting deep into his mindset when i can. more so than other characters #i love him. he’s another character (like again all of these characters) who has a deceptive amount of layers #i enjoy deciphering his mental gymnastics and try to really give him more depth when i can #anonymous #asks

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acaesic · 2 months

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i really want to finish all my unfinished art before i turn 15 but im so burnt out rn 😭 </3

#i have two days #including this one #i wanna draw #but also i fucking hate drawing #but i love drawing but i HAT EIT AND ITS THE WORST AAAAAUUGGGHHHHHHHHH #mostly because i just wanna feel like less of a failure in some way #art for me is about 50% passion and 50% a crippling desire to prove that im not useless and an idiot #so because of the lack of stability there i always end up with a dozen unfinished art projects #when i cant live up to my own expectations i give up #i think this is me still clinging to my childhood in a way #i always wanted to be a child prodigy but i never had talent or skill in anything #so now that im rapidly getting further and further from childhood i feel a desperate need to prove that im not worthless #its like #my 15th birthday feels to me like how jonathan larson did about his 30th. is that fucked up to say ..#aaaaaaaaaaa :’) i want to finish all the art i promised but i genuinely just. cant #chase said something alright #sigh. i have ideas #im plagued with visions but i have none of the time #i want to draw patrick and pete #i want to draw the cast of community all smiling and stuff. because i love and adore all of them #id like to finish my vampire dallon art but im So Bad at shading without reference #i so desperately want to just share my art and feel okay but I CANT ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH #IVE MADE SO MANY EMPTY PROMISES ABOUT FINISHING ART AND SHARING ART AND AND AND FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #someone tell me im not useless #<- dont do that im responsible for my own happiness #anyway UM. sorry if you opened this #you know what. in spite of everything i didnt do at least um. uhhhhhhhh #i won a 3ft tall shadow the hedgehog plushie at a carnival.

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felloweeper · 6 months

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*more book spoilers* hi, it's the cufflinks anon again, thank you for your reply to my ask, I'm very excited for your post on the cufflinks, it's such a small yet heartbreaking detail. Another thing I noticed about the cufflinks scene in the epilogue is that Mary says Tim's sister found them on Tim's night-table when he passed, implying that his sister is the one who arranged for him to be buried in the cufflinks - I find this interesting in the context of the show, given that Tim's sister is shown to be disapproving and at times outright hostile (with good reason) towards Hawk, and again, I really hope we get to see the cufflinks come up again in the show. And re: the epilogue in general, I also find it interesting that Mary says Tim hadn't been involved in politics for 20 years and died of bone cancer, not AIDS (personally I wonder if this is a compassionate lie she's telling Hawk?). I like that the show took a different direction with 1980s Tim, I think it was absolutely the right decision, I just wonder what prompted the change. The epilogue also makes me think of Hawk as a rather unreliable narrator at times, especially with regards to his compartmentalization and repression of his feelings for Tim, while in the show we see Hawk have some very vulnerable moments in 1986 with Tim, which I love.

yes, in the book, tim's sister notices how much the cufflinks mean to him very early on. she doesn't piece together that it's hawk until way later, though, but she notices tim's feelings are strong. and, yes, the contrast between his sister in the book vs in the miniseries is drastic. i love the change, though. again, adds so much to the tension.

i had never thought that she may be covering up his actual manner of death!! in the prologue, hawk just straight up assumes that tim died of aids. i felt that having mary say he actually died of bone cancer was an awakening of some sort for hawk and his assumptions and judgments of people. i think that's a really interesting point, but mary as a character (in my opinion, lmk if you or anyone else feels differently) was someone who showed hawk little to no mercy. i don't think there was any point where she wasn't incredibly blunt to him and that's something he really admired about her. if anything, she was the one who was on his ass the most about how she was treating tim. i'll definitely keep that in mind, though!

hawk is absolutely an unreliable character. sometimes you're not sure who's speaking when it's in his perspective: his exterior or interior self. there's definitely small, softer moments he thinks about -- he has romantic moments, but they're very rare. seeing them on the show be much softer with each other, the intimacy is so much more alive and beautiful. in the book, it's just sad and hard to look at. being that hawk's intentions are always so secretive, you find yourself not wanting to dwell too much in the happiness because you know the next blow is gonna hit just as hard.

#fellow travelers #hawkins fuller #book vs series #book vs tv #fellow travelers spoiler #fellow travelers spoilers #anon ask #no idea if the show will include much of the cufflinks shit #i'll be on the floor screaming if it does #again this reminds me of my policeman bc the entire book is written from marion and patrick's perspective of this man they both love #so you never know who tom really is #he's just this projection of their own view of perfection #very similar to hawk

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angelfrombeneth · 16 days

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SECRET - A . DONALDSON

Sexual Content Ahead

Art Donaldson x Fem!ChubbyReader

Summary: Where you and Art are 'secretly' hooking up without your friends knowing.

Warnings: SMUT (18+), Born with barely any plot, Art is slightly pathetic in this, Reader loves a cheeky ass grab.

Note: This one is a quick one I rushed, because I'm writing a nice long Art fic for yall. So please enjoy this for now.

If you told yourself 3 years ago that you'd be sat on some bleachers watching tennis you wouldn't believe it.

You were never interested in tennis, you knew about it obviously but it was never your thing.

You came to Stanford as an international student due to the fat scholarship you recieved so you packed your bags from London to California.

That is where you met Tashi Duncan, your best friend. She introduced herself to you one day in the library after hearing you tap away to the music playing in your headphones. It was a close call, she saved you from another warning from the librarian.

Tashi and you were inseparable. Learning about eachother more you discovered she played tennis and was quite well known but you had no clue. She found this a breath of fresh air as everyone knew of her some how. She put it down to the fact your from a different country additionally to your lack of interest of the sport.

Tashi coaxed you to come watch her warm ups and games - which you did being a great friend. But you sported to opening your sketchbook and sketching out the scene infront of you additionally. Might aswell do a research project on human posing and what better sport that tennis.

After your first semester you noticed Tashi always hanging out with this tall lanky man. He seemed nice but, you'd never seen him around. She told you he was her 'thing' which made you both laugh over lunch one time. She had mentioned he will be around alot more and he has a friend and that's when you met Art Donaldson, and well. The rest is history.

It had been a good year since you met Patrick and Art and you four were now a little quad. Despite the three of them being raging tennis players and you just sat on the side line they didn't mind.

You did try to take up a sport but it just wasn't for you, after Tashi found you face down in a bush after a 100m sprint.

You were watching Art play against someone from another University - you weren't listening to their name though.

Tashi and Patrick sat beside you, gasping and groaning, cheering and whooping at what was going on in the game but you only knew so much.

In the year you've known Art, you two had a great bond and tend to.. dip into eachothers bonds from time to time. You had no clue if Tashi or Patrick knew about your occasional flings with Art, you both never aired it nor got caught it just happened sometimes.

But as of late, you can't take your eyes off him. The way his shorts ride up his muscly thighs as he jumps from one end of the court to the other. The way his hair bounces but also sticks to his forehead due to his sweat. You were slightly obsessed.

You wouldn't say you had feelings for him, it never got deep enough for that. But you craved him. You craved every single inch of him and how he'd just melt into your hand.

"COME ON!!" You jump slightly as you were ripped out of your daydream as Tashi flew up beside you screaming as you looked at Art celebrating on the court.

You smiled, standing up and clapping as you grabbed everyone's coats and bags as Tashi and Patrick dashed off to see Art.

Climbing down the stairs was tricky balancing everything but as soon as you saw Tashi and Patrick bust through the door of the court as they piled onto Art you smiled. Walking towards them as you put down the stuff.

Art turned to you smiling, walking up to you and pulling you in for a hug. It wasn't unusual just took you off guard.

"We should celebrate! Let's go out for dinner" Tashi smiled.

"I love a good dinner" You smiled as they all chuckled at you.

You got changed for the dinner into a little black dress, you can never go wrong with it. Tashi texted you earlier her and Patrick will be late - which you assumed they were fucking in his car yet again. Dinners cancelled you assumed.

You walked over to Arts dorm, knocking on the door as it swung open to reveal a slightly disheaved Art as he stared at you. Shirtless and in the tightest pair of shorts ever.

"Did you forget we are going to dinner-"

"No- I was just.. working out" He spoke slightly.

You looked him up and down, a knowing smirk on your face.

"You can't hide it from me" You laughed. Art's face contorted as he looked at you confused as you swiped your hand over the very obvious bulge in his boxers before walking past him into his room.

He doubled over, groaning as he shut the door as you laughed, sitting on his desk chair.

"I thought Tashi was taking you to the restaurant?" He dove onto his bed, laying on his stomach as he scrunched a pillow up at leaned against it looking at you. God he looked so pathetic. Ass up and everything.

"Seems she got preoccupied with Patrick, I got this" You pulled up the text and turned it around to show Art.

"We definitely won't make it to the restaurant now" He laughed.

You stood up, dropping your bag on the chair as you walked over to Art, sitting by his head as he looked up at you.

"What do you wanna do then?" You caressed his cheek, smiling down at him.

"I have a few ideas.." His head turned to kiss your palm as his lips made its way up your arm till he was on his knees infront of you.

You stared at him blankly, sucking in your bottom lip as you took in the situation. You both paused for a brief moment staring at eachother.

You leaned in, kissing him roughly as your hands dropped to his back, pulling him closer as his hands slid up the back of your dress as he squeezed your ass. One thing about Art he loved your ass.

The pair of you tumbling with one another as you yanked down his boxers slightly as the back, grabbing a chunk of his ass with his hand as you sucked onto his tongue. A soft moan leaving his lips as you yanked down his boxers completely rolling over as you caged him below you.

"Mm- want you- s'bad" You pulled at his lip as you sucked on it, grinding down against his bare cock as you reached to pull your dress off in one swift motion.

"Fuck- good girl-" He groaned as he unclasped your bra throwing it off as he pulled your neck and pulled you back into another kiss. It was passionate but needy. The way his tongue slipped in and out of your mouth had you yearning for more. You reached down to wriggle out of your panties as you kicked them off to the side before you held the base of his dick. Running it between your slit as you gasped, pulling away from the kiss.

You bit your lip, sighing as you bucked your hips against his tip. Your hands sliding up over your breasts as you peered down at him. "You piss me off how fucking hot you are. Why are you so fucking hot" You groaned, grinding down harder against him as he harshly gasped.

"Shut up" He whined lightly as he grabbed your hip, lifting you up so he could grab his cock and curve it up towards your entrance as he dropped you down against his abdomen as his cock slipped up inside of you. "Fuck-" You both yelped in unison.

You peered down at him, chuckling softly as you let out soft moans as you rocked back and forth against him. "Oh fuck-" You grit your teeth as your hand slid down his chest as you rocked back and forth. Your thighs slightly twitching as your eyes threatened to roll back.

"Such a good girl f'me aren't you" He smirked, sliding a hand up overs your stomach. This was something Art tended to do. You knew you were chubbier that other girls you'd seen him with before but he was definitely into it. His smile grew as he slid them further up to grip your breast as he squeezed and toyed with it.

You smirked down at him, leaning forward slightly, pecking his lips as your ass rebounded against his abdomen as you dropped down on him continously as you rode him.

"Good.." You spoke with breathy moans as light whines escaped Art's lips as he stared into your eyes. It was pathetic. He was pathetic. The way his eyes watched you.

His hands dropped from your breasts, gripping onto the plush of your thighs as he whined slightly, spreading his legs below you.

You could feel his hips thrusting up into your for more, as you bit your lip moaning lightly. "Yessss~ fuck. Art- s-so good" You yelped as his hands gripped your waist before flipping you onto your back. The movement shocked you but the second he got his balance he began to piston into you.

You reached back, grabbing the headboard of the bed as you yelped. Whines and moans pouring from your mouth as Art demolished you. His hips slamming into you. His balls slapping into your ass as the bed creaked below the pair of you. One of his hands, gripping at a chunk of your thigh as his thumb caressed against the skin. The other, reaching for one of yours as your fingers interlocked with one another.

You reached forward grabbing his ass harshly with your free hand, as you squeezed it, looking up at him, biting your lip.

His mouth ghosting over yours as he let out soft whines and groans - just like he does in tennis. Fuck do you love the sounds he makes when he's playing fucking tennis...

"Yes- Fuck Art please.. Harder" you groaned, your hand removing from his as they both flew to his back, your nails scratched down it as he pounded harder into you.

His groans got louder and needier, as his hands returned to your chunk sides, his fingers dug harder into your hip. His thrusts became sloppier, you knew he was close.

Art threw your legs over his shoulders as he slammed back into you. A guttural moan yelping from your throat as you shrieked, his pace quickening as you whined. Your nails digging into his shoulder as your back arched down against him as your eyes rolled back as you drew closer to your climax.

He knew you were close abd so was he. He continue to pump into you as fast as he could till you both came undone. Both cumming together, his head hung low as he watched a mixture of your releases create a ring at the bottom of his cock as he thrusted a few more times, dragging the pair of you through the high.

"Fuck-" He groaned as he pulled out, biting his lip as he leaned back on his legs as he stared down at you panting.

You looked at the disheaved boy infront of you, you couldn't help but let out a breathy chuckle as he panted.

"S'good as always" You smiled, sitting up as you pecked his lips.

Art leaned forward, kissing you deeper as his hand snaked around your neck, pulling you closer as he kissed you. You hummed softly, your tongue swiping over his lips as the kiss grew more heated.

Before the pair of you could even consider a second round a loud string of knocks banged against the door.

The two of you pulled away and froze. Your hand pressed against his chest, your other frozen as you stroked his cock. His hands cupping your face as the pair of you just stared at each other.

After a while no knocks were heard so you were going to continue till another string of loud knocks.

"Fuck" You hissed as the pair of you both stood up, grabbing your clothes as you tried to quickly dress.

Your dress nowhere to be seen amongst the large pile of clothes. "Art where the fuck is my dress-" You whispered shouted.

"Shhh!-" He quipped. You grabbed his dress shirt he was wearing off the floor and threw it on over your underwear. He was scrambling around the room looking for his shirt when he looked at you wearing it.

He quickly pulled on his trousers and opened his wardrobe for a tshirt as he stumbled to the door. You stood behind him.

You don't know what you both expected or who you expected to be behind the door. But the colour drained from both of your faces as the door revealed your two friends.

"I texted you Y/N that we were outside 10 minutes ago but I can see you were occupied" Tashi raises her eyebrow, a sickly smirk across her face.

You gulped as you stared at her, smiling awkwardly.

"Tash- did you figure out where Y/N was-" Patrick's voice could be heard down the hall as he gained closer to the door. Stopping behind Tashi as he stared at you and Art. "Fucking knew it" He laughed.

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turnstileskyline · 5 months

Text

The Oral History of Take This To Your Grave – transcription under the cut

The pages that are just photographs, I haven't included. This post is already long enough.

Things that happened in 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Teen Vogue published its first issue. The world lost Johnny Cash. Johnny Depp appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow for the first time. A third Lord of the Rings movie arrived. Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley released Take This To Your Grave.

"About 21 years ago or so, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop-punk side project of what we assumed was Pete's more serious band, Arma Angelus," Patrick wrote in a May 2023 social media post.

"We were sloppy and couldn't solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it."

"We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would eventually become Evening Out With Your Girlfriend and tactfully said, 'What do you think your best instrument is, Patrick? Drums. It's drums. Probably not singing, Patrick.'"

"We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O'Keefe... So, there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who'd only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean at Butch Vig's legendary studio.

"Eight or so months later, Fueled by Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We'd sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next three years, and somehow despite that, eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn't made it to the session and Joe hadn't dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band."

Two decades after its release, Take This To Your Grave sits comfortable in the Top 10 of Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums, edging out landmark records from Buzzcocks, Generation X, Green Day, The Offspring, Blink-182, and The Ramones.

It even ranked higher than Through Being Cool by Saves The Day and Jersey's Best Dancers from Lifetime, two records the guys in Fall Out Boy particularly revere.

Fall Out Boy's proper full-length debut on Fueled by Ramen is a deceptively smart, sugar-sweet, raw, energetic masterpiece owing as much to the bass player's pop culture passions, the singers deep love of R&B and soul, and their shared history in the hardcore scene as any pioneering punk band. Fall Out Boy's creative and commercial heights were still ahead, but Take This To Your Grave kicked it off, a harbinger for the enduring songwriting partnership between Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz, the eclectic contributions from Joe Trohman, and the propulsive powerhouse that is Andy Hurley.

The recordings document a special moment when Fall Out Boy was big in "the scene" but a "secret" from the mainstream. The band (and some of their friends) first sat down for an Oral History (which doubled as an Oral History of their origin story) with their old friend Ryan J. Downey, then Senior Editor for Alternative Press, upon the occasion of the album's 10th anniversary. What follows is an updated, sharper, and expanded version of that story, newly re-edited in 2023. As Patrick eloquently said: "Happy 20th birthday, Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record."

– Ryan J. Downey.

A Weird, Brilliant Lightning Strike Of A Record. The Oral History Of Fall Out Boy's Take This To Your Grave.

As told by:

Patrick Stump

Pete Wentz

Joe Trohman

Andy Hurley

Bob McLynn - Crush Music

Sean O'Keefe - Producer/Mixer

John Janick - Fueled By Ramen

Tim McIlrath - Rise Against

Mani Mostofi - Racetraitor

Chris Gutierrez - Arma Angelus

Mark Rose - Spitalfield

Sean Muttaqi - Uprising Records

Rory Felton - The Militia Group

Richard Reines - Drive-Thru Records

"To Feel No More Bitterness Forever" - From Hardcore to Softcore, 1998-2000

PETE WENTZ: When I got into hardcore, it was about discovering the world beyond yourself. There was a culture of trying to be a better person. That was part of what was so alluring about hardcore and punk for me. But for whatever reason, it shifted. Maybe this was just in Chicago, but it became less about the thought process behind it and more about moshing and breakdowns. There was a close-mindedness that felt very reactive.

TIM MCILRITH: I saw First Born many years ago, which was the first time I saw Pete and met him around then. This was '90s hardcore - p.c., vegan, activist kind of hardcore music. Pete was in many of those bands doing that kind of thing, and I was at many of those shows. The hardcore scene in Chicago was pretty small, so everyone kind of knew each other. I knew Andy Hurley as the drummer in Racetraitor. I was in a band called Baxter, so Pete always called me 'Baxter.' I was just 'Baxter' to a lot of those guys.

JOE TROHMAN: I was a young hardcore kid coming to the shows. The same way we all started doing bands. You're a shitty kid who goes to punk and hardcore shows, and you see the other bands playing, and you want to make friends with those guys because you want to play in bands too. Pete and I had a bit of a connection because we're from the same area. I was the youngest dude at most shows. I would see Extinction, Racetraitor, Burn It Down, and all the bands of that era.

WENTZ: My driver's license was suspended then, so Joe drove me everywhere. We listened to either Metalcore like Shai Hulud or pop-punk stuff like Screeching Weasel.

MCILRITH: I was in a band with Pete called Arma Angelus. I was like their fifth or sixth bass player. I wasn't doing anything musically when they hit me up to play bass, so I said, 'Of course.' I liked everyone in the band. We were rehearsing, playing a few shows here and there, with an ever-revolving cast of characters. We recorded a record together at the time. I even sing on that record, believe it or not, they gave me a vocal part. Around that same time, I began meeting with [bassist] Joe [Principe] about starting what would become Rise Against.

CHRIS GUTIERREZ: Wentz played me the Arma Angelus demo in the car. He said he wanted it to be a mix of Despair, Buried Alive, and Damnation A.D. He told me Tim was leaving to start another band - which ended up being Rise Against - and asked if I wanted to play bass.

TROHMAN: Pete asked me to fill in for a tour when I was 15. Pete had to call my dad to convince him to let me go. He did it, too. It was my first tour, in a shitty cargo van, with those dudes. They hazed the shit out of me. It was the best and worst experience. Best overall, worst at the time.

GUTIERREZ: Enthusiasm was starting to wane in Arma Angelus. Our drummer was really into cock-rock. It wasn't an ironic thing. He loved L.A. Guns, Whitesnake, and Hanoi Rocks. It drove Pete nuts because the scene was about Bleeding Through and Throwdown, not cock rock. He was frustrated that things weren't panning out for the band, and of course, there's a ceiling for how big a metalcore band can get, anyway.

MANI MOSTOFI: Pete had honed this tough guy persona, which I think was a defense mechanism. He had some volatile moments in his childhood. Underneath, he was a pretty sensitive and vulnerable person. After playing in every mosh-metal band in the Midwest and listening exclusively to Earth Crisis, Damnation A.D., Chokehold, and stuff like that for a long time, I think Pete wanted to do something fresh. He had gotten into Lifetime, Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and bands like that. Pete was at that moment where the softer side of him needed an outlet, and didn't want to hide behind mosh-machismo. I remember him telling me he wanted to start a band that more girls could listen to.

MCILRATH: Pete was talking about starting a pop-punk band. Bands like New Found Glory and Saves The Day were successful then. The whole pop-punk sound was accessible. Pete was just one of those guys destined for bigger things than screaming for mediocre hardcore bands in Chicago. He's a smart guy, a brilliant guy. All the endeavors he had taken on, even in the microcosm of the 1990s Chicago hardcore world, he put a lot of though into it. You could tell that if he were given a bigger receptacle to put that thought into, it could become something huge. He was always talented: lyrics, imagery, that whole thing. He was ahead of the curve. We were in this hardcore band from Chicago together, but we were both talking about endeavors beyond it.

TROHMAN: The drummer for Arma Angelus was moving. Pete and I talked about doing something different. It was just Pete and me at first. There was this thuggishness happening in the Chicago hardcore scene at that time that wasn't part of our vibe. It was cool, but it wasn't our thing.

MCILRITH: One day at Arma Angelus practice, Pete asked me, 'Are you going to do that thing with Joe?' I was like, 'Yeah, I think so.' He was like, 'You should do that, dude. Don't let this band hold you back. I'll be doing something else, too. We should be doing other things.' He was really ambitious. It was so amazing to me, too, because Pete was a guy who, at the time, was kind of learning how to play the bass. A guy who didn't really play an instrument will do down in history as one of the more brilliant musicians in Chicago. He had everything else in his corner. He knew how to do everything else. He needed to get some guys behind him because he had the rest covered. He had topics, themes, lyrics, artwork, this whole image he wanted to do, and he was uncompromising. He also tapped into something the rest of us were just waking up to: the advent of the internet. I mean, the internet wasn't new, but higher-speed internet was.

MOSTOFI: Joe was excited to be invited by Pete to do a band. Joe was the youngest in our crew by far, and Pete was the 'coolest' in a Fonzie sort of way. Joe deferred to Pete's judgement for years. But eventually, his whole life centered around bossy big-brother Pete. I think doing The Damned Things was for Joe what Fall Out Boy was for Pete, in a way. It was a way to find his own space within the group of friends. Unsurprisingly, Joe now plays a much more significant role in Fall Out Boy's music.

WENTZ: I wanted to do something easy and escapist. When Joe and I started the band, it was the worst band of all time. I feel like people said, 'Oh, yeah, you started Fall Out Boy to get big.' Dude, there was way more of a chance of every other band getting big in my head than Fall Out Boy. It was a side thing that was fun to do. Racetraitor and Extinction were big bands to me. We wanted to do pop-punk because it would be fun and hilarious. It was definitely on a lark. We weren't good. If it was an attempt at selling out, it was a very poor attempt.

MCILRITH: It was such a thing for people to move from hardcore bands to bands called 'emo' or pop-punk, as those bands were starting to get some radio play and signed to major labels. Everyone thought it was easy, but it's not as easy as that. Most guys we knew who tried it never did anything more successful than their hardcore bands. But Pete did it! And if anyone was going to, it was going to be him. He never did anything half-assed. He ended up playing bass in so many bands in Chicago, even though he could barely play the bass then, because simply putting him in your band meant you'd have a better show. He was just more into it. He knew more about dynamics, about getting a crowd to react to what you're doing than most people. Putting Pete in your band put you up a few notches.

"I'm Writing You A Chorus And Here Is Your Verse" - When Pete met Patrick, early 2001.

MARK ROSE: Patrick Stump played drums in this grindcore band called Grinding Process. They had put out a live split cassette tape.

PATRICK STUMP: My ambition always outweighed my ability or actual place in the world. I was a drummer and played in many bands and tried to finagle my way into better ones but never really managed. I was usually outgunned by the same two guys: this guy Rocky Senesce; I'm not sure if he's playing anymore, but he was amazing. And this other guy, De'Mar Hamilton, who is now in Plain White T's. We'd always go out for the same bands. I felt like I was pretty good, but then those guys just mopped the floor with me. I hadn't been playing music for a few months. I think my girlfriend dumped me. I was feeling down. I wasn't really into pop-punk or emo. I think at the time I was into Rhino Records box sets.

TROHMAN: I was at the Borders in Eden's Plaza in Wilmette, Illinois. My friend Arthur was asking me about Neurosis. Patrick just walked up and started talking to me.

STUMP: I was a bit arrogant and cocky, like a lot of young musicians. Joe was talking kind of loudly and I overheard him say something about Neurosis, and I think I came in kind of snotty, kind of correcting whatever they had said.

TROHMAN: We just started talking about music, and my buddy Arthur got shoved out of the conversation. I told him about the band we were starting. Pete was this local hardcore celebrity, which intrigued Patrick.

STUMP: I had similar conversations with any number of kids my age. This conversation didn't feel crazy special. That's one of the things that's real about [Joe and I meeting], and that's honest about it, that's it's not some 'love at first sight' thing where we started talking about music and 'Holy smokes, we're going to have the best band ever!' I had been in a lot of bands up until then. Hardcore was a couple of years away from me at that point. I was over it, but Pete was in real bands; that was interesting. Now I'm curious and I want to do this thing, or at least see what happens. Joe said they needed a drummer, guitar player, or singer, and I kind of bluffed and said I could do any one of those things for a pop-punk band. I'd had a lot of conversations about starting bands where I meet up with somebody and maybe try to figure out some songs and then we'd never see each other again. There were a lot of false starts and I assumed this would be just another one of those, but it would be fun for this one to be with the guy from Racetraitor and Extinction.

TROHMAN: He gave me the link to his MP3.com page. There were a few songs of him just playing acoustic and singing. He was awesome.

WENTZ: Joe told me we were going to this kid's house who would probably be our drummer but could also sing. He sent me a link to Patrick singing some acoustic thing, but the quality was so horrible it was hard to tell what it was. Patrick answered the door in some wild outfit. He looked like an emo kid but from the Endpoint era - dorky and cool. We went into the basement, and he was like, trying to set up his drums.

TROHMAN: Patrick has said many times that he intended to try out on drums. I was pushing for him to sing after hearing his demos. 'Hey! Sing for us!' I asked him to take out his acoustic guitar. He played songs from Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. I think he sang most of the record to us. We were thrilled. We had never been around someone who could sing like that.

WENTZ: I don't think Patrick thought we were cool at all. We were hanging out, and he started playing acoustic guitar. He started singing, and I realized he could sing any Saves The Day song. I was like, 'Wow, that's the way those bands sound! We should just have you sing.' It had to be serendipity because Patrick drumming and Joe singing is not the same band. I never thought about singing. It wasn't the type of thing I could sing. I knew I'd be playing bass. I didn't think it'd even go beyond a few practices. It didn't seem like the thing I was setting myself up to do for the next several years of my life in any way. I was going to college. It was just a fun getaway from the rest of life kind of thing to do.

STUMP: Andy was the first person we asked to play drums. Joe even brought him up in the Borders conversation. But Andy was too busy. He wasn't really interested, either, because we kind of sucked.

WENTZ: I wanted Hurley in the band, I was closest to him at the time, I had known him for a long time. I identified with him in the way that we were the younger dudes in our larger group. I tried to get him, but he was doing another band at the time, or multiple bands. He was Mani's go-to guy to play drums, always. I had asked him a few times. That should clue people into the fact that we weren't that good.

ANDY HURLEY: I knew Joe as 'Number One Fan.' We called him that because he was a huge fan of a band I was in, Kill The Slavemaster. When Fall Out Boy started, I was going to college full-time. I was in the band Project Rocket and I think The Kill Pill then, too.

MOSTOFI: After they got together the first or second time, Pete played me a recording and said, 'This is going to be big.' They had no songs, no name, no drummer. They could barely play their instruments. But Pete knew, and we believed him because we could see his drive and Patrick's potential. Patrick was prodigy. I imagine the first moment Pete heard him sing was probably like when I heard 15-year-old Andy Hurley play drums.

GUTIERREZ: One day at practice, Pete told me he had met some dudes with whom he was starting a pop-punk band. He said it would sound like a cross between New Found Glory and Lifetime. Then the more Fall Out Boy started to practice, the less active Arma Angelus became.

TROHMAN: We got hooked up with a friend named Ben Rose, who became our original drummer. We would practice in his parents' basement. We eventually wrote some pretty bad songs. I don't even have the demo. I have copies of Arma's demo, but I don't have that one.

MOSTOFI: We all knew that hardcore kids write better pop-punk songs than actual pop-punk kids. It had been proven. An experienced hardcore musician could bring a sense of aggression and urgency to the pop hooks in a way that a band like Yellowcard could never achieve. Pete and I had many conversations about this. He jokingly called it 'Softcore,' but that's precisely what it was. It's what he was going for. Take This To Your Grave sounds like Hot Topic, but it feels like CBGBs.

MCILRITH: Many hardcore guys who transitioned into pop-punk bands dumbed it down musically and lyrically. Fall Out Boy found a way to do it that wasn't dumbed down. They wrote music and lyrics that, if you listened closely, you could tell came from people who grew up into hardcore. Pete seemed to approach the song titles and lyrics the same way he attacked hardcore songs. You could see his signature on all of that.

STUMP: We all had very different ideas of what it should sound like. I signed up for Kid Dynamite, Strike Anywhere, or Dillinger Four. Pete was very into Lifetime and Saves The Day. I think both he and Joe were into New Found Glory and Blink-182. I still hadn't heard a lot of stuff. I was arrogant; I was a rock snob. I was over most pop-punk. But then I had this renaissance week where I was like, 'Man, you know what? I really do like The Descendents.' Like, the specific week I met Joe, it just happened to be that I was listening to a lot of Descendents. So, there was a part of me that was tickled by that idea. 'You know what? I'll try a pop-punk band. Why not?'

MOSTOFI: To be clear, they were trying to become a big band. But they did it by elevating radio-friendly pop punk, not debasing themselves for popularity. They were closely studying Drive-Thru Records bands like The Starting Line, who I couldn't stand. But they knew what they were doing. They extracted a few good elements from those bands and combined them with their other influences. Patrick never needed to be auto-tuned. He can sing. Pete never had to contrive this emotional depth. He always had it.

STUMP: The ideas for band names were obnoxious. At some point, Pete and I were arguing over it, and I think our first drummer, Ben Rose, who was in the hardcore band Strength In Numbers, suggested Fall Out Boy. Pete and I were like, 'Well, we don't hate that one. We'll keep it on the list.' But we never voted on a name.

"Fake It Like You Matter" - The Early Shows, 2001

The name Fall Out Boy made their shortlist, but their friends ultimately chose it for them. The line-up at the band's first show was Patrick Stump (sans guitar), Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, drummer Ben Rose, and guitarist John Flamandan in his only FOB appearance.

STUMP: We didn't have a name at our two or three shows. We were basically booked as 'Pete's new band' as he was the most known of any of us. Pete and I were the artsy two.

TROHMAN: The rest of us had no idea what we were doing onstage.

STUMP: We took ourselves very seriously and completely different ideas on what was 'cool.' Pete at the time was somewhere between maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Charles Bukowski, and kind of New Romantic and Manchester stuff, so he had that in mind. The band names he suggested were long and verbose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I was pretty much only into Tom Waits, so I wanted everything to be a reference to Tom Waits. The first show was at DePaul [University] in some cafeteria. The room looked a lot nicer than punk rock shows are supposed to look, like a room where you couldn't jump off the walls. We played with a band called Stillwell. I want to say one of the other bands played Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath in its entirety. We were out of place. We were tossing a few different names around. The singer for Stillwell was in earshot of the conversation so I was like 'Hey, settle this for us,' and told him whatever name it was, which I can't remember. 'What do you think of this name?' He goes, 'It sucks.' And the way he said it, there was this element to it, like, 'You guys probably suck, too, so whatever.' That was our first show. We played first and only had three songs. That was John's only show with us, and I never saw him again. I was just singing without a guitar, and I had never just sung before; that was horrifying. We blazed through those songs.

ROSE: Patrick had this shoulder-length hair. Watching these guys who were known for heavier stuff play pop-punk was strange. Pete was hopping around with the X's on his hands. Spitalfield was similar; we were kids playing another style of music who heard Texas Is The Reason and Get Up Kids and said, 'We have to start a band like this.'

MOSTOFI: The first show was a lot of fun. The musical side wasn't there, but Pete and Patrick's humor and charisma were front and center.

TROHMAN: I remember having a conversation with Mani about stage presence. He was telling me how important it was. Coalesce and The Dillinger Escape Plan would throw mic stands and cabinets. We loved that visual excitement and appeal. Years later, Patrick sang a Fall Out Boy song with Taylor Swift at Giants Stadium. It was such a great show to watch that I was reminded of how wise Mani was to give me that advice back then. Mani was like a mentor for me, honestly. He would always guide me through stuff.

MOSTOFI: Those guys grew up in Chicago, either playing in or seeing Extinction, Racetraitor, Los Crudos, and other bands that liked to talk and talk between songs. Fall Out Boy did that, and it was amazing. Patrick was awkward in a knowing and hilarious way. He'd say something odd, and then Pete would zing him. Or Pete would try to say something too cool, and Patrick would remind him they were nerds. These are very personal memories for me. Millions of people have seen the well-oiled machine, but so few of us saw those guys when they were so carefree.

TROHMAN: We had this goofy, bad first show, but all I can tell you was that I was determined to make this band work, no matter what.

STUMP: I kind of assumed that was the end of that. 'Whatever, on with our lives.' But Joe was very determined. He was going to pick us up for practice and we were going to keep playing shows. He was going to make the band happen whether the rest of us wanted to or not. That's how we got past show number one. John left the band because we only had three songs and he wasn't very interested. In the interim, I filled in on guitar. I didn't consider myself a guitar player. Our second show was a college show in Southern Illinois or something.

MCILRITH: That show was with my other band, The Killing Tree.

STUMP: We showed up late and played before The Killing Tree. There was no one there besides the bands and our friends. I think we had voted on some names. Pete said 'Hey, we're whatever!'; probably something very long. And someone yells out, 'Fuck that, no, you're Fall Out Boy!' Then when The Killing Tree was playing, Tim said, 'I want to thank Fall Out Boy.' Everyone looked up to Tim, so when he forced the name on us, it was fine. I was a diehard Simpsons fan, without question. I go pretty deep on The Simpsons. Joe and I would just rattle off Simpsons quotes. I used to do a lot of Simpsons impressions. Ben was very into Simpsons; he had a whole closet full of Simpsons action figures.

"If Only You Knew I Was Terrified" - The Early Recordings, 2002-2003

Wentz's relationships in the hardcore scene led to Fall Out Boy's first official releases. A convoluted and rarely properly explained chain of events resulted in the Fall Out Boy/Project Rocket split EP and Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Both were issued by California's Uprising Records, whose discography included Racetraitor's first album and the debut EP by Burn It Down. The band traveled to Wisconsin to record their first proper demo with engineer Jared Logan, drummer for Uprising's 7 Angels 7 Plagues.

TROHMAN: This isn't to be confused with the demo we did in Ben's basement, which was like a tape demo. This was our first real demo.

STUMP: Between booking the demo and recording it, we lost Ben Rose. He was the greatest guy, but it wasn't working out musically. Pete and Joe decided I should play drums on the demo. But Jared is a sick drummer, so he just did it.

TROHMAN: We had gotten this great singer but went through a series of drummers that didn't work out. I had to be the one who kicked Ben out. Not long after, our friend Brett Bunting played with us. I don't think he really wanted to do it, which was a bummer.

STUMP: I showed up to record that demo, feeling pulled into it. I liked hanging out with the guys, but I was a rock snob who didn't really want to be making that type of music. The first few songs were really rough. We were sloppy. We barely practiced. Pete was in Arma Angelus. Joe was the guy determined to make it happen. We couldn't keep a drummer or guitar player, and I could barely play guitar. I didn't really want to be in Fall Out Boy. We had these crappy songs that kind of happened; it didn't feel like anything. Joe did the guitars. I go in to do the vocals, I put on the headphones, and it starts playing and was kind of not bad! It was pretty good, actually. I was shocked. That was the first time I was like, 'Maybe I am supposed to be in this band.' I enjoyed hearing it back.

SEAN MUTTAQI: Wentz and I were pretty tight. He sent me some demos, and while I didn't know it would get as big as it did, I knew it was special. Wentz had a clear vision. Of all the guys from that scene, he was the most singularly focused on taking things to the next level. He was ahead of the game with promotion and the early days of social media.

STUMP: Arma Angelus had been on Eulogy. We talked to them a bit and spoke to Uprising because they had put out Racetraitor. At some point, the demo got to Sean, and he decided to make it half of a split with Andy's band, Project Rocket. We were pretty happy with that.

HURLEY: It was kind of competitive for me at the time. Project Rocket and Fall Out Boy were both doing pop-punk/pop-rock, I met Patrick through the band. I didn't really know him before Fall Out Boy.

TROHMAN: We got this drummer, Mike Pareskuwicz, who had been in a hardcore band from Central Illinois called Subsist.

STUMP: Uprising wanted us to make an album. We thought that was cool, but we only had those three songs that were on the split. We were still figuring ourselves out. One of the times we were recording with Jared in the studio, for the split or the album, this guy T.J. Kunasch was there. He was like, 'Hey, do you guys need a guitarist?' And he joined.

MUTTAQI: I borrowed some money to get them back in the studio. The songwriting was cool on that record, but it was all rushed. The urgency to get something out led to the recording being subpar. Their new drummer looked the part but couldn't really play. They had already tracked the drums before they realized it didn't sound so hot.

STUMP: The recording experience was not fun. We had two days to do an entire album. Mike was an awesome dude, but he lived crazy far away, in Kanakee, Illinois, so the drive to Milwaukee wasn't easy for him. He had to work or something the next day. So, he did everything in one take and left. He played alone, without a click, so it was a ness to figure out. We had to guess where the guitar was supposed to go. None of us liked the songs because we had slapped them together. We thought it all sucked. But I thought, 'Well, at least it'll be cool to have something out.' Then a lot of time went by. Smaller labels were at the mercy of money, and it was crazy expensive to put out a record back then.

MUTTAQI: Our record was being rushed out to help generate some interest, but that interest was building before we could even get the record out. We were beholden to finances while changing distribution partners and dealing with other delays. The buck stops with me, yes, but I didn't have that much control over the scheduling.

WENTZ: It's not what I would consider the first Fall Out Boy record. Hurley isn't on it and he's an integral part of the Fall Out Boy sound. But it is part of the history, the legacy. NASA didn't go right to the moon. They did test flights in the desert. Those are our test flights in the desert. It's not something I'm ashamed of or have weird feelings about.

STUMP: It's kind of embarrassing to me. Evening Out... isn't representative of the band we became. I liked Sean a lot, so it's nothing against him. If anybody wants to check out the band in that era, I think the split EP is a lot cooler. Plus, Andy is on that one.

TROHMAN: T.J. was the guy who showed up to the show without a guitar. He was the guy that could never get it right, but he was in the band for a while because we wanted a second guitar player. He's a nice dude but wasn't great to be in a band with back then. One day he drove unprompted from Racine to Chicago to pick up some gear. I don't know how he got into my parents' house, but the next thing I knew, he was in my bedroom. I didn't like being woken up and kicked him out of the band from bed.

STUMP: Our friend Brian Bennance asked us to do a split 7" with 504 Plan, which was a big band to us. Brian offered to pay for us to record with Sean O'Keefe, which was also a big deal. Mike couldn't get the time off work to record with us. We asked Andy to play on the songs. He agreed to do it, but only if he could make it in time after recording an entire EP with his band, The Kill Pill, in Chicago, on the same day.

MOSTOFI: Andy and I started The Kill Pill shortly after Racetraitor split up, not long after Fall Out Boy had formed. We played a bunch of local shows together. The minute Andy finished tracking drums for our EP in Chicago, he raced to the other studio in Madison.

STUMP: I'm getting ready to record the drums myself, getting levels and checking the drums, pretty much ready to go. And then in walks Andy Hurley. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to play drums that day. But then Andy goes through it all in like two takes and fucking nailed the entire thing. He just knocked it out of the park. All of us were like, 'That's crazy!'

WENTZ: When Andy came in, It just felt different. It was one of those 'a-ha' moments.

STUMP: Sean leaned over to us and said, 'You need to get this guy in the band.'

SEAN O'KEEFE: We had a blast. We pumped It out. We did it fast and to analog tape. People believe it was very Pro Tools oriented, but it really was done to 24-track tape. Patrick sang his ass off.

STUMP: The songs we had were 'Dead On Arrival,' 'Saturday,' and 'Homesick at Space Camp. There are quite a few songs that ended up on Take This To You Grave where I wrote most of the lyrics but Pete titled them.

WENTZ: 'Space Camp' was a reference to the 1986 movie, SpaceCamp, and the idea of space camp. Space camp wasn't something anyone in my area went to. Maybe they did, but it was never an option for me. It seems like the little kid version of meeting Jay-Z. The idea was also: what if you, like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie, took off to outer space and wanted to get home? 'I made it to space and now I'm just homesick and want to hang out with my friends.' In the greater sense, it's about having it all, but it's still not enough. There's a pop culture reference in 'Saturday' that a lot of people miss. 'Pete and I attack the lost Astoria' was a reference to The Goonies, which was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.

HURLEY: I remember hearing those recordings, especially 'Dead on Arrival,' and Patrick's voice and how well written those songs were, especially relative to anything else I had done - I had a feeling that this could do something.

WENTZ: It seemed like it would stall out if we didn't get a solid drummer in the band soon. That was the link that we couldn't nail down. Patrick was always a big musical presence. He thinks and writes rhythmi-cally, and we couldn't get a drummer to do what he wanted or speak his language. Hurley was the first one that could. It's like hearing two drummers talk together when they really get it. It sounds like a foreign language because it's not something I'm keyed into. Patrick needed someone on a similar musical plane. I wasn't there. Joe was younger and was probably headed there.

HURLEY: When Patrick was doing harmonies, it was like Queen. He's such a brilliant dude. I was always in bands that did a record and then broke up. I felt like this was a band that could tour a lot like the hardcore bands we loved, even if we had to have day jobs, too.

"(Four) Tired Boys And A Broken Down Van" - The Early Tours, 2002-2003

STUMP: We booked a tour with Spitalfield, another Chicago band, who had records out, so they were a big deal to us. We replaced T.J. with a guy named Brandon Hamm. He was never officially in the band. He quit when we were practicing 'Saturday.' He goes, 'I don't like that. I don't want to do this anymore.' Pete talked with guitarist Chris Envy from Showoff, who had just broken up. Chris said, 'Yeah, I'll play in your band.' He came to two practices, then quit like two days before the tour. It was only a two-week tour, but Mike couldn't get the time off work from Best Buy, or maybe it was Blockbuster. We had to lose Mike, which was the hardest member change for me. It was unpleasant.

TROHMAN: We had been trying to get Andy to join the band for a while. Even back at that first Borders conversation, we talked about him, but he was too busy at the time.

STUMP: I borrowed one of Joe's guitars and jumped in the fire. We were in this legendarily shitty used van Pete had gotten. It belonged to some flower shop, so it had this ominously worn-out flower decal outside and no windows [except in the front]. Crappy brakes, no A/C, missing the rearview mirror, no seats in the back, only the driver's seat. About 10 minutes into the tour, we hit something. A tire exploded and slingshot into the passenger side mirror, sending glass flying into the van. We pulled over into some weird animal petting zoo. I remember thinking, 'This is a bad omen for this tour.' Spitalfield was awesome, and we became tight with them. Drew Brown, who was later in Weekend Nachos, was out with them, too. But most of the shows were canceled.

WENTZ: We'd end up in a town, and our show was canceled, or we'd have three days off. 'Let's just get on whatever show we can. Whatever, you can pay us in pizza.'

STUMP: We played in a pizza place. We basically blocked the line of people trying to order pizza, maybe a foot away from the shitty tables. Nobody is trying to watch a band. They're just there to eat pizza. And that was perhaps the biggest show we played on that tour. One of the best moments on the Spitalfied tour was in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local opener wasn't even there - they were at the bar across the street and showed up later with two people. Fall Out Boy played for Spitalfield, and Spitalfield played for Fall Out Boy. Even the sound guy had left. It was basically an empty room. It was miserable.

HURLEY: Even though we played a ton of shows in front of just the other bands, it was awesome. I've known Pete forever and always loved being in bands with him. After that tour, it was pretty much agreed that I would be in the band. I wanted to be in the band.

WENTZ: We would play literally any show in those days for free. We played Chain Reaction in Orange County with a bunch of metalcore bands. I want to say Underoath was one of them. I remember a lot of black shirts and crossed arms at those kinds of shows. STUMP: One thing that gets lost in the annals of history is Fall Out Boy, the discarded hardcore band. We played so many hardcore shows! The audiences were cool, but they were just like, 'This is OK, but we'd really rather be moshing right now.' Which was better than many of the receptions we got from pop-punk kids.

MOSTOFI: Pete made sure there was little division between the band and the audience. In hardcore, kids are encouraged to grab the mic. Pete was very conscious about making the crowd feel like friends. I saw them in Austin, Texas, in front of maybe ten kids. But it was very clear all ten of those kids felt like Pete's best friends. And they were, in a way.

MCILRITH: People started to get into social networking. That kind of thing was all new to us, and they were way ahead. They networked with their fans before any of us.

MOSTOFI: Pete shared a lot about his life online and was intimate as hell. It was a new type of scene. Pete extended the band's community as far as fiber optics let him.

ROSE: Pete was extremely driven. Looking back, I wish I had that killer instinct. During that tour; we played a show in Colorado. On the day of the show, we went to Kinko's to make flyers to hand out to college kids. Pete put ‘members of Saves The Day and Screeching Weasel’ on the flyer. He was just like, 'This will get people in.'

WENTZ: We booked a lot of our early shows through hardcore connections, and to some extent, that carries through to what Fall Out Boy shows are like today. If you come to see us play live, we're basically Slayer compared to everyone else when we play these pop radio shows. Some of that carries back to what you must do to avoid being heckled at hardcore shows. You may not like our music, but you will leave here respecting us. Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to give a shit. But you need to earn a crowd's respect. That was an important way for us to learn that.

MOSTOFI: All those dudes, except Andy, lived in this great apartment with our friend Brett Bunting, who was almost their drummer at one point. The proximity helped them gel.

STUMP: There were a lot of renegade last-minute shows where we'd just call and get added. We somehow ended up on a show with Head Automatica that way.

MCILRITH: At some point early on, they opened for Rise Against in a church basement in Downers Grove. We were doing well then; headlining that place was a big deal. Then Pete's band was coming up right behind us, and you could tell there was a lot of chatter about Fall Out Boy. I remember getting to the show, and there were many people there, many of whom I had never seen in the scene before. A lot of unfamiliar faces. A lot of people that wouldn't have normally found their way to the seedy Fireside Bowl in Chicago. These were young kids, and I was 21 then, so when I say young, I mean really young. Clearly, Fall Out Boy had tapped into something the rest of us had not. People were super excited to see them play and freaked out; there was a lot of enthusiasm at that show. After they finished, their fans bailed. They were dedicated. They wanted to see Fall Out Boy. They didn't necessarily want to see Rise Against play. That was my first clue that, 'Whoa, what Pete told me that day at Arma Angelus rehearsal is coming true. He was right.' Whatever he was doing was working.

"My Insides Are Copper, And I'd Like To Make Them Gold" - The Record Labels Come Calling, 2002

STUMP: The split EP was going to be a three-way split with 504 Plan, August Premier, and us at one point. But then the record just never happened. Brian backed out of putting it out. We asked him if we could do something else with the three songs and he didn't really seem to care. So, we started shopping the three songs as a demo. Pete ended up framing the rejection letters we got from a lot of pop-punk labels. But some were interested.

HURLEY: We wanted to be on Drive-Thru Records so bad. That was the label.

RICHARD REINES: After we started talking to them, I found the demo they had sent us in the office. I played it for my sister. We decided everything together. She liked them but wasn't as crazy about them as I was. We arranged with Pete to see them practice. We had started a new label called Rushmore. Fall Out Boy wasn't the best live band. We weren't thrilled [by the showcase]. But the songs were great. We both had to love a band to sign them, so my sister said, 'If you love them so much, let's sign them to Rushmore, not Drive Thru.'

HURLEY: We did a showcase for Richard and Stephanie Reines. They were just kind of like, 'Yeah, we have this side label thing. We'd be interested in having you on that.' I remember them saying they passed on Saves The Day and wished they would have put out Through Being Cool. But then they [basically] passed on us by offering to put us on Rushmore. We realized we could settle for that, but we knew it wasn't the right thing.

RORY FELTON: Kevin Knight had a website, TheScout, which always featured great new bands. I believe he shared the demo with us. I flew out to Chicago. Joe and Patrick picked me up at the airport. I saw them play at a VFW hall, Patrick drank an entire bottle of hot sauce on a dare at dinner, and then we all went to see the movie The Ring. I slept on the couch in their apartment, the one featured on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. Chad [Pearson], my partner, also flew out to meet with the band.

STUMP: It was a weird time to be a band because it was feast or famine. At first, no one wanted us. Then as soon as one label said, 'Maybe we'll give 'em a shot,' suddenly there's a frenzy of phone calls from record labels. We were getting our shirts printed by Victory Records. One day, we went to pick up shirts, and someone came downstairs and said, 'Um, guys? [Owner] Tony [Brummel] wants to see you.' We were like, 'Did we forget to pay an invoice?' He made us an offer on the spot. We said, 'That's awesome, but we need to think about it.' It was one of those 'now or never' kinds of things. I think we had even left the van running. It was that kind of sudden; we were overwhelmed by it.

HURLEY: They told me Tony said something like, 'You can be with the Nike of the record industry or the Keds of the record industry.'

STUMP: We'd get random calls at the apartment. 'Hey, I'm a manager with so-and-so.' I talked to some boy band manager who said, 'We think you'll be a good fit.'

TROHMAN: The idea of a manager was a ‘big-time' thing. I answered a call one day, and this guy is like, 'I'm the manager for the Butthole Surfers, and I'd really like to work with you guys.' I just said, Yeah, I really like the Butthole Surfers, but I'll have to call you back.' And I do love that band. But I just knew that wasn't the right thing.

STUMP: Not all the archetypes you always read about are true. The label guys aren't all out to get you. Some are total douchebags. But then there are a lot who are sweet and genuine. It's the same thing with managers. I really liked the Militia Group. They told us it was poor form to talk to us without a manager. They recommended Bob McLynn.

FELTON: We knew the guys at Crush from working with Acceptance and The Beautiful Mistake. We thought they'd be great for Fall Out Boy, so we sent the music to their team.

STUMP: They said Crush was their favorite management company and gave us their number. Crush's biggest band at the time was American Hi-Fi. Jonathan Daniels, the guy who started the company, sent a manager to see us. The guy was like, "This band sucks!' But Jonathan liked us and thought someone should do something with us. Bob was his youngest rookie manager. He had never managed anyone, and we had never been managed.

BOB MCLYNN: Someone else from my office who isn't with us anymore had seen them, but I hadn't seen them yet. At the time, we'd tried to manage Brand New; they went elsewhere, and I was bummed. Then we got the Fall Out Boy demo, and I was like, Wow. This sounds even better. This guy can really sing, and these songs are great.' I remember going at it hard after that whole thing. Fall Out Boy was my consolation prize. I don't know if they were talking to other managers or not, but Pete and I clicked.

TROHMAN: In addition to being really creative, Pete is really business savvy. We all have a bullshit detector these days, but Pete already had one back then. We met Bob, and we felt like this dude wouldn't fuck us over.

STUMP: We were the misfit toy that nobody else wanted. Bob really believed in us when nobody else did and when nobody believed in him. What's funny is that all the other managers at Crush were gone within a year. It was just Bob and Jonathan, and now they're partners. Bob was the weird New York Hardcore guy who scared me at the time.

TROHMAN: We felt safe with him. He's a big, hulking dude.

MCLYNN: We tried to make a deal with The Militia Group, but they wouldn't back off on a few things in the agreement. I told them those were deal breakers, opening the door to everyone else. I knew this band needed a shot to do bigger and better things.

TROHMAN: He told us not to sign with the label that recommended him to us. We thought there was something very honest about that.

MCLYNN: They paid all their dues. Those guys worked harder than any band I'd ever seen, and I was all about it. I had been in bands before and had just gotten out. I was getting out of the van just as these guys got into one. They busted their asses.

STUMP: A few labels basically said the same thing: they wanted to hear more. They weren't convinced we could write another song as good as 'Dead On Arrival.' I took that as a challenge. We returned to Sean a few months after those initial three songs, this time at Gravity Studios in Chicago. We recorded ‘Grenade Jumper' and 'Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy' in a night or two. 'Where is Your Boy' was my, 'Fine, you don't think I can write a fucking song? Here's your hit song, jerks!' But I must have pushed Pete pretty hard [arguing about the songs]. One night, as he and I drove with Joe, Pete said, 'Guys, I don't think I want to do this band anymore.' We talked about it for the rest of the ride home. I didn't want to be in the band in the first place! I was like, 'No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band, and then leave it! That's bullshit!' Pete didn't stay at the apartment that night. I called him at his parent's house. I told him I wasn't going to do the band without him. He was like, 'Don't break up your band over it.' I said, 'It's not my band. It's a band that you, Joe, and I started.' He was like, 'OK, I'll stick around.' And he came back with a vengeance.

WENTZ: It was maybe the first time we realized we could do these songs titles that didn't have much do with the song from the outside. Grand Theft Auto was such a big pop culture franchise. If you said the phrase back then, everyone recognized it. The play on words was about someone stealing your time in the fall. It was the earliest experimentation with that so it was a little simplistic compared to the stuff we did later. At the time, we'd tell someone the song title, and they'd say, 'You mean "Auto"'?

JOHN JANICK: I saw their name on fliers and thought it was strange. But I remembered it. Then I saw them on a flyer with one of our bands from Chicago, August Premier. I called them and asked about this band whose name I had seen on a few flyers now. They told me they were good and I should check it out. I heard an early version of a song online and instantly fell in love with it. Drive-Thru, The Militia Group, and a few majors tried to sign them. I was the odd man out. But I knew I wanted them right away.

HURLEY: Fueled By Ramen was co-owned by Vinnie [Fiorello] from Less Than Jake. It wasn't necessarily a band I grew up loving, but I had so much respect for them and what they had done and were doing.

JANICK: I randomly cold-called them at the apartment and spoke to Patrick. He told me I had to talk to Pete. I spoke to Pete later that day. We ended up talking on the phone for an hour. It was crazy. I never flew out there. I just got to know them over the phone.

MCLYNN: There were majors [interested], but I didn't want the band on a major right away. I knew they wouldn't understand the band. Rob Stevenson from Island Records knew all the indie labels were trying to sign Fall Out Boy. We did this first-ever incubator sort of deal. I also didn't want to stay on an indie forever; I felt we needed to develop and have a chance to do bigger and better things, but these indies didn't necessarily have radio staff. It was sort of the perfect scenario. Island gave us money to go on Fueled By Ramen, with whom we did a one-off. No one else would offer a one-off on an indie.

STUMP: They were the smallest of the labels involved, with the least 'gloss.' I said, 'I don't know about this, Pete.' Pete was the one who thought it was the smartest move. He pointed out that we could be a big fish in a small pond. So, we rolled the dice.

HURLEY: It was a one-record deal with Fueled By Ramen. We didn't necessarily get signed to Island, but they had the 'right of first refusal' [for the album following Take This To Your Grave]. It was an awesome deal. It was kind of unheard of, maybe, but there was a bunch of money coming from Island that we didn't have to recoup for promo type of things.

JANICK: The company was so focused on making sure we broke Fall Out Boy; any other label probably wouldn't have had that dedication. Pete and I talked for at least an hour every day. Pete and I became so close, so much so that we started Decaydance. It was his thing, but we ended up signing Panic! At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship.

GUTIERREZ: Who could predict Pete would A&R all those bands? There's no Panic! At The Disco or Gym Class Heroes without Wentz. He made them into celebrities.

"Turn This Up And I'll Tune You Out" - The Making of Take This To You Grave, 2003

The versions of "Dead on Arrival," "Saturday," and "Homesick at Space Camp" from the first sessions with Andy on drums are what appear on the album. "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy" and "Grenade Jumper" are the demo versions recorded later in Chicago. O'Keefe recorded the music for the rest of the songs at Smart Studios once again. They knocked out the remaining songs in just nine days. Sean and Patrick snuck into Gravity Studios in the middle of the night to track vocals in the dead of winter. Patrick sang those seven songs from two to five in the morning in those sessions.

STUMP: John Janick basically said, ‘I'll buy those five songs and we'll make them part of the album, and here's some money to go record seven more.'

MCLYNN: It was a true indie deal with Fueled by Ramen. I think we got between $15,000 and $18,000 all-in to make the album. The band slept on the studio floor some nights.

STUMP: From a recording standpoint, it was amazing. It was very pro, we had Sean, all this gear, the fun studio accoutrements were there. It was competitive with anything we did afterward. But meanwhile, we're still four broke idiots.

WENTZ: We fibbed to our parents about what we were doing. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did.

STUMP: I don't think we slept anywhere we could shower, which was horrifying. There was a girl that Andy's girlfriend at the time went to school with who let us sleep on her floor, but we'd be there for maybe four hours at a time. It was crazy.

HURLEY: Once, Patrick thought it would be a good idea to spray this citrus bathroom spray under his arms like deodorant. It just destroyed him because it's not made for that. But it was all an awesome adventure.

WENTZ: We were so green we didn't really know how studios worked. Every day there was soda for the band. We asked, 'Could you take that soda money and buy us peanut butter, jelly, and bread?' which they did. I hear that stuff in some ways when I listen to that album.

HURLEY: Sean pushed us. He was such a perfectionist, which was awesome. I felt like, ‘This is what a real professional band does.' It was our first real studio experience.

WENTZ: Seeing the Nirvana Nevermind plaque on the wall was mind-blowing. They showed us the mic that had been used on that album.

HURLEY: The mic that Kurt Cobain used, that was pretty awesome, crazy, legendary, and cool. But we didn't get to use it.

WENTZ: They said only Shirley Manson] from Garbage could use it.

O'KEEFE: Those dudes were all straight edge at the time. It came up in conversation that I had smoked weed once a few months before. That started this joke that I was this huge stoner, which obviously I wasn't. They'd call me 'Scoobie Snacks O'Keefe' and all these things. When they turned in the art for the record, they thanked me with like ten different stoner nicknames - 'Dimebag O'Keefe' and stuff like that. The record company made Pete take like seven of them out because they said it was excessively ridiculous.

WENTZ: Sean was very helpful. He worked within the budget and took us more seriously than anyone else other than Patrick. There were no cameras around. There was no documentation. There was nothing to indicate this would be some ‘legendary' session. There are 12 songs on the album because those were all the songs we had. There was no pomp or circumstance or anything to suggest it would be an 'important’ record.

STUMP: Pete and I were starting to carve out our niches. When Pete [re-committed himself to the band], it felt like he had a list of things in his head he wanted to do right. Lyrics were on that list. He wasn't playing around anymore. I wrote the majority of the lyrics up to that point - ‘Saturday,' 'Dead on Arrival,' ‘Where's Your Boy?,’ ‘Grenade Jumper,' and ‘Homesick at Space Camp.' I was an artsy-fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band, so I was going really easy on the lyrics. I wasn't taking them seriously. When I look back on it, I did write some alright stuff. But I wasn't trying. Pete doesn't fuck around like that, and he does not take that kindly. When we returned to the studio, he started picking apart every word, every syllable. He started giving me [notes]. I got so exasperated at one point I was like, ‘You just write the fucking lyrics, dude. Just give me your lyrics, and I'll write around them.' Kind of angrily. So, he did. We hadn't quite figured out how to do it, though. I would write a song, scrap my lyrics, and try to fit his into where mine had been. It was exhausting. It was a rough process. It made both of us unhappy.

MCLYNN: I came from the post-hardcore scene in New York and wasn't a big fan of the pop-punk stuff happening. What struck me with these guys was the phenomenal lyrics and Patrick's insane voice. Many guys in these kinds of bands can sing alright, but Patrick was like a real singer. This guy had soul. He'd take these great lyrics Pete wrote and combine it with that soul, and that's what made their unique sound. They both put their hearts on their sleeves when they wrote together.

STUMP: We had a massive fight over 'Chicago is So Two Years Ago.' I didn't even want to record that song. I was being precious with things that were mine. Part of me thought the band wouldn't work out, and I'd go to college and do some music alone. I had a skeletal version of 'Chicago...'. I was playing it to myself in the lobby of the studio. I didn't know anyone was listening. Sean was walking by and wanted to [introduce it to the others]. I kind of lost my song. I was very precious about it. Pete didn't like some of the lyrics, so we fought. We argued over each word, one at a time. 'Tell That Mick...' was also a pretty big fight. Pete ended up throwing out all my words on that one. That was the first song where he wrote the entire set of lyrics. My only change was light that smoke' instead of ‘cigarette' because I didn't have enough syllables to say 'cigarette.' Everything else was verbatim what he handed to me. I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss. The sound was always more important to me - the rhythm of the words, alliteration, syncopation - was all very exciting. Pete didn't care about any of that. He was all meaning. He didn't care how good the words sounded if they weren't amazing when you read them. Man, did we fight about that. We fought for nine days straight while not sleeping and smelling like shit. It was one long argument, but I think some of the best moments resulted from that.

WENTZ: In 'Calm Before the Storm,' Patrick wrote the line, 'There's a song on the radio that says, 'Let's Get This Party Started' which is a direct reference to Pink's 2001 song 'Get the Party Started.' 'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today' is a line from the movie Rushmore. I thought we'd catch a little more flack for that, but even when we played it in Ireland, there was none of that. It's embraced, more like a shoutout.

STUMP: Pete and I met up on a lot of the same pop culture. He was more into '80s stuff than I was. One of the first things we talked about were Wes Anderson movies.

WENTZ: Another thing driving that song title was the knowledge that our fanbase wouldn't necessarily be familiar with Wes Anderson. It could be something that not only inspired us but something fans could also go check out. People don't ask us about that song so much now, but in that era, we'd answer and tell them to go watch Rushmore. You gotta see this movie. This line is a hilarious part of it.' Hopefully some people did. I encountered Jason Schwartzman at a party once. We didn't get to talk about the movie, but he was the sweetest human, and I was just geeking out. He told me he was writing a film with Wes Anderson about a train trip in India. I wanted to know about the writing process. He was like, 'Well, he's in New York City, I'm in LA. It's crazy because I'm on the phone all the time and my ear gets really hot.' That's the anecdote I got, and I loved it.

O'KEEFE: They're totally different people who approach making music from entirely different angles. It's cool to see them work. Pete would want a certain lyric. Patrick was focused on the phrasing. Pete would say the words were stupid and hand Patrick a revision, and Patrick would say I can't sing those the way I need to sing this. They would go through ten revisions for one song. I thought I would lose my mind with both of them, but then they would find it, and it would be fantastic. When they work together, it lights up. It takes on a life of its own. It's not always happy. There's a lot of push and pull, and each is trying to get their thing. With Take This To Your Grave, we never let anything go until all three of us were happy. Those guys were made to do this together.

WENTZ: A lot of the little things weren't a big deal, but those were things that [felt like] major decisions. I didn't want 'Where Is Your Boy' on Take This To Your Grave.

JANICK: I freaked out. I called Bob and said, 'We must put this song on the album! It's one of the biggest songs.' He agreed. We called Pete and talked about it; he was cool about it and heard us out.

WENTZ: I thought many things were humongous, and they just weren't. They didn't matter one way or another.

"Our Lawyer Made Us Change The (Album Cover)" - That Photo On Take This To Your Grave, 2003

STUMP: The band was rooted in nostalgia from early on. The '80s references were very much Pete's aesthetic. He had an idea for the cover. It ended up being his girlfriend at the time, face down on the bed, exhausted, in his bedroom. That was his bedroom in our apartment. His room was full of toys, '80s cereals. If we ended up with the Abbey Road cover of pop-punk, that original one was Sgt. Pepper's. But we couldn't legally clear any of the stuff in the photo. Darth Vader, Count Chocula…

WENTZ: There's a bunch of junk in there: a Morrissey poster, I think a Cher poster, Edward Scissorhands. We submitted it to Fueled by Ramen, and they were like, 'We can't clear any of this stuff.’ The original album cover did eventually come out on the vinyl version.

STUMP: The photo that ended up being the cover was simply a promo photo for that album cycle. We had to scramble. I was pushing the Blue Note jazz records feel. That's why the CD looks a bit like vinyl and why our names are listed on the front. I wanted a live photo on the cover. Pete liked the Blue Note idea but didn't like the live photo idea. I also made the fateful decision to have my name listed as 'Stump' rather than Stumph.

WENTZ: What we used was initially supposed to be the back cover. I remember someone in the band being pissed about it forever. Not everyone was into having our names on the cover. It was a strange thing to do at the time. But had the original cover been used, it wouldn't have been as iconic as what we ended up with. It wouldn't have been a conversation piece. That stupid futon in our house was busted in the middle. We're sitting close to each other because the futon was broken. The exposed brick wall was because it was the worst apartment ever. It makes me wonder: How many of these are accidental moments? At the time, there was nothing iconic about it. If we had a bigger budget, we probably would have ended up with a goofier cover that no one would have cared about.

STUMP: One of the things I liked about the cover was that it went along with something Pete had always said. I'm sure people will find this ironic, but Pete had always wanted to create a culture with the band where it was about all four guys and not just one guy. He had the foresight to even think about things like that. I didn't think anyone would give a fuck about our band! At the time, it was The Pete Wentz Band to most people. With that album cover, he was trying to reject that and [demonstrate] that all four of us mattered. A lot of people still don't get that, but whatever. I liked that element of the cover. It felt like a team. It felt like Voltron. It wasn't what I like to call 'the flying V photo' where the singer is squarely in the center, the most important, and everyone else is nearest the camera in order of 'importance.' The drummer would be in the very back. Maybe the DJ guy who scratches records was behind the drummer.

"You Need Him. I Could Be Him. Where Is Your Boy Tonight?" - The Dynamics of Punk Pop's Fab 4, 2003

Patrick seemed like something of the anti-frontman, never hogging the spotlight and often shrinking underneath his baseball hat. Wentz was more talkative, more out front on stage and in interviews, in a way that felt unprecedented for a bass player who wasn't also singing. In some ways, Fall Out Boy operated as a two-headed dictatorship. Wentz and Stump are in the car's front seat while Joe and Andy ride in the back.

STUMP: There is a lot of truth to that. Somebody must be in the front seat, no question. But the analogy doesn't really work for us; were more like a Swiss Army knife. You've got all these different attachments, but they are all part of the same thing. When you need one specific tool, the rest go back into the handle. That was how the band functioned and still does in many ways. Pete didn't want anyone to get screwed. Some things we've done might not have been the best business decision but were the right human decision. That was very much Pete's thing. I was 19 and very reactionary. If someone pissed me off, I'd be like, 'Screw them forever!' But Pete was very tactful. He was the business guy. Joe was active on the internet. He wouldn't stop believing in this band. He was the promotions guy. Andy was an honest instrumentalist: ‘I'm a drummer, and I'm going to be the best fucking drummer I can be.' He is very disciplined. None of us were that way aside from him. I was the dictator in the studio. I didn't know what producing was at the time or how it worked, but in retrospect, I've produced a lot of records because I'm an asshole in the studio. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not the nicest guy in the studio. It's a lot easier to know what you don't want. We carved out those roles early. We were very dependent on each other.

MCLYNN: I remember sitting in Japan with those guys. None of them were drinking then, but I was drinking plenty. It was happening there, their first time over, and all the shows were sold out. I remember looking at Pete and Patrick and telling Pete, ‘You're the luckiest guy in the world because you found this guy.' Patrick laughed. Then I turned to Patrick and said the same thing to him. Because really, they're yin and yang. They fit together so perfectly. The fact that Patrick found this guy with this vision, Pete had everything for the band laid out in his mind. Patrick, how he can sing, and what he did with Pete's lyrics - no one else could have done that. We tried it, even with the Black Cards project in 2010. We'd find these vocalists. Pete would write lyrics, and they'd try to form them into songs, but they just couldn't do it the way Patrick could. Pete has notebooks full of stuff that Patrick turns into songs. Not only can he sing like that, but how he turns those into songs is an art unto itself. It's really the combination of those two guys that make Fall Out Boy what it is. They're fortunate they found each other.

"I Could Walk This Fine Line Between Elation And Success. We All Know Which Way I'm Going To Strike The Stake Between My Chest" - Fall Out Boy Hits the Mainstream, 2003

Released on May 6, 2003, Take This To Your Grave massively connected with fans. (Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend arrived in stores less than two months earlier.) While Take This To Your Grave didn't crack the Billboard 200 upon its release, it eventually spent 30 weeks on the charts. From Under the Cork Tree debuted in the Top 10 just two years later, largely on Grave's momentum. 2007's Infinity on High bowed at #1.

WENTZ: I remember noticing it was getting insane when we would do in-stores. We'd still play anywhere. That was our deal. We liked being able to sell our stuff in the stores, too. It would turn into a riot. We played a Hollister at the mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. A lot of these stores were pretty corporate with a lot of rules, but Hollister would let us rip. Our merch guy was wearing board shorts, took this surfboard off the wall, and started crowd-surfing with it during the last song. I remember thinking things had gotten insane right at that moment.

HURLEY: When we toured with Less Than Jake, there were these samplers with two of their songs and two of ours. Giving those out was a surreal moment. To have real promotion for a record... It wasn't just an ad in a 'zine or something. It was awesome.

MCLYNN: They toured with The Reunion Show, Knockout, and Punch-line. One of their first big tours as an opening act was with MEST. There would be sold-out shows with 1,000 kids, and they would be singing along to Fall Out Boy much louder than to MEST. It was like, 'What's going on here?' It was the same deal with Less Than Jake. It really started catching fire months into the album being out. You just knew something was happening. As a headliner, they went from 500-capacity clubs to 1500 - 2000 capacity venues.

WENTZ: We always wanted to play The Metro in Chicago. It got awkward when they started asking us to play after this band or that band. There were bands we grew up with that were now smaller than us. Headlining The Metro was just wild. My parents came.

MCLYNN: There was a week on Warped Tour, and there was some beel because these guys were up-and-comers, and some of the bands that were a little more established weren't too happy. They were getting a little shit on Warped Tour that week, sort of their initiation. They were on this little, shitty stage. So many kids showed up to watch them in Detroit, and the kids rushed the stage, and it collapsed. The PA failed after like three songs. They finished with an acapella, 'Where is Your Boy,’ and the whole crowd sang along.

WENTZ: That's when every show started ending in a riot because it couldn't be contained. We ended up getting banned from a lot of venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage. It was pure energy. We'd be billed on tour as the opening band, and the promoter would tell us we had to close the show or else everyone would leave after we played. We were a good band to have that happen to because there wasn't any ego. We were just like, "Oh, that's weird.' It was just bizarre. When my parents saw it was this wid thing, they said, 'OK, yeah, maybe take a year off from college.' That year is still going on.

MCLYNN: That Warped Tour was when the band's first big magazine cover, by far, hit the stands. I give a lot of credit to Norman Wonderly and Mike Shea at Alternative Press. They saw what was happening with Fall Out Boy and were like, 'We know it's early with you guys, but we want to give you a cover.' It was the biggest thing to happen to any of us. It really helped kick it to another level. It helped stoke the fires that were burning. This is back when bands like Green Day, Blink-182, and No Doubt still sold millions of records left and right. It was a leap of faith for AP to step out on Fall Out Boy the way they did.

STUMP: That was our first big cover. It was crazy. My parents flipped out. That wasn't a small zine. It was a magazine my mom could find in a bookstore and tell her friends. It was a shocking time. It's still like that. Once the surrealism starts, it never ends. I was onstage with Taylor Swift ten years later. That statement just sounds insane. It's fucking crazy. But when I was onstage, I just fell into it. I wasn't thinking about how crazy it was until afterward. It was the same thing with the AP cover. We were so busy that it was just another one of those things we were doing that day. When we left, I was like, 'Holy fuck! We're on the cover of a magazine! One that I read! I have a subscription to that!'

HURLEY: Getting an 'In The Studio' blurb was a big deal. I remember seeing bands 'in the studio' and thinking, Man, I would love to be in that and have people care that we're in the studio.' There were more minor things, but that was our first big cover.

STUMP: One thing I remember about the photo shoot is I was asked to take off my hat. I was forced to take it off and had been wearing that hat for a while. I never wanted to be the lead singer. I always hoped to be a second guitarist with a backup singer role. I lobbied to find someone else to be the proper singer. But here I was, being the lead singer, and I fucking hated it. When I was a drummer, I was always behind something. Somehow the hat thing started. Pete gave me a hat instead of throwing it away - I think it's the one I'm wearing on the cover of Take This To Your Grave. It became like my Linus blanket. I had my hat, and I could permanently hide. You couldn't see my eyes or much of me, and I was very comfortable that way. The AP cover shoot was the first time someone asked me to remove it. My mom has a poster of that cover in her house, and every time I see it, I see the fear on my face - just trying to maintain composure while filled with terror and insecurity. ‘Why is there a camera on me?'

JANICK: We pounded the pavement every week for two years. We believed early on that something great was going to happen. As we moved to 100,000 and 200,000 albums, there were points where everything was tipping. When they were on the cover of Alternative Press. When they did Warped for five days, and the stage collapsed. We went into Christmas with the band selling 2000 to 3000 a week and in the listening stations at Hot Topic. Fueled By Ramen had never had anything like that before.

MOSTOFI: Pete and I used to joke that if he weren't straight edge, he would have likely been sent to prison or worse at some point before Fall Out Boy. Pete has a predisposition to addictive behavior and chemical dependency. This is something we talked about a lot back in the day. Straight Edge helped him avoid some of the traps of adolescence.

WENTZ: I was straight edge at the time. I don't think our band would have been so successful without that. The bands we were touring with were partying like crazy. Straight Edge helped solidify the relationship between the four of us. We were playing for the love of music, not for partying or girls or stuff like that. We liked being little maniacs running around. Hurley and I were kind of the younger brothers of the hardcore kids we were in bands with. This was an attempt to get out of that shadow a little bit. Nobody is going to compare this band to Racetraitor. You know when you don't want to do exactly what your dad or older brother does? There was a little bit of that.

"Take This To Your Grave, And I'll Take It To Mine" - The Legacy of Take This To Your Grave, 2003-2023

Take This To Your Grave represents a time before the paparazzi followed Wentz to Starbucks, before marriages and children, Disney soundtracks, and all the highs and lows of an illustrious career. The album altered the course for everyone involved with its creation. Crush Music added Miley Cyrus, Green Day, and Weezer to their roster. Fueled By Ramen signed Twenty One Pilots, Paramore, A Day To Remember, and All Time Low.

STUMP: I'm so proud of Take This To Your Grave. I had no idea how much people were going to react to it. I didn't know Fall Out Boy was that good of a band. We were this shitty post-hardcore band that decided to do a bunch of pop-punk before I went to college, and Pete went back to opening for Hatebreed. That was the plan. Somehow this record happened. To explain to people now how beautiful and accidental that record was is difficult. It seems like it had to have been planned, but no, we were that shitty band that opened for 25 Ta Life.

HURLEY: We wanted to make a record as perfect as Saves The Day's Through Being Cool. A front-to-back perfect collection of songs. That was our obsession with Take This To Your Grave. We were just trying to make a record that could be compared in any way to that record. There's just something special about when the four of us came together.

WENTZ: It blows my mind when I hear people talking about Take This To Your Grave or see people including it on lists because it was just this tiny personal thing. It was very barebones. That was all we had, and we gave everything we had to it. Maybe that's how these big iconic bands feel about those records, too. Perhaps that's how James Hetfield feels when we talk about Kill 'Em All. That album was probably the last moment many people had of having us as their band that their little brother didn't know about. I have those feelings about certain bands, too. 'This band was mine. That was the last time I could talk about them at school without anyone knowing who the fuck I was talking about.' That was the case with Take This To Your Grave.

TROHMAN: Before Save Rock N' Roll, there was a rumor that we would come back with one new song and then do a Take This To Your Grave tenth-anniversary tour. But we weren't going to do what people thought we would do. We weren't going to [wear out] our old material by just returning from the hiatus with a Take This To Your Grave tour.

WENTZ: We've been asked why we haven't done a Take This To Your Grave tour. In some ways, it's more respectful not to do that. It would feel like we were taking advantage of where that record sits, what it means to people and us.

HURLEY: When Metallica released Death Magnetic, I loved the record, but I feel like Load and Reload were better in a way, because you knew that's what they wanted to do.

TROHMAN: Some people want us to make Grave again, but I'm not 17. It would be hard to do something like that without it being contrived. Were proud of those songs. We know that’s where we came from. We know the album is an important part of our history.

STUMP: There's always going to be a Take This To Your Grave purist fan who wants that forever: But no matter what we do, we cannot give you 2003. It'll never happen again. I know the feeling, because I've lived it with my favorite bands, too. But there's a whole other chunk of our fans who have grown with us and followed this journey we're on. We were this happy accident that somehow came together. It’s tempting to plagarize yourself. But it’s way more satisfying and exciting to surprise yourself.

MCILRITH: Fall Out Boy is an important band for so many reasons. I know people don't expect the singer of Rise Against to say that, but they really are. If nothing else, they created so much dialog and conversation within not just a scene but an international scene. They were smart. They got accused of being this kiddie pop punk band, but they did smart things with their success. I say that, especially as a guy who grew up playing in the same Chicago hardcore bands that would go on and confront be-ing a part of mainstream music. Mainstream music and the mainstream world are machines that can chew your band up if you don't have your head on straight when you get into it. It's a fast-moving river, and you need to know what direction you're going in before you get into it. If you don't and you hesitate, it'll take you for a ride. Knowing those guys, they went into it with a really good idea. That's something that the hardcore instilled in all of us. Knowing where you stand on those things, we cut our teeth on the hardcore scene, and it made us ready for anything that the world could throw at us, including the giant music industry.

#long post #lke. VERY long post #fall out boy #fob #take this to your grave #tttyg #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley #if theres any typos lmk and i'll fix em this. hust took fucking forever to transcribe.

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falloutboy · 1 year

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About 21 or so years ago, as I was applying to colleges I would ultimately never go to, Fall Out Boy began as a little pop punk side project of what we assumed was Pete’s more serious band Arma Angelus. We were sloppy and we couldn’t solidify a lineup, but the three of us (Pete, Joe, and I) were having way too much fun to give up on it.

We were really rough around the edges. As an example of how rough, one of my favorite teachers pulled me aside after hearing the recording that would become “Evening Out With Your Girlfriend,” and tactfully said “What do you think your best instrument is Patrick? Drums. It’s drums. Probably not singing Patrick.”

We went into Smart Studios with the Sean O’Keefe…. So there we were, 3/5 of a band with a singer who’d only been singing a year, no drummer, and one out of two guitarists. But we had the opportunity to record with Sean and record at Butch Vig’s legendary studio.

8 or so months later, Fueled By Ramen would give us a contract to record the remaining songs. We’d sleep on floors, eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly, live in a van for the next 3 years, and somehow in spite of that eventually play with Elton John and Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and for President Obama and for the NFC championship, and all these other wildly unpredictable and unlikely things. But none of that would ever come close to happening if Andy hadn’t made it to the session and Joe hadn’t dragged us kicking and screaming into being a band.

Happy 20th birthday Take This To Your Grave, you weird brilliant lightning strike accident of a record that absolutely changed my life.

———

p.s. just dropped some TTTYG anniversary merch in our webstore to celebrate. also working on something special for a vinyl reissue but you’ll have to wait a sec on that one 🤐

#fall out boy #fob #tttyg #take this to your grave #pete wentz #patrick stump #andy hurley #joe trohman

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whore-ibly-hot · 1 year

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Yan!Bully x Gn!Reader x Yan!Loser

'Art-Project'

18+ Minors DNI

Warnings: Bullying, name calling, degradation, violence, mentions of non-consensual photos, nonconsensual touching, male pronouns for the yans, mentions of school, general perversion, toxic behaviors, creep behavior.

(AN: Had a fun time with this one, really enjoyed toying with the dynamic between this two. I think I'll probably make a part two with these trainwrecks in the future)

Part 2 here

The crashing of books and pens falling on the tile floor rings out through the boy's bathroom, as a young, dark-haired boy is thrown harshly onto the cold multi-colored tile. The boy lets out a cry as he hits the ground, and he scrambles away upon impact, pressing his back up against the wall as he looks up at his assaulter.

"F-fuck off, Patrick!" Ahmed exclaims, his frightened eyes never leaving the predatory gaze of the bully who stands over him. Ahmed's free hand wanders around the bathroom floor, grasping blindly to try and find his book bag. Ahmed's accent only becomes more prominent, as his voice shakes and cracks. "Fuck did you say to me, you little shit?" Patrick grabs the boy by his collar, yanking him up from the ground and sneering at him. Ahmed gulps when he feels Patricks breath tickle his neck, making him tremble. "I-I didn't, didn't mean it, c'mon. I was just shocked when you threw me on the floor, it just slipped out." Patrick rolls his eyes, and as he does, his gaze falls on Ahmed's bright red backpack, laying open on the floor. Patrick notices how Ahmed's eyes widen when Patrick looks at it, causing Patrick to raise an eyebrow.

"What's in the bag, freak?" Patrick whispers, and before the sentence has even fully left his lips, Ahmed is fiercely shaking his head. "Nothing, nothing! Just work, please-" He hits the floor again, and he's sure tomorrow he'll be bruised from the rough treatment. "Pick it up." Ahmed looks up. "What?" "C'mon, pick it up. You're all freaked out, freak... I wanna know why, so I'm gonna tell you one more time." Patrick crouches down, and nods in the direction of the cloth schoolbag. "Pick. It. Up." He pauses after each word, relishing the fear in Ahmed's eyes.

Since Ahmed transferred to Morrisville high, Patrick had made his life a living hell. Not that he wasn't already unpopular at his old school, but people at least tried to avoid him there. People did here at first, before Patrick set his sights on Ahmed. Patrick wasn't sure what drew him to the scrawny, quiet boy. Possibly the way everyone avoided him, or maybe it was how little everyone knew about the new kid. Most likely, it was the knowledge that no matter what he did to the boy, or what he made him do, no-one was going to stand up for the boy. Patrick picked on everybody, but god, Ahmed became his favorite. The way he'd squirm, and cry. The way he was able to convince the other kids at the school to pick on the lonely boy. Things only got worse when Patrick found out that everyone at Ahmed's old school thought he was a freak too. Suddenly, shoulder-checks in the hallway became full-on beatings, stolen homework became shoes and clothes being taken from Ahmed's locker, or even right off the poor boy. Patrick never hesitated to remind Ahmed that even if he reported him, or got away from this school, that he'd still be a freak, no matter where he went.

Ahmed's sobs snap Patrick out of his reveling, as the scrawny boy crawls over to the bag, his hands shaking as he tries to grip the red canvas of the backpack. Patrick huffs, but before he can open up the backpack and take a look, he hears footsteps outside the bathroom, coming from down the hall. "Get in the fuckin' stall, go." Patrick growls, pointy sharply at the large handicapped stall at the other end of the bathroom. Patrick steps outside of the bathroom, and Ahmed can hear Patrick greeting whoever is outside. A friend of Patrick's probably. Another member of his little delinquent gang. Ahmed shuts the lid of the toilet and sinks down to sit on the lid, afraid his knees may give out. The sound of heavy boots approaches, and Patrick fingers slid around the stall door, pulling it open as he slips into the stall, locking it behind him. Ahmed tries to steady his breathing.

"Alright, open it up. C'mon." Patrick nods in Ahmed's direction. Shaking hands pull out textbooks, pens, pencils, even the leftovers from Ahmed's lunch. The objects clatter to the floor, scattering across the bottom of the stall. "See, nothing in here, just my school stuff." Ahmed's trembling hands extend the now empty bag to Patrick, presenting it almost proudly. "What... there's no fucking way." Patrick huffs. He begins to dig through the objects, kicking away the writing utensils as he grasps at the textbooks. He flips through each of the pages, trying to find anything incriminating. His frown only deepens as he finds nothing. He's about to give up, as he reaches for a blue folder labeled 'Math'. When he does, Ahmed lets out an involuntary whimper, causing Patrick to freeze. A sick grin spreads across the blonde's face, as he slowly pivots his head to look at Ahmed.

"There we go, somethin' in here you don't want me seeing?" He asks. Ahmed nods, tears cascading down his cheeks. "Alright, I'll tell you what, freak..." Patrick stands straight up, leaning up against the wall behind him. "Tell me what's in the folder, and I won't even look, okay? Just get it off your chest, I'm open-minded." Patrick purrs at the boy, watching his resolve crack in real-time.

"It's-" Ahmed goes quiet towards the end, his words so soft Patrick can't hear. "What was that? You gotta speak up." He sighs. "Or, I guess I could just look-" He moves to flip open the folder with the edge of his boot, causing Ahmed to jolt forward. "N-no!" The boy yells, thrusting his hands out in front of him. Patrick scoffs, tossing his head back for a moment as he laughs, clutching at his stomach. "Jesus, Ahmed, what the hell is in here that's got you so spooked?" Patrick asks. Ahmed shivers. Somehow Patrick using his real name is worse than him calling him 'freak'. It feels more personal.

"It's nudes... nude photographs." Ahmed whimpers, a blush of shame spreading across his cheeks as his gaze falls to the floor. "Oh- yours?" Patrick asks. Ahmed doesn't respond, causing Patrick's brows to furrow, an amused and pleasantly surprised expression coming onto his face. "Not yours, huh." Patrick glances down at the folder. "Who the hell's been giving you pussy, freak? Who's been letting you take those pics?" He asks. Ahmed's hands are tense, gripping the fabric covering his knees so hard that he worries they might tear.

"I- they didn't, alright?" Ahmed cries, curling his knees up to his chest and burying his face in shame. "They didn't-" Patrick takes a moment to process this information. His eyes light up in realization. "You really are a little pervert, huh? I knew something was off about you." He puts his hand on his knees, leaning over so he can make eye contact with Ahmed's curled up form. "A sick little pervert. You get off on those photos?" Ahmed whines. "Some poor kid at this school doesn't know that the school freak strokes it every night to a picture of them... poor them." Patrick leans down and picks up the folder.

"Wait, w-what are you doing, you said you wouldn't look if I told you the truth about what was in there?" Ahmed coughs, almost full on hyper-ventilating at this point, eyes wide in panic. Patrick nods, keeping eye contact with Ahmed as he flips open the folder. "True, but..." He shakes his head, his blonde locks falling from his loose ponytail. "How do I know you're telling me the truth about what's in here if I don't look?" Ahmed scoffs. "Why would I lie about having a folder of some creep-shots?" Patrick shrugs. "I don't know, maybe something like that doesn't seem that serious to you, y'know, because you're a pervert." He suggests. Patrick sticks his tongue teasingly out at Ahmed, before looking down at the gritty Polaroids nestled behind some math notes.

The photos are taken from all sorts of places. The ones at the front are simple upskirts from behind, the subjects face not visible. As Patrick examines more of them, he notices they seem to get more invasive. The final photograph was clearly shot at night, a bedroom window visible. The subject of the photo lies nude, and Patrick's face falls when he sees the face. He looks up at Ahmed, his breath halted. "They... they are cute, huh?" Ahmed looks up from his knees, confused. "You know them?" Ahmed swallows harshly, then nods. "Sort of... we have English together." As Ahmed explains the nature of his relationship to you, Patrick flips through the photos once more. Now that he knows these photos are of you, they have an even greater allure. "Hmm, I have lunch period with them, gym too..." He muses. "Heh, you should see em' in those little gym shorts, shit..." Ahmed isn't sure where this is going, but Patrick's calm tone and hyper-focused expression stress him out even more than when Patrick is outwardly aggressive. At least then he's predictable. Right now, Ahmed is in new territory with his tormentor.

Patrick sighs, and tucks the photos back into Ahmed's folder. He smacks the folder into the center of Ahmed's chest, making him let out a grunt as his trembling hands grip the blue plastic. "Listen, freak." He whispers. He places a hand on the wall behind Ahmed, allowing him to move his face right up in front of the boys. Brown eyes look back at him with fear. "Nobody has to know about all this. I'm still gonna kick your ass, but nobody has to know about your..." He thinks. "Let's call it 'extracurricular art project', okay?" Ahmed, gulps, and asks. "What do you want in return, I know the way you are." Patrick chuckles. "You're pretty smart, huh? Alright, I'll tell ya. Get me some of those photos, some new ones. And copy that last one, that shot into their room." He says. "Why, y-you like them too?" Ahmed whimpers. Patrick shrugs. "I know they've got a sweet little body, and I wouldn't mind a closer look at it, that's all." Ahmed considers this. If he doesn't agree, who knows what Patrick would tell everyone. God, Ahmed might even have to change schools again, and if he did, he couldn't be near you. He shakes his head. He won't let that happen.

"Alright, you got it. I- I think I can get them to you by friday." Ahmed offers, and Patrick nods. Ahmed moves to stand, but Patrick pushes him back. "One more thing, freak." He whispers. Ahmed bites his lips in fear. Patrick slips his hand from the boy's shoulder, down past his waist, and to the front of his victims school shorts. He roughly palms Ahmed's limp cock through his pants, making the boy choke on his own spit in shock. Patrick sighs softly at his reaction, leaning in to whisper into his ear.

"Snap me a pic of yourself too, freak..."

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mizgnomer · 3 months

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Behind the Scenes of The Giggle - Part Three

From Entertainment Weekly (Dec 2023 by Clark Collis):

Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies tells EW that the American actor was completely unfamiliar with the beloved science fiction series when the executive producer approached Harris about playing a villain called The Toymaker on this Saturday's final 60th anniversary special episode, "The Giggle." "He’d never heard of it in his life, bless him," Davies says with a laugh. "I was lucky enough to work with the great man on a show called It’s a Sin, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and working with him was such a joy. The Toymaker, he's kind of the god of games, so he shuffles cards, he does magic tricks, and all of that fits Neil Patrick Harris. If you go through agents, they often tell you to go away. I was able to send just a text saying, 'Do you fancy reading this?' He read it and literally phoned me up going, 'Let me get this right, so the Doctor’s an alien, right?' I was like, 'Oh my god, you really have never heard of Doctor Who!' But he couldn’t resist it, and he came to Cardiff, and we had the most spectacular time." Davies explains that, "it's very hard to find the villain who can match David Tennant and Catherine Tate. To have a character who can be in danger of defeating those two is very hard to find. Sometimes on Doctor Who, you need armies of a thousand robots who could do that. This is just one person, so casting them was absolutely crucial and this becomes a pivotal event in the Doctor’s life. We needed that man, and, god, we had a glorious time. It’s so lovely working with Neil. When I text him now, [we ask], what’s our third project together? We’ve got to keep going!"

With huge thanks to all who shared set photos (including @TomWrenPhoto on Twitter)

For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsGiggle tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

#david tennant #catherine tate #neil patrick harris #doctor who #rtdedit #the giggle #60th anniversary #dw 60th #he was indeed an excellent toymaker #I'm glad they all had fun together #oh what I would give for footage of them doing escape games together #stuff i posted #whoBts #whoBtsGiggle

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patrickztump · 26 days

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oh i looked for your name on the ouija board and your naked magic, oh dear lord..

i didn't want to bulk up the post with multiple paragraphs or add it in a reblog but i wanted to talk about this a little :)

i was thinking about the gif i made last year for where did the party go and still love how it turned out. it gives me lost tapes vibes and i've also been into a lot of throwback/retro themed art, so wanted to tap into that with a stack of tvs.

there are clear references to the music video with the disco ball, that abandoned hospital wall color, spray painted symbol, and The Cord. but the tvs also tie back to the album cover, mirroring the clothing colors. and if you take a peek at the runtime on the tv, it's to where the lyrics start in the song (minus the milliseconds, itunes didn't provide it so i just threw a couple to the end).

i know the machete didn't come in until the end half of death valley and guitar not until save rock and roll, but last summer i made another version of that and have been trying to use it in something since, but never found the right idea to incorporate it. so i figured add it to this piece because so many associate lyrics of love and comparisons to pete and patrick's relationship, so why no put the two together? they were brought together by music, torn apart by it, then made whole again from it.

also, since i started using procreate i've been able to do about 60-70% (of large projects, like this) in the program before having to eventually move it into photoshop to finish it up. but this one is 99% procreate! the only thing that's ps is the "and the love on tv / love on tv" text because i couldn't quite replicate it the same way i did in ps (skill issue as of right now lol). but i a quite proud of that! because the learning curve has been a slow and steady climb.

anyways, there you go! if you read this, thank you <3 and i hope you enjoyed this little scene my brain plopped out :)

#idk if people enjoy or care to read the behind the scenes / inspiration talks i do but i kind of can't shut up #and like to talk about my ideas. so i put it behind a click to spare those who don't want it front and center #fall out boy #fob art #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley #save rock and roll #srar #youngblood chronicles #things i make #digital art #art #artblr #artists on tumblr #procreate

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gonzo-rella · 1 month

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Them | Art Donaldson

MASTERLIST | AO3 | KO-FI

Relationship(s): Art Donaldson x gn!reader (unrequited romantic), Art Donaldson x Tashi Duncan x Patrick Zweig (romantic)

Summary: You'll never be them.

Warnings: Angst, unhappy relationship. (Let me know if I need to add any)

Word count: 0.3k

(A/N: I saw Challengers today and… oh boy. This throuple is so fucking compelling, I like depressing shit, and I had a crush on Mike Faist's Connor Murphy when I was a teen, so I figured why not write something to combine my crush, my love of depressing shit and my fascination with this throuple to write a little thing. I thought it'd be a really interesting dynamic to explore. If you'd be interested in seeing more from this idea, let me know, and I'll happily write something! I'm tempted to write an angsty thing where the reader is finally open about the fact that they know about Art's feelings for Tashi and Patrick.)

You’ll never be them.

You’ll never be Tashi Duncan, whose gaze he craves like sunlight. It’s like he searches for his reflection in her eyes- no matter the distance between them- because that’s the only place he wants to exist, or can exist. He gets lost in them. It’s a good job he doesn’t want to leave; he couldn’t if he tried.

You’ll never be Patrick Zweig, whose smile would make his knees buckle were his legs not strong from years of training. His stare can’t stop time quite like Tashi’s, but he’d probably melt if Patrick looked at him for long enough.

Their history is something you’ve pieced together from scraps of anecdotes he’s reluctantly offered up over the time you’ve been together. Each one serves as a bedtime story you can’t help but tell yourself late at night, the ceiling a screen on which to project memories that aren’t yours. Art always faces away from you when you’re in bed together. You used to wonder if he was dreaming of them, or just her, or just him. But, one night, you noticed the moonlight reflected in his eyes, and you realised he was lying awake, too, as tortured by Tashi and Patrick as you.

He can love more than one person at a time. Maybe he loves you, too. But, he doesn’t love you like Tashi, or like Patrick. You know that. He can say those three magic words all he wants. He can kiss you. He can look at you. It all rings hollow when adoration practically radiates off him when he locks eyes with Patrick or Tashi. You recognise it because it’s like the adoration that radiates off you when you look at him.

But, you don’t say anything. Just like how Art doesn’t say anything.

#art donaldson x reader #art donaldson #challengers x reader #challengers #tashi duncan #patrick zweig #x reader #x gn!reader #x gn reader #x gender neutral!reader #x gender neutral reader

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grandhotelabyss · 1 year

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Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

#creative writing #literature

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taintandviolent · 11 months

Text

deflowering ; James March x virgin!Reader

{requested by anonymous} summary: 7k words! after a little dancing, more than a little champagne, you decide to take James March up on his offer of going up to one of the new rooms of the Hotel Cortez, to break them in, as it were. Little does he know, he's about to break you in, too. w a r n i n g s: virgin!reader (adult), mentions of alcohol, rough sex, explicit descriptions, canon divergence, rough sex, thigh riding, cunnilingus, blowjobs, aggression, use of 'daddy', dom themes.

full fic under cut! ↓ / ao3 link here! / ♪ recommended playlist here! ♪

t a g l i s t : @kaismanwich / @redwoodghost / @elsamars / @silverzoomies / @kaissweetlamb / @thewolveswithin / @80strashbag / @twinkiemaximoff / @spill-the-t / @stucktothetwo / @evansb1tch / @enchanting-evan / @petersevans / @yesdevineruler / @enchanting-evan / @anonymous0316 / @eventually27 / @violetharmonscupcake/ @my-own-walker / @kai-slut / @evanpetersfansblog / @fuckedbykai / @iluwmycats / @nova-kayne67 / @dewberryobssesed / @the-goblin1 / @dirtyfairy97 / @jellyluvr / @strangerthings420 / @kai-anderson-whore / @piecesofcain / @lilthbunny

It was the twenty-third of August, 1926, and you had just finished your second glass of champagne in the Hotel Cortez. Usually, you never drank this much, but it was a celebration after all. Some fellow named James Patrick March had finally completed the arduous construction of his new hotel and tonight was the opening night. Crowds had flocked to the entrance, dressed to the nines and all eagerly craning their necks for a peek at the glamorous inside. Those who weren’t explicitly invited were turned away by the doorman in his starched uniform.

You, of course — you’d been invited by your friend’s friend’s friend and when you showed up in a beaded, green dress and the mink stole your mother had given you four birthdays ago, you waltzed right through those doors without a single question. You looked like you belonged here as much as the group of actresses that walked in before you. The moment you entered, the hotel stole a gasp from your lips, dazzling you with its prestige and innovation.

It had been toted as “an overly ambitious project” and you could certainly attest to that. Mr. March, whomever he was, had written a particular aesthetic into the design of his hotel and from the hexagonal patterned carpets to the ornately panelled gold walls, everything fit the opulent theme. The Blue Parrot Lounge was a name you’d heard whispered several times, waiters coming down the curved staircases with trays full of delicate champagne flutes. You learned shortly after that the bar was on the second floor and overlooked the entire hotel lobby.

But downstairs in that lobby, a band was set up, their instruments exhaling the liveliest melody you’d heard in ages. Easily, they persuaded the masses to kick their heels up. The grand chandelier above your head twinkled like your own personal galaxy, shimmering every time you moved. In fact, everything twinkled. You felt ebullient, as light as a cloud, and didn’t have a care in the world.

There had been a brief pause where Mr. March welcomed everyone to his Hotel in his dangerously cordial way, making a show of popping champagne. Everyone applauded, congratulated and then quickly dispersed, eager to return to the complementary libations. You’d eagerly taken to the dance floor and quickly found a partner in a jazzy white suit. He had blonde hair, sharp, chiseled features and deep green eyes - handsome enough. You two paired alright, enjoying each other’s lively moves.

He’d clearly been drinking more than you, judging by the way he slurred his compliments to you, dabbing nervously at the sheen of sweat that decorated his forehead. After an hour or so of dancing, your feet were sore and your curious nature had wrapped its tendrils around your throat, ordering you to investigate the rest of the hotel.

A server held another glittering tray of champagne high above everyone’s heads, and you snatched one as he passed you, hurriedly bringing it to your mouth. The effervescent liquid tickled the bow of your lips, the tiny bubbles popping as you sucked in a delicate mouthful. You dabbed at the corner of your mouth with your middle finger, trying not to gulp too loud.

As the song changed, the band racing into another upbeat melody, you swung your shoulder around, prepared to sink deeper into the hallways. Instead, you nearly collided with a broad shoulder. “Oooh! ‘Pardon me!”

“Mm.”

You recognised him right away. In the wicked and honest parts of your brain, you were thrilled that, of all people, you’d bumped into him. During his speech, all the women were staring with illicit gazes and hungry tongues. You’d mapped the direction of their eyes as they scanned along his face, and down his body as they openly and dissolutely lusted after him. The audible whispers that scattered the room when he cracked open the champagne, allowing the fizzy stream to spray into his mouth would’ve been laughable if you hadn’t been one of the whisperers.

He seemed slightly less personable now, almost curt in nature. Something about the dismissive way he’d flashed his brows at you as if he was annoyed sparked a fire in your curiosity. He was too handsome to let slip through your fingers, and surely, there must be a reason for his clipped response. You gulped down a mouthful and cleared your throat.

“Say, aren’t you Mr. March?” You asked coyly, knowing full well who he was.

He stopped then, like he’d been challenged to a duel, and with a slight bow, turned gracefully on his toes. To him, it was a challenge. You hadn’t run off with your tail between your legs, offended by his sternness, and that was a challenge for conversation, for flirtations and perhaps… indulging himself.

“Indeed I am. Enjoying yourself?” He eyed the half-empty glass in your tiny little hand, taking note that it clearly wasn’t your first.

“Oh, very much so. This is a ssswell party, Mr. March.”

“Splendid! And please,” He took your hand in his, pressing his lips against your knuckles. “Call me James.”

You cooed in acknowledgment, watching him from the rim of your glass. He lingered for a little too long and you would’ve bet your last penny that you saw his nostrils flare slightly as he inhaled a deep breath of your scent. After a moment, James straightened up, keeping a firm grip on your hand.

He had indeed; you were sweet, like a delicate pastry with the slightest hint of fruitiness underneath. There were notes of a perfume, floral, something moderately expensive — surely, something you’d saved up all your pocket change for. The way your eyes glimmered awoke a deep hunger within his core. He’d play with this.

“Tell me, my dear. Can you dance?” He asked.

The moment you said you could, he’d wrapped your slender arm around his forearm, holding onto it tightly as he towed you back towards the dance floor. Thank god your mother had insisted you learn how to dance properly. And thank heavens your friend, whom Mother detested, taught you how to dance improperly. Mother had always said these new trend dances were for immoral and loose women, but when James March insisted you dance the Charleston with him, you’d never been gladder for immorality in your life.

Keeping a tight hold on your hand, he swung you out into the clearing. With his fee hand, he made a quick gesture to the band. They responded by starting up the familiar melody, and James stepped to your side, lifting his brows in a silent confirmation that you were as ready as you looked. You gave him a short nod, and you both took one step backwards, beginning the shuffling motions.

His feet moved quick to the rhythm; behind and in front of each other, his heels kicking out to the side. All things considered, you made a worthy partner, keeping up with his lively, bobbing movements. Your hands were at your waist, fingers splayed out, swishing from side to side. You both leaned forward in unison and sent your right heels up into the air. The moment you straightened up again was when you realised that a small crowd had gathered in the lobby of the Hotel Cortez and all of their eyes were on the two of you. Everyone was watching as you two masterfully stepped the Charleston and you felt like a celebrity, a performer with the most handsome partner.

There was one woman in particular, a gorgeous brunette gal, who looked on with narrowed eyes. James stepped in front of your line of sight, flashing a villainously personable smile, and spun you back to his side. Though he wouldn’t dare voice it, the beginning twitches of an erection had his cock stirring in his pants. You were delectable and lively, something he’d take great pleasure in snatching away from you. All the more arousing that she hasn’t the slightest clue….

As the song ended, you couldn’t help but dissolve into a fit of giddy laughter, falling backwards into his chest. You couldn’t be sure, but as his arms enclosed around you, you thought you heard a syrupy laugh deep in his throat. Both of you were tuckered out, chests heaving, a misting of sweat covering your décolleté and his forehead. After a moment in his strong arms — ooooh, his arms — he brought a handkerchief from a pocket, dabbing his forehead gently. Modest applause peppered the crowd, along with a few glad compliments.

“I don’t mean offence by this, but…” You swallowed, wetting your throat. “I didn’t think you could dance like that!”

“I’m full of surprises.” He answered.

James swooped around you, circling you predatorily. His fingers ghosted over the back of your neck, sending a convulsive shiver down your spine.

You two locked eyes then, staring wordlessly. Both of you unable to ignore the need, the pulling draw, the hunger to touch each other. It was the sort of gaze that started rumours. His tongue scraped along the roof of his mouth, longing to taste the churning arousal between your legs. He knew it was there, told plainly by the way you fiddled with the hem of your neckline, nervously, trying to placate your own licentious thoughts.

“Beautiful hotel, really.” You finally whispered.

“Allow me to show you the best room in the house.” His eyes flashed to yours, sensing the apprehension. You rolled your shoulders inward, prepped to decline as politely as you could.

“Oh now, now… no need to be shy. I’m a gentleman first and foremost.”

“I don’t know if your lady friend will enjoy that…” You retorted.

“You are the only lady in my company.” He assured.

You gazed behind him one more time and met eyes with her — an action you’d immediately regretted. Her gaze was as comforting as a jail cell, and her full lips were pulled into a tight, frustrated line that held back a myriad of hatred. You opened your mouth to speak, but a forefinger was pressed hurriedly into your cupids bow, shushing you quickly. He looked down at you, brows furrowed in disapproval.

“Now, now. Shh. I’d hate to have to cut out your tongue, my dear. I had plans for it later.”

Your brows pulled together, eyes displaying nothing but sheer confusion. What on Earth did he mean by that? Either of those things? You were too afraid to broach the question, partly in fear that the answer would’ve frightened you, or worse, aroused you.

As though he read your mind, heard your innermost thoughts, he added quickly: “If you want to find out what… well, you’ll have to follow me first, my dear. Shall you?”

He extended his hand to you, palm up.

Against your better judgement and without thinking a second more about the repercussions, you took it and managed to squeak: “To the moon, James.”

When you glanced over his shoulder a final time, that woman watched you as he led you away, that tumultuous anger burning in her eyes. Something about her piercing gaze sent a shiver down your spine. She looked innocent enough, but underneath the done-up exterior, there was a cruelness, a hostility that you wanted nothing to do with. You hurried your steps, pinning yourself closer to James.

The journey took longer than you expected as every few moments, he was stopped by a hotel guest and congratulated. Everyone from stuffy elderly couples to actors you recognised from pictures all wanted to shake hands with the man that had created “the hotel of the century”. You hung on his arm, politely silent, offering agreeing nods and kind smiles when they’d look at you. They must’ve assumed, of course, that you two were an item, and for that brief, fleeting moment, you were thrilled by the idea.

Once he’d pushed open the door, allowing room for you to walk in, you realised that the room he’d led you into was the room he’d cracked the champagne in — except it had been expertly cleaned within a few hours. There were no crowds, no remnants, no sounds aside from a pair of breaths; yours and his. Although, if you listened hard enough, you thought you heard the dull, muted music from below. It sounded hazy and slower up here in this room.

The lock clicked into place and James had you in his arms, his face buried in your neck, his pencil-thin moustache tickling the sensitive flesh under your jaw. He whispered seductive words of veneration into the nape of your neck, praising your appearance between breaths and tastes of your salty flesh.

“Forgive my eagerness,” he whispered into your ear, before nipping at your skin. “I find you… irresistible.”

Delighted by the sensations, your lids fluttered. You extended your neck to him, allowing more. He kissed your neck over and over again and began sucking too hard in certain spots. You let out the tiniest little hums of discomfort, trying to stretch away from him then. However, somewhere deep in your core, you craved that pain, the burn of his suckling kisses.

“I want you to kiss me.” He declared, finally pulling away to gaze upon your face, like he was studying it. “Kiss me, but don’t hold back. I want to feel your passion.”

You nodded quickly, feigning all the courage in the world. Nervous? Who, me? Never! Your lips clashed together as you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling yourself as close to him as you could. His mouth parted, allowing his tongue out to swirl around yours, and you could taste the champagne that lingered on it like a fading memory. He deepened the kiss, moving further into your mouth and all you could do was moan into his. Silly girl, he must’ve thought.

His hand left your side, trailing further down. With a cruel tug, James yanked your stocking from its front clip, tearing a generous hole in the nylon, then repeated the process with the other. You broke the kiss to watch this fiery display of arousal in awe, feeling a new, unfamiliar fire in your stomach. You’d been aroused before — hell, even pleasured yourself shyly under the sheets… but the hunger. The hunger that clawed at your insides with reckless abandon was speaking in a foreign tongue… but it was one that you wanted to translate into physicality.

“Oooh, easy tiger…”

His fingers splayed out over your now bare thighs, exploring the smooth skin ravenously. As he neared your centre slit, he snarled in response — whether intentionally responding to the animalistic nickname you’d given him, or because he’d felt the slippery nectar dripping from between your legs, you couldn’t know. You thought it might be the latter. You hoped it was.

Abruptly, he pulled away, leaving you to wobble forward with want. He made a beeline to the nearby alcohol cart that had been arranged near the door and poured amber liquid into one of the glasses and golden champagne into another. He brought the darker coloured one to his lips.

“Mmm…” He growled as he swallowed, locking eyes with you, walking confidently towards the nearby chair. Though his head was turned away from his destination, he didn’t stumble, just gracefully sunk down into the chaise lounge without spilling a drop of his precious liquor.

You were in awe of this man’s finesse, of his charm, and the adoration for him displayed all over your cheeks. You didn’t need to bring out your compact to know that the flush had travelled down your neck, and your pretty little doe-eyes were as wide as saucers. He set the glass of champagne down on a nearby end table, presumably where it would stay until you reached for it.

“What’s underneath that ravishing dress, hm?” He asked. You gathered your lips to one side in a coy expression.

“Let’s see,” you tittered. "My bra and my knickers. And…. A pair of torn stockings and shoes, if you’re a specifics kinda’ guy…” You knew he was.

He waited.

You raised your brows, cocking your head to the side in affirmation — that was all. You were a woman of style after all. In this outfit? You wouldn’t be caught dead in a corset or a slip. Besides, corsets were for stuffy old broads nowadays. Everyone was wearing bras.

“Take it all off. Everything but the dress.”

Surely, the dress would be the first thing to go? It was an odd request, even for your virgin experience. You’d heard stories of men and their covetous desires. The idea of keeping the biggest article of clothing on seemed unorthodox, but you weren’t about to question his demands.

Obediently, you bent down and undid the buckles of your shoes, stepping out of them carefully. With a shy bat of your lashes, you turned away from him, shimmying and shrugging out of the straps of your dress until they fell into the crooks of your arms. Reaching around behind your back, you unlatched the satin bra, letting your supple breasts spring free of the compression.

Your heart pounded as you bent down again to slide the satin underwear over the curve of your ass and down your equally satiny thighs, giving the man behind you the tiniest previews of what was to come. Facing him again, you held your dress at your chest, carefully sliding the straps back up your arms one by one.

With a drink in one hand, the other stretched over the back of the loveseat and a delightedly smug expression, James watched your undergarments fall to the floor piece by piece. His cock throbbed in his pants, the thick fabric doing a damned good job at keeping the beast at bay. Free of everything, your dress hung a little different now, and his black eyes were aflame with the realisation. You swayed back and forth, the strands of sequins brushing lightly against your thighs.

As you bent down one final time, reaching for the nylons, came his voice. “Leave those.”

After a small sip, he pat his thigh twice with his free hand; the sound of his palm snapping against the taut fabric atop his thigh echoed in the room. For a brief, insecure second, you were frozen. A deer in the headlights. Except the headlights weren’t headlights, they were the eyes of the hungriest tiger you’d ever seen and you’d already succumbed to your fate the moment he locked the door.

“Come to daddy.”

You shuddered in response, your tummy doing backflips like an acrobat in a circus act. His words held such command and purpose, you had no choice but to saunter over to him, swaying your hips a little more than you usually did. He seemed to enjoy that; a tiny smirk played out over his mouth.You pressed your knees against his, struggling to not come undone at the contact. With a deep breath, you manoeuvred yourself in between his parted legs.

“Good…” He replied. “Atop my thigh, my pet.”

With your flesh turning a deep shade of red, you walked over his thigh, resting one knee on the edge of the cushion. You felt the air on your cunt, the chill of the room touching the wetness and making it tingle. You looked down at his groin. The fabric was pulled taut. You could make out the faintest outline of a swelling cock underneath —

You snapped your attention back to him, embarrassed. He downed the rest of his drink, set it carelessly on the table next to your still-full champagne and lifted his hand to your legs. The pad of his middle finger caressed the back of your knee, sending a shockwave through your entire body. No man had ever touched you like that, the sensation was erotic and overwhelming to your core. Inch by inch, his fingers trailed higher.

You reached for the champagne, and despite the sting in your nose, you downed the entire glass, setting it back on the small table.

“Lower.” He commanded, amused.

You obeyed, bending your knees.

“Lower.” He repeated.

He’d lined it up perfectly; James pressed that same finger into your slit as you lowered, wiggling it further in, then flicking it up to your clit. You let out a shrill mewl. Your knees nearly buckled as he circled the bundle of nerves, bringing the sensitivity higher. You squeezed your eyes shut as hot, salty tears bit at the corners. Your muscles had begun to quiver, overwhelmed by the strain of hovering over his thigh. His skilful fingers manipulated your cunt, simply playing with your wetness.

James abruptly yanked you all the way down, forcing you into a straddle. Your cunt was spread, pressed tight against his thigh and you needed no instruction on what to do next.

“Ooooh,” he growled, watching your hips as they ground your weeping cunt against the expensive fabric of his suit pants. “Good girl. Your desire is intoxicating… show me how much you want me…. yes.”

James chuckled, knowingly. Despite your best effort in trying to suppress your moans, he saw through the act. The skin of your neck had flushed red. Your soft jaw hung slack, tiny little moans floating out every time he touched you. Your sweet little eyes rolled back into your head every time he so much as flexed his thigh muscle. He knew the effect he had on you. Every slight movement from him ground against your cunt, sending shuddering waves of heat into your core.

“I said,” he started, gripping your jaw hard between his thumb and pointer finger. “Show me how much you want it, my dear.”

You winced, but allowed instinct to kick in. You began bobbing up and down on his thigh, whimpering as the wet spot on the fabric spread. The slick glistened on the fibres as you ground back and forth. Eventually, the friction of dry against wet lessened, and you found a rhythm, bouncing. His leg bumped into your sensitive, aching clit over and over again.

As you rode his thigh, James gripped your dress at the shoulders, kissing up along the curves of your arm. There was a warmth on your skin, a tugging, though you were too deep in the sensations to pull away. A cacophony of ticking began; tiny beads scattered across the floor, bouncing and dancing into crevices where they’d never be found again.

When you finally glanced down, a look of shock painted across your features. Your dress had been ripped at the seams, the delicately beaded fabric now hanging limply at your hips in a mass. James looked on, adoringly, his hungry, inky eyes dancing over your exposed breasts, and the way your nipples had hardened in the slightly colder air.

“What’s wrong, my dear? Are you frightened?” He asked. The lilt in his question was too revealing, but alas, who was he to deny the delicious aroma of fear?

“Who me?” You laughed breathily, like a fool. Sweat pooled in the hollows of your collarbone. No time like the present, you thought. You’d reached the point of no return, and surely if you didn’t say something now, he’d find out when he took you. “Oh, no, it’s just that… I’ve never been with a man is all.”

The realisation swept across his face, the expression telling all the tales of how he felt about being the first man to have a woman. “Aaahhh…. And do you…. wish to be…?”

“With you?” You swatted the air dismissively. “More than anything.”

“Brave. Brave girl.” With that, he scooped you up in his strong arms, and got up from the chair. You wrapped your legs around his torso as he carried you effortlessly to the table. The journey was short, and before you knew it, your bare back was laid on cool wood. Your legs hung off the edge, and with one strong yank, James pulled the tattered dress from your hips, tossing it heedlessly behind him.

“Knees up — heels on the table.” He then ordered, sternly. Pulling your knees towards your chest, you adjusted yourself on the table and swallowed hard, feeling vulnerable. Short of hearing the snap of latex gloves, you were left feeling like you were about to be examined by a doctor.

James disappeared from your view then, sinking down below the edge of the table. With nothing to look at, you gazed up at the ceiling with wide eyes, anticipating the next move. When it came, you let out a yelp, your legs closing on either side of his head. James had pressed his lips against her, peppering little kisses against your centre, and after a moment or two of that, opened his mouth to slip his tongue deliberately along the folds. The sensation of his tongue darting out to taste you was enough to send you to the moon, but he continued, delving further into you. Your legs opened again, exposing more of your aching cunt to him.

You felt his nose press into the mound of flesh as he flattened his tongue on your clit, lapping at it hungrily. Your body responded by squirming, a desperate whimper pouring from your throat. His hands were suddenly on your pillowy thighs, holding you tight where you were. With a vibrating groan, his tongue abruptly changed techniques; he began flicking the tip of his tongue into the underside of your clit. Your moans - though they were teetering on the edge of screams — bounced off the walls of the empty room.

In a delirium of ecstasy, you’d gripped the hair at the crown of his head, pulling it hard. He grunted into your pussy, sending vibrations deep into your core. His hand came down on the side of your ass with a resounding slap. You shuddered violently, your sopping cunt clenching tight against his chin, wetting it as your first orgasm came in sudden waves. James slipped his tongue deep inside of your entrance, feeling the pulses as they gradually subsided. Before pulling away to look at the flower in front of him, and what he’d done to it, he let out a throaty, pleased growl. A small puddle had formed on the table, your slick arousal leaking from the hole like sweet nectar dripped from the centre of a fruit.

“Ahhh…” he exhaled. “Divine.”

His eyes darting to the side, James made a mental note to have Miss Evers re-polish the table. After this, it would certainly need it.

The way he gazed upon you, seemingly satisfied with just how wet you were drove your head into the table with a thunk. You arched your back with a whimper, somehow still unsatisfied. From the side, came his voice. “Use your words, my darling.”

Your eyes snapped open, startled that you hadn’t heard him move around. You swallowed, looking up at him piteously. For a moment you dug deep into your own mind, battling with coherency to find the correct words. And, disappointingly, all you could muster was: “I… want more.”

“Yes….. yes, you do.”

Gently, with two fingers, James pulled your jaw towards him, moving your head so that your cheek laid against the table. There was a certain predatory nature in his gaze as he looked at you. “Open up,” he demanded, his thumb prodding your lips. “That’s my girl…”

He smeared his thumb along your warm, strong tongue, depressing it and feeling around the rest of your mouth. He glided over your smooth teeth, digging the fleshy pad into the decently sharp points of your incisors.

“Don’t bite me… too hard.”

With that, he began unbuckling his trousers with one hand, sliding the belt from its loop. You watched intently as this handsome, charming stranger handled himself; taking himself out his undergarments and his trousers, roughly adjusting his cock so that it was free for your devouring. He closed his hand along the length, pumping it several times. A generous droplet of precum leaked from the red, sweating tip and before it had time to string away, he guided his cock to your mouth.

He smeared your lips over the head, coating it in his own dripping seed. His hips then bucked the length into your mouth, bringing a whimpering gag from deep within your throat. Gentle, he thought. With the way your mouth eagerly worked him, doing your best to suck and lap at his aching cock, that thought was whisked away seconds later.

Wet sounds filled the room as James fucked your pretty little mouth, your lipstick smearing waxy, blood-coloured streaks on the shaft of his cock. In your peripheral, it was quite a gruesome sight, but he seemed to enjoy it, tilting his head to watch.

You closed your lips around the tip as it slid out, letting your tongue flatten on the underside of it. You felt every throbbing vein, but every time your tongue or lips grazed that one, the protruding one, James making sounds that you’d only ever dreamed of hearing a man make. It was a breathy, higher pitched moan, or a choking gasp, and each time he did, the corners of your lips curled up into a smile, delighted with eroticism. You pressed your tongue hard into it, sliding it up and down. From this angle, you realised, you couldn’t do much else… but perhaps that’s how he’d wanted it.

You remembered his previous mention of biting, so thinking that it was something he favoured, you began toying with his sensitivity by grading your teeth along his shaft. He hissed, ceasing his thrusts to crane his neck back, revelling in the amalgam of pain and pleasure.

“Harder,” he demanded.

You furrowed your brows in concern, daunted by the new territory that lay ahead. You closed your mouth a little more, the ridges of your teeth gently clamping down on his swollen cock. Suddenly, James gripped your face hard, squeezing your cheeks together like a fish. You winced as he leaned forward to hiss in your open mouth, his demeanour suddenly callous and dreadful. “I said not too hard.”

He released it sharply as you did, and punishingly bucked his hips into your wanting mouth. His thrusts were quick, and marvelled at the tiny, pathetic gags that broke from your throat every time he hit the back of it. You were so delicate, but so… willing.

Suddenly, he pulled his cock from your lips with a sick, filthy slurping sound, and holding it in his right hand, moved back to the head of the table. His breaths were ragged, hungry. You blinked away the tears that had accumulated.

“You nearly ruined my makeup…” You whispered, wiping the slimy collection of drool and precum from your chin.

“I’ll do more than that.” Gripping you at the knees, James yanked you down the table’s length, your ass slipping easily against the polished wood.

Briefly, you felt the velvety hot tip of his cock teasing your cunt. He slid it between your wet folds, exhaling loudly at the slickness that greeted him. He teased you with a thrust of his hips, the tip of his head slipping slightly. You whined as he pulled away.

“What did I say about words?”

Like a toddler throwing a tantrum, you moaned shakily, gritting your teeth. “Don’t do that…”

“Do what?”

“Tease me…”

“Oh, but it’s fun. I’ll do so until you beg for it.”

“PLEASE!” You howled a moment later, taking fistfuls of his shirt and yanking him closer. You wiggled your hips at his groin, your cunt trying to find his cock desperately. You writhed around like a cat in heat, whimpering and leaking more cum onto his expensive mahogany table. In one of your hip sways, the hot tip brushed past your entrance, leaving a springy line of pre-cum in its path. In response, you rocked your hips against his, trying to pull him in further. The sensation had you gasping, rolling your head from side to side. “Please, please, please, I simply mu—

Your screams faded away into the back of his mind, dull and muted like they came from behind a brick wall. James watched your lewd, begging performance with a bemused smirk, chuckling through closed lips. Every anguished whimper, every desperate plea that his lack of action brought forward from your lips seemed to send you closer to the edge of madness. He enjoyed that. Too much, perhaps.

He reached up, running a single finger down the side of your neck, pausing to feel your pulse throbbing away beneath the skin. Such liveliness, such… James swallowed, suppressing the dark sludgy desire that clawed at his insides. His urges had been worse and worse lately, and now with the hotel open… Not now… not with her.

“What do I need to say?”

“Nothing more.” James took hold of his cock, stroking his fingers over the tip, dragging the slickness along his shaft. He exhaled, lining himself up. At first, James popped only the tip in and out, playing with his food. Each thrust, he slipped a little farther in. Out of the kindness of his heart, James was gradually getting you used to the feeling of fullness, but once he felt your slick walls, he grit his teeth. He had told you that he was a gentleman first and foremost, but… such is life. He swiftly sank his hard length into you with little friction. You were soaked and all it took was one determined thrust.

For a moment, you felt nothing but a searing pain as the thickness of his cock stretched your cunt wide open. Tears welled in your eyes, a cry bouncing against your rolled lips. The stinging was replaced with a dull ache, and finally, a warmth.

“My, my…” He admired. “Taking it so well already.”

You nodded feebly, doing your best to muster a smile amidst your punishing euphoria. Had you not been as wet as you were, it would’ve been excruciating. And when he started pounding, it almost was.

James must’ve sensed your discomfort because he brought his hand to your pussy, his thumb circling your clit. Mercilessly. You cried out like a wounded animal and that seemed to only drive him to continue, stroking his finger down length of your pussy before returning his attention back to the bundle of nerves. Your hips swayed back and forth on the table, desperately trying to get away from the pressure that was blossoming deep within your cunt, just above your bladder. It felt like a tangled mess of fire, and your whole centre was aflame.

You shakily lifted your head, watching as his pelvis smashed into yours, over and over again, his cock slipping easily from your aching, drenched cunt. Your hands climbed his torso. You fiddled with the buttons until his shirt hung open lifelessly, like two ghosts on either side of his body. He moaned as your fingertips explored his stomach, his ribcage, and then curled around the small of his back, forcing their way up underneath the restraint of his clothes. You felt uneven skin, the way that flesh raised once it had healed over deep lacerations.

James suddenly picked up speed, drilling into you harder and that released something in you. You felt devious, immoral, and wanted to howl like a banshee. In fact, you did. You let out a shrill, dirty moan, the kind you heard coming from those brothels as you passed them by. Tears pooled at the corners of your eyes before streaming down your temples, disappearing into the hair that laid on the table. Your fingers flexed, nails digging into his back and leaving crescent-moon shaped indentations amongst his scars. Feeling your clenching, he growled and lolled his head back in ecstasy.

You pulled your leg up, pressing your nylon-covered toe against his jawline and gave it a little push.

You heard his breath hitch.

You pushed harder, craning his neck off to the side. His moan said more than any words could’ve. With a devious smirk, you drug your toe down the length of his throat, pressing hard into his windpipe.

James jerked his hips harder and harder until you felt his cock twitch inside you, hot and angry, the first spurt of his orgasm planted deep inside you. He then backed his hips out slightly, just enough for the thick ropes of cum to cover your cunt. His cock bumped into your clit with tiny thrusts, forcing every last milky drop onto you. James straightened up, clenching his fists tightly.

“Ravished. Deflowered. Desecrated!” His words echoed loudly off the walls.

His arms came down with a loud thud on either side of your head, his shirt acting as blinders. There was nothing else in that moment; just you and him and the way he’d claimed you, taken every ounce of innocence you had left.

His hands traced along your collarbone, up the sides of your neck. The black thoughts wormed into his brain, screaming for sating attention. Which weapon would he use? Where he'd cut first - an artery? Arterial blood was always so… satisfying. Would her screams be as such? The final moment, the look in her eye? Perhaps, he could hear those desperate, soprano shrieks if he just…

Thunk-thunk-thunk.

Your lids peeled open, one by one. The blazing light that filtered in through the crack in the deep red curtains burned. You hardly remembered being in a hotel room… alone, and the hotel room you remembered wasn’t the one you were in now. This one looked more or less like any new hotel room that you could’t afford. Moving yourself into an upright position, you let out a depressed bleat… the headache. How much champagne did you have last night? You couldn’t remember.

Sleepily rubbing your eyes, you stumbled towards the door. “Just a minute!”

You were completely nude. That wouldn’t do to answer the door in. Panicked, you looked around the empty hotel room, considering the bed sheets for a moment. Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted a Praising the gods for the robe that had been hung on a hook by the door as you slipped your arms into it and hurriedly tied it round your waist. You caught a glimpse of yourself in the reflection of the framed photo near the door; your hair was a wreck, makeup smeared, and there were the faintest whispers of new bruises along your collarbone and neck.

The doorway was empty, as was the hallway.

Except for the box at the floor.

Despite giving a complete stranger your virginity last night, you had more sense than to bend down and open a foreign box. Clutching the robe at your chest, you began gingerly prying open the edge of it with your foot, wiggling your big toe underneath the fine cardboard until the lid popped off.

Inside, carefully arranged and wrapped in delicate pink tissue paper, laid a dress; a dress that was terribly similar to your own, but considerably more expensive. Atop it, a package of fine silk nylons. And atop those, in exquisitely elegant penmanship, a handwritten note lay. It read:

Thank you for a splendid evening, my dear. My deepest apologies about your dress — please accept this as a replacement. As for the flowers, it only seemed fair, considering the circumstances.

xoxo James P. March

You picked the box up, again checking the hallway to see if the deliverer was there. Still, empty. With a sigh, you shut the door, leaning against it. As you leaned there, holding the box in your arms, the corner of it digging into the middle of your neck, you winced at a sudden pang of soreness.

Your eyes drifted to the clock on the nightstand. “Nearly noon!? Oh, RATS!”

You pushed yourself off the door and changed hurriedly, throwing the robe off your shoulders and onto the floor. Mother! Mother would be furious and nothing was more terrifying than her rage. You’d rather be chopped up and filleted than have to deal with Mother’s anger, even as an adult. You pulled the nylons up as far as they could go without clips, and snatched the mink stole off the bed.

You threw open the heavy door and turned to your left, hoping for the best. You began running as quickly as you could down the lengthy hallway, barefoot. The straps of your shoes were hooked around your middle finger. With no markers, and no indication of where you were going, anxiety climbed your throat. Somehow though, after winding back and forth and up and down for what felt like hours, you managed to find the lobby.

As you emerged from the hallway, it was considerably less busy than last night. Where the band had been, waiting chairs and tables had been placed, a courtesy for guests waiting to check in. The cleaning team of the Hotel Cortez was marvellous, you had to admit. As you ducked your hips away from the edge of a chair, you spotted him. James March was leaned against the bar, chatting gayly with the bartender. The bartender nodded, swiping a rag over the spot directly in front of him. A glass of bourbon sat in front of James, perspiring. Much like you were. So it hadn’t all been a dream. He looked the same as he had last night, no hint of a hangover or fatigue. Just… charming. You inhaled and headed for the door.

“A perfect fit!” He called out from the balcony, his glass raised in a cheers. A few guests turned, searching for the voice. You jumped. The man had a talent for startling you — you’d give him that. You turned, your brows upturned in the middle, asking silently for clarification.

“The dress!”

“Oh! Yes! It does…. Thank you! It’s beautiful, Mr. March!”

“How’s your neck!?” He asked, lowering his head slightly.

The question threw you off. “….fine, but I really must be going, Mr. March! Bye!”

“Come back to the Hotel Cortez any time, my darling! As my guest.”

James watched you hurry out the door, knowing that if you did come back for a second time… it would be the last time.

#James Patrick March #James Patrick March x you #James Patrick March x reader #ahs smut #ahs fanfiction #AHS Hotel #james march x reader #myfics

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