fic 36 - rinse and repeat [john/adam, mentions of jesse/john, adam/michelle]
title: rinse and repeat
fandom: Taking Back Sunday/Straylight Run
pairings: John Nolan/Adam Lazzara (mentions of Jesse/John, Adam/Michelle)
rating: PG-13
synopsis: Touring never was easy - but, really, neither was life.
author's note: I'm sure my chronology's pretty off for this but I couldn't find any tour date archives. That aside: I love you LI fandom. You guys rock.
word count: 2200w approx.


At the beginning of the tour, Adam’s completely on edge. He appeals to anyone who’ll listen that he can’t sing, there’s no way anyone will want to listen to him sing. Eddie has an endless listening capacity and hits him on the back far too hard, saying, “It’ll be OK, kid. You’ll get used to it.” Shaun listens but makes completely unhelpful comments. Mark pretends to listen, unconvincingly, and John’s only response is: “Well, what did you come to New York for?”

Adam argues that New York is New York. You play in shitty venues, the basements of coffee shops, the back rooms of bars where the stage is half a foot high if it exists at all. Touring’s different, it’s much more serious and if you screw up you can’t sit at home and brood, you’re stuck with your bandmates somewhere miles away from anywhere you know with no money and no easy way of ducking out.

“Well then, go home.”

When Eddie hears how ‘unconstructive’ and ‘unsupportive’ John’s being, they have their first major falling out. Eddie talks about Adam’s potential and his charisma and how he’s a good kid. John argues that if Adam’s not ready to tour they shouldn’t make him and that Eddie shouldn’t treat him as though he’s indispensable because it’ll make him cocky and more annoying than he is already. Eddie scoffs at those accusations and says John just resents the fact that Adam’s dating his sister. John hadn’t known about Adam and Michelle.


By the time they hit Carolina, the tour bus (which is really just a small van) is back to its usual social climate. Stupid pranks abound and Mark has to buy a new pair of shoes because whatever it was that whoever it was (and when he finds out there will be retribution) did to his old pair has rendered them completely unwearable. Adam had insisted that they go to his home state and that they could crash at his parents’ for a few days.

The Lazzaras are nice people and seem sort of surprised that Adam’s “made such nice friends”. John imagines that Adam must be embarrassed by them but, oddly, he seems unaffected by the way his mother mollycoddles all of them and the odd looks his father gives John’s too tight jeans and bleached hair. John wonders whether Adam’s father even knows about his son’s penchant for tattoos.

On the first night at Adam’s parents’ place, they all plan to go out and leave Adam to catch up with his parents, only John decides he’s come up with an awesome riff and needs to work on it so stays in, sat in Adam’s bedroom with headphones plugged into his guitar amp, playing the same chords over and over trying to work out what goes next in the sequence.

When the bedroom door opens, John says, “Hey, you wanna hear what I’ve been working on? It’s only a couple of chords right now but…”

“Can we get out of here?” The voice which speaks these words has a sort of seriousness of tone which normally only appears when Adam’s singing and has none of its usual acceleration toward the end of sentences. Its sobriety has an almost daunting echo to it.


High Point’s a big city, the main streets are flanked with buildings the colour of sandstone and John finds it completely unlike New York. He wonders if it’s the lack of water, the lack of a pier or beach to sit on and the fact that he finds himself in an empty park area with convenience store beer where in all prior situations of this sort he’d been in hearing the sound of waves - not traffic. In times of crisis, he and Jesse used to drive out to the water, throwing stones into it as they talked. Now, he’s with Adam, who hasn’t yet given any explanation, and is pulling up fistfuls of grass like substitute pebbles.

“Sorry,” is Adam’s first word on the subject.

“Sorry for what?”

“That you had to hear that.” Adam’s voice is sombre again and seems deeper than usual, maybe because he’s half-whispering.

“Hear what?” John can guess what but he didn’t hear anything apart from the same beginning of a song, over and over.

Adam seems to consider what he‘s going to say. He’s not the type to think much before he speaks but there are exceptions to every rule. “My parents cleaned my room up a bit while I was gone, found some things they weren’t too happy about.” Adam sounds as if he’s trying to sound like himself but there’s too much severity in his voice for that.

John’s long wondered whether Adam was just an act. An actor in the drama of his life. Carefully crafted to be outgoing and uninhibited without ever revealing anything about himself. He’d tell stupid anecdotes but never speak a serious word about anything. He wonders whether the Adam he’s hearing now, the one speaking in an unfamiliar tone from a familiar skin, is the real thing or just another shade of dramatic creation. He’s pretty thrown and the only answer he can think of to Adam’s words is “Porn?” though he has no answer for his tone.

“No. Nothing like that. My parents were always pretty cool with that sort of thing. I mean, they wanted me to be a normal kid. If I came home late, it didn’t bother them. As long as I didn’t drink in their house they didn’t seem to care if I did. You know, they were pretty cool.” Adam tries for the warmth and animation of his normal voice and doesn’t quite get there so he drinks about half the contents of the can he’s holding before carrying on. “They found photographs and things. A couple of notes, that sorta thing. I think. I don‘t really know. They didn‘t show me. Probably burned ‘em or something. I mean, I don‘t really care about that.” The tears say otherwise but John doesn’t like to mention it. He doesn’t want to fight with this real, genuine person Adam the way he does with bubbly, mask Adam.

Adam’s story is a wobbly one, propped up by back-peddling statements: “I dated this guy in high school, no, well, I had a friend in high school and we were kind of an item, it’s not like I’m gay, we were friends, just friends who, you know, kissed and stuff” and ending with, “You probably think this is really stupid.”

His parents are homophobic and weird the way most people of their generation are - “they’re that age, you know, they don‘t think it‘s normal” - and they’re pretty outraged that their son has a strip of photo booth photos of him kissing another man and a second-hand copy of an Edmund White novel with a couple of inarticulate sets of lyrics he’d tried to write stuck inside it like page markers.


They end up crashing at some guy Adam used to be in a band with’s place and John picks up the others from Adam’s parents’ in the morning. They play a gig that night after which Adam stays up the whole night talking with old friends and giving the impression that he knows everyone who was in the audience. They leave state with Adam asleep in the backseat.


In Florida, the night before they set out on the return part of their tour, John and Adam are left on a beach after everyone else has gone back to the hostel. It’s a comfortable setting but it reminds John of being in High Point and how it was so far away from the sea. And without really thinking about it, he tells Adam about Jesse. About how Jesse had had girlfriends as a freshman and how he’d always been jealous and then Jesse had told him that he was seeing this guy who was in senior year. John had never spoken to the guy but he’d see him talking to Jesse in corridors, keeping close to the wall and talking quietly. When the guy graduated, he’d dumped Jesse. Somehow, it’d all taken off from there. They’d drive out to the beach and spend half the night there with the sea playing accompaniment more often than the car stereo. This sort of thing didn’t happen so much anymore, but sometimes they’d meet up and spark off the old chain of events with just a simple “hey, do you remember” or the brush of skin on skin.

Adam gives no answer to John’s confession, which is shaded by guilt and patterned with references to what he’d heard the night Adam had walked out on his parents. And John doesn’t bring it up again.


They’re in Tennessee when it first happens. John cites the trigger as a certain glint in Adam’s eye between encores, the product of the adrenaline. The first kiss is rough and unconsidered against a backstage wall after all the others have walked past and out into the bar. Halfway to Richmond, they share a room.


One night in Harrisburg, Adam asks if John likes Jesse better than he likes him. John laughs and criticises Adam’s grammar. When Adam pushes for an answer, John asks the same question about Adam and Michelle. Adam protests difference but seems to realise the ridiculous of his own question and drops the subject.


Most nights they sleep on rotation in the van. Adam rarely sleeps when they do this and whenever its John’s turn to drive, he hijacks the front seat next to him and speaks in animated monologue pausing only when John tells him to keep his voice down. It climbs from a whisper to its usual volume every few minutes with strange regularity. Adam boasts about ex-girlfriends he’s had until he’s done the list more than once and asks John about his but John’s response is nothing of the embroidered history of beauty and sex and fallings out that Adam had recounted. He talks about two girls with a flippancy and lack of depth which annoys Adam who’d wanted to know what it was really like to be in a relationship with John. In truth, John’s information revealed much more than any of the legend Adam had spun which, though mostly true, lacked emotion or sincerity.


On the last night driving home through New York State, John and Adam argue because John gets sick of the dramatic monologue and tells him he wants to hear something without hyperbole or affectation.

“Come on, tell me something, just one thing, that’s actually true.”

“I’m sick of being a replacement for Jesse Lacey.”

“I’m sick of you thinking this is more than it is.”

“I’m sick of you not admitting it is.”

“I’m sick of how everything that touches you becomes melodrama.”

“I’m sick of… for fuck’s sake, John, this is me. Accept it.”

“You know, the only reason I let this happen was because I wanted to see what was underneath your fake skin.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry that you haven’t got a soul.”

“Sure.”

They drive back to Long Island in silence. When the unload the van at Shaun’s parents’ Adam leaves without talking to anyone.

When Shaun asks what’s eating Adam, John says it’s “Leadsingeritis.” Shaun laughs. The others don’t.


A few days later Adam drops Michelle back at John’s parents’ after a date and Adam’s discomfort at seeing John shows so barely that John thinks it can’t be an act. So, John proffers a drink, like a hand or a raised white flag, and Adam takes the bait.

They play at insincere apologies and John tries to catch glimpses of ‘real Adam’, who may or may not exist. When Adam brings up Jesse, John checks it with Michelle and they write a map leading down the path to self-destruction.

Adam says, “I love you,” and John takes it for another attempt at drama. Adam tries for blackmail, tries for “I’ll tell Michelle.” John’s estimate of Adam’s daring is a little off. It ends with doors slamming a little too hard on all sides.


John spends a night elegising it to Jesse, who thinks it’s the best thing he’s heard all year. Eddie isn’t as impressed and doesn’t object to John’s suggestion that he’ll leave the band. He might have objected a little if he’d known that Shaun was going to quit too but maybe not, he’d always been on Adam’s side of the argument. Adam was better for business and less dispensable, anyway.


Michelle is less easily dealt with. John knows that if she’d been the one seeing his girlfriend, he probably wouldn’t have listened either. But she comes around because she has to, because they both still live at home and they need a way out. So it’s music, the beginning and end of all problems. And before the bitterness is quite over, they’re loading up a van at Shaun’s parents’ again and Michelle’s nervous about singing and John’s playing Eddie’s role and Will is playing Mark’s, Shaun’s playing Shaun and there’s no one left to play John - and it’s probably better that way.