A/N: Thank you so much to Nat for helping me. I'm calling you my beta on this one because without you, this wouldn't exist! This is already complete, I just need to do some editing along the way and I'll be posting every Friday! We don't want another Forever Enough situation on our hands do we?
On the corner of a lightless street in Pawnee, Indiana there's a little ramp that leads down into what had previously been the only nightclub in town. The Lunge sits alongside the rest of the stretch of rundown establishments and sports bars, pretending it isn't on its last legs. Despite the large bouncer staring down anyone who attempted to break the meager line and the velvet gate barring foot traffic from the carpet, the inside of it wasn't as booming as the exterior let on. Other than the dilapidated lights, some stuck between color oscillations and giving off a nauseating mixture, and the equally worn down floor that was now clearly visible with only a few dancers there The Lunge only had live music going for it. As it turned out that seemed to be just as much its downfall as it was originally a crowd-pleaser, and most people that wanted to go to a sleazy club didn't want to hear any particular music at all – just something loud, bass heavy, and indistinguishable from the next song.
Waiting in front, Andy Dwyer tried to remember why he's even going to the club that night. Nothing seemed that great about being surrounded by way too many people, grinding on him and making him sweat more than even he was used to, listening to some terrible band in their last ditch effort to try and drum up some excitement for the club and their dying popularity.
Andy knew that all too well – his band, Mouse Rat, had played there once before and it was never the sign of a band on the rise. Soon after that Andy was sent into a spiral over the sudden breakup with his longtime girlfriend at the time, Ann. He didn't like playing with his band so much after that, given the circumstances, and kept to himself by wandering around the city at night until he was so tired he slept on a bench or in an alley.
After figuring out that his band mate and friend had been essentially homeless, Burly let him stay on the couch indefinitely. Like most things, however, his stay was becoming more and more unwelcome as Andy seemingly refused to find a job and struggled to find a reason to even practice with the band anymore let alone search for gigs and play them. Trying to get him out of the slump, Burly had told Andy to meet up with him and his new, rich girlfriend at The Lunge and that he could drink on his tab for a few nights if he wanted to.
"Can I see your ID?" the guy twice as wide as and a little taller than Andy asked him.
"Really, you need to card me?" Andy said incredulously. "Dude, I've been here before. I've played here before."
"There's a lot of people trying to get in with the worst fakes I've ever seen," the bouncer explained with a blank expression, "so look man, this is easy. You show me your ID, you get in. Nobody's in there, but I can't just eyeball you."
Looking behind him, Andy saw that there were only two or three people waiting for him. The rest of the bars, especially any place with TV's stuck on ESPN, were crowded and lively. Sighing, Andy dug through his back pocket, passing up gum wrappers and empty bags of Skittles to find his wallet. After more fumbling, he finally walked down the ramp and through the door into the club.
Inside, everything was as lonely and depressing as he expected – grimy floors with only a few incredibly drunk people dancing belligerently on one another, a bored bartender serving people actually at the bar and sitting, and the terrible live band to top it all off. He knew what to expect in places like this when it came to the music. Mostly it was just hit fodder, hyper aggressive dub, or drop-heavy house music he generally filtered out, but that night the band sounded a special kind of boring. At least that music sounded kind of fun, something Andy could get into for a moment, but the placid beat and horribly electronic sound coming at him then were a new level of annoying. Thankfully the live performance was opposite the bar so Andy never had to look the absolutely murky sounding band in the eyes while they droned on. He noted that everything just sounded bored from the drummer to what sounded like a sole sampler and the tired rumblings of the girl singing for them.
"Hey man," Burly waved him over with his new girlfriend on the stool beside him. "Surprised you made it, to be honest."
"Hey Andy," the girl said.
"And pass up on free drinks?" Andy ignored her and grinned at the idea of drinking until he passed out for the first time in a while. "Yeah, I'll definitely make it here. I'll even listen to this crappy band for a free beer."
"I dunno, they seem all right," Burly shrugged.
"They sound like a cat getting run over," Andy laughed, taking the seat next to Burly and ordering his first drink.
"Yeah, I guess," and then things between them quieted for a while.
The first beer went down in only a few minutes and Andy was already feeling the bitter hops overload in the back of his throat, waiting for the sweetness that a vaguely empty mind combined with drunken stupor could only give him. After a few minutes of drinking by himself, Burly clearly more interested in the woman than in Andy, the music seemed less obnoxious as it faded into the back of his mind. Before when it sounded dreary and far too kitschy for his tastes, a little alcohol was already starting to make it just irritating.
Not as irritating as the constant barrage of thoughts about Ann. She kept trying to explain to him why they broke up, but the whole time all Andy could think about was how stupid all of this was. All he did was fake a double-cast for so long that it resulted in a dramatic rift between the two of them. That's all. Thinking on it again, Andy realized that was a bit more than "something small" but he just chalked that up to the beer talking.
Not long after that, Burly and his girlfriend disappeared from beside Andy. That was okay, since the tab was still open and Andy only had four or five beers – he lost track of how many exactly. Whatever time it was, it seemed like the band had stopped playing finally and all he had to worry about now was the growing bitterness with every drink. When he went to order a whiskey to top everything off, someone spoke up from beside him for the first time.
"Make it two," she said, sitting down next to Andy.
Turning to look at the newcomer, Andy saw mostly a curtain of incredibly dark hair hiding the face of a woman. Behind the wall of hair, and when she gave him a grimace that told him to back off, she had a permanently sour expression and shockingly large, brown eyes – the kind that catch you off guard by the sheer breadth, or in this case lack of, emotion behind them. These ones were telling Andy not to say a word to her. She looked the part of a troubled, extraordinarily pretty, and likely angry person that Andy usually tried to avoid. So, being drunk and tilted on memories of Ann, he tried to talk to her anyways.
"Hey," he started with a casual grin and a slur to his words he couldn't hear.
"No," the girl said before she slammed her shot. "Two more."
He still couldn't place why he wanted to keep talking to her, but Andy was starting to get bored with his minimal drinking. At least this girl seemed ready to take as many shots as her small frame could handle. Andy partly wanted to see how many she could do and how many he could get through without collapsing on the spot from alcohol poisoning. Either way it ended up, things would definitely be more interesting.
"I didn't even do mine yet," Andy motioned with the shot and finished his. "It's on my friend Burly's tab anyways, so I got you."
"I didn't say one was for you," she finally turned to look at him and Andy grinned at her funny, bland drawl. "But I'll take free drinks any day."
"That's what I said!" he laughed.
"I'm still not talking to you," she said contradictorily.
"Okay," Andy mumbled and nodded gravely, turning back to the new shot in front of him.
With some sense of sobriety left in him, Andy noted something familiar in the girl's voice but gave up trying to figure it out. Thoughts of Ann were being washed away with the liquor, the sweet sound of silence, and the occasional murmur from Andy's new drinking partner. The others that were in the club, the handful of drunks on the trashed dance floor and the band, were all gone and showed just how gross the place was underneath even a handful of sweating bodies.
The bar was a mess, the stools were a recent addition with the thinning crowds and reliance on live music, and the only people left inside were Andy and the girl and the bartender. The turnout couldn't have been good enough to allow two people to sit and drink idly, but still they sat and downed three more shots before Andy felt a dry weakness in his head.
"I think I'm out," he made a show of blinking slowly, his head spinning.
"That was four shots. What a wimp," she complained with a heavy slur while drinking her last but still sitting down. "Ugh, I think I am too."
"That was pretty good, though… y'know? Like, you did pretty good," he repeated.
"Gee, thanks," she deadpanned and Andy laughed, eliciting a very brief movement from her lips that was more alarming than it should have been.
"I'm just glad that band stopped playing," Andy continued, rubbing his eyes.
"Oh really, why's that?" a new, sudden tone was in her voice and when Andy looked at her the trace of a smile was replaced with a withering glare.
"They were super boring," he told her, blinking and trying to focus on her increasingly agitated features.
"I'm sure you can do so much better," she scolded him.
"Well, my band is way better," he responded, scratching his face and squinting at her.
"Yeah?" she crossed her arms with a little trouble, hooking her fingers on the sleeve of her shirt. "What's your band?"
"Mouse Rat," Andy immediately said with a proud smile, "and we're the best rock band in Pawnee."
"Wow, you guys got some awesome competition," she said in that same bored tone that told Andy she was probably super good at sarcasm.
"If our competition is bands like that one we're doing pretty good!" Andy laughed again, ignoring how visibly annoyed the girl was.
"I'm pretty sure my band actually gets gigs," she lashed out finally, those eyes clear in their directed fury. "Like this one. And we actually got paid. You're sitting in here drinking with the successful one."
"Oh, whoops. Hah!" Andy chuckled, trying to figure out why this girl was acting so strange. "Oh, you're that singer? Huh, wow."
"Whatever," she turned back to the bar and held onto the edge of it, swaying.
Andy stopped laughing then, because now he finally understood that she was actually mad. The singer wasn't the worst person to drink with, and unless Andy was horribly blinded by whiskey she seemed to enjoy it to whatever extent someone so obviously infuriated at the entire universe could, but he knew what it was like to be compared to Mouse Rat. They were the greatest band in the world, obviously, so she must have just been feeling down about how her band – Andy couldn't remember the name – stacked up to them.
"Hey, what's your band's name again?" Andy rolled his lips, savoring the warmth of them rubbing together.
"I didn't tell you," she turned after a few seconds of silence. "Why do you care anyways? We're just gonna make fun of each other."
"What? No, that's impossible," Andy laughed.
"You literally just made fun of my band," the girl crooked her eyebrow and gave him an attempt at a pointed look.
"Just tell me. C'mon, I'm super good at naming bands," Andy moved closer to her, gesturing with his hand like he wanted her to tell him a secret. "C'mon, it'll be fun."
"Yeah great name, Mouse Rat," the girl gave a minute chuckle before looking at Andy and biting her lip. "Flyover State."
"What?" Andy asked, unsure if that was supposed to be some code word or the band name.
"That's the name – Flyover State. Y'know, like those stupid Midwest states no one cares about because they're super boring and everyone that lives there sucks?" she explained, rambling on the reason they named the band that.
"That's… not bad!" Andy admitted. "Y'think it's all bland and cows down there but once you get to know 'em it's awesome too, but in it's own way… like your music!"
"Yeah," the girl nodded, giving Andy a confused look now. "Yeah, that's it."
"See, I know stuff," Andy sat back in his stool and nearly toppled if it wasn't for the edge of the bar. "You should come see Mouse Rat sometime, we're pretty awesome."
"When's your next show?" the singer asked and whether she was being sarcastic or not, Andy couldn't tell.
"Actually… we don't know," Andy admitted, chuckling when the girl broke a small smile and then realizing how much of a bummer that realization was. "I could definitely tell you when we know."
"Yeah, you could," she nodded, "but why would I let you tell me?"
"No idea," Andy shrugged. "Figured you'd want to hear the best music of all time. Well, not the best because Pearl Jam did that-"
"Ew," she grimaced. "I already don't want to listen to your band, dude."
"Oh," Andy stopped suddenly. "Okay, cool."
"I'm kidding," she amended. "What's your number? Just text me when you have a show next and I'll make fun of your stupid rat band."
Andy hurriedly pulled his phone out and was met with actual laughter from the girl at the old flip phone he was still using. After putting in her number, he tried to remember what her name was while staring at the contacts screen.
"Am I supposed to just call you singer chick?" he pointed to the screen. "I'm Andy."
"Cool," she stood up and walked away from him to the dance floor, clearly avoiding him.
"Hey, seriously what's your name?" he shouted after her.
But the girl simply walked out of the club, briskly and without as much of a stumble as Andy knew he was going to have. Telling the bartender to close his tab, Andy managed to jostle himself out of the stool before getting outside himself. The blast of cold air sent a bit of the drunken haze away, clearing his mind and making it easier to pull his phone out and call the cab service he knew wouldn't just be waiting around the bars. Sitting on the bench near the bus stop just a block down from The Lunge, Andy wondered if he would ever hear from that girl again at all.
He wondered if he texted her an actual show date if she would be there and if they'd drink again, make fun of stupid things, and walk away strangers. For some reason he couldn't quite grasp Andy didn't like that thought much, but the blurriness of his thoughts was interrupted by a dull vibration in his pocket. Pulling out his phone, he scanned the text from "Singer Chick." He expected a brief message telling him never to call her and get rid of her number. Instead of that, the text was only one word:
April.
a/n2: Title for the fic taken from the lyric "Rationale and rhyme and reason/Pale beside a single kiss" from the Sisters of Mercy song, Some Kind of Stranger.
Sisters of Mercy makes a great comparison for April's band, for what it's worth.