Work Text:
Andy's head throbbed as he opened his eyes, blinking rapidly at the bright sun that shined above him.
He sat up, and looked around in confusion. "Where the fuck is the bus?" He grumbled, standing up on unsteady legs as he took in his surroundings.
It was a patio of what appeared to be a very nice house, there were two massive cats sitting in front of the sliding glass door, watching him like hawks.
'They look like mine on steroids.' He thought in amusement, though the markings on ones face was eerily similar to Crow's.
"I'm never mixing whiskey and ecstasy again." Andy huffed out, trying to find a cigarette and lighter in his pockets.
It was just another night on warped tour, nothing crazy special about it, but his band, some friends, and Juliet decided it was a good opportunity to party like it was their last day on earth.
The sliding glass door suddenly opened, making Andy jump and spin around.
"Hey, this is private property-." The other man froze, gawking at Andy with a gaping mouth. There was a moment where Andy thought he just recognized him, but then his brain caught up with him.
They had the same face.
There were some differences with the other man, he didn't have a lip ring, he had a slit in his right eyebrow, a cool looking buzz cut with a blond streak, and a lot more tattoos, but it was the fact that he still had the same tattoos as Andy, and the same scars from having pierced his own lip three times that made him realize that...
"Holy fuck, did I time travel?" He blurted out as the older version of him continued to stare in bewilderment. "There's no way, I'm having a weird trip, that's it." He tried to reason.
The older Andy finally snapped out of his stupor. "I uh- okay, I don't know what's happening, but I think you should probably come in." He said, gesturing for the brunet to enter the home. "2013, right? That's the only time I can remember having my natural hair color."
Younger Andy nodded slowly, his head throbbing as the large cats(that are apparently his babies) rubbed up against his legs. A dog came running in, barking happily as the older man lifted it up, and kissed the top of its head. "I have a- you have- we- this is confusing, holy shit." He stammered, sitting down on the couch with a sigh.
"His name is daredevil." Older Andy chuckled, sitting down across from him.
"Wait, what year is it here?" The brunet asked.
"2022." The other man replied, sitting the dog down.
"What?! I traveled nine years in the future!?" Andy gasped out.
"It looks like it, yeah." He nodded, looking unsure of what to say or do.
Younger Andy started to light a cigarette when the older man shook his head. "Don't smoke in the house."
"Wait, did we quit? Why the fuck did we quit?" The brunet asked in surprise, putting the cigarette away as requested.
"Yes- well kinda, we vape, but we haven't had a cigarette in almost five years." The older man replied. "Jesus, its weird saying we." He laughed.
"Tell me about it." Younger Andy chuckled.
"Okay, so how the hell did we manage to afford a house this big in LA? Is the band really doing that well?" He asked hopefully.
"Oh, the bands doing great! One of the singles off the new record is the highest charting song we've ever had, and almost all of the shows on the upcoming tour is sold out!" Andy grinned. "But I'll be honest with you... we can't afford a house like this in LA."
The younger stared at him in bewilderment. "Wait then how-."
"But we can in Florida." Andy finished, trying not to laugh at the way the younger man's eyes bugged out.
"We live in Florida?!" The brunet exclaimed.
"Yeah, we hate LA- and don't say you don't, I'm literally you- and we wanted to be closer to our family and Juliet's." Older Andy explained with a smile.
"Wait..." Younger Andy started, his eyes becoming soft at the mention of his girlfriend. "We're still dating Juliet?" He asked softly, a smile playing at his lips.
"Oh, buddy. We married her!" The older man grinned. "And not the confusing, not actually binding bullshit we did in Vegas, we had an actual legitimate wedding." He added, standing up and gesturing him to follow.
They stepped into a hallway, and the older gestured towards the photos hanging on the wall.
Andy took the first one in, smiling at how beautiful Juliet looked in her wedding dress as she and the version of him in the photo smiled brightly at each other. "When does this happen?" He asked.
"2016, so in three years for you, and six years ago for me." The older explained. "Blasko officiated and John was our best man." He added, smiling as he watched the brunet look at each photo hanging up, some from the wedding, some from past photoshoots, and one from the most recent one they did together.
"I like the black hair on her." The younger man smiled.
"I do too." Older Andy agreed with a proud grin.
They walked back into the living room, and that was when younger Andy noticed the many vinyls and awards hanging up. He looked at one with Juliet's face on it, tilting his head to the side. "Lilith Czar?" He asked in confusion.
"Oh yeah, Juliet decided to kill off the old her in a music video and was reborn as Lilith, Juliet Simms just didn't work for what she was creating anymore. Its probably the most badass thing I've ever gotten to witness an artist do." Older Andy said, the pride he felt for his wife obvious.
"Sounds like something she would come up with." Younger Andy grinned, and nodded before he looked at what appeared to be a recent photo of the band, the aesthetic was similar to the old era, but completely modernized and revamped into something completely different, so different in fact that Andy almost missed-.
"Who the fuck is that guy?" He asked, pointing at the unfamiliar face.
"Oh that's Lonny, he's our bassist." Older Andy replied, hoping and praying he wouldn't have to explain this.
"We have a new bassist?! What happened?" Younger Andy exclaimed, making the other man sigh.
"Yeah, we do... you know how Ashley is." He started, watching as something in the younger man's expression change, but Andy already knew why. "Well it gets worse. So much worse." Andy explained, watching the horror in the other man's face.
"What happened?" Younger Andy asked.
"We almost gave up the band because we didn't see a way out." That was like a knife to the chest. Andy couldn't fathom ever wanting to quit his band or give up on it, so the fact that it got to that point scared the hell out of him.
"What?" He whispered, staring at the older man in shock.
"We started a solo project because we needed to tour to support ourself, but we-... we just couldn't do another tour with him. We tried, we thought if everyone took a break it would get better... but it only got worse." Older Andy explained.
"How the fuck did it get better then? Obviously it did since the band still exists." The younger asked.
"We met Lonny Eagleton, and let me tell you something, that weird, talented, sweet kid is one of the best things that will happen to you and he's going to become a little brother to you." Andy said with such conviction that the younger man knew every single word of it was true. "He reminded us why we love that damn band so much and why we needed to fight for it."
The two fell into silence for a bit, unsure of what else to say. Andy didn't want to go through that, he didn't want to almost lose the band.
"Fuck, I need a drink." Younger Andy sighed, this conversation went from really fun, to really depressing so quick.
Older Andy winced. "Oh man, this is a really bad time to tell you we're sober, huh."
The brunet stared at him, waiting for the punchline, but it never came. "Oh my God, you're serious." He said incredulously.
"Afraid so, over six years clean and sober now." The elder replied, trying not to laugh as younger Andy flopped onto a chair dramatically. He forgot how ridiculous he was at twenty-two.
"Oh my God, next you're going to tell me we're fucking vegetarian and have a gym membership or some shit!" Andy groaned.
"No of course not." Older Andy scoffed, sitting down across from him. "We're vegan and work out from home." He corrected, laughing at the pained noise he received in reply.
"You hate me, you actually hate me. How the fuck do we have any fun?" Younger Andy huffed out.
"Oh please, the only reason we started drinking in the first place was because of our social anxiety, don't lie." Older Andy replied with an eyeroll.
"If you hate that, you're gonna hate the fact that we completely drop the rockstar persona and everyone knows what an awkward nerd we are because we have a podcast where we tell all of our embarrassing stories." He added.
Younger Andy stared at him. "Why would you do tha-? If you wrote a book too-." The nod he received in reply made him want to scream. "Who do we have a podcast with?" He asked, rubbing his temples.
"Joe." The older man replied with a smile.
Younger Andy smiled slightly at that. "Okay, well if it's Joe then I guess it makes sense."
"So why aren't we on tour?" He asked, sitting up slightly.
"We just got off one tour, Juliet is about to come home from hers and then we'll have a few weeks off before we go on our next two legs of a two and then we start filming." Andy explained, petting Crow when he crawled up into his lap.
"What tour is it? Warped? That's what I was on before I ended up...here." Younger Andy asked.
"I really hate to be the bearer of bad news... but warped ended like four years ago." The older explained.
"Seriously?" Andy asked, clearly upset.
"Yeah, I miss it a lot, but hopefully someone will start doing something like it or they bring it back." Older Andy replied with an understanding smile.
"Wait, what are you filming? A new video? Something like legion?" The younger asked when he remembered what the older man had said.
"No, Paradise City." Andy said.
"The guns and roses song?" He questioned, making older Andy laughed at this.
"No, the TV show we're in."
"I'm sorry, the what?!" The younger man asked incredulously. "We're in a fucking TV show and you didn't lead with that?"
"Yeah, we did a movie with Ash Avildson and he made a spin off show." Older Andy said with a grin.
"Our old booking agent?" The brunet's head was spinning, this was a lot of information he was taking in.
"Yeah, we're signed to his label now by the way, we're super happy." Andy said.
"Is it kinda like Average Joe or-?"
"Oh no, it's on Amazon prime, it actually ended up being so much bigger than anyone thought." The younger man stared at him, his eyes wide.
"So are we a side character?"
"Um no... we're the lead." Andy replied, laughing when the younger jumped up from his seat.
"We're in an Amazon show and we're the main mother fucking character?!" Younger Andy said in shock and excitement.
"Yeah dude." Older Andy chuckled.
Younger Andy sat back down, not knowing how to feel about all of this information. "So we're-... we're really happy now?" He asked, his voice dropping to an almost whisper.
"Happier than you can ever imagine." The older man smiled kindly. "You're gonna go through a lot of shit, but at the end of the day, it will all be worth it. You have your parents, you have Joe, Pat, Downey, Blasko, and most importantly you'll have Juliet through it all."
Younger Andy smiled at that, unsure of what to say, so he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, taking in the silence.
"Andy? get the fuck up, we need to go back to the bus." Andy jumped, looking up to see Yanni standing over him. "You good, Drew?"
"Yeah, I just had the weirdest fucking trip where I traveled in time and met future me, he had a buzz cut and he was vegan. It was weird as hell." Andy said, standing up unsteadily.
Yanni laughed at this, wrapping an arm around the thin man's shoulder. "Tell me all about it when we get back to the bus."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Andy's eyes opened to find his wife sitting on the edge of the bed. "Babe, you need to get up." Juliet said, leaning down to kiss him softly.
"I had the weirdest fucking dream." He said, sitting up.
"Really? What was it about?" Juliet asked, moving to sit in his lap.
"2013 me time traveled and ended up on our patio, and he was really pissed about me being sober and vegan." Andy said, smiling at the cackle he earned from his wife.
"Honestly, 2013 me would've probably felt the same way so it checks out." She replied, still giggling as Andy wrapped his arms around her.
"How about we stay in bed a little longer, our flight doesn't leave for a while." Andy suggested.
Juliet looked at him with a raised brow before she grinned. "I mean, I guess we cou- Andy!" She laughed as he flipped them over so that he was hovering over her.
"Okay, awesome." He beamed, leaning down to kiss her.