Archive of Our Own

They kill out there, they own the place. They're so on it hurts and while Travis sure as fuck isn't surprised -- his band is awesome -- halfway through his intro to Cupid he stops listening to his words, tries to work out just whose soul he sold to get here. But then the thunder of the crowd and the slam of the drums run through him, and it doesn't matter, they're not getting it back.

He says this to Bill, later, the way he says everything, and then they're all -- him, Bill, Jon Walker and the stain in the Academy's trailer from last time Mike tried to make pancakes -- stuck on what they'd sell someone else's soul for.

"I want an elephant," says Bill. Travis can see his eyes widen as he realizes what he's just said. Sometimes it takes a while for messages to get all the way from Bill's mouth to his brain. "I do. I'm a goddamn rock star, and I want an elephant."

"Not that big a rock star," says Walker from his perch on the trailer's countertop, but Bill lets it go with an easy "Oh, fuck off back to your child brides" and a wave of the hand not holding a beer.

Travis thinks there are better things to do with your rock star status and someone else's soul, but Bill's Bill and he wants an elephant.

"I'll call it Judy," Bill says, more to himself than either of them. No one else is around -- there's some thing with Pete Wentz and brewery, Travis doesn't care -- but it's cool.

"What if it's a boy?" asks Walker.

Travis snorts at this, spreading his arms wide as he leans back into the couch with a worldly air. Some people are so dumb. "You think an elephant's going to get beat up for having a girl's name?"

"I wouldn't let that happen," Bill says protectively. He's pulled his legs up under himself and is hugging his beer to his chest.

Bill didn't mean the crack about the child brides, Travis knows, like he doesn't mean it when he cusses out his idiot band for refusing to entertain him. But yeah, they're both still in awe of the Panic! guys for achieving what Bill calls the twelfth wonder of the world, right between internet porn and Pete Wentz's herpes-free status: Jon fucking Walker in eyeliner.

"Hey, hey, you think I'd look good in eyeliner?" Bill asks, his thoughts ending up the same place as Travis's, however the hell they got there. Travis doubts even Bill knows, though tonight they're sticking to beer and elephants; Walker's teen harem still doesn't like it when he comes back stinking of more.

"Yeah, man," says Travis, reaching out to ruffle Bill's hair.

Bill leans in to the touch. "Me too. Me too."

The thing to remember about Bill is sometimes he works hard at not taking himself seriously. Like, it shouldn't go like that -- you can't frown in concentration to remember not to concentrate -- but Bill pulls it off. He'll be ten seconds into caring about some fucking card game, and then he'll blink and make himself laugh and it's back to regular, easy-going Bill, who'll smile as he bitches all night about something else entirely. He doesn't have to do it a lot, but enough that you can't just buy him a dinky toy elephant from some stupid shop in Fuckless, Ohio and expect him not to pause for a moment, trying to work out if he's allowed to be upset about not getting the real deal.

But Travis is used to it by now, and kind of thinks it's neat, like Bill cares about not making other people freak, so he presents the toy with a flourish and says, "Installment, Bill."

Bill smiles, of course.

The other thing to remember about Bill is that for a guy who picks his fights so carefully, he sucks at knowing which to pick. He probably used up all his good judgment the day he chose the struggle to be in a band over the struggle to fit seven popsicles in his mouth at once. Like, the first time Travis really talked to him, he was picking a fight with God.

There was this tree near Academy's trailer, and Bill had been sent out by his -- "cruel, Travie, cruel and heartless"-- band to get high where it wouldn't fuck with Siska's -- "cruel, Travie, cruel and pointless" -- brief flirtation with keeping edge. He was standing against the tree, one leg bent up.

The cause of the argument, and the reason Travis had gone to offer him space in their bus, was the rain.

"Genesis 1:29, Lord," Bill shouted, tipping his head back to yell right at the sky. "You promised."

"'Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth. They will be yours for food,'" said Travis, like hello but better. "That going to work?"

Bill shrugged. "Worked for a guy I knew back home."

"Yeah?"

"Rain stopped, ray of sunlight, everything."

"Cool."

And it was cool, and it is cool, even though it stayed raining and Bill isn't going to get his elephant.

===

Travis doesn't make lists. He dated a girl once, Kaylee, who made lists of fucking everything. Like most shit with her, the fun blended pretty smoothly into the crazy; it killed any listing tendencies he may have had.

"I'll list your mom," Bill said when Travis brought it up once, halfway through Siska's abandoned stash of M&Ms.

"Yeah?" Travis bounced a brown M&M off Bill's nose, laughing when Bill caught it. "She'll list you."

So Travis doesn't make lists, but if he had a list of reasons why Bill's number -- the secret one, known only to "important people, dude, and Shania Twain when she asks, which she will, oh yes" -- is top of his Recently Dialed more often than not, yeah, if he had that list, then he knows Bill's laugh and Bill's encyclopedic knowledge of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wouldn't beat the way he doesn't ask stupid questions.

Like, not just the fucking stupid ones like "What's the weather like up there?" or "Do you know Pete Wentz?" but also the everyday stupid ones that other people use to fill the time Bill spends pining after elephants.

(The elephant thing is getting to be a thing. Travis picks them up whenever he goes anywhere that sells the right kind of junk, and last night Siska and the Butcher got Ryan Ross to paint elephants on their cheeks before their set. Bill almost choked on the first song, he was so happy. After, though, he slung one arm round Travis's shoulder and said, quiet for Bill, "I like yours best, man. They last.")

Once, he turned to Bill and said, "And then I hallucinated groundhogs," like they'd been in the middle of a conversation, not fucking around on Guitar Hero. Bill didn't ask what he'd been on, or what color, like he was trying to be funny. Instead, he thought for a moment, but not long enough that it was a surprise when he said, "What size?" Because that was important: if they'd been too small, it would have been creepy, and too large would have just been fucking weird, but they were kind of puppy-sized and cute.

"Cool," Bill said. "You know Jesse Lacey once kissed a bobcat?"

But, yeah, maybe even higher on the list-that-isn't comes Bill's hands.

"They're the same size," says Travis now as he presses the palm of his right hand to Bill's left. He feels his way around the words, liking the shape they make as they leave his mouth. "Size," he says again.

"Isn't everything," says Jon Walker, who's once again hiding from the Panic! trailer, which Bill claims is housing a big gay circus orgy and Walker says just holds three Vegas fuckups on too little sleep. Walker leans over to laugh in Bill's ear, and Bill bats him away with his free hand.

It's cool when Walker comes over to the Academy's trailer, but it means they're just drinking, so everything's a little faster, a little sharper than normal. Siska and Disashi are there too, sitting at the table playing strip-snap-poker with Mike's porno cards. It's good, like Travis doesn't even have to stretch his arms out to hit someone worth knowing.

"Bill gets it," Travis points out because it's true. That's another thing on the list he doesn't have.

Bill nods into Travis's shoulder. "Travis says we're not tall," he explains to Walker. Their hands are still pressed together, fitting just right.

"Hell yeah," Travis adds. "You fuckers are all short."

Walker snorts at this, causing bubbles in his vodka. "Yeah, tiny."

Bill gets it, still. "But the hands," he says. "Even my man here --" He lifts his head so he can clap Travis on the shoulder. "-- even he can't explain why you've all got such little hands."

If you think about it, Walker's hands are probably bigger than any two of the Panic! guys' combined, but they feel small, is what gets to Travis.

"It's why I need an elephant," says Bill, never one to let a good refrain die.

There's a pause while they all think about it. Two feet from Bill's head, Siska gets wrestled to the ground by an angry, butt-naked Disashi. Travis nods with approval: no one cheats his band at cards.

"Elephants don't have hands," says Walker apologetically.

Bill thinks about this some more. "Shit."

===

It's awesome, taking crowds of emo kids or metalheads or lesbian feminist poets so one song they'll be waiting for the bands they've really come to see, and the next they'll be eating out of Travis's hand, never wanting it to end. It's awesome, but Travis wouldn't trade it for this, for a crowd of kids who've come for them. There are people out there wearing his band's merch, who sat through other bands just to get to them.

He's on, he's always on, but tonight he's so on he can feel Bill come on stage even before the noise of the crowd changes. He can feel his band, feel the stage spread out under his feet because he rules it, and he knows where Bill is without having to look. It's no surprise when arms slip round his waist and there's some dork pressed against his back, grinning into his neck.

Their fans don't take it like the Academy's do, don't go insane, but they like it enough that when Travis leans back into the touch, stumbling into the chorus as he takes Bill's hand, he can pretend he's just milking the crowd.

Later, when he's about to return the favor for the Academy's set, he catches himself before he goes on, almost misses his cue he's so caught up in how fucking good they are tonight. They've found their sound, they've nailed it. Mike owns the stage, playing like this is all there is to living, and just as Bill opens his mouth to sing again, Travis stops breathing.

Gabe calls that night, his Saporta senses tingling, and the phone gets passed around with the smokes.

"Man," says Gabe, his voice tinny in Travis's ear, "you have fans now."

"Fuck you," Travis snorts. He's got his legs propped up on Matt's lap and he's leaning back against the mass of bodies playing poker for the last of the good candy. Every so often, Bill will twist round to show Travis his cards, knee jiggling with excitement whatever the hand. "Hey, Bill's about to clean up," Travis adds, not even bothering to focus on the jumble of red and black in front of him.

"Yeah." Gabe laughs. Travis can see him now, hunched into his phone as the rest of his band fight over pizza or table waxing or something. Their voices float over, and Gabe breaks off to get them to keep it down, man, he's talking to serious musicians over here.

"Hey, hey, why don't you fly out here?" Travis says, just to hear Gabe sigh with irritation.

"I would if I could," says Gabe after the sigh. "You know that."

Matt is deep in some argument with a tech about the Matrix trilogy. Travis can't hear them above the buzz of conversation, but he recognizes the look on Matt's face from the shittiest leg of last year's shittiest tour. It's technically band policy to kick Matt in the teeth whenever he says the name "Wachowski", but Travis feels easy-going tonight, with Gabe's laughter in his ear and two fucking awesome sets still making his blood pound.

Bill comes up behind him, rests his elbows on Travis's shoulders to pour a pile of candy bars into his lap. "Your cut," he says into Travis's free ear, then grabs the phone off him.

"Dude!" he shouts into the receiver. "Travie brought me luck."

===

Natalie Who Techs For Fall Out Boy, her girlfriend tie-dyes stuff, really cool shirts and bags and shit, and when Travis gives his best smile, of course Natalie gets her to do an elephant.

The girlfriend isn't on tour, so it's a week later, and they've just arrived in Shitlake, Michigan, when Natalie turns up with a shirt and a grin. It's fucking awesome, swirls and stripes that comes together to make a blur that could be a drunk elephant if you look right. She apologizes, says that was the best Val could do, but there's not a doubt in Travis's mind that Bill's going to know how to see it.

So Travis goes into the Academy's trailer to give it to Bill, he can't wait for later, and Bill's half-naked, sprawled on top of the Butcher and setting up camp.

"Hey," says the Butcher from under one of Bill's arms. He's absentmindedly petting Bill's back. "He's bored."

"I wouldn't be bored if you fuckers would entertain me," Bill points out, in the same reasonable tone of voice that he used two days ago when he was plotting out where Judy The Elephant was going to live on the trailer. "You brought this on yourself."

"Man's got a point," says Travis, but he doesn't think about it too hard as he shoots the Butcher a quick look of sympathy, half amusement and half how do you cope? The Butcher gives him the exact same look in return.

There's a pause while Bill rearranges himself to face Travis. It's hard to tell whether the Butcher is pantsless because he's him, or because Bill made it further than the whining stage of proceedings.

"Got you a thing," says Travis, holding up the t-shirt with a grin. He knew Bill was going to love it, but the speed Bill launches himself out of the Butcher's lap into Travis's arms is pretty cool.

Bill speaks into his neck. "Dude."

"Hey, hey, you didn't even look at it," Travis protests, bringing his arms up automatically.

"It's a drunk elephant," Bill says. "A pink and blue and green drunk elephant. For me." And that's all there is to it, really.

Natalie Who Techs For Fall Out Boy, the next day she asks Travis what Bill thought of it, and she's cool about everything, so Travis smiles at her again. "Yeah," he says. "Your lady is a jewel."

She ducks her head, tight dark curls spilling out of the clip she's got keeping her hair back. "I know."

And that's cool, too.

That evening, when Bill's been wearing the shirt for thirty hours straight, through two kickass sets and a few hundred miles, and it's sticking to his chest like it's his own funky, multi-colored skin disease, Travis tells him about Natalie. They're leaning against a wall, close enough Travis can feel the heat from Bill's skin, watching MxPx take Alkaline Trio in some sort of kickball thing. It's not soccer, but past that he can't make out the rules.

"The tech who got me this, her girl does all kinds. Bags, hats, shirts."

There's a second where Travis thinks Bill's going to say something dumb, but he doesn't, just smiles. "Talented woman."

And then they have a moment, staring at Pete Wentz as he leaps onto the pitch MxPx staked out and flips the ball up from under Matt Skiba's feet. Travis thinks about talent, and about love. He doesn't know what Bill's thinking, but he knows he'll listen as soon as it filters its way through the haze of thoughts, tunes and cock jokes that make up Bill's brain.

"Yeah?" says Bill, just as Pete starts yelling for Patrick to come support his glorious sporting prowess.

"Yeah."

Another time Travis saw Bill have to work at not taking himself seriously, maybe the first time he really noticed it, was during a TAI TV thing. They were doing whatever, Travis can't remember, he just remembers it was Bill's vision and everyone was fucking around and Bill kept sending him these texts -- concept ruind. may cry. and han solo - cud u take him? -- while Travis was trying to write. And he'd been sending Bill back punctuation, all :( or ? or once even !!, until he got blocked, and then he picked up the phone.

Bill listened to him talk about shit, about how the new song wasn't about what it felt like it was about, maybe? and how nothing rhymed with "that way things feel when they don't" and didn't complain once about how his artistic integrity was being compromised by his idiot band.

Travis remembers not getting why, so he dropped it into the conversation and Bill just sighed, then tried to pretend like he hadn't.

Now, right now, he's thinking maybe he should let Bill know he doesn't have to hold back. If he wants to get all stupid about dumb shit, that's fine. It's not, he doesn't want Bill to get all broken up about losing at charades or whatever, but when it's just them, Bill shouldn't feel like he has to laugh everything off and then make up new stuff to be pissy about.

Pete and Patrick are doing a victory dance along with what looks like half the bands on the tour. They all stepped up to play, it seems, while Travis was staring at the patch of dirt where Pete tackled someone ten minutes ago.

"Hey," he says to Bill.

"Yeah?"

"You really want that elephant?"

Bill's face does that thing, so Travis sticks out a foot to nudge him in the calf. "Bill."

"Yeah," says Bill.

"Man."

===

So just as Travis is thinking maybe he could do one of those adopt-an-elephant things, where you get a certificate and visiting rights and a letter a month with a giant foot-print at the bottom, the Academy stage an intervention.

"You and Bill?" says the Butcher.

"Yeah?" Travis asks, a little surprised to see them all sitting in his trailer with no sign of any of his band anywhere. He has to check for a moment, make sure he's not come in through the wrong door, but there's the dark patch from the last time Disashi lost a battle of wills with the Jell-O shots, and to Siska's left is the angry note from Matt about fuckers who leave the milk places no milk should go, you shittards.

Patrick once said they should all have alarm buttons, not for creepy fans but just in case Pete ever makes good on his promise to wedgie everyone on tour. Alarms are starting to sound pretty good right now.

He reaches into his pocket, fishes out his Sidekick to note down adopt elpnt?? in case he forgets. It looks like this is going to be taking all his attention.

"Hey, yeah, I'm worried about the heteronormative overtones," says Siska. "Just because you could snap Bill like a twig --"

There's a pause, in which Travis tries not to fall out of the open door and Mike points out, "Gerard Way could snap Bill like a twig."

Alarms, Travis is thinking to himself. Security guards with Dobermans. But then he blinks, and remembers he could snap everyone here like a twig, if it came to that. Siska can get kind of vicious, but his pupils look too blown for any real threat.

"-- just because of that, yeah, doesn't mean you should assume the stereotypical dude behaviors of gift-giving and staring at his ass. Like, if straights can leave all that baggage behind, you two can give it a shot."

Mike nods. "The elephants have got to stop, man. I keep standing on them at 4am."

Chislett winces. "Tusks."

Butcher's pointing at his foot with the air of a wronged man, and Travis thinks he might have missed a minute or two of the conversation, but there's something majorly fucked up with Bill's entire band all managing to look concerned at the same time.

"Hey," says Travis, suddenly worried. "Bill's cool, yeah?"

Everything stops.

They look at each other with some serious band telepathy, and then the Butcher sighs.

"Yes. Fuck's sake."

There's this pause, like maybe he couldn't snap them all like twigs before someone got a good punch in, and Travis decides to bail. "Sure. Right. Yeah," he says, and stumbles out of the trailer and into Walker.

Walker's just been on a Starbucks run, ten coffees in one of those dinky cardboard carriers, but he saves them all with a practiced all-body twist. Before he can recover, Travis steps behind him and wraps him into a tight hug, stretching a little to rest his chin on Walker's head. "Lie to me, Jon Walker."

"Bill's right," Walker says instantly, selling it with a low, sincere tone. "Ryan and Spencer and Brendon are in a gay threesome and they keep asking me to join in." He rushes the last bit, like it really is a secret, and Travis gets confused.

"Shit, really?" The coffee smells good.

Walker tries to shrug him off, but Travis is holding on tight. Some people act like there's a difference between being near someone and being right on top of them, but luckily a ton of people already trained Walker out of that shit. "Yeah, no, I mean--" Walker stops. "Wait. Am I still supposed to be lying?"

Travis puts his hands on Walker's shoulders, pushing off and away. "Yeah, whatever, man." He laughs. "Would you hit that?"

Bill likes lists, he told Travis, but not numbered ones. He'll put things in order out loud, but inside his head Travis knows they're all just bullet points, circles and swirls. The second time they really talked, Bill told him about how he liked to number everything one, to make it feel like nothing and everything was important. So with that and Travis's own list trauma, it's possible neither of them have been counting the elephants.

Walker nods, eyes wide. "Of course. There's nothing I want more than dick."

Travis laughs. "Me too, man. Me too."

===

There aren't many downsides to Walker getting kidnapped by Bugsy Malone extras and forced into frock coats, but one is the way he remembers stuff now. The old Walker, he might have crept up behind Travis while he was drinking and said, "Dude, so you do like dick now?" but he wouldn't have meant it. New Walker, though, new Walker still laughs as Travis wipes beer off his face, but then he tips his head to one side and says, "Is that why the Butcher keeps threatening to kill you with his sticks?"

This is news to Travis. He turns to tip the rest of his can over Walker's head, but those Panic guys have trained their boy well, and he ducks and weaves to safety.

Travis has bigger worries, anyway, so he just bats Walker away like Bill does, and it seems to work. Walker prances off calling back, "Me too, man. Me too."

Mainly he's wondering if the adopt-an-elephant plan is going to incur the wrath of Siska. He hopes so.

When Travis was seventeen, he kept almost dyeing his hair blue. Like, he'd get as far as the drugstore and then accidentally buy seven cans of shaving foam and a cat bell, or he'd have the dye but no time and then when he had time again, he'd find he'd traded the dye for a handjob or something. It sucked; not the handjob, that was awesome, but the way each time he'd be sure this was the day of blue hair, and then it wasn't.

Bill says the plan had too many steps. But then, this is a man who thinks cereal with milk is a plan with too many steps, so maybe he shouldn't be making the call. It makes Travis feel better, though. Now he could tell the fans and they'd send buckets of dye, or he could walk into a shop and pay some bored trainee hairdresser to do it for him, or he could convince the label it was an integral part of the next video's message. But he doesn't care any more, so instead maybe he'll use his amazing rock star powers for good.

He walks through the trailers aimlessly, but it's harder than he thought to come up with a mission for the forces of good, so when he finds himself at the Academy's trailer without a plan, he just shrugs and lets himself in.

"Hey, Siska," he says to the foot poking out from underneath a pile of band hoodies. He can make out a Gym Class one in there, a load of Decaydance and FBR shit, and right by the foot is My Chem staring up at him like they know what he did last summer.

The pile makes a noise like a puppy being squashed.

"Cool," says Travis. "Anyone else around?"

There's a rustle, then another puppy dies.

"Yeah?" Travis is glad the Butcher's not around; the guy's beginning to creep him out. He steps over last night's takeaway to get to the bunks, and sure enough, Bill and his iPod are lying there.

There's an etiquette to these things. You don't just barge in on a guy unannounced, leap into his bed and demand attention when he's clearly hiding from the world, so Travis makes sure to wear his cutest expression as he does it.

Bill flails for a moment, eyes opening in panic before he realizes it's Travis, and then he just relaxes into the bone crunching hug Travis is trying to deliver.

"Man," says Travis, flicking one of Bill's earphones out with his nose, "everything sucks."

He hadn't realized until he said it, but it's true. Right now, everything fucking sucks.

"Shit," says Bill, and he shifts them so they're pressed against each other, one arm round Travis as the other hand hooks the free earphone into Travis's ear. "Mike has brownies," he offers over the strains of Matt Bellamy telling them they could have been number one.

"I'm good." Travis wipes a hand over his face, trying to rub away the frown that's been building since he woke up this morning. There's not room for one of them in the bunk, let alone two, but they kick their legs out over the side and lie there for a bit, ignoring the rest of the world.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, when Muse has given way to The Cure and Travis's back is starting to get seriously pissed at this state of affairs, Bill makes a snuffling sound into his hair.

"Hey?" Bill sounds like he just woke up, even though Travis would have felt if he'd been asleep.

"Yeah?" Travis struggles to sit up. If his back is fucking with him, Bill's must be just as bad; the dude was not built to stay still. He stands, spine popping. "Thanks, Bill."

Bill makes the noises of "Fine, sure, fuck off," and there's etiquette and there's etiquette, so this time Travis does leave him alone. He can't place why he felt so bad anyway. Some shit about hair dye, maybe, but it fades away as he steps out of the trailer and into the sunlight.

There's a patch of grass nearby, and Disashi and Matt are trying to juggle eggs over Eric's prone body. He leaps forward, ready to help any way he can.

===

Gabe sends them a care package of two hundred flavored condoms and picture of Maja's latest tattoo. A worried looking merch girl delivers it into Travis's hands as soon as they've stopped in Assface, Connecticut, and leaves before he can notice it's addressed to "Gabe Saporta's Bitches, c/o Some Shittyass Tour." Fucking Gabe.

They're pushed for time, and with sound check and signings and, oh yeah, some music and shit, Travis doesn't see Bill without an audience of thousands before it's time to load up onto the trailers and head out onto the road again. He leaves the box unopened until Bill can see it too, and when they finally do get some time, two more tour stops and an argument about Disashi's socks later, he forgets until Matt throws it at his head.

"Open it, fuckface."

So because Bill's there, Travis shrugs and they do, and Bill just lights up when he sees the condoms. "Hey!" he says. "Macramé!"

Eric's lying on the floor of the trailer, staring at the wall with a frown, but he lifts his head at that. "You're really fucking gay, you know?"

Bill stretches out a foot to kick him, and Eric tries to grab it. He misses.

The laughter makes Travis think of that night last week, when Eric went onstage plastered with eggs and none of them could stop laughing all through sound check. "I'd like to dedicate this song to my most egg-cellent band," Travis said when they were onstage for real, and they were way too professional to crack up -- hey, he should have used that one -- but the guitar stuttered for a moment, and he knew what was on their faces without having to look. He turned, though, anyway, to catch Bill's smile from off the side of the stage, and grinned back so hard his cheeks ached.

The picture of Maja is stunning, there's no other word for it. He and Bill stare for a while, feeling pretty damned blessed to be Gabe's bitches if this is the reward.

The black flames lick the inside of her thigh; it's a revelation in ink, like she was drawn by God.

"Wow," says Bill, after a suitably reverential silence.

"Yeah."

Matt's suddenly leaning between them, gazing at the photo. "Man."

"Yeah."

But that's the thing about Gabe, is one day it's flavored condoms and Maja's leg, the next it's threatening phone calls that make no sense, even by Gabe's low standards.

"Jon Walker says you've stopped," he says in greeting.

Travis is pretty sure they're neither of them that high. "The fuck, man?"

"Jon Walker." Gabe pauses. "Says." Pause. "You've stopped."

"The." Pause. "Fuck?"

"You'd better know what you're doing."

Travis holds on to the phone. There's nothing to do but wait it out, and hope Gabe starts making sense before Travis has to go for tonight's set. Gabe is like his own hold music; he'll talk shit until his brain is ready to join in on the conversation. It's cool, mostly. Once he talked Travis through every kind of animal he'd ever hallucinated before he remembered he'd called to ask what that shade of blue was, the one like teal only not.

Gabe hangs up.

===

The elephant is called Keira, and the adoption certificate comes with a shitload of photos. Keira's first bath, Keira eating half a tree, Keira playing with a giant beach ball. There's one of her just standing there, looking straight at the camera like she's done being cute, now it's the camera's turn to entertain her. Travis steals that one before he gives Bill the pack, sticking it in his back pocket without thinking too hard about it.

Keira, the certificate says, is nine years old. She lives in the Terai Arc lowlands of India, her mother died when she was two years old, and she likes eating bark. Bill loves her instantly.

His eyes go wide and he grins like Travis did more than just spend three minutes with Eric's laptop and his credit card. He can't decide between hugging Travis and going through the pack again, poring over every detail of Keira's life. It's pretty funny, his head going from side to side as he tries to work out how to combine the two.

Travis gives him a minute before taking pity on him, slinging one arm round him and holding on as they sit down on Bill's bunk to read about Keira's dietary habits. She's not fussy; Travis approves.

After a while, though, after they've looked through the photos three times and Bill's read out all his favorite elephant facts and Travis has threatened to kill him with a shoe if he does that damned elephant impression into Travis's ear one more time, after that, Travis shifts away. He doesn't need to say anything, he knows Bill will get it, but he takes Bill's hand anyway to get him to quiet down, and looks at their fingers intertwining as usual.

"But hey, I'm going to stop now," he says, because he doesn't want it to be a bad surprise.

Bill rolls his eyes, which is cool. "Of course. You got me, like, you got me an elephant." He bounces in place, like that's it, but then he thinks for a moment and says, almost kindly, "Thanks for saying, I mean. It would have sucked to start expecting them."

Travis is getting pretty good now at telling the times when Bill means it and the times when Bill just wants to mean it, but he's pretty sure this is one of the first lot. He likes that. He likes Bill.

"Hey," Travis says, feeling the words spill out of his mouth with a sort of dawning horror. "Want to fool around?" He doesn't censor himself around Bill, hasn't since the first stupid question Bill didn't ask, but damn, sometimes he wishes he did.

Bill chokes with laughter. There's this pause where Travis can hear the blood rushing in his ears and Bill's having some sort of hernia, and then Bill notices he's the only one laughing and kind of trails off.

"Yeah?" Bill says, but it's definitely a question. His eyes are damp with laughter and wrinkled a bit at the corners. He's concerned, now, and Travis can't fucking breathe.

"Shit." Travis looks down, watches Bill's fingers hold on to his.

"Travie?" Bill says. "Not with you."

This, though, this is one of those times Bill just wants to mean it, so Travis leans forward until their lips are just barely touching, their hands still clasped together between them.

"Hey," he says into Bill's mouth. "Hey."

But no, yes, because this is fucking epic, this makes sense, and then Bill leans back and it all falls apart.

"...uh?" Travis manages.

"You got me an elephant."

Bill is smiling, which is good, but he's not making out with Travis, which is bad. Travis can see it now, can feel how it would go, the two of them trading sloppy kisses in the back of Bill's trailer with no rush to do anything but sit there and be. He's thinking so hard he almost misses Bill's next words.

"I don't know." Bill sounds kind of defeated. "Yeah, we can just fool around."

Which, maybe if Travis hadn't had two weeks of death glares from the Butcher and the world's dumbest phone call from Gabe and years of learning what Bill's smiles don't mean, maybe Travis might not have understood. But he catches the words as they fall from Bill's mouth and thinks, Oh. Because, fuck.

"I kind of." He stops. "I kind of got us the elephant, you know?"

He wouldn't mind being Keira's other daddy. She's cute, and even if she wasn't, even if she was the elephant man of elephants, the paternity suit would be worth it for the chance to unlace their fingers and cup Bill's face with both hands, to pull them together and smile into Bill's twenty gigawatt grin.

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End
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