Challenge #4: A cold, cold winter and a lotta love, RPF, PG

[mazily.livejournal.com]

Title: A cold, cold winter and a lotta love
Author: mazily
Fandom: Rolling Stones RPF (proto-popslash, baby)
Things: PG. Not real, never happened, don't sue. All I own is an empty bottle of vodka.
Summary: You would like it noted that Mick is a filthy sodding liar.





Winter in Connecticut, and the girls don't live here anymore. You and the old lady spend a week traveling from room to room, trying out all the furniture, and it's like being nineteen again (only you were never this lucky at nineteen, in love).



Mick is at the door, hopping. "It's so fucking cold," he says. He's carrying a guitar case, and he's wearing a fuzzy red scarf and what looks like three separate hats.

You step aside, and he tracks snow into the house. He's shivering. You pull him into a quick hug, and he follows you into the kitchen, shedding layers like a fucking boa constrictor. You pour the drinks: tea for him and an extra large screwdriver for yourself, an entire fucking toolkit. You eat three biscuits (good enough, though you're smart enough to know telling Patti that you prefer your mum's would be an embossed fucking invitation to an Elton John gig) and place a handful in front of Mick. He reaches across the table for an orange.



(The lights are brighter, even, than the sun reflecting off the snow at the old homestead. You cover your eyes, squint, and the audience is fucking alive, fucking on fire, and your voice may be shot but you've still got it, baby, you're still rocking.

The band's still rocking. Your band.

You gesture to Ronnie, and he smiles. You inhale, lean into the mike.)



"The old lady's out of town, visiting the girls," you say. Mick's tuning the beat-up old acoustic you can't quite convince him to replace, playing a bit of "Brown Sugar" and humming to himself. You smile. The corners of his mouth twitch.



You've known each other for dog's years, which is how you know that he's licking the juice from his fingers like that in a juvenile attempt to get at you. It's how you know that the moaning and the "lovely" are just Mick being Mick and not, as certain morning show fops would insinuate, Matt Lauer, a come-on. Mick's your brother, he's your fucking twin born of different parents, and incest has never been one of your things.

His either.

Just to be clear.

So he's licking his fingers clean, and you're eating the last biscuit. Muddy Waters is doing his thing on the stereo. The sun is just a touch too bright through the windows, and you pull off your tee-shirt. Close your eyes. Stretch. Let the heat seep into the old bones and warm up the insides.



Mick would like it noted that he is not: lonely, desperate, afraid of silence, friendless, bored. He likes his solitude, he likes quiet, he likes the opportunity to relax and be himself without the unremitting pressure of an audience.

You would like it noted that Mick is a filthy sodding liar.



"Keith," he says, "Keith, Keith." A bit of orange hits your cheek.

"Mmm," you say (Mick hates to be ignored). The orange goes perfectly with your drink. "Oh, Michael, you're just too fucking kind, so very fucking generous. I don't know how I'll ever be able to repay you."

"Oh, sod off." He smiles and says the magic fucking words: "I've been working on something, shall I play it for you?" He tilts his head, taking a nice long dramatic pause, the fucking drama queen. "Or would you rather lie there and sunbathe a while longer?"



(He walked out of your life with a calm, "See you tomorrow."

When the fax came, you were more surprised, perhaps, than you should have been. You were fucking shocked. Appalled. It was, there aren't fucking words, you were incandescent, you were fucking enraged. He'd punched you right in the gut, and you couldn't fucking breathe.)



You reach for your guitar. He puts his down and stands up. Washes his hands, dries them, tosses the orange peel in the rubbish bin, reaches for the taps again, rinses his hands, dries them on the dishtowel you never use, and sits back down at the table-- the poncy git-- before pulling his guitar back up into his lap and strumming a couple of chords.

"-right" you say. "But, okay, see, how about?"

You play. Mick begins to tap out the beat on the body of his guitar. Begins to hum.



Sitting across from him in a sunlit room, writing, is the easiest thing in the world. Except when it's the hardest. That's the thing about Sir Michael Sodding Phillip Jagger, that's the trick: you never really know how it's going to be until you're throwing a bottle at his head.



The trick is knowing what not to talk about, what not to bring up, right? So take Charlie. Take the doctor's appointment you know he's at, the one he's fucking at right now (give or take, because, well, you've probably fucked up the timezones). Take the eighties. Take Brian. Take Little Mick, Bill, Brian. It's like quitting smack: you just got to go cold turkey, batten the hatches and all that jazz.

("Is this your last tour?" is a question best left to fucking journalists.
"Are we slowing down?" is a question best left unasked.
The answer to, "So, how's Charlie doing?" is always, always, "Better than fucking ever, mate.")

Every morning you wake up is a fucking blessing, and the sun on your face is a gift from Jah. Mick knocks on your bedroom door. You throw a pillow in his general direction. Miss. Your eyes are still closed.

"Oy," he says. And then he sits on your bed, just sits right down and begins to play a bit of something. A fucking blessing, today is, a brilliant morning. You yawn.

"I'm up, I'm up. You and your sodding schedules."

He ignores you. Keeps playing, and suddenly it hits you-- a fucking lightning bolt from the heavens and electricity running through the veins-- that the old boy's got something there. You grab your guitar. The sun's almost up, and this is why you're alive.


*fin

Comments

[ohmygodmuffin.livejournal.com]

(Four years later...)
I don't know a lot about the Rolling Stones, but I stumbled upon this on delicious, and it is very very lovely. Overwhelmingly beautiful writing. :}