Chapter 2
From Glittercrash: The Rise and Fall of Nic Skye and the Shooting Stars from Outer Space, directed by Andy Connors, starring Colby Kent and Jason Mirelli.
Nic wakes up and doesn't know where he is, which bed he's in, what night this is—which show, which explosion of glitter and glam rock and high heels and a pink drum kit and screaming fans and a microphone, which afterparty and dissolving discordant cacophony of sex and bare skin and guitar strings and booze and heroin and the sweet sharp infinite golden rush—
His head hurts. His chest hurts. Even his toes hurt, which feels unjust. He's pretty sure he hasn't done anything to them. Though, to be fair, he might not recall.
He blinks cautiously. The world swims, purple-hued and twinkling.
That's…not the fault of his vision. That is, in fact, his bedroom ceiling, his own extravagant house, and the paint job he'd demanded for this room. So, all right: he knows where he is, if not how he arrived.
The walls are blue, like the sky. The ceiling's deep indigo with lots of silver stars. His bed's enormous and plush and golden and heart-shaped, because he'd thought: why not? Nic Skye, glamorous everything-sexual face and voice of the incandescent band that was the Shooting Stars from Outer Space, velvet and brocade and provocation on legs, sex and music and snakeskin challenge to a calcifying nineteen-seventies institutional status quo…
Of course he'd wanted a golden bed. And a closet full of high-heeled shoes. And fame, and wealth, and love, and adoration, and everything else he'd never, ever had.
He feels utterly, entirely, exhausted.
He's felt awful before—he's awakened in hospital, or naked on the floor of his own closet, or immediately vomiting onto his drummer's unconscious head, or bewilderingly dressed in violet feathers and handcuffed to a hotel bed. He knows the hangover, the throbbing head, the churning gut.
This feels different, and Nic Skye—twenty-three, gloriously incandescently famous, twin pasted-on silver stars beside his left eye, iconic—doesn't know why.
He isn't even that hungover. Some, yeah: as usual. As expected. And sore all over.
But he's alone in bed, which isn't entirely usual, and he's definitely not wearing the leather trousers and mesh top from last night's show; someone's wrapped him up in a dressing gown, one he doesn't recall buying. It's nice, though: thick and quilted, royal blue, something he probably would've spotted and desired and purchased on the spot, just to laugh at the whole contrast of where he'd grown up and where he is now. Or maybe to hurt for it: for the gulf between the past and the present, the boy with holes in his shoes and secondhand shirts versus everything he'd thought he'd ever wanted, and the hollow tiredness in his bones.
He thinks about how nice the fabric feels, posh and plush, though he's also aware that he doesn't deserve it.
The fabric does feel nice. That's a real sensation.
And Nicholas Shelley, somewhat to his own surprise, sprawled across his bed in a quilted blue dressing gown with various aches and bruises waking up to announce themselves, thinks: I like feeling something soft, and nice, and warm. I like this. I like feeling real.
He's also hearing a quiet sound. Purring. No. Snoring. Not loudly, and it's sort of a friendly noise, even: as if the sleeper's just saying, I'm here, I'm here with you, in case you needed to know.
Nic, lying in bed and thinking about sensations, rolls his head that way. His hair gets into his face, blond and long and silky and tangled; he blinks it away.
Ah. His manager. Too large for the chair that's been dragged over—a hot-pink fanciful powderpuff of a chair, with fringe on the arms. Joe's suit is also too large, wide lapels, flatly brown and relentlessly boring, and he's contorted himself into a position that's going to make his back scream upon waking. And he's fallen asleep here at Nic's side. Shadows lurk under his eyes. Dark as ash.
Nic considers all of this, for a moment.
There's sunlight in Joe's hair. A streak of gold, lightening the brown. Touching the edge of his eyebrow, the crags of his face.
Joe looks older. Older than they'd both been, starting out, once upon a time. Worn thinner, grooves etched in. Fame, and managerial responsibility, of course. Watching out for a lead singer who appreciates mind-emptying substances and three-or-more-somes backstage. But also…
…the loyalty, the specific brand of faithfulness to a charge, that means he's here. In a too-small too-pink chair. Waiting for Nic to wake up. When no one else is.
Unshakeable, Joe. True of heart. Like the sunshine gold.
And it's a cliché and it's ridiculous and it'd never be believable even in a love song, but Nic Skye looks at his manager there in morning light, and he thinks that Joe Sullivan is maybe really the actual best person ever, the sort of person who'll be an anchor for everyone else when the world comes apart, no complaints, only carrying on and trying his best to be whatever everybody needs from him, a real-life hero because that's who Joe is, someone everybody should probably worship and adore and completely love with all their hearts; and then Nic thinks, oh.
And of course at that moment Joe makes a confused rumbling sound and wakes himself up, jerking upright, banging an elbow on the vivid chair, which at least is well padded. "Nic—?"
There's an emotion in his voice. Or more than one. Nic's listening now, in a way he hasn't been for years, and that's Joe scared and trying to hide it: afraid that something's wrong, afraid of whatever woke him, afraid for…
…Nic himself.
Astonished by this revelation, he doesn't answer. Joe must think he's dead, open eyes and all, because the next motion's a dive for the bed, where Joe grabs his arm, tries to check his pulse. "Oh God—no—"
"I'm awake! I'm fine!" Or not; but it's shorthand for I think I've had some sort of epiphany and also I'm in love with you and you're too good for me. His voice rasps, catching on sleep and feelings and last night's show and whatever the hell he'd been doing after. "Sorry!"
Relief, blank and stunned. Joy. Anger. They all break and crash across Joe's deep brown eyes. And his hand clamps down on Nic's wrist for a second, only a second, before he gets control. "You're alive."
"Was that a question?"
"Yes. Jesus." Joe hasn't let go. "They had to bring you back—again—God, you almost—you did—"
"We're here," Nic says. Aloud. Hearing it. "You're here. You're real."
"What? Are you…" More fear, again, abrupt. More lines between Joe's eyebrows. "Do you not know where you are? Or—or what's real, or…"
"Oh. No. Yes. Wait. Sorry!—I'm okay." And he's got the sensation of Joe's hand, that first clutching frantic need, around his wrist. "I mean, you brought me home. After…whatever." Joe also knows he hates hospitals. Too many memories of visiting his mother in one, while she faded away.
"Of course I did."
"You took care of me."
"Of course I did," Joe says, and then, soft and not bitter but heartbroken, resigned, weary, "I always do, don't I?"
"That's not what I meant."
"It never is. You never mean to fuck up." Joe sighs, lets go of Nic's wrist, scrubs a hand through his hair. Looks away. "Which I guess is why I—never mind."
"Why you what?"
"Nothing."
Nic sits up. Joe's still on the edge of his bed; the movement brings them closer, though his body hurts in mysterious spots when he shifts his weight. It's not a performance, not a flirtation, when he says, "Why you what?"
It's a need. And a hope. A trembling half-glimpsed fractured one.
Joe isn't looking at him, or is, briefly—a glance—and then away again. Into the sun. "You're not a bad person."
"Um. Thanks?"
"I mean you're not…you go out and give yourself to everyone, night after night, all of you, on display. You give them yourself. Your own heart."
"I—"
"Every damn night. Every tour. Every record. Every song. I don't know how you do it. I couldn't do it. You're amazing and incredible and everything everyone wants Nic Skye to be, just for them, you make the whole fucking audience feel loved, all of them, and then you do stupid shit like this and you check out on me and one of these days you might not come back and I can't fucking stand that and I don't know how to help and I can't fucking lose you!"
Silence, as loud as the sunbeam, and sharp as the gold. Joe's breathing fast.
"Um." Nic inches a hand over. Touches Joe's. Just fingertips, meeting. Atop his bed. "About that."
"About what."
"I think I might be sort of done with all that, actually. I know it's not that easy. It'll be hard. But I think I…might want to stop. And I might really like this robe."
"I thought you'd want something soft." Joe's watching him with the expression of a man seeing an oasis, which might be a mirage, might be a refuge. "You…sound different."
"I'm more okay than I have been for a while, I think." He curls his fingers around Joe's. Which wrap into his, as if the reply's instinctive. "You could've left."
"You think I'd fucking leave you alone—"
"No. You wouldn't. Which is why…I think…and it's not because I nearly died, so don't say it, I thought this before you told me…I think…I'm sort of probably definitely in love with you."
"What the fuck," Joe says, "if that's a fucking joke—" and tries to get up; but there's a shine of silver across his eyelashes, sudden and clear as if he's said the words, so Nic holds onto his hand, which means he doesn't get up. "If you're fucking with me, it's not funny—"
"I'm not."
"—because you know how I feel, how I've always felt, since we were kids, and you never—" He stops. Looks at Nic, for a moment. Looks at their hands. And back. "You aren't joking."
"No."
"You…"
"I love you, and—wait. How you feel, you said. Always."
"I thought you knew!"
"I didn't!"
"You…"
"I'm not saying it again until you say it. Properly."
Joe shakes his head, but he's starting to grin. "Nic Skye. Nicholas."
"I'm waiting."
"I fucking love you," Joe says, other hand coming to rest over Nic's on his, still grinning but serious too, meaning this with every ounce of heart behind his eyes, brown as earth and gardens and life, "and I'm here for you, we can do this together, I promise I'll be here for you, whatever you need."
"Oh, good," Nic says, lightly because the moment's too intense for anything less flippant; but meaning it too, meaning it with everything he is, when he adds, "I know you will be," and then he throws in, "And I love you too, now come here and kiss me."
And Joe leans in and does, with a new morning and a blue plush dressing gown and a terrible brown suit and a pink fuzzy chair as witnesses.