Title: Cold Lonely Light

Author: Lucky Gun

Description: The crowd's cheering, the lights are hot, and he realizes that this is what he traded his dad's freedom for. Stepping backstage, the sounds die, the air cools, and he knows it wasn't worth it. Character introspection. A little dark, nothing terrible. Quick and dirty. No beta.

A/N: When you have two kids, you see every animated film out there. That said, I openly admit I love watching them. "Sing" was a bit of a hidden hit for me, though, mostly with Johnny's character development. Out of all of them, he's the only one who had a substantial, heartbreaking story that really made you feel for him. Little license pulled here and there and a little dark but only realistically so. Quick and dirty – have my national exam tomorrow that I really ought to be studying for instead...

The shouts of his name followed him stage left, each syllable hitting his chest like a bass beat.

Moments before, singing till his jaw cracked, he'd been something. Happy, fulfilled – some word like that. And then it stopped, and a coldness like winter in London had crept up his fingers to his tongue and made it heavy behind his teeth. His Converses scraped the stage softly as he passed from light into shadow, and he was only vaguely aware of something soft being pressed into his hand.

The ancient lizard who'd taken him from lapsed novice to outstanding pianist continually surprised him, but he just gave her the barest hint of a chin dip as he took the towel and moved past her.

He could still hear his name, that heavy thump in the air making every part of him twist in knots, and he was suddenly so tired that he almost forgot how to breathe. Something briefly overwhelmed the noise, though, and he welcomed the slight distraction.

"What's with the face? You were great – they loved you!"

The warm voice melted some of the ice at his throat even as he edged further off from the group, sitting heavily. His name repeated in the air again, louder for a moment – some cruel piece of wind, maybe – and let himself hide behind the towel for half a heartbeat.

Johnny! Johnny!

It was dimming slowly, much like whatever hope and light was in his eyes when he was before the crowd, and he silently begged for it to end.

Johnny! Johnny!

There was a deep hole in his gut and he felt every part of him slowly fall into it, each brick of himself dropping in with every repetition of his stupid name.

Johnny!

There went honesty.

Johnny!

There went honor.

Johnny! Johnny! Johnny!

There went selflessness, chivalry, respect.

Even as it died down and he forced himself to raise eyes that burned to someone he privately called friend, he could still feel himself growing heavy.

"Yeah...thanks, Rosita."

Thanks, for believing in him? For reassuring him? For giving him some lifeline when all he could do was realize that everything was hell from now on?

He would never know exactly why he thanked her, but she seemed at least temporarily satisfied and turned away. So he dropped his gaze to the wood planks beneath his feet and felt a wave of suffocating anxiety drag him down.

This was it? How long had he worked at this – a week? A month? A year? It could have been half his life and it wouldn't have mattered. Because this was it, just like their manager had said to their wallflower a scant few days before.

"I'm afraid that this – me, right now – is who I am. This is my lot for life – that I'm not the guy my dad wanted me to be, not by a million miles."

God, how true, how depressingly true that was.

What was he?

He was a teenager living alone in an auto repair shop while his dad and uncles were looking at twenty five years in prison. He was a poor excuse of a getaway driver who'd had the wherewithal to make a hasty retreat but not the foresight to use a different route heading back. He was his mother's brown eyes staring into his father's blue as the silverback decided that there was nothing special inside him after all.

There was light and movement, maybe music from somewhere in front of him, but it couldn't drag his interest. Anxiety gave way to raw fear, and he rested his chin on his hand.

CPS was coming. That was a given. He hadn't gone to school for three years because of their constant moving around, his dad's attempts to stay ahead of the law working until he'd put his son behind the wheel. That would all come out now, the truancy, the fact that everyone in his life was bones in the ground or members of club fed. Hell, the fact that he'd been involved in the family gang, however unwillingly, would probably get spilled at trial, and then he was hoosegowed too. If not, he was looking at spending the next lifetime staying one step ahead of his father's debts and enemies with nothing but the leather jacket he bought a year before he fit into it and a skateboard he was fifty pounds too heavy for.

All this, everything he was looking at, he'd earned over a shitty rendition of All Of Me with a dozen flawed keys and a check engine light on the truck dash.

Still...was it worth it?

Two minutes before, he might have found himself arguing that it was. There was something dangerous about being up on stage that overwhelmed any high he'd felt before. Not that bottle of vodka he'd downed on his lonely fourteenth birthday or that joint he'd choked on during his fifteenth could touch the feel of lights on his fur and ivory under his fingers. It was addicting, intoxicating, and utterly seductive.

Before a hint of a grin could cross his face, he heard his father's voice in his head, and the memory of the euphoria faded.

"How did I end up with a son like you, eh? You're nothing like me. You never were, and you never will be."

There was part of him that was proud of that – what part of his pride hadn't fallen into that same sickly black oil that was choking that back of his throat – and he let that comfort him for a full minute.

Then the truth of it, the glare of prison glass between them, voices modulated over garish orange phones, that came through even clearer than his dad's words, and the relief faded. There wasn't anything on the other side of it, either; there was no bridge of remembered joy as a salve to those words, no anticipation of happiness in his future.

Grey walls and black bars, red and blue flashing lights, neck aching from watching his own back...that was it. That was what he had.

The song he'd chosen to play for the finale echoed through his head, lyrics dancing like vinegar over his taste buds, and his lips parted silently.

"You'll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use," he whispered softly, and the burn in his eyes intensified.

This was it.

There was an oasis of dead silence that surrounded him for a moment, a pocket of tranquility in a world that he would have sworn could have been saved by music, and he savored it with a selfish tongue. The pit of nothingness that had started to build within him eased a bit, and then the city screamed around him again.

It wasn't his name, though, and he kept the last few pieces of himself from dropping away.

He lost some time, movement he wasn't sure he could create bringing him to his feet and to the side of the stage. He gave a wordless apology to the spiny creature ambling towards him, an acknowledgment that his misery had overwhelmed his appreciation of her own reach for immortality, and she just as wordlessly accepted it.

Absently, he found himself wondering how long he'd go without speaking to anyone once he went on the run that night.

He not-so-absently wondered if he'd ever sing again.

You're nothing like me.

With a shudder, he fought an unusual chill that chased up his spine and shifted deeper into his jacket. Well, that answered that.

Slow tones echoed through the air, a song he'd heard rehearsed a handful of times, and he forced himself to focus on it. To focus on the sounds echoing in his ears – not his name now. To focus on the changing cadences and chords. To focus on anything but the words booming from the speakers.

Because those lyrics were too close, too deep, so much better and worse for him than the ones he'd poured into the microphone, and he felt an otherworldly desire to go full Kong on that white mouse.

Something hit his head.

He turned almost instantly, eyes raising to the ramshackle stage they'd pulled together with montage-like speed. He wondered if this time it would really kill him, if it would kill all of them. There was that one thought, the one he'd tried to avoid, but still...his dad hadn't even asked how he'd gotten those bruises, how his prized jacket had been torn, or how that dark look at gotten into his eyes.

Eyes, brown, not blue. Brown like his mother's, not blue like his father's. Not like the blue eyes peering at him in the darkness above an orange jumpsuit with arms outspread.

He jerked in place, eyes widening, and he knew that the fear inside was suddenly very clear outside. His father was not small, and his temper was not leashed. He used his size to bully those who disagreed with him. That was often his son. So there was fear, obvious and real and deserved, but there was also another emotion.

It was terror, sheer and unadulterated; terror that everything he'd just planned for was obvious on his face, that every traitorous thought was written in his skin like a blazing meteor on a moonless night, and that his father could see it all.

But that toothy snarl was upraised in a gentle smile, those arms were welcoming, not threatening, and he took that one breath to stare at the sight of what once was and was never going to be again. Then he exhaled, moved with speed he shouldn't have had, and found himself inside his father's embrace. It was warm – warmer than the spotlights – and the pressure around his back somehow didn't make the drowning grief inside him any worse.

Then he was pulled back, bereft for a moment, before a large hand came and rested gently, so gently, on the side of his face, and he almost leaned into the touch. Words he had never heard and never expected in his life somehow rang louder than the sounds from the stage, and he felt them etch on his soul like his mother's lullabies.

"I'm so proud of you."

Then the warmth and strength and every good thing about his dad was there again, and he stared at orange cotton, jaw hinged slightly and that burn that had gone coming back to his eyes again. And he grabbed and pulled and squeezed, soaked up enough of his father's approval to shut that deep well inside him, to dredge the bricks of his soul back from the darkness and put them to rights within himself. His father was always so strong, so confident, and he drank that in as he put himself back together. Fears and plans and pavement under nylon wheels while hounds snapped at his ankles disappeared under the thought that maybe...the two of them, yes, they could handle this together.

He never remembered the end of the song or the beat of the helo blades that were louder than his own heartbeat in his ears. He never remembered his heartfelt promise or the shadows that fell like bars. He never remembered the questioning look from the others as the world ran its course and he smiled a little brighter than he ever had.

"I'm so proud of you."

But that...that, he would always remember.