A/N: I'm back and, you know, officially this time. I cannot leave this fandom, I see. And I am like herpes: I KEEP COMING BACK. Seriously, though, this is somewhat of a comeback. Not the comeback I had before where the output kind of sucked—that was my "Steel Wheels" comeback that was heralded as a comeback but wasn't. This is my "Voodoo Lounge" comeback that's much more of a return to form. Sorry, Stones humor. Anyway, I have much time to kill when I'm not being a college student and I've been re-watching/exposing people to Newsies…but I digress. Really.
Disclaimer: Disney owns 'em and I'll have 'em back before they're any the wiser…also, any songs used/mentioned here belong to their respective artists and I do not intend to use them for profit or promotion; only for entertainment/story-advancing purposes. Rosie, though, belongs to me...but I don't know of anyone who'd want her…
--
As long as Jack Kelly could remember, he loved music. His mother died when he was very young. She was driving home from working in a bar a few miles north that tipped better and decided that she'd rather crash her car into a tree than continue to raise Jack.
His parents were never married but he liked to pretend that they were. His dad was a nice guy and a loving father but not a good person. Their town was in the sticks, in a shit-hole. They lived in a trailer in the middle of Bum-fuck nowhere. His dad was a drug dealer and cooked crystal meth in their bathtub.
Jack grew used to having drugs all around him. He'd sneak the dregs from his dad's glasses of beer and inhale the marijuana smoke that wafted through the particle board that separated their two rooms. His dad was kind of touchy and irritable when he was on drugs, though he never hit Jack. Jack was his pride and joy. His little cowboy.
His dad had been doing heavy coke when Jack was two until he found out that he could save his nose merely by doing freebase. He took to this like a house on fire. Jack was never alone when his father was on base. He'd take him to the bars and let him play with his cowboy figurines on the pool table. Francis Kelly and his other degenerate friends would down drink after drink at the bar while Jack pretended that the green felt was grass and he was riding the range. It was on one particular outing when he heard the sweetest sounds from the jukebox in the corner. A lilting guitar and sour vocals that made his head spin.
"…And you can send me dead flowers every mornin'…" the voice sang in a put-on, country twang. "Send me dead flowers by the mail…"
Jack started trying to ape the lyrics as the song went on but it ended before he could. Jack, though, was still two and couldn't understand the other words like "upholstered" and "Cadillac." Every time his dad would take him to the bar, though, he'd coax a few quarters off of him and have him put on that song.
He later found out that the band who sang that song was called The Rolling Stones and that they were British and not at all from the country. They were outlaws, though, he thought. Jack decided that he wanted to be one of them when he was five. He practiced a British accent and put unlit cigarettes in his mouth and affected a languid slouch as he played an invisible guitar. The one he wanted to be most like was the guitarist, Keith. To Jack, he was a real life, slam-a-jam-a cowboy.
He told his to his dad who laughed but on his sixth birthday, got Jack a tiny guitar with cowboy decals and a whole slew of records. As he got older, he found out that these materials were stolen for him but he didn't care either way. By that time, he was just as jaded as to expect it.
With the records and the guitar, he'd laboriously listen to them and copy what he heard on his own little guitar. He'd wear sunglasses and bandanas with cowboy boots. To be a rock'n'roll cowboy was now his mission in life.
Unsurprisingly, Jack did horribly in school. The teachers would be teaching math and he'd be off in a fantasy-land of gun-toting guitarists and petticoat whores. It was because of this did he befriend Louis, the son of one of his dad's friends. The man was in jail for blinding him with a class ring and Louis wore the eye patch he was given with pride. He had blonde hair that was once in a boyish bowl but he grew into a shag to look like one of The Faces. He could play any instrument, Jack thought. Pick up an instrument and get a grasp on it in a few minutes. Louis—nicknamed Blink because of that eye patch—had a nasty habit of stealing things and cutting class. He and Jack often skived off of class to smoke cigarettes behind the bleachers. Jack didn't do many drugs outside the most recreational but Blink was quickly following in their parents' footsteps. He did anything anyone passed to him no matter what it was or what it was mixed with. He'd jump out of cars as they still moved and partied in junkyards.
Jack dropped out of school with Blink when they were sixteen. They started playing at the local bar that had once played the music that so captivated Jack as a youngster. The same bar that had the pool table that served as his nursery. The same bar where Jack would eventually meet the love of his life—but that one comes later.
--
Blink was the only kid Jack knew who could strum a guitar while holding a cigarette. He kept it held between his middle and ring finger as he strummed. His wide, clownish mouth was spread wide in a smile before he belched into the microphone.
"Lovely," the bartender said.
He was a kid, not much older than them, whose name they didn't know. He was skittish, though, and prone to bouts of insanity so Jack just called him Skittery.
"Just testing the mic," Blink explained with an easy smile.
Jack shook his head and laughed. He was smoking as well but preferred to keep the cigarette just dangling from his lower lip.
"You're gross," Skittery shot back lamely.
Blink frowned and put a hand over his heart. "Oh, right in the feel-bads, Skits. Why do you cut me so?"
Skittery rolled his eyes and went back to wiping down glasses. Jack took in his group. They weren't a band by any stretch. A motley crew of various denizens of Tiger Hollow. Kids who had nothing better to do than go to a bar, drink illegally, and play hoochie-cootchie music from a kid who wanted to be Keith Richards. Their bassist that night was a friend of Blink's. He was a drug addict Blink referred to solely as Mush. Their drummer was a loudmouth Italian from New York who called himself Racetrack. So many people in Tiger Hollow refused to go by real names. It was America's Australia, Jack often thought. Throw in the convicts and the rejects.
"Hey, Rod Stewart," Racetrack hollered. "I can't see over your head—and dontcha know the goddamn Faces broke up in '75? And only two of them went on to do anything?"
"Which two?" Mush asked blearily.
"Singer and guitarist," Blink answered before turning to Race. "Shut your goddamn hole, fucker. I know that."
Race pounded out a beat in response, a sneer curled on his face.
"I like my hair," Blink countered.
"So do the farmers when they have you crow every morning, right?" Race cocked a brow.
Blink hurled a glass at his drum kit. It crashed on one of the cymbals. Race gave him a glare.
"Do it again, you backwoods fucker and I'll cut your throat."
Jack was surprised at that. When he had met the short guy, he seemed congenial and funny—a real hoot. He figured, though, that if someone came near his guitar, he'd want to brain him too.
"Didn't their drummer join The Who?" Mush was still mumbling about The Faces.
"Who cares about The Who?" Blink snarled. "The Who fucking suck. Always did. Artsy bullshit and too many fucking egos."
The others seemed to agree and Race, pacified somewhat by Blink's commentary on The Who, went back to tuning his snare.
"Who was their singer?" Mush asked.
Jack sighed and turned to him. "Of The Who or The Faces?"
"…Faces…they sound familiar. What'd they sing?"
Blink glanced up from his guitar and took a drag on his cigarette before answering.
"Rod Stewart was the lead singer of The Faces," he explained. "They were pretty much him and a backing band."
Jack glared. "No way. They may have kind of sucked but the guitarist—"
"I thought Rod Stewart was their guitarist?" Mush asked.
Race cocked a brow and gave him a look that read: dumbass.
"Oh, right. Jacky-boy's getting all defensive," Blink teased. "'Cause their guitarist went on to join his precious Stooooones."
Jack clenched his fist at that, especially considering that Blink liked them, too.
"Fuck off, Louis. You're the one who has his haircut."
"The Faces had a guitarist?" Mush asked. "I thought…wait…Rod Stewart's in The Rolling Stones?"
Jack decided to never again let Blink pick who played with them.
"No," he said evenly. "He isn't. Ron Wood is in The Stones. He was The Faces' guitarist!"
He turned away from their idiocy and played a short riff on his guitar to test their piss-poor amplification. It sounded dragging and druggy, as always. He wanted just to play to at least end the stupid conversation that was being had. He was told that Mush was supposedly a killer bassist but he was getting increasingly pissed at this entire arrangement that he wanted to walk off before they even played.
"Isn't he an alkie?" Race asked snidely.
A stupid comment to be made in a bar full of current and future alcoholics. Jack had had enough. He unplugged his guitar and stormed out. The neck banged painfully against his hipbone as he walked briskly away from the low stage Skittery had built for them. As he left, he heard Blink say to Race,
"Way to fucking go, dipshit."
--
Once outside, Jack carefully unhooked his guitar and placed it next to him. He then reached into his army surplus jacket and retrieved his pack of Marlboros. He always smoked Marlboros from when he had started smoking at age eleven. Cowboys smoked Marlboros, he was told. More importantly, his idol smoked them as well. Jack was a self-admitted sucker for hero worship. It was why he drank Jack Daniels and listened to Chuck Berry. He wished he could find people to play with whose necks he didn't want to wring. Blink was fine most of the time. Jack figured that he was thinking about his next hit of base rather than concentrating on playing. Loved his drugs, Blink did.
The others, Jack wanted to brain with his guitar. Race was annoying and loud and Mush didn't play with a full deck. He wanted a real band. A band he could call his own.
"You seem glum." The voice that spoke to him was feminine yet a little raspy.
Jack glanced up from his cigarette to see a girl leaning casually against the front of the bar. She was around his age, he guessed, and had long brown hair in two, loose braids. He was most struck by what she was wearing. Corduroy pants tucked into moccasin boots and a plaid shirt with a knit vest over it. It all looked expensive.
"Astute," Jack replied. "And you're not from here. You've got nice clothes."
"Astute yourself," she replied. "Yeah. My family's from New York. But we moved down here…because I'm fairly certain my mom finally leapt off of the deep end."
He smirked. She smiled back. He wasn't used to new people, let alone girls. Of course, he didn't especially cotton to girls. Especially city girls with designer clothes, rustic though they may be.
"My great-aunt lived here," she continued. "Gert Freedman?"
"Your aunt's Crazy Gert?" Jack quirked a brow. "With the thirty-two cats?"
She nodded, a smile playing on her lips.
"She died last week so we're here in her house because my mother thinks it will build character and get us away from the mad drive in New York. All pathetic, really. But, whatever. I'll adapt. I'm Rosie and I'm guessing you're the entertainment here?"
She was gesturing to his guitar. Jack nodded.
"Yeah. I'm Jack. This is Dooley's Bar…I play here. Don't worry about the drinking age because our cops are loadies."
She laughed until she saw that he was serious.
"I don't drink," she told him. "Well, I would…I mean, I like the idea of drinking but the execution makes me ill. I'm not going to fit in here, am I?"
He shook his head. "No. But I'm fairly clean so…"
He looked at her. She was skinny and little and almost very pretty. Yeah, she'd be fucked.
"Just stick with me," he assured. "I only smoke spliffs and cigarettes and drink. So you'll be safe from the druggies."
"I feel honored," she replied.
"Please do. Do you play an instrument?"
Rosie shook her head. Jack sighed; he didn't think she would.
"You want to come in and meet my friends?" he offered.
Jack threw the remains of his cigarette down and crushed it. She shook her head again.
"You've got me scared, now," she said with a laugh.
"They're harmless. Stoned—but generally harmless. They're on base most of the time so they're dead to the world. My mate Blink was doing it in the bathroom and I went in and did my, you know, business without him even realizing I was there."
Rosie laughed again. Jack found himself somewhat liking her in that she wasn't a druggie and, more importantly, he hadn't grown up around her like the other girls in school. He still had no feelings about women but she didn't need to know that—nobody needed to know about Jack. His hero worship of Keith had extended beyond mere boyhood wishes. He realized, staring at his idol's face peering up at him in post-adolescent surprise from the cover of "Out of Our Heads" that he was in love with the guitarist and even more attracted to men he knew.
He picked his guitar back up and hooked it up to the strap that had still dangled over his neck. Chivalrously, he held the door open for Rosie as she entered the bar. To his surprise, Blink, Mush and Race were waiting for him. Race was twirling his drumsticks in one hand and Mush was blinking his eyes in obviously confusion.
"Is that your band?" she asked.
"No," Jack replied. "They're just a group of losers I play with. I don't actually have a band. My mate, Blink—the one in the eye patch—he'd be in it, though. We've been friends since were little."
She nodded and shifted from foot to foot. Rosie was getting looks from the various men but largely due to the fact that women rarely entered Dooley's.
"He's the one who does freebase, right?" she asked.
Jack nodded. "Yeah. Totally harmless…stoned anyway. Sober, he has a bit of a temper. You can sit down to listen to us if you'd like."
"Sure. I have nothing else to do."
Jack made his way back to the stage and Rosie situated herself at an empty table.
"The prodigal son returns," Race said with a smirk. "And picked up a chick. She's kinda cute."
"I didn't pick her up," Jack said mater of factly. "Now let's play before I kill you all."
Jack plugged his guitar back into the homemade amp and turned to face the crowd. When he played, everything seemed to vanish. Jack lived for the feeling he got when he sang or strummed his guitar. Belting out cowboy tunes or rockabilly rough. Singing the blues like Muddy Waters or pounding out rock'n'roll like his idols. The entire world melted into nothingness and he was in his fairyland. His land of saloons and magic. He wasn't onstage with his friend and two morons and there wasn't a girl he had just met sitting there with a little smile on her face. It was just him and his guitar.
Jack was so preoccupied, being in his own world that he created by playing his guitar that he didn't notice the lone, male figure slip in and sit at a table. That, though, is for later.