a/n: I'm oddly pleased with this one. It lets me explore my personal canon of having Hugo in a world-famous Muggle band, which I don't do much but always enjoy.
With the song: Mr Brightside by The Killers.
"When darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over trouble water, I will lay me down." (- from Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Paul Simon)
boy on repeat
HugoAnne
open up my eager eyes,
'cause i'm mr brightside.
- Mr Brightside, The Killers
He's been in love with her since – oh, forever. She's a gorgeous little thing, all blonde hair-wide smiles-pretty eyes and from the moment he met her he never had a chance.
It's the tiniest little bit pathetic because, hello, he's Hugo Weasley and he's been famous since the first time the world heard his voice on its radios and fell in love. He picked up a guitar when he was seven and he spent his whole childhood hidden in the shadow of his famous family, his foot tapping out melodies and his voice sounding from behind closed doors as his fingers stretched out over chords, moulding the music to his will.
And then he left Hogwarts after a quiet period of education and got a flat in a non-magical part of London. He met four guys with big dreams and two years later they exploded onto the Muggle music scene brighter than supernovas, dominating the charts and combining an impossible appeal with meaningful music that touched anybody who heard it.
They're sort of a miracle, actually, because in a world overshadowed by baby popstars with autotune and more hair stylists than friends, they've managed to become pin-ups and style icons, and yet nobody can dispute that their music is raw and passionate and entirely full of reality.
He met her at a party, the way boys and girls so often meet. He caught her eye across the dancefloor and she smiled and, just like that, he was gone. He plucked up the nerve to approach her after three drinks, shy inside his leather jacket and trying to hide behind his fame.
Her smile brightened and she danced with him all night and he couldn't believe his luck.
And since then she's been – well, everything. Morning and evening and the muse for all his songs and the reason he sings and, god, all the clichés in the book. She tells him that she loves him and kisses his cheek and her hands are fire and, heavens, for a Muggle girl she's just plain magical.
"Where're you going?" he inquires groggily of her one morning a couple of weeks after his twenty-third birthday, hungover from the night before celebrating the band's second album going platinum, "It's only six am."
She leans over to drop a kiss onto his forehead, her hair dropping down to tickle his face, and pulls back with a small smile, "I've got work soon, and I need to stop off at Mary's on the way. I'll see you this afternoon."
"'Kay," he replies, stealing a quick kiss and then watching her leave with a blissful smile.
He pretends he doesn't hear her pick up the phone and croon, "Hey, baby. Yeah, I'm just leaving. Told him I was stopping at Mary's."
After all, after music the thing he's best at is denial.
;;
She goes out again that evening, ostensibly for a "girl's-night-in". He watches her leave, forehead pressed against his floor-to-ceiling sitting room window, the London lights spread out before him like a rebel host bearing torches. He watches the man get out of the taxi idling below and gather her up to him, spinning her around and earning laughter that Hugo can't hear from twenty floors up.
Jealousy rises hot and thick inside him – because, for Merlin's sake, he's Hugo Weasley and he's the lead singer of Catacomb and he will not be this guy. He moves away from the window, images of the pair of them playing through his mind, and he gets a beer from the fridge and as it sits perspiring on his coffee table he sits with his back against the window and his guitar on his knees and sheet music carpeting his floor.
She returns at midnight with a lovebite on her neck and finds him fast asleep with empty beer bottles clinking dolefully around him, sheet music stuck all over the walls and windows.
"Hugo," she says, bending down to where he's passed out on the floor, giving him a gentle shake, "I'm home, honey."
"Go 'way," he mumbles, rousing, his face pressed into the carpet, "Seriously, Anne. Go away."
"But, Hugo," she protests, and when he sits up and rubs his eyes he can smell the stale cigarette smoke coming off her (-"I hate smoking, Hugo, it's so gross. I used to do it just to impress boys I really liked. I'm glad I don't have to with you"-) and it sort of makes him want to cry.
"Get out," he repeats, and she shakes her head mutinously and then somehow he's on his feet, screaming, "Get out!" at her, expression wild and eyes filling with tears.
"I love you, I love you," she's pleading, and she's crying outright as he tries to hustle her over to the door, so desperate not to see her face ever again for fear of this pain settling in his chest never going away, "Please, Hugo, you know I love you."
"No, Anne," he says icily, wrestling the front door open and pushing her out into the hallway, not caring what the neighbours think, "That's just the problem. I know you don't."
"You promised me everything," she whispers, the tearstains on her cheeks glittering in the bright lights, "You promised."
"You promised not to break my heart," he retorts shortly, and then he's slamming the door in her face and sinking down, head against his knees, wishing and wishing he could go back to ignorance.
;;
The song "The Girl of Broken Promises" goes straight to number one but the band can't get Hugo to celebrate. He stays in his flat and when he does go out he's totally destructive, either lashing out at anybody who tries to talk to him or retreating into a shell of silence, cradling a beer and glowering at the rest of humanity.
"Pull yourself together, man," Mark-the-drummer demands one afternoon, the ninth in a row they've spent round at his apartment trying to write a new song, "This is getting ridiculous. We need a song by next Wednesday."
"Fuck the song," Hugo replies boredly, rubbing his chest absently with one hand, "Fuck everything."
"She's just a girl, man," Colin reminds him sympathetically, "And a bitchy one at that."
"I love her," Hugo responds simply, and then he gets up and disappears into his bedroom and refuses to come out for anything.
The band get desperate, and do the only thing they can think of, skimming through the contacts in his phone until they find the one they need. They dial and the phone rings five times before a girl's voice picks up.
"Hugo?"
"Actually, this is Mark, a friend of Hugo's. We need your help. Please."
;;
When the knock at the door sounds twenty minutes later the keyboardist, Jack, leaps to get the door before Mark, wrenching it open and beaming at the girl standing with a bored expression.
"Lily!" he exclaims, and she just rolls her eyes and pushes past him – Jack's crush is completely old news by now – and marches into the sitting room.
"Where is he?" she demands of the three other guys in the room, reaching up to secure her red hair into a messy bun, nodding her thanks when they indicate Hugo's closed bedroom door.
She strides up to it and, with two small pale fists, sets about beating at it as hard as she can.
"Go away!" a voice calls from inside, and Lily just smiles grimly and pounds harder.
"What?" Hugo eventually demands, yanking his door open with enough force to nearly tear it from its hinges, faltering slightly when he sees Lily.
"Let me in," she demands, hands planted on hips, and Hugo musters up his courage and glares at her.
"No. Go away. I don't want to talk to you."
"Since when have you ever been the one who decides whether or not we talk?" Lily demands, and then she's striding inside, giving him a shove to get him into the room, and the four men in the sitting room settle back onto their sofas in an uneasy silence, wanting to be confident that Lily will sort Hugo out, but not really able to be.
Thirty minutes later the door flies open and Lily reappears, looking pleased with herself, and leaves with a quick "Bye!" and a wave over her shoulder. Jack springs to his feet to walk her out, disappearing out of the front door and ignoring her exasperated expression.
The three leftover guys all turn simultaneously back to the door to Hugo's room, and their faces are wary when he appears, cup of coffee clutched in one hand and a painful-looking bruise just peeking out from under the sleeve of his t-shirt.
"So I've been a dick," he says eventually, not meeting their eyes, "And I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken it out on you guys."
They exchange glances and then they're beaming and all shouting at him at once, rushing up to slap his back and making fun of his blush and demanding that he go out that evening and get laid and improve his mood.
"We've got a song to write first," he reminds them firmly, and he picks up his guitar from its spot leaning against the wall and finds his usual place on the sofa and starts strumming idly, looking through piles of sheet music as the other guys rearrange themselves around him, the band back in balance, Mark tapping drumsticks against the coffee table absently as they talk it through.
;;
"Mistakes Not To Be Repeated" stays at number one for six weeks, and at an after-party for the Grammys Hugo, clutching an award (Catacomb's third, if anyone's counting), spots a dark-haired girl across the room smiling at him, and after six drinks he summons up the courage to go to talk to her.
After all, he's much better at music than at learning from history.
a/n: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, I'm begging you not to do so without reviewing!
