SHOUTOUTS:
wiseupjanetweiss - hehe, as always, top of my list! Hehe and here's the update… wrote it while I was "tanning" (AKA burning) at the lake
Miss Loaf - hey there! Hehe thanks for checking this out! I always love to see new people coming by- and I love my Dorian Gray book.. Hehe mine looks rather like the one I described Brian as having… that and my copy of Wilde's other stuff. Have you read any of it?
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - hallo! Lol you should be afraid of the ending… I'm very very afraid… I've several options, dunno which to choose! And I gotta say… I think I've read all of your VG stories… luff 'em! But I'm fairly bad about reviewing -blushes-

Chapter Ten

It was sort of reassuring that he never got off that damn couch. So I eventually figured out (you think it would have taken me a lot less time, but I was pretty blitzed around then, you gotta remember) that I didn't have to watch him all the time to make sure he wasn't after me. I could go off and do my own thing. Which was quite helpful, considering I wanted to stay away from Maxwell as much as possible.

So I started going out again. A little. I saw Jack Fairy quite often. He would always ask me (while smoking a cigarette, re-applying rouge or eyeliner, messing with his clothes or mine, never just staying still and looking at me and asking me, like Brian would have) how I was "getting along" without Brian, what I was doing, what was new, that sort of thing. Very concerned-like, but I knew better. I always knew Jack Fairy had ulterior motives when he was dealing with me or anyone else who happened to be a little more famous than him. Or at least, that's what it felt like. But he supplied me with a good amount of heroin or methadone or whatever I wanted so I didn't much care. Let him ask his nosy questions and flaunt me about like we were actually an item, like he was actually with the late Brian Slade's lover. The tabloids seemed to think so anyway. There were tons of them saying what an insensitive prick I was for "bouncing back" so fast, but I was too doped up most of the time to argue. If only they would have known what was really going on. But I never gave them the chance.

Jack Fairy did one thing, though. He kept nagging and bitching and poking at me until I promised him I would start playing music again. So I did. Or tried to. I tried messing around and making up some new stuff to finish out my album, get out my feelings about Brian and all that crap, but it was all some grand bunch of shit. Nothing I wrote about him was worth recording. Nothing was worthy of Brian Slade. Which the drugs I'm sure didn't help much, but it made me feel like shit, because Brian sure as hell would have recorded something if I had died. And it would have been the best damn song ever, an instant number one hit.

Maxwell enjoyed my ineffective messing around immensely. As in it actually got him to get up off the couch to come see what I was doing. We'll just say I was startled a bit more than a little the first time I was playing and looked up to find him in the door. If I hadn't had the strap on my guitar, I'm pretty sure I would've dropped the thing and smashed it, 'cause I know I let go of it. He just smirked in amusement at my alarm and sat down in the doorway to let me know he wasn't leaving anytime soon.

But he had one of the collars on and it sort of reminded me I couldn't act like I was afraid of him then, just because he'd decided to get off his lazy ass. So I picked up my guitar and started playing again, glaring hard at him the whole time. He just shut his eyes and laid down again, right across the doorway. I stopped playing.

"Do you do anything besides sleep?"

He opened an eye.

-Do you always miss the middle note of your chords?-

That pissed me off. So I made a motion at my headphones like I couldn't hear him.

-Don't act like you can't hear me, you twat. Firstly, I don't speak aloud, so your headphones have nothing to do if you can hear me. Second, I haven't moved my mouth, so unless you have heard me, you would have no idea I'd spoken.-

"Bitch."

-How much heroin have you had today? You shouldn't play like this; you're simply dreadful to listen to.-

"What the fuck business is it of yours!" I spat back.

He just shrugged. Later on he would tell me he was "of the opinion I was incapable of making any good noise," the way I'd either shouted at him or rambled drunkenly or had the TV on or tried to play music while I was shitfaced. And as good as he could apparently hear, I'm sure it drove him fuckin' insane.

So in a way, I sort of didn't blame him. I kind of had been going around acting like an asshole, but then again, so had he. And anyway, Brian had just died, and Maxwell was in my house, so was I supposed to act like everything was all right?

'Cause it wasn't.