holy crap -- it's Curt/Mandy! i rather dislike Mandy, to be honest, but there was a mutual sorrow here that needed to be explored. and i found my dvd! (who the hell lists it under 'action'?)...there may be some time inconsistencies/errors/the like in here. hope you all like.

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Chapter Eleven: "Wistful Thinking"

He had never really resented her, but he had also never exactly liked her. In truth, Curt Wild had been rather indifferent to Mandy Slade. She'd been there first, with Brian, and Brian had played them both. Curt and Mandy had rather avoided each other.

She had resented him. She knew that Brian worshipped Curt Wild because he envied him so. She had seen it in his eyes all those years ago. Curt was...well, he was a consuming entity. Electric. Intense. She had lost part of Brian to Curt Wild the night of that concert. And then Curt was part of their life. She wasn't the centre of Brian's world anymore -- had she ever been, really? -- though she was still granted some attention. But that wasn't enough. She was his wife. Mandy wanted her husband. Her husband wanted them both. Curt wanted her husband. A black little triangle with Brian Slade as the focus. Bri meant the world to both her and Curt.

Maybe that was why they both found themselves drawn to each other after "The Stunt" -- Brian's supposed assassination and revealed hoax.

It was awkward, and completely by chance.

Mandy had stayed in a haze. She knew Brian wasn't dead dead. But he was dead to her. Hence the divorce papers she had thrown upon his pile of coke -- "So you won't forget," she had hissed venomously. "I already have," he had had the gall to shoot back. And then that little bitch of his, that crazy little...Shannon...had come in to "escort" her out. How dare they! Maybe it was better when she had thought he was actually dead. So she let herself again. Oh, of course she knew quite well he was...about...but he was dead to her. And she was numb to the world.

She stumbled into a bar one night, not quite sure why or when or what. Reality was creeping in on her and she needed to push it away. She had sat at a table in the back, oblivious to her surroundings. Her first scotch took all of her attention, anyways. It numbed only a tiny fraction of her pain, but it was enough to allow her the ability to look round.

Only to be shocked hard when her eyes lighted on something instantly recognisable.

Someone unforgettable. Someone from the past life she wanted to ignore.

"Curt?"

At first he did not want to look up. For one, he couldn't place the voice. It sounded vaguely familiar, but... For two, he was working hard on trying to drown himself. He had been for quite sometime -- didn't know how long; the days had blurred into weeks, the weeks into months... But he looked up when the woman said his name a second time.

And it shocked the shit out of him to realise who it was.

He might be hell with placing names and faces, but she was one he should know well enough: Mandy. Fuckin' Mandy Slade. He ex-lover's ex-wife.

She sat at the table across from him, although she was now getting up to sit across from him at his table. She looked a right mess, what with her usually perfectly done hair dishevelled -- still blond, he noted, though the dark roots were starting to show -- and her makeup was smudged and smeared. Dark circles were beneath her eyes, which were bloodshot, contrasting rather nastily with their watery blue colour -- of course, what colour did bloodshot go well with? Hell, his own eyes weren't much different.

Which Mandy noticed as she sat down across from him. Firstly, not yet prepared to meet Curt Wild eye to eye save for that brief passing glance, she looked at the tabletop, or more particularly, at Curt's hands. The nail polish upon his nails was peeling. His knuckles were busted, and he had nicks and cuts all over his hands. One forearm sported a bandage about it, rather sloppily although nevertheless proficiently-enough done, telling that Curt had probably fixed it up himself. She saw the whiteness of another peeking out from under the collar of his T-shirt.

She took a deep breath as she looked up. His eyes were on her, not quite cold, not quite hard, though most definitely both. And so sorrowful, hurt and empty. Mandy had always noticed that Curt's eyes, no matter how vacant, still told a good deal about him. She searched them, seeing if any trace of the Brian they both had loved could be found within them.

Her search was futile. Much like her own, all that could be found was Brian Slade's aftermath, the devastation he had caused.

"I guess you heard about it all," was all Mandy said when she finally decided to speak, not looking Curt in the eye, but instead taking in the cuts and bruises upon his face.

There it was. That was why he hadn't been able to place her voice at first. It was stripped bare -- nothing but her American accent. None of her annoying, feigned English -- though she had slipped in and out of that like Curt with consciousness after a rush. Hell, Curt could sound more consistently British than Mandy without trying.

He downed the rest of his own scotch -- straight, though, whereas Mandy liked hers on the rocks -- and let it burn a path to his stomach before answering.

"Yeah," he said simply. He cleared his throat. His voice sounded like shit, rough and hoarse. Mandy snorted indifference to how he had so simplified the situation. Curt refilled his glass -- he'd bought the bottle and was more than prepared to buy however many more he needed. He tipped the bottle toward Mandy. "More?"

At first she was going to decline. But then it struck her. She herself couldn't pin down what it was. But she realised what a sad little situation she and Curt were in. She realised that Curt was actually accepting her.

"Top it off," she allowed.

There was silence after that, but the ice had been broken. The song that came on the jukebox five minutes later was the conversation starter. "2HB," sung by Jack Fairy, off the record he had just released -- with Curt, if Mandy wasn't mistaken.

"Oh, I was moved by your screen dream..."

"Brian loved this song," she mused aloud before thinking. She sighed, realising she might as well finish her thought. "He never got tired of performing it."

"That was what he was born to do," Curt replied simply. Both of them realised the underlying meaning beneath the statement.

Mandy smiled ruefully, dipping her head in acknowledgement. "That he was."

The next hour and a half was filled with snatches of memories on the rise and fall of the great Brian Slade and Maxwell Demon.

"So," Mandy asked, lighting up a fresh cigarette. "You stayin' around here?"

"Yeah. Rentin' a flat right next door." Curt's eyes suddenly got sharp, mistrustful. "Why?"

It was essentially a rhetorical question. Even a blind man could have read the look in Mandy's eyes.

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She hadn't originally been able to find much of worth in Curt Anthony Wild. He was an on and off junky. The ex-lead singer of a huge American garage band that had since rather faded into obscurity. A total spaz, prone to random, sudden and sometimes violent outbursts. He was pale. He had stolen her husband out from under her. But he had those damnable eyes -- that seemed to her to be his only redeeming quality.

By the next morning, though, she had found some of what Brian must have seen in Curt. He was intense -- as she knew -- but surprisingly considerate. He could be violent -- for that matter so could she -- but he could be touchingly gentle. It was sweet, endearing.

They played rough -- she had bruises, seemingly everywhere; he was scratched from top to bottom. He hadn't said a thing when she had cried out for Brian at those highest of moments, but she always saw the sorrow in his eyes. They were both trying to cope with their loss of Brian by trying to invoke the man where he no longer was. Traces might have still lingered, but they were bitter, jagged and hurt.

Curt wouldn't let the tears fall He wanted to call to Brian, but unlike Mandy, it was impossible for him not to realise that she was far from Brian. That pain of realisation ripped at the walls of anger he had built round his heart after Brian's betrayal.

He passed out hard finally around six in the morning, after coming in off the balcony from an extended cigarette break. Mandy had observed him from her place on his bed, where she herself was committing suicide slowly.

Moonlight suited Curt, she decided. He looked ethereal bathed in the light from the yellow-white orb. Shadows suited her. She'd always wanted attention, but found she was far better suited to observing from the sidelines.

Stage lights, spotlights and camera flashes had suited Brian.

Curt stumbled back in and fell ungracefully half on and half off the side of the bed. Mandy sat and looked at him for a moment. She reached forward and, struck by sudden impulsive tenderness, pushed Curt's wild fall of hair back from his face.

"Bri..."

The way he moaned the name, so soft and forlorn and grateful all at once, she should have pitied him, just a bit. Instead, a cold core of icy rage -- jealousy -- flared up and she slapped him across the face she had just bared, one of her rings busting his lip, her handprint vivid red against his almost too-fair skin.

And then she got up and walked out.

She would always feel Brian loved Curt more.

Or maybe just that Curt loved Brian more than she had.

(The lyric in the page break is from "Bitter-Sweet" by Thom Yorke and the Venus in Furs)