Author's Note: To clear up the unfinished business with Curt and Brian, I thought this would show it off well. Personally, I love Curt/Brian, but it's too convenient. With the different circumstances in their lives, I think they would become too different to really work.

"Curt?"

The sniffling voice on the other end made the faded star sit up and take notice. "Brian? What's wrong?"

"Everything, Curt. I want… I want to die. Please, God, let me die!"

"I'm not God, Bri," Curt groaned, rubbing his eyes to get the sleep from them, "I can't help you, there."

"Curt, help me."

Was it possible for one man to sound so… small? Curt Wild angled his watch to the thinnest shaft of moonlight shining through the battered curtains and squinted. 3 a.m. He concluded Brian must have had too much to drink- again- and gotten himself into a snit- again- and was now blubbering because he felt scared. "Bri, get off the fucking phone. Go talk to someone who gives a shit."

"No, no! Wait! Curt, please, I… Curt."

The phone was off his ear but the man pulled it grudgingly back. "What?"

"Curt, I need help."

Help. It was easy for Brian Slade to ask for help. He simply looked crestfallen, like a kicked puppy, and used that devastating pout to get all his loyal followers to slit their very wrists to help him out. And if that didn't work, he set Shannon on them with a malicious smile. "You want help? You go to fucking detox and get off the booze. Then you wipe that shit off your face and stop bleaching your hair. After that, live in a hole in the ground for a few hundred years until we've all died and gone so we don't 'help' you fuck up any more than you already do."

"Curt, I said I was sorry!"

He had. So many times. Curt shut his eyes and grit his teeth. "Well, stop, okay? I don't wanna hear it."

"Curt, I know you're mad at me, but if you would listen. You don't listen! You never have!"

"I don't want to listen!" Curt yelled, losing his temper as the only way to stop the gnawing burn somewhere in his gut, "I don't want to fucking listen to a single poisonous word that comes out of your poisonous little mouth! Now get off my fucking phone and stay off!"

"Curt, he knows!"

Once again the phone paused in mid-flight back to the cradle. Sleep-reddened blue eyes gazed around the tangled shadows and mess of the trailer, trying to reconcile the voice on the phone with the life around him. "Knows what?"

"That reporter," Arthur's voice continued hurriedly, "He- he knows who I am. He knows me. He knows about Brian Slade and Tommy Stone."

"He been blackmailing you?" Curt raised a mock-reverential hat to the reporter in question. If he'd had the balls, he would have done it. Shannon would have paid handsomely to keep her alcohol-addled only client out of the shithouse.

"No." The silken voice quivered. "He s-says he won't tell. But how can I trust him? I can't trust anyone! Why would someone like him care if I get hurt? No one else does, Curt. No one at all." Another bout of sniffles made their way over the line.

"For God's sake, Bri, get a hold of yourself," Curt growled cruelly. It was the only way to stop that self-pitying streak. The man was neurotic and petrified. The only thing he responded to was someone stronger than him, someone who would cut through his bullshit and drag him out by the scruff of his neck. "No bloody aliens are out to get you, you wanker."

"No, but this reporter is!" The voice was becoming shrill, reminiscent of a cornered rat thinking it had to fight for its life.

Curt knew that voice. It said people would be hurt so Brian Slade could feel he was 'safe' again. Whatever safe was. "Now shut up and listen to me, Brian," he snapped, letting every last ounce of his own dangerous personality out into the words. Not that he needed to try; he owed Brian Slade enough anger as it was. "You will sit your bony ass down and think about what you're doing. Jesus Christ, you sound like a sodding nutcase!"

"I am not mad!"

Long legs thudded to the floor as they swung restlessly out of the narrow bunk. "Yes, you fucking are if you think that this poor sod is out to get you. I met him, Bri, and I did a little checking up on him. He's just some rookie journalist that happened to put two and two together. Word is, he's a decent guy who won't break his word."

"How do you know?"

"I told you, I asked around." Yeah, Curt added silently, to see if I could tell the man that I'd back his story myself. "And that night, the one where he came backstage to the press conference, I met him in a bar. He was a glam boy, Bri, who got messed with when you got yourself shot. He misses his country and he misses his youth. That's all."

Silence.

"Bri, you still there?"

"Yes…"

"Good. Could you get off the fucking phone so I can get back to sleep?"

"Curt, what happened with us?"

The older man groaned and fell back on the bed. "Brian, it is too late at night for this shit."

"Please, just- just tell me."

Curt propped himself up on his elbow and stared up at the rusty ceiling. "We thought we could rule the world and we couldn't," he said, "We got lost in the dreams and got scared. We went too far out to sea and we drowned. Want any more metaphors for what happened?"

"No, Curt, I want the truth."

"The truth?" How strange, Curt frowned. Brian Slade had never asked for the truth before. "You want the truth?"

"I want the truth. No metaphors. Don't sound like you're trying to write a song out of this. I just want to hear you."

"You can't handle the truth."

"Curt, the reporter said the only reason the world liked me was because I didn't mean anything to them. Is that true?" Soft voice, not childishly petulant but something even more dangerous- honestly mournful.

"See it from his point of view, Brian. The kid probably worshipped you. Hell, they all did. We all did! We thought you were going to live forever, being as gorgeous and beautiful and… ah, shit. What does it matter? Ten years ago you ruled England and everyone thought you were some kind of messiah. Now you're like everyone else. If you left, they'd get someone else to play Tommy Stone."

"And no one could ever be Brian Slade. Was that it?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Curt, are you still doing coke? I can hear rustling on the phone."

Curt Wild froze, his blond hair in his face as he glanced up in fright. His hands stilled on the package they had reached for, the little packets of white that he had bought up with the last of his savings after that last song had been grudgingly taken by EMI. He had another in the works; he wouldn't be penniless for very long. What was the harm in a little pleasure? When he had so little left, why would anyone grudge him just a tiny snort of something good?

"Curt, you're still on that crap. I told you to stop. I told you!"

The fingers stiffened and continued with their tasks. "Stay out of it, Bri. It's not your business any more."

"I told you, Curt. I need you! I'd do anything to get you back, but all I ask is that you get off the coke! Is that too much to fucking ask for, you nancy prick?"

Curt winced and began the delicate process of forming the neat little lines. "You don't need me, Brian. You just want to know you can snap your fingers and have your own human poodle run out and lick your face. Well, I don't roll over and I sure as fucking hell don't play dead."

"I never asked you to play dead." More silence as Curt inhaled all the goodness of the white powder. "Curt, you're killing yourself and your music. Trust me, I know. I've been there."

"You've been there?" Curt wiped his nose and laughed a little. "I've never left. For over twenty years. Since I was sixteen, Bri. There is nothing you can tell me about dope that I don't already know. And you know what? That's the way it is. So don't give me your reformed bullshit because I know you better."

He slammed the phone down and refused to pick it up again when it rang. Soon the insistent ring of the telephone droned into his reeling mind until he thought it was just the sweet sound of a shrill guitar. His shrill guitar. The one he would have to sell if EMI decided they didn't want that second shitty song he had written for Brenda Whatshername. He was already due on the rent and his supplier would come knocking for the rest of what was owed him.

Curt Wild forgot all about that, forgot all about the savage disappointments of his life for the glory of his former days. The most explosive thing to hit England since the Blitz, his band. Where were they now? One was playing in another band somewhere in Michigan. Another was dead of a heroin overdose. Yet another was just out after serving time for sexual assault and battery.

A bloody ill-fated lot they were. The end of the sixties had been a glorious ride for them, full of wonderful clashing cymbals and pretty people. And then… that face- that one beautiful, pale face with the over-full lips and the long-lashed grey eyes. Brian's jaw had fit so perfectly in his palm, his tongue had found a home in Brian's mouth.

And Goddamn it, could the boy give head!

Curt Wild smirked dreamily up at his ceiling, still hazily recalling the memories of that one night, too soon before the end, when they had first begun. Of course, they'd had the looks and the glances and the meaningful words, but when they'd finally ditched the groupies and the fuck-buddies and the wife… ah, that had been heaven.

Long fingers and a worshipful prayer for more; flushed pale skin and those pretty, pretty thighs that had flexed so beautifully when he…

The memory vanished. Curt frowned and sank down into tears, turning over onto his stomach so he wouldn't drown himself.

And then there had been the second time. Cautiously agreeing to meet with Tommy Stone over a business dinner. The first glance of long-lashed grey eyes and the first feel of those slim fingers and he knew. Raging under his breath and the way Brian had just let him. Had taken it all and trembled out an apology. Had begged to be forgiven, spoken of all the nights he'd woken up crying because Curt was not laying next to him… romantic bullshit, the lot of it. But affecting romantic bullshit.

And they'd made up. Oh, how they'd made up! The tiny lines were now a permanent fixture on the once-smooth skin, and the bleached hair was not really Brian Slade's colour, but with the make-up and stiff suits gone, it was just Brian in bed with him. Sipping champagne and making new memories, talking over the people they had known and the things they had done.

Curt sniffled; unable to stop himself crying when his mind was rolling down the slope to a green meadow. The sound of the sea and the memory of those sweet kisses crashed along somewhere in the back of his mind.

The final betrayal when they both realized they weren't at all what the other needed. Curt wanted his Brian Slade, his glittering glam boy with the shivery vocals and the snake-slither shimmy. Brian wanted his Curt Wild, with the howling energy and the squealing guitar and the crudely humorous talk. What they got were two very different people, who were no longer bound even by a dream. Curt wanted fame; Brian wanted comfort. Curt wanted to go back; Brian wanted to go forward. Curt wanted leftovers for breakfast; Brian wanted a cup of coffee and vitamin pills.

They had had to break. Curt tangled his fingers in the stale sheets. They had had to break and he'd been left to pick up the pieces on his own. Never being able to leave his shitty trailer without seeing that fucked-up face on a poster on the street somewhere, smiling blandly down at him with cold grey eyes.