"Wake up, Arthur. Come on, luv. You've got work to do."
Arthur opened one very groggy eye and groaned deeply as his brain objected. "Go 'way," he mumbled.
"Arthur, I don't have all the time in the world."
This voice was different. Less of a soft drawl and that much more painful to listen to. Arthur knew this voice. He slitted one eye open again and sighed as he levered his head carefully off the hard pillow beneath his head.
"What d'you want?" he slurred.
Ray sat down on the bed beside him and silently handed him a glass of water, stroking his forehead and hair to soothe him. "Shut it and drink that," he said.
Arthur drank thirstily, spilling half of it in his haste. But his tongue didn't feel so much like lead any more. For which he could only be thankful. He licked his lips and tried again- "What are you doing here, Stone?"
"Came to find you," Stone said artlessly. He even offered a thin smile.
Arthur snorted, wished he hadn't and tried to untangle himself from the covers.
"Coffee, Arthur?"
"Please."
Ray made himself scarce, jerking away like the ungraceful marionette he was. All long limbs and gangly gait. Mincing along in bare feet and torn jeans.
Arthur didn't know how he still did it! He was freezing!
Stone was still standing there, waiting, hands in his pockets and suit neatly pressed. Completely at odds with the eccentric mess of the bedroom he was in. There was a purple scarf flung over the door and a mesh-thin t-shirt lying almost at those impeccably shod feet.
"Coffee."
Ray walked back in and dumped the cup sloppily on the table. Somehow he managed not to spill a drop. He seemed to notice the mess as well because he walked to Stone, holding those grey eyes in a mildly curious stare, and then bent down two steps away and picked up his mesh shirt. That went on and then he turned back to Arthur with a grin.
"The place gets so dirty," he laughed, "Got no one to clean it up, now, do I?"
Arthur just had to grin back. "Get Malcolm," he retorted.
"Malcolm? Bloody poofter would steal all my clothes."
Stone might just as well have not been there. But Arthur noticed a slight smile tugging on the corners of that mouth. It was hard to tell with all the make-up, but there! That muscle twitched again!
"Do you know a good cleaning lady?" Ray. With one of his absolutely straight-faced digs for the rock star.
Tommy Stone didn't bat an eyelash. He didn't even laugh. He only nodded gravely and said, "Garbage collectors."
Arthur bit his lip and angled his legs out of bed.
"Trousers, darling. Though I'm sure Mr. Stone won't object to your, er, lack," Ray sniped.
Arthur flushed and stuck his finger up at the older man. "Bugger off," he kindly suggested.
"Gladly, Arthur. But sadly no one will oblige these days."
Ray wandered off and carolled an off-tune nursery rhyme in the other room.
"One kitchen, one bedroom, and what passes as a sitting room." Brian Slade's grey eyes glanced around in a mixture of fond nostalgia and disdain. "Bloody rock martyrs."
"They didn't sell out."
"Man can't live on bread alone. Hurry up; I'm late."
"Turn your back," Arthur insisted mulishly.
Stone raised a blond brow. He didn't even need to speak. He only shrugged, turned his back and acted as if he were humouring an otherwise fractious child. He spent his time looking coolly up at that purple scarf with a contemplative air.
Arthur almost fell over struggling into his trousers. He bumped the table and the coffee spilt. He cursed a little and did up the zipper. Grabbing the nearest piece of what could hopefully be too old and frayed, he moped up the stuff and tossed it back to the floor.
"You finished or what?"
"You can turn around," Arthur said.
Stone turned around, glancing at the gold watch on his wrist in annoyance. "I'm late," he criticized.
"Arthur, do you want to eat?" Ray sauntered into the little room with a careful look of limpid innocence in his eyes for the man he walked around.
Stone seemed to stiffen.
Arthur made a face as his stomach turned over. "Don' even mention it," he pleaded, "God, my head."
"Nothing renders a man more vulnerable than drink," Ray laughed, tugging irreverently on a dark, dank lock of hair, "Shot of the best makes it all go away, luv."
"I'm not eating or drinking anything," Arthur said slowly, gripping the thin arms in his hands to signal how serious he was, "Nothing!"
"Careful!" Ray brushed the fingers away. "Don't damage the merchandize."
Arthur sighed. Ray was obviously in one of his difficult moods. The journalist didn't remember very much from the night before. He knew hazily that they had talked. He had said he hated Stone; Ray had said he thought the rock star was somewhat Arthur's type. Arthur had been insulted and Ray had laughed. Then Ray had consumed one drink too many and he had gone off on a rambling- and not very coherent- tangent of whether or not he was desirable any more.
"People don't understand us any more, Arthur," he'd mourned, "We're outcasts. Left to die in the cold, stark deserts of social rejection. It's a sea of ignorance, Arthur, and we're the ones without lifeboats."
Arthur didn't know who the 'we' was. Try as he might he couldn't see himself as a part of the same group any more. At one time he had hoped so, he'd thought he'd found a little gang of people who had the same ways of thinking if not the same thoughts. But it wasn't. How could it be? They were so different, now.
"I'll be outside," Stone said abruptly.
Arthur watched him stride from the little apartment, watched the door slam behind that straight back. He caught Ray just looking at him, frowning slightly in concentration.
"What?" he demanded, hackles rising.
"You know, I thought you'd be different," Ray commented, suddenly dropping the languid pose, "Thought you'd be older. But you're the same old boy who couldn't see what hit him in the face."
"Ray, don't even start on me."
"Shit, Arthur! Is that all you can say? What the hell are you doing with him?"
Arthur didn't like this conversation. It was too much like the last conversation. The one before he moved out to New York. He looked to the door and wondered if he could make it before Ray threw something hard at him.
"The same old fetish," Ray continued, viciously ripping into the pale, guarded blankness of the face deliberately not looking at him, "Fucking rock stars- the original groupie. That it, Arthur? That's why you went all the way down to U-S-of-sodding-A?"
"You don't understand…" The air got really heavy in a small apartment. Ray didn't get vicious often, but when he did, he'd always been able to hurt.
"Get out. Come back when you've grown up."
And Ray just threw him out. Just like that. After all of the last night Ray just stalked to the door and flung it open, insisting silently that he leave immediately. At once. As soon as was humanly possible.
And Stone was downstairs. Probably waiting in that damned tinted limo of his. In this street! Where most people couldn't afford the shoes Stone scuffed on the scarred roads. With a black-suited chauffer and that damned blue suit that cost the earth and looked like nothing worth its price.
"You want me to go."
"Get out."
"You're fucking crazy," Arthur commented, grabbing up the last of his clothing and leaving. Fast. He wouldn't give Ray the satisfaction of having to be told to 'get out' again. He didn't wait to hear the door slammed behind him. He only stopped on the stairs to put on his shoes and he was still sliding on his jacket when he emerged into sunlight.
Real sunlight!
The kind he never remembered in England except for when he'd still been at home. At home with Claire Watts passing with friends outside his classroom window and old Grant reading Oscar Wilde.
The car was nondescript. The driver was in the car and out of sight. Stone was in the car and bundled up in a trench coat and fedora. The disguise of choice, it seemed. Stone always used that one when he went out.
He got in and the car set off immediately.
"Where're we goin'?" he asked.
Stone didn't answer right away. Instead he glanced at his watch again and leaned forward to say something to the chauffer.
Arthur was feeling that usual blackness close in. He fought it, hoping desperately that it wouldn't hit this time. He couldn't afford to do this. He was working. He had to be sensible and sane, not sunk in the blankness of whatever fit he always dropped into when the shock passed.
The car stopped.
"What the hell?"
Stone tapped his knee and pointed outside. "We're here," he said shortly.
It was their hotel.
Arthur barely registered anything except that he had to get out. He got out, walked passed the doorman without even realizing the man was there, and brushed passed a tall, African lady that seemed to think he had done it on purpose.
He just stared at her back as she clicked her tongue and bit back a shocked exclamation. He couldn't summon up the strength of mind to apologize. He was sure he was sorry about being so rude but for the life of him he couldn't marshal the words.
Tommy Stone was at the front desk, putting a call through to somewhere else.
Arthur watched him for a moment and then took out the key to his new room. He looked at it blankly for a minute and then decided that bed would be the best place for him. He needed to sleep. His head still throbbed horribly and his mouth was still as dry as a desert. And those dark sands kept sinking him in deeper and deeper until he could almost feel the rasp in his lungs from having to keep breathing.
He made for the elevators.
Stone found him sitting outside the door of Room 103, back to the door and eyes shut. The rock star took the key from him and hauled him to his feet. "Get in," was all that he said.
Arthur could take an order. He went in.
The bed was smooth and comfortable and there weren't any dirty clothes and dirty glasses littering this room. No smell of stale cologne and stale sweat. Just fresh, sweet, hotel-room air.
Arthur landed face-down on the bed and decided to stay there.
Stone watched him for a few minutes and then looked at his watch before leaving. If he left a message down at reception for the reporter, it wasn't done in anything more than professionalism.