It was after five when Mike put away the guitar and his songwriting notebooks and went out to the living room to check the clock over the fireplace. He'd left his watch upstairs, determined to let Bonnie's mood take as long as it needed to without checking on how long that might be.

Ah, shit.

He went out to the deck to repeat in a shout that echoed over the canyon - "SHIT!" - then went back in the house and got himself a beer.

Hell, they'd had this "discussion" before, the concrete versus the ethereal, the promotional and management process and the creative process, how even though they were like two tent poles holding up the same roof, success meant two completely different things depending on which pole you were bracing. In fact it was probably the first real conversation they'd ever had... how long ago was that? Before Paris, before Chicago... before he was even sure of who she was and what she did on the show.

They'd been together now for what, year and a half if you counted the dodging and weaving they did in the beginning. Less than a year since she'd first come to his bed. Less than that, since she'd moved in. Through it all they'd always been cool with approaching their opposite sides of the same Monkees circus tent as more of a puzzle, an exercise in logic, than a battle. Oh they'd gotten into it to the point of raised voices, almost without realizing it, as the points they made (that they'd made plenty of times before) got louder, as if that gave them more weight. No big deal, in fact at times it was almost a game. And they always knew when to stop. Sometimes it was him who did it, when things got this close to heavy, he'd abruptly suggest dinner, or some close lounging on the deck. Or sometimes she'd yawn and say 'I'm tired, let's put it to bed for now.' Either way, they always shut it down like flipping a switch, something to break the momentum. No, not break it... just send it in another direction. He knew he'd been right when he told Peter that he and Bonnie got mad at the things they couldn't agree on, but never at each other.

But today was different, for sure. Today was Opposites Day, she said "stop" before they started. Then again, today it wasn't about philosophy. This new mess was the one-hundred percent reality of concrete banging into ethereal, and it had spun out of control at the speed of sound. Bob's freak-out at the studio should have been a cosmic warning.

"Maybe I shoulda kept my goddamn mouth shut," Mike announced to the empty room. Bonnie had told him often enough, the biggest difference between her and Mike, and even Mike and Bob, was the ability to pick the right battles, to give up a skirmish now to win the war later. Okay, it wasn't just Bonnie who told him. In their way the other guys told him that too, when things got to him and he thought his head would explode. Peter told him because, well, he just wasn't that into wars of any kind, and preferred diplomacy. And David and Micky because they knew the show biz game. "Patience, my son," Mick would say in his put-on Father Flanagan voice, "all things come to those who don't flip out." But Bonnie had told him plainly, because she knew him in a different way.

"Nesmith, I know you want everything now, hell so do I, but 'now' is for kids. Better to have everything when the time is right. Just think of 'later' as now, only for grownups."

Something else made today different, too, something that rang ugly bells in Mike's brain. Bonnie had never shot out of the house and raced off in a screech of tires. He'd done that plenty himself, no lie, but that was before. Before... what? Before he'd met her, before she lived here... before he had something he couldn't imagine racing away from.

Little flashbacks started sparking in his head. Why the hell hadn't he kept his mouth shut? Because I thought I didn't have to. Neither one of them did, wasn't that what brought them together in the first place, the freedom to be who they were, proverbial warts and all? Still...

Mike realized he was pacing from room to room, muttering half of his thoughts aloud. "Hell with this," he declared and bounded upstairs two steps at a time carelessly knocking the tin of cocoa butter to the floor as grabbed his watch from the bedside table. When he picked it up and set it back in its usual place, another tiny flashback assaulted him. Another day, another argument like many before except for one thing: a slamming door, and screeching tires. Only that door had stayed slammed, and those tires never came back.

It's not the same, everything is different now. Still...

The knot in his gut overcame his logical brain, and he picked up the phone and dialed Peter's number.