"Matt, for God's sake, must we be late for everything?" Dom yelled, Matt rolling his eyes as he shaved off the last of the hair on his chin and rinsed the razor.

"I'm almost done. Don't get your knickers in a twist!" he shouted back, smirking as he dried his face, checked his hair one last time in the mirror and headed out into the corridor. Dom was narrowing his eyes at him, Chris chuckling beside him. They started to head out towards the stage, the sound of the crowd growing louder and more intense the closer they got. They could hear the guy introducing them to screams and cries of joy as they broke out onto the stage, and peered around to see the ecstatic faces of their audience for the night.

They burst into Supremacy, Matt lunging across the stage to dance in front of Dom's drum kit, the crowd going wild.

The gig went extremely well. Aside from the minor glitch of Matt's guitar breaking within the first song, there weren't many technical difficulties-aside from when Matt jumped up onto the piano and made it out of tune-and the reception in the crowd was amazing. The joy in the atmosphere was palpable, everyone in the room enjoying themselves even if they didn't want to.

Matt skipped over to the drum kit to take a quick swig of his water, grinning up at Dom as he did so. The audience cried for certain songs, 'Fury' being the most commonly heard alongside requests for an encored of 'Dead Star'. The band smirked to themselves, knowing exactly what they wanted to put in the set, whether the audience liked it or not. But they hoped they would like it. It'd be a bit rubbish if they didn't.

Matt walked back over to the microphone and was about to pull it out of the stand to begin the song when he heard somebody in the crowd yell,

"Madness is shit!" His heart sunk but he refused to let his face fall.

"Hah!" he responded. "We'll play that one for you then!" The crowd laughed at his reply and he grinned to show that he was proud of himself, but inside he was still disappointed. They received a lot of criticism, although not enough to outweigh the response of their loyal fans, but it felt different to have somebody interrupt the gig to say it to his face. He'd put his time and effort into that song, he'd put his soul into that song, and somebody had dismissed it with those three words.

Swallowing nervously, suddenly self-conscious and afraid of messing up, he turned to Dom with a sad frown pulling his eyebrows in. Dom gave him a pointed look and then flashed him a sunny smile, but Matt could see the message in his eyes. 'Keep going. Don't listen to him.'

A quiet, apologetic, "Madness is alright," could be heard before they finally began the song.

The rest of the gig went without a hitch. Somebody threw a horse mask onto the stage which Dom was pressured to wear, much to the amusement of all the spectators. Matt felt himself sinking back into the normal excitement he felt on stage, the thrill of all those people enjoying his performance coursing through his veins, but he couldn't help letting that minor disappointment drag him down a bit.

After they'd finished up and Matt had followed Dom and Chris offstage, they sat down in the dressing room and cracked open two bottles of beer, with a Red Bull for Chris. Matt sighed and slipped into his seat, taking the bottle gratefully and downing half of it in one go. Dom and Chris watched his warily.

"Matt, mate, you alright?" Chris asked tentatively.

"Just thirsty," Matt quipped, lips returning to the rim of the bottle. Chris raised an eyebrow but dropped the subject until the liquid had completely disappeared. Dom still had two thirds of his left. Shaking his head, Chris nodded at Dom and waved goodbye to the pair, intending to meet again with his family in the room next door. There was an awkward silence as the door closed, Matt closing his eyes and leaning back into the chair with Dom watching him the whole time.

They remained like this for a few minutes until Matt snapped,

"What do you want, Dom?" Dom refused to answer, knowing how to deal with the other man when he was in one of these moods. He allowed him to contemplate his actions and, when Matthew let out a deep sigh, knew he'd predicted right. "I'm sorry, Dom. I'm just...a bit highly-strung."

"So I see," Dom replied. "Anything in particular on your mind?"

"No."

"Matt."

"I said, 'No'."

"And I know when you're lying. Don't try and pull one over on me. It's about the Madness thing, isn't it?" Matt ran a hand through his hair, grimacing when it caught because of the hair gel.

"I just...I really thought people liked it," he mumbled.

"Hey, people do like it! Just because that one guy wasn't too taken with it doesn't make it a bad song."

"But for somebody to actually say it? And just as we were about to play it?"

"He was being a dick, Matt. We've had worse criticism than that and look at us now! Don't let it get to you." The blanket of silence settled over them again. Dom took another swig of his beer, watching as Matt played with them hem of his shirt.

"I feel like I'm losing my touch," Matt confessed suddenly. Dom paused, slowly lowering the bottle back down to the table and hoping for Matt to meet his eyes. He didn't. "I...lots of people didn't like The 2nd Law. Said it was too mainstream, said the lyrics weren't heartfelt enough, said I'm just copying our old albums. Don't know whether to believe them or not." His voice grew softer as he spoke until it was almost a whisper. Dom crept from his seat to wrap an arm around Matt's shoulders.

"Now, don't you go starting that. We all know that you're a fantastic songwriter, so you can stop with your moping, okay? Some people didn't like the album, but so many more people did. Did you see everyone in that crowd? One person out of all two thousand didn't want you to play that song. Everybody else loved it. Chris and Morgan and I loved it. In fact, I think the only person that didn't love it was you." Matt leaned his head on Dom's shoulder and sighed heavily.

"I dunno, Dom. I don't know where I'm going with this anymore." Dom's hand found Matt's hair and he began to flatten it down as he stroked his scalp soothingly, tightening his hold around Matt's chest.

"Just go wherever it takes you. Trust me, Matt, it's going to be great. No matter what you do, you'll always have us behind you. Always."

I know I twisted this a little bit. Matt seemed extremely hyper throughout the whole gig and probably didn't feel like this at all, but I felt like writing it so here /o/ take it.