Author: Hilary
Fandom: Velvet Goldmine
Rating: NC-17
Series: none
Categories: Curt/Arthur, angst
Feedback: Dying for it, please.
Summary: Curt is stuck in the past; Arthur finds a way to help him deal with it.
Spoilers/Warnings: No poster boys here. Anti-Brian sentiments.
Disclaimers: Someday I intend to use my own beloved, beautiful characters to write for fame, fortune and glory. Today is not that day.
Notes: Emu, Emu, Emu.
Note: This sort of falls in line with Twenty-One, which got put in Con*strict 2002. You don't have to have read that one to get this one.
Jackpot
by Hilary
* * * *
Arthur's arm hung from the subway strap, swaying with the motion of the train as it whipped him between segments of the city. The noise was miserable, the lighting was bad, and it depressed him in ways that extended beyond the faint smell of urine and the crush of bodies. He hated the subway. He especially hated what it represented right now.
He tipped his head down and stared at the dingy floor and thought about *why* he was on the subway: Curt had decided out of nowhere that he wanted to see Tommy Stone play again. The reason? He'd heard Stone was covering a Venus in Furs number.
"What a joke that is, right?" Curt had snorted. "Ha-ha. Funny." And he'd crushed his cigarette out violently and tucked his hair behind both ears in an efficient gesture he'd picked up from Arthur.
"Clever," Arthur had muttered, and then asked, "So why d'you want to go?" just less than petulantly. He'd kept his voice quiet and even.
The shrug had told him everything he needed to know. "Just want to see what he did. You know, probably some synth-techno shit, or he's got a fucking row of chorus girls behind him for it. Maybe I want to be professionally insulted." He'd snorted again.
But Curt's disdain for Tommy Stone had never managed to mask his interest, and didn't now.
"Why not The Ramones? They're in town." Arthur had gestured, a flick of fingers, and Curt had passed the cigarettes. Lighting up, the journalist had dragged deeply and looked at his lover, not bothering to cover his suspicion. "You like The Ramones."
The second shrug was noncommittal and more defensive than the first. Curt hadn't said anything else. Neither had Arthur, with the exception of, "Right. Well I've got to go to the paper." And he'd taken up his jacket and walked out into the hall, closing the door behind him a little harder than necessary. His pause had only been to gather his thoughts--*not* because he was considering going back inside. Curt could be wounded all he wanted on this one; he was on his own.
Now, hanging on the train with the rest of the corporates slogging themselves to overtime on a Saturday, he only wished he'd remembered some cigarettes--that was the habit he'd picked up from Curt.
Along with the habit, Arthur had also picked up the keen insight that told him Curt was off the wagon again. He could practically smell it. It wasn't smack; the fidgets were wrong and he'd seen none of the paraphernalia around--stuff wasn't missing from the kitchen--and anyway, Curt had started to write again. He'd never been able to write properly on heroin.
The funny thing--and not funny ha-ha, either--was that Curt would not let Arthur see what he'd been writing.
So Arthur was rocking and swaying passively, letting himself be jostled on his way away from Curt. His writer's mind smirked at the symbolism while his heart contracted.
He didn't want to lose Curt, but that was what it was coming to. Arthur could no longer keep up with the heavy, inherent need Curt had to tether himself to the past. He could no longer fight that need; it was winning. The more he struggled against it, the more he tried to bring Curt forward with him, the more Curt tensed and pulled away, until the fading rock star wanted to go to Tommy Stone concerts to see bad rehashes of his old boyfriend's music.
There was more behind it, though. Arthur could smell *that*, too. He shoved the suspicion out of his mind and adjusted his hand in the strap, focusing instead on how he would wash his hands the instant he got to the paper and wish he'd taken a cab.
It was insidious, though, the damned suspicion. It was becoming a paranoia. Curt had backstage passes whenever he wanted, for nothing more than a phone call. Arthur knew it was just another manipulation tactic, another way Brian Slade made sure people owed him. But he suspected that Curt thought it was more. That Curt pursued that thought... well. It was too much to consider on the subway.
Arthur let go of the strap long enough to pat his pockets down, then cursed softly as he remembered again that he'd left his cigarettes at the apartment. He'd wanted one in his mouth and ready to light by the time he stepped out of the underground.
"Well fuck," he sighed, a little more loudly than necessary, and grabbed the strap again as the train rounded a curve. He hoped he had some in his desk at the paper, if nothing else.
When he finally did reach the paper, Arthur stormed up the steps instead of taking the elevator, then advanced on his office like he was going to beat it to death. The desk, thank God, held a mostly stale, half-empty pack of Winstons. He lit one up and wished he had a window to stare out, but he was only just lucky enough to *have* an office as it was, and a hard-won office, at that. He'd spent years carefully crafting this job, molding it around him until he didn't just write for a paper, *he was a journalist.* He didn't do it, he lived it. He couldn't go back, and he didn't want to.
But that was what Curt was all about--two things, really--going back, and making Arthur do things he didn't want to do.
Now, Arthur kept seeing that shrug over and over again, the defensive movement that Curt intended to look like "I don't know," but really just meant Curt was avoiding.
Arthur thought about the last time they'd fought over this; it hadn't been too much different. They'd yelled more--Arthur had yelled more--but it seemed with every passing fight, with the increasing quiet tension, came less promise and more of Curt leaving. The image of Curt with one hand on the doorknob used to flash by quickly, disappearing with the makeup sex. Now Arthur not only saw it, but *felt* it.
"It's constant with you, isn't it?" Arthur had shouted through the kitchen, more or less at the ceiling, as Curt had raved in the living room. "I'm in a bloody black hole. Jesus, I'm not askin' you to pick out fuckin' curtains with me, I just wish you'd be here with me now!"
Curt had left suddenly, slamming the door behind him. Something had fallen off a shelf; Arthur couldn't even remember what it had been. It didn't matter; things were always falling off places when Curt was around. Arthur had spent the next three hours pacing, first enraged, packing Curt's
things, then concerned, then downright afraid because Curt had never left the apartment so quickly, the spoon still hot next to the gas burner. Curt was loaded out of his mind; by the fourth hour, Arthur was calling hospitals, in spite of Curt's penchant to stay gone for weeks at a time and
come back with a hangdog look on his face and contrition in his blood instead of smack. By the sixth hour, Arthur was resigned and tired, knowing it would be weeks again, knowing all the promises had been spent and would, somehow, by a trick of the light and his boundless forgiveness, be spent again. Then Curt had shown up, still wobbly, looking at the packed up box of his stuff and Arthur's tired eyes. The apologies had poured out, but the journalist had waved his lover down, undressing him and contacting the clinic, and then calling in sick to the paper. Luckily, Arthur only caught flu that bad about once a year.
It wasn't only the compulsion for smack that drove Curt into those spirals, though. It was the compulsion for anything that tied him to that half-crazed period where he had been, as it were, walking arm in arm with a lie. Arthur liked that even less than the drugs, liked it even less than
when Curt flailed around, looking for the next big thing.
The day after Arthur had caught the "flu," Curt had come to him, loaded again, this time on Jack and coke. "Maybe I wan' you to ask me to pick out curt'ns," he'd slurred, and Arthur's stomach had turned over with sick, nameless sorrow. He wasn't going to allow himself to be the next big thing. Not like that. The next morning, Curt hadn't even remembered the words had left his mouth.
He smoked in his hard-won, minor success of an office. He wondered if Curt was working on his next big thing now, the new music he wouldn't show his lover.
*I don't want to pick out fucking curtains,* Arthur thought sadly, *and maybe I don't expect you to be here now. Not anymore. Just if you'd meet me halfway....* Blinking, Arthur put out the cardboard cigarette in a clandestine ashtray in his desk drawer. Halfway. Arthur narrowed his eyes and bit his thumbnail, another annoying habit he'd picked up from Curt. Halfway. Shaking his head, he reached for the phone, hesitated, then found himself dialing. Not his apartment, where Curt likely wasn't, and not Curt's apartment, either. No, this was an entirely different phone call.
* * * *
Curt had no intention of still being there when Arthur got back. As soon as Arthur had left, Curt had let out a furious scream, slammed a beer bottle down too hard on the tile of the kitchen counter, and then stood there, shaking and scared, not even sure why he was shaking and scared.
Now he wondered why he'd said all that. He could have gone to the concert, just not said anything and gone. Now it was an issue, a whole big thing in the line of big things Arthur seemed to like making up when he thought Curt was on something.
"Fuck," Curt said, louder than necessary, and went to a chair, rummaging around in his leather jacket before he found the package he was looking for.
Arthur probably thought Curt was on junk again, but no; junk fucked up his ability to write, made him not care, and Curt was, if nothing else, trying to get started again. The other thing was that the first thing Arthur would notice was Curt's inability to get hard, and personally Curt could do
without the lectures about what it was doing to them in bed. He could pass on Arthur running around trying to hide the drugs from Curt at the same time he was making excuses for Curt's behavior--enabling and disabling at the same time.
Curt looked at the package, small and white, and sighed. "God damn it," he hissed, and put the package away again. Arthur did it every time; the quiet conversion tactics were still at work even though Curt openly rebelled. He wanted to now. He wanted to lay out the coke and just do the whole bag at once, just to say *Fuck you, Arthur. Fuck the gray-steel idea of how people should look straight and cool and boxed up. Fuck the newspaper journalist pretense and the "Let's find you something, Curt," and the crates of research and clippings that lined the walls instead of the old posters of Maxwell Demon on a bed of velvet, like a piece of rhinestone jewelry. Fuck all of it.*
But the package stayed in his pocket. Somewhere buried underneath all of that, Curt loved Arthur and needed him, far beyond the moments when Curt was shaking so badly he couldn't walk to the bathroom. It went far beyond the times when he was cold and couldn't admit that he liked when Arthur hugged him close, spooned against his back, stroking his hair because he was crashing down from shit far harder than the drugs themselves. Curt sat in the chair, put his head in his hands, and sighed. He wanted to be gone when Arthur got there. Now he only had to make himself get up and go.
*Maybe I should stay,* he told himself, but no. He got up, took up his jacket, and left the room.
He was walking away when Arthur got home.
* * * *
"Look," Arthur sighed into Curt's answering machine. "If you'd... come over, I won't--I promise I won't fuck with you, alright? I won't ask you what you're writing; I won't even ask you what you're on. No talking, just... just come over, for God's sake take a cab if you've been--I'll pay for it. Just come over. I have something for you." He hung up, biting his nails, and waited.
Eventually, Curt decided to go. He didn't know what Arthur wanted, or had. He wasn't sure he could manage to do this again, much as he wanted to. It had become some kind of fucked-up obsession, Curt's "next big thing," Arthur always called it, fixing shit between them. But he went, driven by the compulsion to look at Arthur again over takeout. Arthur used to tell him sex would never make it right, but that always ended up happening, too. Maybe it was the last thing they had in common.
Not knowing why, he folded up a sheet of lyrics he'd written and stuffed it into his jacket pocket--right before he took the package out and set it in his headboard cabinet.
But nothing, nothing could have prepared Curt Wild, the tired, drug-experienced, bombed-out rock star, for what met him in the doorway of Arthur's apartment.
It wasn't Arthur, that was for sure.
He was a half-lit waif with livid red hair, spiked up in every direction and glittered all over. He had thick eyeliner on and dark purple lipstick and some kind of vanilla perfume, and fuck if Curt didn't want to eat him alive. This waif had a tight black t-shirt on, sprinkled with more glitter, and purple leather pants that somehow, unbelievably, matched the lipstick. He had boots on, great, huge black patent platform boots, mostly hidden under the ass-tight purple leather pants.
The waif held out a beer and spoke, and underneath all of that glam lay Arthur. Waiting.
"C'mon," he said quietly, swinging the door open and stepping back. "I have something for you."
Curt walked in unsteadily, staring at Arthur in not-quite-drag. "You said that on the phone," he told Arthur a little hoarsely. What more could there be than *this*?
Arthur stepped forward, closing the door behind Curt and shoving him against it suddenly, pushing a leather-clad thigh between Curt's denim-covered ones. "I'm giving you a present," he said softly, and it was only when he swallowed that Curt could see how nervous Arthur really was under all that glitter. "Only you have to find it yourself," Arthur added, his voice a low murmur against Curt's ear as he leaned forward, pressing himself against the wiry chest.
"Find it...?" the singer heard himself asking stupidly. "Myself?"
"Mmm-hmm." Arthur thrust his hips, grinding against the leg he had trapped between his. He had his hands pressed against Curt's chest, kneading lightly, fingertips dragging over already-hard nipples through the cotton of the faded old concert shirt Curt had on.
Curt studied Arthur's face carefully, looking for a clue to this sudden change. "What the fuck?" he finally asked. "What're you doing?"
"Meeting you halfway," Arthur said softly, still against Curt's earlobe. He kissed lightly, and Curt swore he could feel the smudge of lipstick there. He shivered. He was confused as all fuck, but damn, he *wanted* to understand, and if he couldn't understand, it was likely because Arthur, rock-hard under that cool purple leather, was sliding against his thigh. Almost absently, he reached around behind Arthur and gripped his ass, stopping when he felt the card-stock thick paper sticking out of a back pocket. The *right* back pocket.
Tugging, Curt got the paper out and held it up. There were two pieces of paper, actually, and they were fifth-row center tickets to Tommy Stone.
"Holy fuck," he breathed, looking at Arthur. "Are you serious?"
Arthur nodded, losing ground with the glam-tart act. "Yeah. I just thought--maybe if I went--"
The rest of the sentence got swallowed in Curt's mouth, hungry and madly in love with Arthur's. Arthur groaned and slid his arms up around Curt's neck. It was good; it was *always* good, and that didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but did the bad parts, either, really? Arthur didn't think so, but it was getting harder to think.
It was always hard to think with Curt around. Curt dealt in absolutes, and Arthur was always trying to munge the borders a bit, and that was where they failed.
Arthur thought about Curt's surprise, and his very sudden need, and the possibilities they'd just opened up, and he hoped maybe this time... maybe they'd succeed. Maybe just once, they'd hit jackpot.
End