Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was ironic that he was the one they all went to for relationship advice, when he’d likely had the shortest marriage of them all. 

Ironic, that was, if it wasn’t just so damn sad. 

Mick knew, with an unshakable faith born of something he couldn’t name, that had cancer not robbed them of her so many years before, Charlie still would have been married today. Would have had a lovely gaggle of kids and a farm and a beautiful artist wife. Would have spent the last few decades in wedded bliss. Would be eagerly awaiting grandkids, even. 

Instead, he hid himself away in that ancient Devon farmhouse, kept down to the last vase and painting as it had been in 1971. 

Before everything had gone wrong, when they were capable of civility (and much more) and life had seemed on the upswing, he and Keith had almost discussed it. There’d been a current of meaning flowing under those late night conversations, the promise of what they both might like to pursue, if one of them could manage to put it out in the open. 

Maybe if they’d done that they wouldn’t have ended up here. 

◑  ◐

Here is different now, than it was 5 years ago, or 10.

It only took them about 7 to figure out that they were better together. 

And if people think Mick sees that only because of better gross profits, well, let them believe what they want. 

What they see certainly isn’t half of what this band is. 

◑  ◐

They’d ended up back in bed together after a month in Montserrat. 

In itself, there was nothing terribly odd about that. Plenty of times, good and bad, they’d screwed. But there was something different in it, now. Some implicit promise, after they’d gone through hell, come out the other side, and were still, somehow, together. A deeper element to what had always been a deep relationship, on so many levels. 

“I’ve been thinking.” 

It was a cliche, but who said he couldn’t use one, every now and again? 

“Yeah?” 

Keith’s voice was rough, and stretched out as he was on the couch of their writing room in the late afternoon sun, it was abundantly clear he was just on the edge of drifting off. 

“About Charlie.” 

“Yeah?” 

This was the part that was decidedly not cliche. 

“About how handsome he is, really.” 

The coughing fit which emanated from the couch was (almost) worth whatever came after. Not often that he shocked Keith, after all. 

“What the fuck are you on?” 

No direct refutation, what a good sign. 

“You saying you don’t see it?” 

He knew Keith had always, always harbored a little crush on their drummer. (Maybe more than little, if he was honest). Since the time they were kids, and the smartly dressed older boy with the brilliant fills and cutting wit first deigned to play with them, his partner has looked at that boy like he put the stars in the sky. 

“What?!” 

That said, there was a good chance Keith didn't realize those feelings for what they were, or are. 

“Last time you got really pissed on absinthe with Ronnie, you told Charlie he has beautiful eyes. He blushed like mad and put you to bed.” 

Keith had finally risen to a sitting position, and was staring at him like a kid caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. 

“Think pissed was the operative bit there.” 

“I don’t.” 

“Mick.” 

“I’m not jealous.” 

And there went the shock threefold. 

“Really?” 

He laughed at the skepticism in the other man’s tone. 

“Nope. I think he’s got lovely eyes, too. Not opposed to any of that package, truth be told.” 

“Oh.” 

“Oh indeed. But what would you like to do about it?” 

A coffee brown gaze was fixed on him, equal parts trepidation and hope. 

“I know what I’d like to do, but what you want, and what he wants, I don’t.” 

“If you want him with us, then I’d like just the same. And I’d say the only way we’re going to find out what he wants is to ask.” 

“I suppose so.” 

“But we can’t muck this up. He’s not - he’s made for monogamy, and stability. One year on and one year off…” 

“Would destroy him.” 

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, allowing those words to languish between them. As much as the idea of Charlie rejecting their proposition was wrenching, the idea that they could hurt him so totally, after the years it had taken him to crawl towards something like normal (something still so lonely and disconnected) when he lost her, and send him right back to square one was unbearable. 

“Yeah.” 

“Then we won’t muck it up. Simple as that.”

Chapter Text

She had pale blue eyes. 

He hadn’t thought of it much when he was two streets down from the recording studio, chatting her up in a too-expensive faux dive. 

But now she was in his bed, and all he could see were those eyes, the same shade as the cornflowers which studded the bouquet standing on his sideboard. 

The same shade as Charlie’s. 

Naturally, the form was all wrong. He’d never met anyone who had the same huge, half-moon shape, and it struck him, as he bent to kiss her, this 20 something stranger, that part of what made Charlie’s eyes so arresting wasn’t just their color, but that unique design of nature. 

The sun had long since departed, leaving the moon to come out and play, and he knew that the drummer was likely with Keith, fiddling with new songs in the studio. They were getting along as well as ever. He and Charlie, too. 

He and Keith were the ones with the problem, and there, what else was new? 

There was a lie embedded in that question, though. Because there was something else very new, at least from four or five years before. 

Although he’d never admit it, he knew exactly how long it had been. Four years and seven months. 

Four years and seven months since he and Keith had knocked on Charlie’s bedroom door, the one tucked at the end of his home’s second floor hallway in Montserrat, and asked if they could talk about something that had nothing to do with a track. Since they had sat down on the floor and admitted, in stumbling, poorly constructed arguments why they thought Charlie should join their relationship. Since Keith had taken in one glance of the older man’s bemused, and slightly horrified, expression, and darted out the door. 

Since he’d stayed, and explained to Charlie, in less tremulous tones, exactly what they wanted, and what they wanted to give him, and how loving him as they loved each other had turned out to be a very natural thing, once they stopped denying to themselves that it was anything at all. 

And Charlie, with that mischievous smile which could cut through any of their carefully laid plans, had simply said, “Okay.” 

◑  ◐

Keith didn’t find him under the sheets with the girl. 

If God had any mercy, it was in that stroke of fate. 

But he had, having pasued a recording session uncharacteristically early in the night, glimpsed her slipping out the door of Mick’s hotel room. 

So he’d burst in right after he watched the elevator swallow her up and whisk her away, full of such undeniable rage he could pretend that the feeling which really overwhelmed him wasn’t pain. 

Old, reliable, ever sharpening agony. 

◑  ◐

Stretched out on the bed like Jesus of the Pietà, Mick paid no mind when he flew through the suite’s entryway and sitting room, coming to stand before the bed like judge, jury, and executioner all in one graying man. 

“Did you forget something, dear?”

Disgust fought to mount the heap of emotions swirling in his gut and reign supreme. 

“No, I think you did, darling.” 

Venom dripped from every syllable, twisting his mouth into a corrosive smirk. 

The singer sprang to life as though he’d been run through with a shock of electricity, sitting up and staring at Keith with an open, shame-filled expression. 

This had been acceptable, on occasion, when it was only them. A natural, if unsavory, way for Mick to exercise his anger, as Keith used silence and isolation to tame his. But it was no longer only the two of them, and hadn’t been for years. 

“It’s not-”

“What it looks like?” 

He gave a shrug, as though any distinctions were meaningless. 

“It’s not what it looks like in how it ended, is what I was going to say. Not that it didn’t start with the intention of something else.” 

So this is why Jerry had come to cry on his shoulder so often, the slithering words which offered both hope and abject revulsion in one hearing, to say nothing of distrust. He’d liked her quite well, for the few years she was around, and hoped, against any rational hope, that his partner in the band would see the light. 

Mick had never bothered with such excuses for him. It must have meant, he guessed, that they’d graduated to the status of a real relationship. The step next to death, where Mick was concerned. 

“Something else? What the hell else are you doing with a chick that looks like that in bed, teaching her trade date accounting? Or are you not qualified to do that, since you never finished the damn degree?” 

Why he was dragging LSE, of all things, into this, he wasn’t sure. Every available cudgel at hand looked attractive, except for the obvious one. 

“I started out planning to bed her, and I didn’t. I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

The stiff, formulaic sentences lay between them like a paltry offering. 

“How ‘bout telling me that you promised not to muck things up? That you promised we wouldn’t muck things up, and then three days into a fight, you fuck the first leggy blonde you can find. This isn’t what it was, Mick, and this isn’t what I’m going to drag him into.” 

“So what do you propose to do about it?” 

What he’d have done, five years before, was slam the door, give him the cold shoulder, and then chase him back into bed a week later, the tried and tested pattern they’d followed for time untold. 

Time untold did nothing to account for the silver haired man twirling his sticks two blocks away while he waited for Keith to return from a smoke break, secure in the knowledge that he would, eventually, find a way to reconcile the friends who had become his partners, his new home. 

Keith collapsed onto the opposite side of the bed, gazing up at the ceiling and hoping he was getting at least a little dirt from his Italian leather boots on Mick’s sheets. 

“Nothing.” 

“Really?” 

“I’m not handing out indulgences to you and I’m not doing this more than once.” 

“I know.” 

“Long as you do.”

◑  ◐

If Charlie noticed something more fervent in the way Mick held on to himself or to Keith the next night, he never said anything about it.

Chapter Text

The doctor’s words had become a part of the background noise of the city, blended away from his consciousness in the ever present whir of rushing cars, busy, cell-phone appendaged pedestrians, and the barks, shouts, and variegated noises of city life. 

Their essence was enough that he didn’t have to hear what came after. 

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Watts. It seems you do indeed have throat cancer.’

What did he really need to say, after that? 

◑  ◐

Most of the year, they lived together. 

But Mick had a relentless tendency to wander, whereas Keith and Charlie craved more staid, centered lives. An occasional shift between London and Jamaica, or between Devon and London, was enough to satisfy most of their craving for any nomadic existence, whereas the vocalist was forever flying between New York, London, Marseilles, Hong Kong, and a ever increasing bouquet of other cities, set on seeing everything the world had to offer and outrunning the past in the same breath. 

It was a tendency which had relaxed somewhat when Charlie came into their shared romance, but he still needed at least a few changes of scenery every year to be content, with or without his partners in tow. 

So they’d settled on recording their latest album in the south of France, and, Keith, having made the journey with Mick, the two were impatiently awaiting the completion of their trio. 

◑  ◐

Clawing at the scarf tied with expert precision around his neck, Charlie allowed the door of his central London bolthole to close with a thundering crack of wood against wood, mindless, as he normally wouldn’t be, either of nicking the paint or bothering any neighbors. 

 Once he’d liberated himself from the cashmere noose, he shrugged off most of his other garments and his shoes in quick succession, standing alone in the fading afternoon light clothed in nothing but a white undershirt and carefully pressed black slacks, like some mirror image of himself from 1971. 

A mirror image of himself older, sicker, and sadder than he ever thought he’d be. 

It was as much vulnerability as he could tolerate, at the moment. 

He loved his suits. He loved them because they were beautiful. He loved them because they were works of art. And he loved them because they made him look like he was something more than what he actually was, a miserable little man at core. 

A miserable little man who was going to die. Maybe as painfully as he deserved. 

With loping, uncoordinated steps, he stumbled to the bedroom, a windowless space hidden away in the heart of the flat. His shaky hands peeled back the coverings, and he climbed into the massive, cozily outfitted bed, drawing the heavy comforter back over his trembling body as though swathing himself in an embrace. 

As he closed his eyes, he prayed it would feel like the warmth of Mick or Keith’s embrace. Arms encircling him with all of the love and affection and boundless devotion he’d done nothing to merit. 

He did close his eyes. 

It felt like a shroud.

All that came were tears.  

◑  ◐

“Charlie?” 

A huffed sigh. 

“You know, it would be nice to hear from you, some day this year.” 

Impatient foot tapping. 

“You’re as bad as Keith at staying in touch, when you want to be.” 

An indignent grunt. 

“Couldn’t you just have gotten the tour check-up here?” 

Some unintelligible muttering from a few feet away. 

“Fine. Do deign to pick up, at some point-” 

The beep of the answering machine let him know the message was at an end, whether or not he wanted it to be. 

◑  ◐

A courageous man would have faced them, for this news. 

Shirley had done that for him. 

There wasn’t any courage left in him.

◑  ◐

Dialing the numbers of Mick’s personal line felt like signing his own death warrant. 

“Hello?” 

“Mick?” 

Idly, he wondered how his own voice sounded. Mick’s was perfectly normal, but he’d sobbed through the whole night, and it ached even to say one word. 

“Charlie? Is that you, finally?!” 

“Yeah. In the flesh, or the voice, at least.” 

“Where the hell are you? We’ve been waiting for days without so much as a word.”

What a bloody failure he was, as a partner. First he’d let Shirley slip away from him, and now he was going to abandon them. Already had started to, in fact.

“Is Keith with you?” 

“No. Do you want him?” 

“I-it would be best, to have him here too.” 

There was a rustle as Mick settled the phone against his chest, and Charlie imagined, for a moment, that he could hear the beating of the other man’s heart through the thousands of miniscule, tightly pulled wires which connected them across ocean and air and land, mechanical veins pumping the lifeblood of the man he loved into his ears. 

“Alright, I’ve got him.” 

“Hi, darling.”

Keith’s cigarette tinged drawl was open and affable, easily forgiving whatever small infringement of relationship etiquette they thought he had breached by being incommunicado for more than a day. 

He was certain none of that would be left by the end of their conversation. 

If Keith lasted to the end.

“I’ve had my check-up.” 

“Same as ever, then. We’ll actually put a little weight on you this time, promise the doc.” 

Mick’s fond faux exasperation made the lump in his throat double in size. 

Hopefully it would kill him right then, and spare them all the suffering of his protracted demise. 

As it was, he was still responsible for sparing them. 

“No. Or rather, he did say that, but then he sent me for a consultation with a specialist.” 

“What kind of specialist?” 

Worry had bled into Keith’s voice, sharpening his consonants and dispeling its sleepy undertone. 

“An oncologist.” 

“Charlie-” 

There was no mercy in drawing it out. 

“I have throat cancer.” 

He heard a strangled cry on the other end of the line. He had no idea which one of them it belonged to. 

“No.” 

The word tumbled from Mick’s mouth like it was made of glass, shattering on impact and leaving the man who’d said it sounding like he’d been punched in the gut. 

Maybe it was a blow that hurt worse than the one in Amsterdam. 

“They want to start treatments right away.” 

“Of course. We’ll be on the next flight to-”

“No you won’t. Stay there and get a start on the album.” 

“Have you gone mad? 

The singer’s question flew through the telephone, propelled by nothing but disbelief and protest. 

“If you come I’ll change the locks on the flat. I already told the hospital to give my power of attorney to Ronnie, and to keep all of you off of the approved visitors list.” 

Something in the dry, legalistic terms felt almost comforting. 

“No. Absolutely not! You’ve seen us at your lowest and still agreed to be with us, and there’s no-”

“Take care of Keith, Mick.” 

He hung up the phone.

Chapter Text

The days began to bleed together, once the chemo started. 

It was a small mercy of fate that the Royal Marsden was only a few blocks from his London flat, and thus, no matter how bad a state he was in after the treatments, he could manage to weave his way home. 

To a home that felt less like a home with each passing day. 

Keith’s smell, that combination of expensive red wine, unfiltered cigarettes, and decomposing paper and ink, had faded from the sheets after a few runs through the wash. No longer did he return to find useless, often tasteless, but never unamusing, gag gifts on the kitchen counter. The cleaning lady, a once a week necessity now that he spent most of his days in bed, had accidentally binned all of Mick’s shirts two weeks before. 

There was only one left now to wrap himself in, on nights when the temptation to call them and beg that they return to his side was nearly irresistible. 

◑  ◐

It had become like a return to the early days of their relationship, but through the distorted lens of a funhouse mirror. 

Neither one of them was young any longer. They certainly didn’t feel invincible. And instead of having the future laid out before them like an unbreakable path of triumph, now it loomed, uncertain in length and almost sure to end in tragedy. 

But they clung to each other as close as they had when they were kids, rarely out of each other’s sight for an hour or two at a time. 

Entwined under the sheets every night, they held each other until they could pretend that the distinctions between their bodies had worn away, and that there was something whole in the two of them together. 

There never was. 

Even if they rarely spoke of it, both of them longing for a voice, a scent, and a smile which had disappeared from their lives without warning or reason, at least that they could see it in each other. 

Mick kept obsessive watch over dying his hair, after watching the way Keith’s face crumpled the first time he discovered a strand of familiar silver in his gentle curls. 

Keith made them dinner every night, laying out a third plate in silent hope. 

Admitting it might never be needed again was a defeat neither of them could bear. 

◑  ◐

Ronnie came by with an armful of gifts in June, and refused to leave until he unlocked the door. 

“Happy birthday!”

The younger guitarist's cheerful display still couldn’t entirely disguise his dismay at the tidy, dimly lit, cheerless flat, though Charlie pushed down the thought that half of Ronnie’s reaction wasn’t due to the state of his living quarters, but the state of himself. 

Suits were simply too much effort, nowadays, and he could shave without a mirror. He hadn’t seen himself in weeks. 

“Not today, Ronnie.” 

“But today’s your birthday.” 

Should I care more, if it’s the last one? 

The question rested on his tongue, ready to pounce and entirely erase his friend’s smile, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

“There’s not much to celebrate.” 

“Nonsense. If we’ve got you, then there’s always something to celebrate.” 

Ronnie’s sentimentality shouldn’t have shocked him, but he found himself at a loss, unable to admit how much the words made his throat ache with unshed tears. 

In his lower moments, when the chemo had him so ill he could no longer recall what it was to live without pain, he deluded himself with the belief that Mick and Keith would welcome him back with open arms, when this was all over. Truthfully, he knew he’d be lucky if they were even willing to see him again in a professional capacity. 

Despite his lack of a response, Ronnie plowed ahead. 

“And I come bearing gifts!” 

“Who from?” 

“Lots of people. But I’m meant to give you these first.” 

He fell asleep on Ronnie’s shoulder a few hours later, and it was only after the occasional artist had departed, having tucked him up on the couch, that he sought out the courage to open the two gifts which he’d been given first. 

‘From Your Stones Family.’ 

Who that excluded, or rather subsumed into an entity with no face or defined relationship, was obvious. 

Whether they would ever love him again, well, the answer was obviously not. 

◑  ◐

“Do ‘ya think he’ll come back?” 

The slur which ran the words together told him that Keith had officially passed the line from buzzed to drunk. 

He’d have been able to tell even without the auditory hint. They rarely discussed their missing partner without one, if not both, of them being comfortably ensconced in the chemical grip of one or another substance. 

Keith had been nursing a bottle of Jack through the entire afternoon and early evening of Charlie’s birthday, and Mick had done nothing but take a couple of pulls himself. 

They’d sent Ronnie along with a few gifts, Dave’s name on the card. Maybe then, at least there was a chance he’d open them, and find a little succor. 

The sole time they’d laid eyes on him in the last five months was a paparazzi photo, taken from a distance, but with enough detail to send Keith on a four day long bender. 

“No.”

Chapter Text

A short press statement, declaring “Mr. Watts free and clear of cancer” issued from their publicist on a snowy winter morning, okayed by neither of them. 

The message, communicated through Ronnie, that he was ready to meet shocked them both almost more than the medical news. 

◑  ◐

Keith had ceded the right to go first to him. 

Briefly, they had considered a united front, but neither of them was sure how united they could be coming face to face with him for the first time in half a year. 

Mick’s chateau was hardly neutral territory, but it didn't surprise him that Charlie was willing to put himself at a disadvantage to see them again. He’d always been the first to fall on his sword for them. 

A beat up, Mitterand era black Citroën meandered into the home’s front driveway, and a sturdily built, aged taxi driver jumped from the front of the vehicle to deboard the luggage, one medium Vuitton valise, far lighter than he’d seen the drummer travel before, and then open the door with a flourish, smiling brightly at Mick from his perch in the alcove. 

Normally, the man’s theatrical “Viola!”, delivered in a heavy Bretton accent, would have amused him. 

But his first sight of Charlie, stopping to thank the driver in quiet, halting French, and dismissing him with a generous tip, laid waste to all of his carefully made plans. 

“You’ve still got your hair.” 

He bit the inside of his cheek, savoring the taste of blood as penance for his careless words. 

“Indeed.” 

Charlie offered him a hesitant smile, but all he could see was the sunkenness of his cheeks and the lines of his jaw, so sharp it looked as though the bone could push through the paper thin skin at any moment. 

The damage was more than skin-deep. Glancing upwards, he saw past the bruises and shallows which shaded out the new shape of his partner’s face to his eyes, still huge and as blue as any late London afternoon, but void of liveliness. They held nothing but exhaustion and terror. 

“How are you?” 

A question he’d ask a distant acquaintance. 

“Quite alright, thanks. Yourself?” 

Reduced to stiff formality, a prize showing of their English upbringing. 

“How do you think?” 

Charlie flinched. 

“I can’t apologize.” 

“Brilliant. I’d suggest you don’t use that as your opening line with Keith.” 

“Mick-” 

“I thought you were meant to be the steady sane one, the one who's always there. That’s certainly how the press has always spun it, so maybe it’s my fault for falling for it, but I did. I believed you were the one we’d never have to worry about.”

The percussionist wrapped an arm around his concave middle, as though staunching the flow of blood from an unseen wound. 

“I’d do it again, if it meant sparing you watching. There’s no romance in seeing someone waste away, I assure you.” 

Mindless of his anger, or his grief, or the flurry of other warring emotions waging battle in his spasming chest, Mick’s body brought him ever closer to the frail man, ‘til his hand landed on a painfully prominent shoulder. 

“I hate you.” 

His hands slid down the contours of that once well-known, and loved, body, coming to rest around his hips. 

“I know.” 

And his head fell into the nape of Charlie’s neck, savoring the one way in which they still fit together. 

“Long as you do.” 

◑  ◐

From nearly the moment they met, Keith had loved Charlie. 

It was almost certain, though Mick hesitated to point it out, that Keith had fallen in love with their partner years before he had ever considered such a thing possible, and certainly before Keith himself had been able to admit what had happened. 

So Mick trusted him with Charlie. Implicitly. 

But, the drummer’s lithe, delicate fingers nested in his loose grasp, he found himself hesitating as they approached the door to the grande maison’s library, fear halting his progress and prolonging their path. The way Keith had drowned in his grief when Charlie left them, unsure if he would return one day - he’d never seen anything like it from him, and he hadn’t a clue what the guitarist would do with Charlie back in their grasp. 

He knew Keith, and he knew Charlie. 

And he was as certain that Charlie would allow Keith to break him as he was that destroying Charlie would be an act Keith could never recover from.

◑  ◐

“You can go.” 

Mick startled at the hushed words, but the skin around Charlie’s eyes was crinkled with the memory of fondness, his easy posture indicating acceptance of whatever came next, for him and for them. 

“Are you sure?” 

“I trust him.” 

“I’m not even sure he trusts himself.” 

“That’s okay.” 

The door to the library opened, and Charlie slipped inside, before he could object.

◑  ◐

The stiff lines of Keith’s back, at once familiar and menacing, were easy for Charlie to read. He could tell from where the man was positioned, in the small, second floor library, that he’d had a bird’s eye view of his and Mick’s reunion. His hands, swollen at the joints with arthritis, were drawn like talons along the windowsill, clutched so hard the knuckles were bloodless. 

“Hello.”

Keith’s hearing, despite years of playing far too loud, had never been very bad. The drummer was sure he’d heard him enter. 

He didn’t turn from his position at the hushed greeting.

“Long time no see.” 

“Something like that.” 

“Yeah, you could say.” 

“Would you-” 

“No.” 

“Any particular reason why?” 

Contrary to popular belief, Keith’s dark temper was not uncontrollable. If he wanted to halt his rage, he was perfectly capable, particularly when it meant shielding someone he held dear. 

“Because I’ve had this dream so many times in the last few months, that if I turn around and you’re not really still there, I don’t think I’ll ever wake up again.” 

It was hardly the confession he’d expected to hear, and Charlie stood entirely still for a moment, more wounded by that one sentence than any of Mick’s quick-burning anger. That his love could do this to a man with such a strong will to live doubled the burden of guilt strapped to his psyche, and felt worse than any surgeon’s knife vivisecting his chest. 

Out of words, he simply took the final step forward and let his arms slowly encircle Keith’s waist, allowing one hand to crawl up and rest against his heart and letting the other remain locked around his core, holding the taller figure flush with himself. 

“Alright. Then we’ll just stay like this, as long as it takes until you want to move.” 

◑  ◐

When he awoke the next morning, which was not truly morning, but the very depth of night, they were nothing but a tangle of limbs. Hands and arms and feet and chests and legs, all reaching out for what they’d been denied or denied themselves, intertwined with the desperation of an ailing penitent threading his fingers with the beads of a rosary. 

He merely threw his body further into the somnolent fray, pressing a kiss to each head which rested on his bare shoulders and drifting back to sleep.

Chapter Text

He’d moved back to Devon three years before. 

What incident exactly had prompted the permanent departure, he could no longer recall. 

The ties which bound Mick and Keith had frayed so rapidly, and violently, by the time they ended the last tour, that it almost seemed a miracle that they’d lasted the two years they did after getting off the road. Much as the world might have vaunted him in his role as the peacekeeper, he’d seen from the start that there was nothing, or nearly nothing, which would keep together two men who no longer wanted to be with each other. 

Certainly not his love. 

Life had simply been the icing on the proverbial cake, not so much a death blow as a kick to a dead horse. 

Though he hadn’t read the book, Mick and Keith’s separate accounts were enough to tell him that the verbal roughhousing which had always been a feature of their relationship had grown to the point where they were capable of doing little more than hurting each other with each and every conversation. 

One day, he’d packed a handful of suitcases, called a car, and departed from their shared home, a designation which had seemed like a sad parody, or a desperate attempt at recapturing a dying past, when Mick spent more time flitting around the world than he did in their arms, and Keith had all but relocated to Jamaica.  

They each called on him, and he’d explained, with a soft-voiced patience meant to veil the shattered heart which losing the only home he’d had since Shirley left him with, that he could not maintain a partnership with one or the other of them. All three, or nothing at all. 

He didn’t bother to mention, returning to his cold and quiet marital bed, that he was certain, with a faith born of long years of friendship, that they would come back to each other. 

But he knew it was different every time. In 1989, they’d returned to each other, and invited him into their bond. 

This time, whenever it was, would be theirs alone. 

◑  ◐

Maybe he was soft-hearted. 

He wouldn’t be admitting it to anyone any time soon. 

From that final break, he’d been, without ever directly saying it, encouraging his two wayward partners to wander back to each other, musically and personally. 

Asking Mick, with a wide-eyed expression and a tilted head, if they weren’t going to do ‘anything at all for the 50th’ had been enough to spur the Rolling Stones machine from its slumber. After all, if he, of all people, was pushing to play live, or better yet, to tour, then the singer would hardly question his good luck. 

Keith hadn’t needed asking. The guitar player had been itching for a chance to play live again, and the tentative offer of a revivified band from Mick had been a prayer answered. Giving his partner the apology he demanded, in light of that offer, was no burden at all. 

So Charlie’s work was done. 

Almost. 

◑  ◐

Two years on the road, and Mick could look at Keith without fitting a mask of measured camaraderie over inherent contempt. 

Two years on the road, and Keith no longer put an arm around Mick’s shoulder with the expectation of being shrugged off. 

Two years on the road, and Charlie could watch them with the warmth of pride glowing in his chest, happy to have whatever part in their story he could. 

◑  ◐

They didn’t fall into bed with each other like people thought, or at least those people who thought they were willing to fall into bed with each other to begin with.

Keith had never fucked Mick to relieve frustration. Mick had never screwed him for revenge. 

Twisted as they might be, at least they’d never descended to that level, directly. 

The world they shared had been one with a cloudless sky, lately. No-one fought (too much), no-one was constantly drunk, and the crowds kept coming, screaming and eager. 

Both a bit buzzed, floating on good red wine and the drafting of a new tour contract, the progression from easy touch to bitten lips to bed had been far too easy. 

It wasn’t the most romantic of new beginnings, perhaps, but, twisted together and sated late that otherwise nondescript Saturday night, a way ahead, and a day beyond tomorrow, was clearer than it had been in so many years. 

◑  ◐

In another life, it would have been almost funny, Charlie stumbling upon the two of them. 

Like an episode from a tawdry soap opera. 

But there were no soap opera theatrics. 

Merely a gentle, fond smile and the suggestion that neither of them get up on his account. 

He was gone before either of them could speak. 

◑  ◐

It’d been a decade since they got Charlie back, and this time, there was no question of a united front. 

Keith, always the keeper of their drummer’s spare key, unlocked the door which separated his room from Charlie’s, hand twined with Mick’s as they traversed the dark space. All of the bulbs had been extinguished, and the only light in the room came from the moon, glowing persistently through the half-drawn curtains. 

Engulfed in the sumptuously outfitted bed was a solitary figure, the richly embroidered burgundy comforter drawn around his slight body like the pall of some medieval queen. Silver hair trapped the modest light, and made the crown of his head shimmer like a halo, while the sharp lines of his shoulders cut the huge swath of fabric he’d drawn over himself, emphasizing delicacy and strength simultaneously. 

Without a word, Keith settled on the edge of the bed and drew his gnarled right hand down the back of Charlie’s head, cupping the base of his skull and moving his other hand to reach over and brush softly against the older man’s hollow cheeks. 

The hand came away wet. 

Mick disentangled from him and rounded the palatial bed, swiftly shedding his dressing gown and climbing in to face Charlie.

There were no wide, cornflower eyes to greet him. The familiar gaze was firmly shut, the ex-artist’s face buried as far he could manage in the pillows without suffocating himself. Despite his best efforts at hiding, the tears which dripped steadily over his nose and stained the bedclothes were obvious. 

Mick, attempting to be delicate with his indelicate hands, drew Charlie’s head from where he’d tried to hide, and tucked it under his own chin.

He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Charlie cry, it was such a rare occurrence, and to see that he and Keith had brought him to such a state made his stomach roil with nausea and disgust, aimed squarely at himself. 

“I’m sorry.” 

It came out as a gasp. 

“I didn’t think it would hurt like this, to let you both go.” 

A shaky smile against his neck. 

“But I’ll do better. I won’t get in the middle, in the way.” 

While Charlie spoke, Keith mirrored Mick’s actions, but from the other direction, wrapping his body around the smaller, trembling one, and ghosting a hand over a chest he could only imagine felt like it was cracking in half with agony.

He knew his own felt that way. 

“Done?” 

A short, involuntary laugh burbled up his exaggeratedly terse enquiry. 

“Sure.” 

“If you don’t get in the way, I will personally drag you right back in the middle of us.” 

Without even glancing up from where he lay, his lips pressed against the nape of Charlie’s neck, he knew what Mick would say. 

It was the same thing he felt. 

“It’s where you belong.”