Chapter Text
The green leather high-back in the corner had always been Charlie’s favorite spot in the library.
He was perched in it now, though Mick couldn’t quite understand why.
It was the middle of the night, and there was only one sconce turned on, no book in sight.
Instead, he had the singer’s notebook full of lyric ideas in his lap, fingers ghosting over the pages as though he expected, if he repeated the motion enough times, a hand would reach up from the pages of fragmented possibility and grasp his.
“This wasn’t the deal.”
Glancing around, he spotted no target for Charlie’s words.
“I’m the oldest. I’ve already had cancer. It was my turn, and you both would have been fine. If anyone was going to go next-”
The words abruptly died in his throat, and Mick edged closer, a seed of worry beginning to blossom in his chest. As far as he was concerned, Charlie was probably the sharpest out of all of them, but if he was talking to himself in the library at night, making no sense - well, maybe it was time for a visit with the doctor.
“How do you expect me to tell him, you bloody prat?”
An abrupt shift in tone. The sentence was snapped, and the earlier, deep melancholy which he had spotted in the percussionist's voice had grown into some sort of wearied rage.
“He walked away when I had to tell you I had cancer. Just the possibility that I might die and he couldn't handle it. What am I meant to do, now that you’ve gone and done it?”
The end of the query was split down the middle, a persistent waver dissolving into a crack which ended with Charlie’s head in his hands, shoulders shivering.
It was all Mick needed to break himself out of his stupor. Rushing forward, he dropped at the foot of the chair and pulled at the older man’s beautifully manicured hands, uncomprehending as none of his actions seemed to have any effect.
A keening moan, like a wounded animal crying out for mercy, emanated from deep within Charlie’s throat, and he redoubled his efforts, begging his partner to pay attention to him and just tell him what was wrong.
There was still no response.
Instead, Charlie’s hands folded in on themselves, and the crescent shaped nails dug so harshly into the calloused palms that blood was soon dripping onto the Persian carpet.
It was like a sick mirror of a stigmata.
The agonized wail ended as quickly as it had begun, and Mick could only look on in horror and confusion as the man he loved righted himself and pulled a mask of serene calm over his face, lowering his eyelids to a lackadaisical half mast, smoothing the lines of his forehead, and pulling his lips into a thin line of neutrality.
“Could have used a couple more acting tricks before you did this to us, Mick.”
◑ ◐
Trailing after the carefully held head of gray hair, Mick followed Charlie up one flight of stairs and down a longish hallway, the well worn path to their bedroom.
Good. It meant they were heading in Keith’s direction, and surely he’d know what was actually behind this whole deranged scenario.
Charlie hesitated for the barest moment before opening the door to their sanctuary, hand gripped so tight on the handle that the sluggish wounds on his hands began to bleed again in earnest. He didn’t appear to notice.
Once the door was open, he was quick to toe off his slippers and glide back into their bed, Keith its sole occupant.
But he didn’t settle in for the night. Rather, after he had pulled the comforter over his lap, he reached down and ran his fingers through Keith’s curls, repeatedly whispering the guitarist’s name until he was met with bleary earth-brown eyes.
“Keith?”
“Yeah? What is it, you okay?”
“Are you awake?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
For a split second, Charlie’s head drifted in the direction of the door, as though he was expecting some last minute savior.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Mick’s doctor called.”
“And?”
Opening his arms, Charlie silently invited the other man to rest against him, but he shook his head, clearly determined to hear the news unsupported.
“Things were worse than they thought. The surgery was a success, like they said yesterday, and Mick was bright and alert all day-”
“He called a couple of hours ago to gloat about how right he was not to drag us to the States for something so minor.”
“He did. And a few hours after that, he went to sleep.”
“No. Don’t you dare.”
“He never woke up.”
The sound that came out of Keith’s mouth was one he never wanted to hear again.
◑ ◐
The days that followed were a blur.
In a different situation, he might have been fascinated by what he was, desperate to figure out what sort of shade or ghost or on-assignment angel he’d been sent to be.
None of that mattered.
He knew he was in hell.
◑ ◐
If the paparazzi from the funeral had followed them home, Mick was fairly certain Keith would have murdered one of them with his bare hands.
But his partners did manage, finally, to make it back from the service and the burial, fingers sore from the thorny roses they had thrown onto the casket and eyes aching with unshed tears.
When Keith shut the door to their bedroom and flicked the lock, Charlie didn’t look the slightest bit surprised.
◑ ◐
Keith’s decision to take flight, vanishing in the middle of the night a few weeks later with no warning or forwarding address, was altogether more surprising.
When he didn’t reappear in a week, Charlie booked a flight to Jamaica.
Then London.
Then New York.
Then Morocco.
Then Turks and Caicos.
Then Paris.
Then Los Angeles.
And, finally, Montserrat.
◑ ◐
The man who arrived in Montserrat, and tracked down a hotel from 30 years before using nothing but memory and Bill’s journals, was hardly one Mick recognized.
He was positively emaciated, eaten away by grief and worry. Every line and curve of Charlie’s skeleton was visible under his paper thin skin, and his half-moon blue eyes seemed impossibly huge, out of proportion with a man rapidly fading away. His beloved suits hung off him like an ill sized mannequin, and no amount of careful facial expressions could erase the decades that had carved themselves into his skin in a handful of months.
Had Mick not been there for the phone call to the chateau from his old ENT two nights after his own death, he’d have blamed it all on grief.
Grief and cancer, it turned out, were evils that loved each other dearly.
◑ ◐
How many of the tears were Keith’s, and how many Charlie’s, Mick could hardly tell.
But, after a seemingly endless darkness, seeing the two of them together was a balm for his spirit, if indeed a spirit could be said to have one itself.
Even though they had no idea he was there, his place in their reunion was obvious. Neither one of them could bear to speak his name, but they went through their old rituals with barely any change, reaching for him at the right moments, and, when that didn’t turn out to be a magic incantation for bringing him back to them, they murmured what “he” would have done and said in each other’s ears, expressing an unending love through his fragile presence.
They fell back into their sanctuary broken and diminished, but more whole than they had been since that muggy summer night.
And Charlie never woke up.
◑ ◐
He didn’t think it would be long, before Keith’s own heart gave out.
All he could do was hold Charlie as Keith awoke in their bed, and discovered that he was truly alone for the first time in 57 years, sobbing for the man in those rumpled sheets who shattered into an uncountable number of lonely pieces.
Never to be put back together again.