"What do you mean, you can't feel anything?" Jack turned to the doctor. "I thought you said he was okay. Is he paralyzed?"

Holtz stifled an inappropriate retort and settled for a lengthy sigh. "Not in the way you mean, no. You've heard of hysterical blindness?" When Jack didn't answer immediately, Holtz proceeded, sensing that Jack's patience, never good to begin with, was nearly at an end. "Sometimes a patient can lose the feeling in their arm...or leg the same way."

"You said there wasn't anything wrong with him," Jack accused.

"There isn't anything physically wrong with him, Jack. He's just-"

"Just what?" Jack said sarcastically.

"It's inevitably the result of overwhelming anxiety-"

"So basically you're telling me that even though Brian Slade is dead, that little arsehole is still fucking up my life?"

Your life? Holtz questioned wordlessly. "Any time the mind is stressed to the point of-"

"Spare me the psychological mumbo-jumbo, Doctor. Bottom line. Is Curt going to get better?"

The doctor shook his head. "We have no way of knowing th-"

"Great. Now I'm stuck with a fucking invalid. Don't think you're going to get away with this, Curt. Not for one minute," Jack complained.

If Curt could have managed it, he would have smiled. Thwarting Jack was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time.

*****

It took months for people to find out that Brian Slade's death was a hoax. If it had been up to Brian, no one would ever have found out. But someone leaked the news to the press, and the rest was a rather unpleasant bit of history.

He stayed in the Bijoux townhouse, surrounded by the disarray that was his life now, and watched television. He was especially enamored of the news, which he taped and replayed over and over and over. Brian lay in bed, naked, covered in coke dust, and flicked the remote again. He wanted to hear the crowds chant his name.

They were calling him a liar.

He couldn't argue with that.

Suddenly the door was flung open. Mandy marched into the room and flung a sheaf of official looking documents at the pile of coke on the bedside table next to him. "What?"

"I thought that might get your attention," she snapped.

He blinked at her blankly. "I filed for divorce, Brian. I figured that one of us needed to move on, and it certainly wasn't going to be you."

"You're leaving me?" he asked plaintively.

"Yes. Not that you'd notice. You've got Shannon. She's such a helpmate. I'm sure she's organized a comeback campaign already."

"But Mandy-"

"This is it, Brian. The point of no return. You either go forward...or you drop off the face of the earth forever."

Brian sank back into the mattress, his too slender frame unnaturally pallid. "Help me, Mandy. Please..."

"The only one who can help you now, Brian, is you."

*****

Mandy was on her way out when she received the call. "Hello?"

"Is this Mandy Slade?"

"Look, I'm not talking to the press anymore today, okay?"

"I'm not a reporter. I'm a doctor."

"A doctor?" she exclaimed. "What do you want?"

"I heard that Brian Slade is still alive."

"What is that, a newsflash? It's been all over the papers that the shooting was a hoax. I'm hanging up n-"

"My name is Holtz. I'm Curt Wild's doctor. I've been treating him for months."

"Is he all right?" she asked anxiously, wondering why she cared so much.

"In a manner of speaking. When he heard that Brian...died...Curt shut down. Almost completely. It's been a tough road back, but I think he's got a chance to make it. If he could just get away from Jack Fairy."

"Get away?" Mandy frowned. "You mean Curt doesn't want to be with Jack?"

"God, no. Listen, it's a long story. Can we meet somewhere for lunch?"

"You're in London?"

"Yes. Curt and Jack finished the Berlin record. They're supposed to appear at the Death of Glitter concert next week. Is there any chance you could persuade Brian to see Curt?"

Persuade him? Mandy's mouth almost dropped open in surprise. "Can you meet me at the Plaza in an hour?"

"Yes."

"Then I think we need to talk."

*****

"He's what?" Brian cried. "No, no, I can't go. I can't. I don't want him to see me like this. I'm sick. I'm so fucking sick."

"Brian! Do you still love Curt?"

Brian buried his face in his sweat-stained pillow and inhaled. It still smelled faintly of Curt. "You know I do," he said, his voice muffled.

"Then get that pretty little ass out of bed. We've got some work to do."

*****

Curt was having the dream again. The one where he found out that Brian Slade was still alive. The one where Jack gleefully told him the news, emphasizing the fact that Brian hadn't once tried to contact him since then. The one where he flatly wrote off Brian Slade and his otherworldly counterpart, Maxwell Demon, as so much delusional rubbish coming from a narcissist who didn't know when to quit.

He woke up with a start, the unfamiliar surroundings of his London hotel room vaguely disquieting. Sunlight was streaming through the windows. It was past noon, and Curt was due for a dress rehearsal at the theater in a couple of hours.

"I see you're up at last," Jack said, tossing a newspaper onto the bed. "You might want to read it. You're in it. As usual. Former lover of Brian Slade, blah blah blah."

"I don't want to read it," Curt said, setting his mouth in a mutinous pout.

"Then don't. Suit yourself," Jack said with a shrug. "You sure you don't want to play guitar at the concert?"

"I can't, Jack. My hands don't work the way they used to. I can't feel the strings when I play. Remember?"

Jack sighed. "Oh, yes, I remember. Pity that. Giving up your music like that. All because of Bri-"

"I told you, Jack. I don't want you saying his name," Curt ground out, his teeth clenched so tightly together, they hurt.

"Very well. Good thing you can still sing, eh? Otherwise, you'd be a complete wash-out."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jack," Curt said acidly. "There's something else you need to remember."

"What's that?"

"After the concert, we're done."

"Don't be so sure of that."

"What are you going to threaten me with this time, Jack? Brian's career is over, and I'm so fucked-up, I might as well be dead. What have you got that's better than that, Jack, huh?" Curt challenged the older man recklessly. He wanted so badly to feel something, anything, and sometimes, sometimes, emotional pain came bleeding through like a shard of glass slicing open an artery, and it felt good.

At least it was feeling.

Ever since he'd learned that Brian wasn't dead, Curt had wrestled with the intermittent control of his frayed emotions. He was glad that Brian lived. He was glad in a way that literally defied expression. But he wasn't healed by the mere knowledge of Brian's survival.

Somehow he knew that could only come with something else. Something beyond him. Something he hadn't a hope in hell of ever seeing again.

*****

"Brian. Brian! Briannnn!" Mandy's voice could be excruciatingly irritating when she chose to make it so.

"What?" Brian peeked out from behind his pillow.

"We've got to meet Dr. Holtz."

"You go."

"I did. That was yesterday. Today I want you to hear what he has to say." Mandy's tone was strangely commanding, and it was that, more than anything else, that got Brian's attention.

"I haven't used since then," Brian offered, hinting that he would be in much better shape to listen if he snorted a little coke.

"Do you want to see Curt again, Brian?"

"Yeah," Brian whispered.

"Then you can't ever use drugs again. Curt gave it up. So can you."

"You've never been his biggest fan, Mandy," Brian grumbled. "Why the turnaround?"

Mandy's eyes grew bleak. "Wait till you hear what Curt did for you, Brian." Pause. "Please don't make his sacrifice useless."

"Mandy!" Brian exclaimed. "What did he do?" The connection between him and Curt still held. After all this time. After everything they'd both been through. In fact, it throbbed to life with almost painful intensity.

"You'll find out," Mandy responded enigmatically. There was only one way to get Brian out of bed and up on his feet. Curt was the answer to Brian's question. He always had been.

*****


tbc