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Shameless	By : FalconBertille Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Placebo Views: 1534 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the celebrity I am writing about. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: Despite my numerous bids on eBay, I don't own any member of Suede or Placebo. As far as I know, none of these people have ever slept together, and I mean no disrespect to any of them. This is fiction, and I'm not making any money from it.

I did a Google search for my pen name the other day, and I found this story posted on a Chinese site. Which kind of suprised me, since I'd only had it online for a few months, before the site it was posted at decided to ban anything with adult content. But apparently in that short time someone decided they liked it enough to snatch it. Which is fine, but the formatting at the Chinese site is terrible, and they cut off the end of the story. I thought that if people still wanted to read it, they should be able to read the whole thing in a clear format. So, I decided to post it here.

It was written a number of years ago, so it's not quite the same quality as the other stories I've posted at AFF. But I'm fond of it.

(And yes, I know that I'm playing with time a bit here. "DogManStar" was released a few years before Placebo really came onto the music scene. But the idea of a collision during this time was too tempting to pass up.)

Shameless

Chapter One

The day hadn’t started out well. After oversleeping, Brett hadn’t had time to do anything other than throw on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and then dash out of his apartment with a change of clothes draped over one arm. To make matters worse, he’d stood in the street for a full fifteen minutes before managing to wave down a taxi. Then, as final proof of the universe’s continuing vendetta against him, he’d gotten turned around in the back corridors of the television studio and missed his dressing room, only to end up in the lounge.

Brett opened his mouth, prepared to do a complete recital of every swear word in his vocabulary. But the sight of a familiar figure dampened his fury. Mat. Tall and lanky, Suede’s bass player balanced on a barstool like a weather vane, ready to tilt and spin in the wind. As Brett entered the lounge, Mat looked up and waved him over. “Well, there you are. Weren’t you the one lecturing the rest of us about being early?”

“Overslept. Then got lost.” Brett gestured back the way he’d come, feeling helpless. “Mat? Where the hell is the dressing room?”

“Down the hall, turn left, second door.” Mat took a long swallow of his beer, then smiled at Brett. “And don’t look so panicked. We still have nearly an hour before we have to be on stage.”

Brett drew a deep breath, trying to inhale some of Mat’s calm. And again he remembered why he’d always clung to Mat’s friendship as they grew up together. Mat wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t driven by ambition, wasn’t even the best bass player in the universe - but he was solid. He was permanent. And very little else in Brett’s world could make that claim. Sighing, Brett draped his change of clothes over the bar counter and sank down on a stool next to Mat. “I know. But this appearance means a lot.”

It was there first performance of anything off the new album. Their first performance without Bernard. Bernard. The name passed through Brett’s body like a ghost called back to the house it had always haunted. Hurriedly, he turned his mind to other things. “Are Simon and Richard here yet?”

“Went to the dressing room about five minutes ago.”

“How’s Richard doing?” Brett couldn’t help envisioning their seventeen-year-old replacement guitarist curled up in a closet somewhere, having a nervous breakdown. “Is the pressure getting to him?”

Mat laughed. “I think he’s a bit tired of the papers calling him ‘Little Dick’, but other than that, he’s holding up better than you are.”

“Right.” Brett stood up, prepared to make another foray into the studio’s back corridors. But before he could, a shriek echoed down the hallway, followed by the sound of running feet. Moments later, an odd pair dashed into the lounge. The first man was tall, easily as tall as Mat, with short blonde hair. The second - man? Brett squinted, trying to determine gender. Ruby lips, kohl-smeared eyes, and a black dress worn over spotted stockings all appeared to indicate a woman. But something about the shorter figure’s movements seemed inherently masculine. This was confirmed when he spoke, his voice slightly nasal as he jumped up and down, snatching at something in the taller man’s hand. “Give it back, Stef! I mean it! Give it back now!”

The taller man - Stef, apparently - danced a few steps back. “Maybe, maybe not. What’s in it for me?”

By now, Brett could see that the contested object was an open bottle of black nail polish. The corner of Brett’s mouth turned down, pulled by the weight of scorn. During his whole career with Suede, he’d always tried to blur the edges of gender without becoming a cartoon. Without pushing it into the realm of camp. A concern which, obviously, had never occurred to the outrageously costumed man still trying to retrieve his nail polish.

“Stef--!” The small man lunged, and Stef leapt back, colliding with Mat and sending a rain of black nail polish down across the bar counter,

“Fuck!” Brett cursed, yanking his change of clothes to safety. “Why don’t you watch the fuck where you’re going?”

“Sorry.” Looking sheepish, Stef returned the nail polish to its rightful owner, who set it aside, seemingly uninterested in his victory. Instead, he leaned against his friend. Something about the droop of their postures suggested that they were both more than slightly drunk. “I’m Stef. This is Brian. And you are--?”

Before Brett could answer, Brian giggled. “I know who you are,” he slurred. “You’re the one who said he was a bicycle who’d never had a homosexual experience.”

“I think,” Stef corrected, “he said that he was a BISEXUAL who’d never had a homosexual experience.”

“Whatever.” Brian shrugged. “It was a stupid thing to say.”

Brett bristled. He was not going to defend that quote one more time - especially not to a pair of drunken deviants. “I’m going to get dressed,” he announced to Mat. Then, turning his back, he stomped out of the lounge, Stefan and Brian’s voices fading behind him.

“Now there is a man with a stick up his ass.”

“No, Stef. He hasn’t got anything up his ass. And that’s his problem.”

Brett gritted his teeth. Down the hall, turn left, second door. Down the hall, turn left, second door. Down the hall… He chanted it to himself like a mantra, trying to regain inner calm. He couldn’t crack. That’s just what the British Press wanted - some sign of weakness, so they could swoop in like a bunch of vultures and feast on Suede’s corpse. Brett wasn’t going to let that happen. He’d come too far, and sacrificed too much, to let it all slip away.

By the time he reached the dressing room, grim determination - if not actually inner calm - had triumphed. Then Brett tried the door, only to find it locked. “Hey!” he demanded, rapping the wood with his knuckles. “Simon? Richard?”

A low, guttural moan answered him. Oh. Great. Brett knocked harder. “Not now, dammit! I need to get dressed!”

“Just a…oh god…oh Richard…oh!” The voice was deep and husky - Simon, obviously. “Just another…minute…”

Brett clenched his eyes shut. He wanted to yell something about Simon maybe, possibly, getting his bitch to blow him on their own time. But not with a steady stream of technicians and camera people wandering past. So he just stood in the hallway, holding his change of clothes and looking - he was sure - like an idiot.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the dressing room door swung open. Richard emerged first, flushed and grinning. The reddish tint of his cheeks reminded Brett of polished apples, an image only further enforced by the burnt-straw color of his long hair. There was something distinctly rural, even virginal, about Richard. He looked so young. Even younger than seventeen. How long would that last? For a moment, Brett felt guilty about the childhood he’d stolen from Richard. But Suede had needed a new guitarist, and if the best candidate for that role was a doe-eyed kid, well, Richard would hardly be the first person Brett had tossed to the lions for the sake of Suede.

Simon came out behind Richard, still pulling up the zipper on black leather jeans. “Sorry,” he apologized to Brett, not looking very sorry at all. Brett just glared at them. Then, when that failed to reduce them to ashes, he stormed into the recently vacated dressing room, and slammed the door behind himself.

Fuming, he tore off his old clothes, and put on the slacks and jacket he’d brought with him. Why couldn’t any of them take it seriously? Why couldn’t any of them see the darkness, and the pits, and the monsters all around them, waiting for one misstep, one weak moment? Why couldn’t they try like he did? Why did he have to be the one to make all the hard decisions? Why was he the one who’d had to… The one who’d had to…

The one who’d had to drive Bernard out of the band.

Brett leaned forward, trying to arrange the drape of his dark hair. And froze. Was that really his reflection? It looked unreal, like a mirage or a mask. Like a badly sculpted imitation with no life behind its eyes. Was that really what he’d come to? Or was it only a trick of the light?

Against his will, he remembered Suede’s early days, when they’d joked with the press. When Bernard had imitated Brett’s stage moves, looking - for all the world - like he was about to shove the microphone up his own ass. When Brett himself, in a moment of particularly drunken merriment, had jumped up on a table and yelled “Now bring me a fourteen-year-old!” It had been a game in those days. A gift. Something they couldn’t believe that they really had, so there’d been no pressure to cling to it. They’d been just like those two in the lounge. Willing to risk fame, dignity, and respect for the sake of a bottle of black nail polish.

But it hadn’t lasted. And it wouldn’t last for Brian and Stef, either. In time, they’d make the same choices he had, and they’d learn the same lessons. In time, they’d betray each other, just like he’d betrayed Bernard.

Brett closed his eyes, but that didn’t shut out the emptiness. And he knew why he’d gotten so angry with Stef and Brian, and then with Richard and Simon. He was jealous. Because they had each other. And he didn’t have anyone. For a minute, the whole world seemed to grow still, like a moment suspended in honey. Then Brett opened his eyes, and shook off his mood. He’d made hard choices, but he’d made the right ones. He’d taken Suede to the top. And he’d do anything to keep it there.

Anything at all.
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