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Thom/Beck	By : VinylTap Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Radiohead Views: 2950 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not know Beck or any of the members of Radiohead. This story is a work of fiction, and I make no money or profit from it.

Chapter List
- 39
- 40
August afternoon, 1977. At the top step of a concrete stairwell, Al Hansen sat bathed in summer light, flanked by Bek and Channing, aged seven and five. He had a magazine open in his lap, his grandsons peered over with interest, Channing’s arms wrapped possessively around one of Al’s. One thing about LA, there was smog, but there was no humidity, and summers were agreeable, there were no big insects, either.
The glittering shadow-light sway of leaves, coming-going chatter of students walking past the college campus, comfortably mellow summer courses. Al had lived with Bibbe and her sons when they were young, they’d been witness to his art early as they could remember. “And what about this one?” Al asked, one large finger tapping a colorful image in the magazine, he tilted it sideways so they could see.
Abstract painting, purple and blue. Bek chewed his lip, squinting against the afternoon sun.
“That’s people washing dishes,” he said, and Channing spoke at the same time, “Leaves, right there, that’s a horse’s ear.”
Al nodded, taking both opinions into serious consideration. “Where, show me,” he asked, and both brothers’ fingers darted to the page, they spoke over each other with words overlapping.
“Blue dishes,” Bek said, and Channing added, “Blue dishes, and horses’ ears.”
“Yeah, I see it—” Al said, “Just here?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s a, what’s that called, an oar.”
They both gripped Al’s arms so tight it might’ve hurt if they weren’t so small, they clearly weren’t aware they were doing it, the way children didn’t pay attention to stuff when they were enough engaged in something else.
“What’s an oar,” Channing asked, and Bek said, “You row a boat with it.”
Al nodded, “That’s right,” and Channing immediately said, “Yeah, I see the oar, too.”
“Tell me a story about this painting,” Al asked, and both brothers went for it straight away, speaking passionately, like the more they had told, the more excited they were to imagine the next bit, impatient to get to their best ideas. Unaware when they’d gone silent in turn to listen to each other, because they’d liked each other’s stories without ever meaning to.
They were eager to get to the next painting, too, Chan’s little hand already on the page, smoothing the glossy surface, he talked fast like speaking wasn’t a fast enough way to get the dreams in his mind into words. He turned the page without thinking, and Bek quickly got his last words in before it turned, frustrated because he wasn’t finished yet.
“All right, all right,” Al said as he saw Chan turn the page, “this next one, then, what’s this one?”
For Bek and Channing, this was pure enjoyment. The memory remained vivid and bright in their heads well into adulthood, they admired their grandfather before they ever knew it. You don’t realize who remains in your mind through the span of your life, and that you’re really acting not through them, but through your perception of them.
Beck still could feel with living recollection the impatient thrill of creation, being lost in sweeping emotion of stories and dreams, it was the highest pleasure he’d known. Everything with a color. He’d had thoughts and ideas for years before learning a way to describe them in words, to flesh them with music; he and Channing saw things in more dimensions than there were means to convey.
Someone else who saw things this way was a rare and precious thing—
Though Al had moved to Germany a few years after that, his grandsons still loved to see him, Bek had stayed with him a while in his teens, though his German always sucked. Channing had argued with Beck when his brother said he’s not doing anything and he should go, but he’d thought better of it; it had been a while since he’d flown abroad.
--
There was a meeting arranged between Greaves and REM’s manager, Jefferson Holt. It was utter bollocks, Thom trying to act like it was a matter of business, he vastly disliked the uneasiness of it, how his stomach felt light, how his muscles felt like he constantly needed to move. He’d not eaten in two days, and even when he felt the abdominal twist pangs of hunger, he thought he’d be sick if he ate at all.
It wasn’t pleasant; it was thoroughly daunting. He’d run the scenario time and again through his mind, how it would go, and found with frustration his thoughts wandered to fantasies and dreams that would only make him feel daft in the end.
Yeah, like that would happen, he scolded himself, but there was the incontestable reality that he’d really got a personal call from Michael Stipe. The prospect of meeting was so frightening Thom rather wished it wouldn’t happen at all, he couldn’t figure out a way to act that didn’t seem in his mind stupid and daft. He stayed up sleeplessly figuring out what he’d say, how each scenario would potentially wind up, what he’d do if things turned out like this versus like that, how not to make Stipey detest him forever, on a personal level.
His only consolation was that he’d already agreed to do this, so he had to, for that reason, because backing out now would be worse than anything dumb he might say.
Thom found himself fighting for normal, guiding himself step by step out the sterile elevator and carpeted hall, the immaculate corporate corridor to Holt’s office. All the planning he’d done went useless, drowned by overwhelming heart, he struggled for composure when checking in at the reception desk. Fingers brittle on the pen. What time is it, right, then the date— he wasn’t really focused on filling the timetable out.
They tell you you’re meant to take deep breaths to calm down, because breath rate and heart rate are related; Thom wondered if it did him good. Office ferns at the corners. Couches and coffee tables and magazines, painting on the wall that looked like something out of an ornithology text. Dim voices somewhere off, people in other offices talking all casual, like this were any normal day, like Michael Stipe wasn’t in that very same office complex, at that very moment.
Waiting was nerve-racking, but every time someone came out to call a guest from the waiting room and it wasn’t for him, Thom felt tremendous relief.
Then the inevitable came: a young man stepped out from the back corridor, eyes scanning the room, lips parted when he’d spotted Thom. He grinned a corporate grin. Thom’s pulse went fast all over again, like he’d not tried the whole breathing bit.
He flushed completely. He felt to himself hopelessly clumsy as he rose from the couch, then the terrifying thought crossed his mind all at once, what if Michael wasn't even there? What if Thom had got excited for nothing, and he’d only be meeting with Holt…?
He followed along, the room spinning, walking dreamlike, the bloody receptionist had him wait in another bloody room. With no indication as to whether Stipey was there, and Thom was too afraid to ask. He dutifully did as he was told, proceeding to settle down at a chair at the corporate edge of a corporate meeting table. There was a phone on the desk for conference calls, there was an overhead projector, wires running clear across the floor to a really long power bar with maybe eight outlets— and at the center of the conference table was a perfect, untouched cheesecake.
Thom fought quickly to straighten his clothes when there came low sounds of footsteps on carpet outside, he actually scrambled to his feet when the door handle twisted.
Silence.
There passed through the hollow room immaterial flashes of pulsing momentum, blood flow suspended, breath and electric precision and heart.
Michael’s hand at the doorknob, Thom’s hands idle at his sides. Both entirely still, distance frozen between them, each slowly acknowledging the other was real after all.
Everything Thom had planned and reasoned he might say had been lost, he stared in a way that might’ve been rude had Michael not stared back exactly the same.
Ages passed before Michael’s hand finally loosened, the sound of the doorknob too grotesque for the moment, gracelessly mechanical, it made them both flush.
Michael coughed; his eyes darted down to the table, he cleared his throat.
“Cheesecake?”
he asked.
The word hadn’t registered straight away. Thom glanced down at the desk, then quickly back up at Michael, pulse too loud in his ears.
“I’m— vegan—”
he murmured, immediately embarrassed, like he’d been daft to turn this down.
(Continued in the story Thom/Beck - Part 2)
- 39
- 40
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Thom/Beck