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History confides that every man will do his duty	By : luna65 Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Pink Floyd Views: 639 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Pink Floyd. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-one
- 2-two
- 3-three
- 1
- 2
I: you’ll get the chance to put the knife in

februaryeleventhnineteenseventynine
“Rog, if you don’t go it’s not going to help matters.”

“Since when do I give a fuckin’ toss ‘bout soothing that bloated prat’s ego? He’s becoming thoroughly insufferable and stands to be taken down a peg or two.”

Roger caught a glimpse of his reflection in the French doors leading to the garden and noticed he was literally pulling at his hair. Carolyne had been nagging him to get a trim and he’d claimed – rightly or wrongly – that he was far too busy to worry about his hair. But Caro noticed things like that, far more than Judy ever had. He tried his best to please her, determined not to fail once more…though of course everything was falling apart around him, wasn’t it? Wolves at the door, band at his throat…and David completely alienated, though Roger refused to assume all the blame for that one. But it was difficult to ignore the growing chasm, not to mention what was causing it.

Nick, however, was not to be swayed so easily from his diplomatic stance. His voice remained calm and soothing, and Roger had a vague sense of being hypnotized by his tone.

“It’s just a party. And beyond saying ‘happy birthday’ you don’t even have to talk to him.”

“Caro will throw a snit, she and Ginger don’t get along.”

“And I say again, you can avoid them if you want. It’s not even at their house, after all.”

“Because he knows no one’s going to drive out to that bloody miserably cold backwater hovel for a fucking party.”

Nick paused, and Roger knew he was probably trying to figure out whether Roger was more or less angry, in regards to his abundance of adjectives.

The answer was more.

The more he thought about it, the situation entire, the more angry he became; which is why he tried very hard not to think about it.

He felt betrayed, and if there was anything he could not stand, it was the feeling of looking into those eyes and no longer knowing the man behind them.

The countdown had begun.

1968
It was a Wednesday, and Roger found himself – mouth parched, heart threatening to find its’ way out of his chest – standing in front of a newsstand looking at the date on the masthead of the Daily Mail.

March sixth.

He had awoken in his messy bed, sheets tangled and sticking to his clammy skin, wondering why he was sweating, as Spring had not yet arrived and he was chilled to the bone once he emerged from the bedclothes. It was raining, though that passed when he left the flat, attempting to escape the herald in his mind: marchsixthmarchsixthmarchsixth and sitting anonymous in a caf (though some looked askance at his fur coat and tousled hair), with tea, cigarettes, and an obsessive sense of unease as Roger thought about the party, two days before.

They had been scrambling for any gig, as Peter and Andrew insisted they were out, and Bryan was making distressing noises about debt and the future was ever unknown; but they were The Pink Floyd, not some pick-up ensemble. It was one thing to play Libby January’s birthday party, but a fucking wrap party? On the other hand, Roger was admiring of Vanessa’s rhetoric, she was certainly a radical. He liked women who knew their own mind.

Yet beyond the beautiful people milling about looking self-important and decadent, clustering in corners to share illicit substances with an air of smug entitlement, and all of it such a bloody fucking bore…in the midst of all the distractions, even as he attempted to look beyond the surroundings, as he always did, Roger’s eyes were drawn to the sight of David on the other side of their designated space. And the noise of the crowd, the amplified excess of their own music, the air thick with smoke and hormonal agendas, it all seemed to blur into a veil when compared to the absolute clarity which was rendered in the perfection of David Gilmour.

Goddamn him.

Carolyne was not pleased to be reminded of the social obligation.

“I thought we weren’t going.”

“It’s difficult enough, believe me – every time we’re all in a room it’s a fucking skirmish – and it’s not getting any easier. Your former boss is quite the prat sometimes. They’re all going to gang up on me if I don’t keep my eye on them.”

Though he could count on her to defend him to the end, there were times when his paranoia appeared too tiresome and she would merely shrug and sigh and her silence was the sound of relational surrender. But no one else in his immediate life was backing down, and it was ridiculous, how could any of them think they had a say in this?

David, on the other hand, had less to say about the process, but he was doing something far more insidious. And the thought of marchsixth was making Roger’s stomach cramp with acidic jealousy.

1971
Jenny didn’t appear to be pleased to see Roger on the doorstep.

“Oh…Rog. Dave isn’t, uh, up yet.”

“I just…it’s, uh…”

“Oh sure,” she said with a shrug, allowing him entrance.

She was lovely, a lithe blonde (they both had a taste for blondes), and she was half-clad, wearing one of David’s shirts, Roger got a whiff of it when he walked by her as she consoled herself with tea in the kitchen. He knew it was a thoroughly dirty look aimed at the spot between his shoulder blades (he was tall, after all), but that smell, it was luring him into imposing upon his nascent lover. Roger knocked on the closed door of the bedroom (and he could still remember what lay behind it).

“Wot?” came a hoarse query.

“Are you decent?” Roger asked.

“Never! But come in anyway.”

Roger opened the door with one hand, present in the other, to find the birthday boy abed, hands behind his head, a beauteous smile at the surprise, which he was likely expecting…

“Lock the door,” David whispered.

…yes, just that.

1970
The van sat at the kerb and Roger kept hitting the horn every two minutes until Rick and Nick were ready to strangle him. Finally Jenny had leaned out of the window and yelled.

“He’s coming! Stop honking you bloody twits!!”

Moments later David did appear, running out the front door, case in hand, looking mussed but otherwise none the worse for wear. Roger moved to the back and let Peter drive, smirking at his bandmate as he lunged into the vehicle without apology.

“We know it’s your birthday, Dave, but you had all bloody day to celebrate, after all.”

David made a particularly infuriating expression, beyond smug.

“Sometimes it takes all bloody day to do it properly.”

marchsixth and it was like champagne made of vinegar in Roger’s veins, the rising urge to touch him, to weave fingers into that hair, pull that sculpted face close and kiss the lips which always seemed to gleam, no matter how much light there was to see them by. He didn’t know how long he could go on, pretending not to care.

Always the sidelong glance, and the smirk. Then the sunbeam of a smile, disarming him at crucial moments, when Roger’s dogged determinism was melted away in hot white light.

“Think you can pull yourself together to play the gig?”

“I’ll muddle through, dear.”

Soft laughter, and the conversation turned to other concerns, but the two stared at one another, Roger could not pull his gaze from David’s mouth, as it pursed teasingly. He had the air of one well-fucked, it was as if Roger could feel the lassitude in his own body, the warm lazy bliss which comes in the aftermath of good sex. Not that he was too familiar with the sensation, but looking at David, he couldn’t distinguish between thinking he could feel it, and his desire to want to feel it.

As delivered by David’s hands, his mouth, his cock.

Such considerations were familiar, but the face of this sly satyr, it positively possessed him as none other. Roger swallowed, mouth dry, groin aching, and he noticed David’s eyes seemed completely focused on the bob of his larynx. He winked and Roger felt the fear, a cold shock in his flushed body.

He’s going to have you, and you’ll show your belly and wag your tail, ever so grateful.

Never had something so desired made him feel so desolate at the same time.

Goddamn you, bastard.

februarytwentysecondnineteenseventynine
David was working out a guitar part for “Backs to the Wall“ and Bob turned his back on the live room, nudging Roger, sitting nearby, with his foot.

“What should I get Dave for his birthday?”

Roger reflexively looked over at James, naturally focused on the task at hand, waiting for the signal to roll tape. Griff sat next to him, pointedly twiddling his thumbs as he didn’t approve of the new hierarchy, and things had become frostier between the lead engineer and his assigned assistant in the new year.

“Some creativity might be helpful.”

Griff snickered, but Roger was sure James’ shoulders had tightened, his posture achingly straight.

“Okay, can you forget you’re English for a minute and give me an actual suggestion?”

Roger shrugged. “Ask Ginger.” He was tempted to make another type of crack, but with David unable to hear it the satisfaction would be lacking.

1968
…fending off a hundred come-ons, offers of anything and everything, as they had to perform the load-out along with their threadbare crew. Girls coming up to whisper in his ear, boys too.

Swinging London, yes it was.

There were plenty of acquaintances present, it wasn’t as if any of them were invisible, just perhaps less visible in the shadow cast by the sun. Roger suddenly felt horribly naff as he recognized a few faces he had last seen in 35mm Technicolor.

He isn’t having it.

The object of his scrutiny continued to gather up gear along with Alan, even as he smiled at every person who came along to chat him up, though the more Roger watched the more he realized it was the same smile every time. But when he looked at Roger there was something different in the smile. Something hopeful.

And this was the third month, the third month of the new regime and Roger didn’t know if he could dare hope just yet. For anything, much less the regard of David Gilmour.

1976
He’d been staring at the phone for a week. He’d started on Sunday and now it was Wednesday and marchsixth was coming and Roger felt the same sickening spin he always did.

Maybe other people had pointed out the coincidence – June had, certainly – but it wasn’t till Carolyne had mentioned it last year, as they lay dreamy and smug after sex one afternoon, with a bit of hash and wine, that it truly dawned on him with full-blown eerie significance.

januarysixth
marchsixth
septembersixth
…and it was all meant to be, wasn’t it?

The first three months were hell, for the ghosts had come to call and Roger tried to beat them back by refusing admission to the mansion of his memory, but in dreams they could slip through the cracks, in the keyholes, down from the attic and assail him full-force with what might have been, and what had been.

“ – can’t live with you anymore. You’re impossible.”

The turning of the year, it was bearable, he was in love, and she was constantly serene and certain and completely committed to his happiness. Even as the notion of absence continued to taunt him because it did not abate, that feeling of loss, of a void which had not been bridged. Even art could not sooth the ache of knowing something had passed and was unlikely to be gained again.

The golden moment was gone. But Roger was determined to go on, even as he stared at the phone and chewed his fingers and failure sat on his shoulder and whispered terrible things, intimations that it would all go wrong now, now that they spiraling down from their moment of cultural zeitgeist.

Did they still belong to one another? Storm had said, the silly git, that in terms of numerology they fit, divisible by three, and wasn’t that a riot?

Divisible.

By three.

There was the shadow, which had a much larger shape now.

Three days.

It would be simple, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t likely even be there, off on one last romp before they started work again, this time in their very own prison (as Roger had most recently termed it, because it did look like a prison, or a bunker, or something equally ugly and confining) and they’d have to look at one another every fucking day and worse yet remember how it had been.

“I don’t believe I ever – “

Three days.

Are you in hell too, lover? Are you chewing your calluses like you always do and wondering if I’m going to call? Too scared to pick up the phone, hiding behind skirts (we’re good at that, aren’t we) and staring, staring at it like the poisoned apple held aloft by the Wicked Witch…speak to me and the spell goes on, the rest of our lives?

And it’s getting longer all the time, isn’t it?

marchfirstnineteenseventynine
Nick came into the control room, looking winded and worried.

“H’llo chaps, sorry I’m late.”

“Who won the pool?” Roger cracked, narrowing his eyes at his bandmate.

“You’re the only one wanted to wager, boss,” James said, not looking up from his task.

“I’ll spot you lunch, how’s that, Rog,” Nick said, folding his hands out and cracking his knuckles, a pre-performance ritual.

“Fair enough.”

“Griff, why don’t you get everything ready upstairs, I’ll be up to tune the drums in a moment.”

“Yes James,” (the other) Nick replied in a monotone, rolling his eyes heavenward.

After they heard his tread on the stairs, Nick managed a sympathetic grin.

“You know it’s nothing personal, lad, he just misses Brian something awful.”

“I get it. My friend Andy said the same thing once I left Utopia. He didn’t like being anyone else’s second.”

“Can it wait till we’re done with this, please?” Roger asked, his voice rising in annoyance. “I was on time today and therefore my work should take precedence.”

“S’fine, Rog,” Nick answered, ever-placid. He sat down next to Rick on the sofa. “Everything ready?” he asked, as David wasn’t in the studio.

“Just about. I never realized how much work goes into these things till, well –“

“Sure,” Nick said, patting his thigh. “I’m certain it’ll be capital.”

“June’s helping, thankfully.”

“Rick, give your part another pass,” Roger ordered, turning his chair towards the others.

“But you didn’t like –“

“Just play something for now, alright? I need that part in there before I can do my vocal.”

“Fine. But please don’t stop me thirty seconds into it like the last five times.”

“I didn’t –“

“Yes, you did. Just let me play it, and then if you still don’t like it we can figure out how to change it after, all right?”

James had already changed the tape and was adjusting the faders for the take, so Rick got up and shuffled into the live room with the gait of an old man.

“James, dub it into the rough mix when he’s done, all right? I’ll deal with it later.”

Roger left the room and Nick sat down next to their engineer with a quizzical look.

“What’s that all about?”

“I’m not sure, except he seems to have a difficult time actually listening to Rick play.”

“Without being overly-critical, y’mean. But that’s nothing new.”

David leaned inside the doorway.

“Whiz Kid, Griff is upstairs grumbling ‘bout waiting on you?”

“I just need to do a take with Rick, then we’ll be up.”

“Oi Nicky, ‘bout time you got here.”

“Lindy and I were at it again.”

“Okay Rick, I’m starting the track now,” James announced over the talkback mic.

Rick played twenty-four bars of soulful Hammond organ ambience, his two bandmates smiling and nodding in time with the beat. Towards the end of the playback David made a tsk sound.

“Ach, ya lost the thread there lad,” he said to Nick.

“I’ll get it right eventually,” the other replied, good-naturedly.

Once Rick was finished and James copied the take to the safety he made to go upstairs, then David stopped him in the corridor, taking hold of his arm. Nick was on his way up the stairs and he turned around to wait on the other, noticing Roger at the other end of the corridor, watching the scene with hands on hips, but seeming merely to observe rather than make his way forward.

“Let’s go ‘round the corner for lunch, hmm? See some daylight?”

“As I recall,” James quipped, looking over a sheet he had written up with the tunings for Nick’s drums charted out, “actual sunshine was not predicted today.”

“C’mon, boy…I love Arthur’s cooking too but one can only eat so much of it.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t turn into another three-hour interlude, if you please. I can’t have another late night; I promised Rachel I’d take her to the cinema.”

Nick cleared his throat politely, and Roger finally came up the hall.

“Plan your assignations on your own time, Gilmour.”

The two of them stared daggers. James came up the stairs, but then paused at the sound of David’s voice.

“Where the hell is Bob?”

James shrugged and continued to follow Nick upstairs. The other heard him mutter don’t know, could give less than a shite.

“What film you planning to see?” Nick asked him.

“Dunno, she’s picking it.”

“Ah yes, a particularly direct method of making up for one’s shortcomings.”

He smiled to hear their engineer snickering behind him.

Roger and David stood at the foot of the stairs, as if for one of them to move would be to admit defeat. David did, however, have the foresight to shut the door of the control room. He could see Rick sitting at the organ in the live room, continuing to tinker with chord progressions.

“Say what you will to my face, but not in front of him,” David hissed.

“I’ll say what I please when I please. And you are a pathetic ruddy whore.”

“And I’ll do what I please. Are you going to threaten me again?”

“It’s no longer a threat. I catch you out and I will bury you. Leave him alone.”

“Not doing anything untoward, ask him yourself.”

“As if he’d tell me the truth! You’ve already made him your lapdog with your constant flirting.”

“Someone has to be pleasant to him, you and Bob treat him like a lackey.”

“He’s got a thick skin, and he knows this is the chance of a lifetime. You’re merely projecting your own insecurities onto the situation.”

“Spare me the psychoanalysis. In fact, just cease speaking to me full-stop.”

Roger scowled and pushed past David, going up the stairs. A moment later Rick opened the door.

“Is he gone?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought the dark cloud of menace had passed by.”

The two of them laughed even as David was beginning to resent the other, tired of the way Rick completely shut down whenever Roger appeared.

“Make sure to bring your brolly next time,” he quipped.

1972
It was after midnight, and two still-drunken bandmates sat out on the balcony of a hotel room in Japan, marveling at the neon spectacle which is nighttime Tokyo.

“Hey, s’your birthday now,” Roger said, raising a cup of sake. “Happy birthday, prat.”

“Thank you, wanker. Not gonna sing to me?”

“Too snockered, can’t remember the words.”

They giggled.

“Whaddya think it says,” Roger asked, waving his hand out at the skyline. “On all those gaudy signs?”

“Panasonic.”

Roger threw his head back over the chair, laughing raucously. As he recovered somewhat he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

“S’what I love about you, prat, you always make me laugh.”

But as the words hung in the somewhat humid air - smelling vaguely of sakura and more specifically of exhaust - everything sounded strange to David, like the playback on a film running half-speed, as soon as love left the lips of Roger Waters. He was drunk, they were both thoroughly drunk, yet he wasn’t drunk enough to mistake in vino veritas…or sake, as the case may be. And sake was wine, so said the drunken musings of David Gilmour, age twenty-six.

“I’m a bloomin’ riot, guv,” he quipped, doing his best Terence Stamp.

“No no, that’s not how you do it, prat!” Roger then went on to rant in Cockney, and it was so thick David had no idea what he was actually saying. But he marveled, as always, at Roger’s adept way with a dialect. They fell silent for a time, listening to the distant tinny din of horns and looking for stars in the sky, but the neon shamed the heavens into obscurity.

“We’re playing every night this week,” Roger observed, looking into his delicate china cup. “How in the world did we agree to that?”

“I s’pose we thought we’d just get it over with,” David said. He thought better of more wine, as their day would be full of corporate schmoozing and hoards of flower-bearing hysterical fans.

“Whose room are we in?”

“Mine.”

“Oh.”

“Just ‘oh?’ Not ‘Yippie!’ or ‘Huzzah!’”

Roger began laughing hysterically again. He then let out a loud groan.

“I fear I’m too drunk to ravish you properly, dear. Spirit is randy but the flesh is soggy.”

“Isn’t that a kick in the arse. It’s my birthday!”

“I know! Didn’t I just wish you happy bloody birthday?”

“But you didn’t sing, it doesn’t count.”

“Tonight, tonight I’ll get all of Tokyo to serenade you, how’s that?”

“They don’t even know it!”

“Well neither do I, at this juncture.”

More snickering, and they began to poke and prod one another, like schoolboys who know no other way to express regard.

Prat! Wanker!

What was it, David wondered. Was it really love? He thought it might be, for he was ever bound up in Roger, even as he could be annoyed or insulted by him. Roger’s personality in total was shocking for one unused to such a force of nature. But David began to appreciate nuances, his way with humour and with words, the way in which he had sudden inspirations and grandiose plans, even if David never agreed with all of them. Roger fascinated him as someone who seemed to exist in specific contradiction to his own personality: driven and determined and one who would not suffer fools at all, much less gladly. David was pushed to his limits, often, but at various points in the journey, speeding along the road of their ambition, he only marveled at how fast they were going, and how everything seemed to work out in the end.

There was a beauty, even so, to Roger’s hungry ambition. It didn’t appear to be ambition for the usual things, but for something one couldn’t define, or obtain. Something which was always out there, urging them onto the next goal. And obvious beauty in that angular face, with features which made David ache to look at, as well as the lean body so capable of physicality.

“You work well together,” Storm had told him one night as they sat in a bar somewhere, talking talking talking about concepts until David was ready to slap one of them, or himself, and ask if that was a bloody concept as well. “Maybe it doesn’t seem that way, but your birthdates are both multiples of three. You have a harmony, you see.”

David leaned forward and kissed Roger in full sight of the metropolis, though he imagined they could only be seen by those with very fancy telescopes, and given the Japanese predilection for gadgetry, it was still a rather risky proposition.

“Not pouting, then?”

“Too pissed to pout.”

They laughed, and every time one of them stopped, all it took was to look at the other to begin again. His ribs ached, but David was having a marvelous time, hangover and jetlag and other annoyances of transcontinental touring notwithstanding.

1975
On the last day of recording, with three days to go (always three days, three days when everything went wrong) they were disjointed and dissatisfied, speaking to one another through clenched teeth and in icy mannerly phrases, and nothing was right.

Nothing had been right, from the start, feeling as though they’d lost the plot, and fighting from the start as well, when Roger began having reoccurring dreams and waking fugue states about the price of ambition.

The price, as rendered in the person of one Syd Barrett.

Whenever he’d mused, with any of them, the room turned silent with resentment and fear and guilt. What were we supposed to do? We had to do something to save –

Save whom? Save themselves, exactly.

Roger viewed it as an unholy alliance, some days. Deals with the devil, though he never believed in such a thing really and yet the past year had taught him how repugnant getting exactly what you wanted could be. But he wanted it, all the same, if only to stifle the voices, mend the threads which were fast unraveling. The waves of doubt eroding the shore of…his sanity? Perhaps something less melodramatic.

Everything had been all of a piece last year, touring to try and alleviate the fear which had arisen that they could get nothing done, could get nothing right, save Roger’s minor victory concerning which songs should be included.

His voice was going, it was worse than being impotent. Another kind of sterility, one might suppose. David’s look of barely suppressed disdain through the glass of Studio Three (retrofitted to the specifications of the golden boys) as Roger flubbed take after take and finally resorted to singing things line by line.

Humiliating.

And the prat did nothing to console him, as he had before, back when they cared to make the effort. David had drifted away, Roger could still see him, but no amount of waving, shouting, jumping up and down would summon the other back to the shore. The crystalline eyes rarely met his own with anything resembling empathy or endearment.

They talked often about why they couldn’t accomplish anything, and underneath everything which was actually said there was a shadow, a spectre.

So now you’re feeling bad? You were equally complicit!

Roger had pushed at David, sending him against a wall, in one of their familiar hidey-holes, and the sudden violence shocked his lover. He was used to their roughhousing, but David was hurt, he was hurt so easily. And when things weren’t going his way Roger was altogether adept at spilling blood for the sake of the cause.

A moment of anguished silence, then they had dissolved into desperate physicality.

Desperate to keep the truth at bay.

Things were going wrong.

Divided by three.
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History confides that every man will do his duty