Don’t lie to me. You always wanted to be royalty. Now that you have the chance, why are you backing out?

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Charles Monet
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: Castres, France
Final Word Count: 810 words
 

---

Joint concerts aren’t all that common. Not because I can’t handle joint concerts, but just because they don’t really fit my playing style. Once in a blue moon, we’ll receive a little or an invite to a concert that is being held for charity and it is always hard to say no to those. They are wholly for a good cause, so why not? Why deny this to others who might benefit from me sitting at a piano and playing while others donate?

Sure, we donate too, when we’re there and it seems to set an example and that’s all there really is to that. It’s usually a mostly fun evening of time spent with other musicians and, at times, actors and actresses who have made it big, so why not? Not that I mingle all that much, I much prefer to watch from a distance, and I suppose that, for some reason, that sits poorly with certain people. I don’t know that I’ve ever understood it.

Like Gavin and his delusions—I haven’t heard from him or seen him since that last issue, but I’m also not surprised as he never would leave our hometown to go anywhere—some people seem to believe themselves so high and mighty that when you might approach them just to get from point A to point B, they’ll get offended.

I had to deal with a similar situation not all that long ago and I’m still shaking my head somewhat at it all. I just don’t understand it.

I wasn’t even trying to talk to her. All I wanted was to walk right by her so I could get to another spot since I knew they were about to call me up. The thing with being partially deaf is that in certain situations, hearing anything clearly is a struggle. In situations where so many people are talking together and chatting excitedly, it makes it hard for me to really make out anything clearly and while Pedro wasn’t far from me, he couldn’t stick to my side the way he usually does at most concerts before I head onto the stage.

All I managed to take was a few steps. From her left to her right before she was grabbing at my upper arm, and she wasn’t really being gentle about it. I did stop; I did turn to her so she would have my full attention—and my good ear. She gave me this look as though I wasn’t worth being out there with the rest of them, huffed and then rolled her eyes.

She spoke so fast that I’m sure I lost a good few of the words she was trying to tell me, but I remember the gist of it. I remember her claiming that somehow, she believed that I’d always wanted to be royalty. That since we had been younger and we’d first stepped up onto any stages, it had been by one big dream. Considering that she was fairly older than I was, this left me baffled, how could it not? I’d seen her in passing and I knew about her career somewhat but that really was it. I knew she sang opera but that really was all the knowledge I had.

The only thing I can think of is that she mistook me for someone else. It wouldn’t have been the first time and it’s always a little confusing when it happens. I can understand that my face is perhaps a little that of what they call the boy next door but to be mistaken as someone at least a decade and a half older than I was still remains confusing.

I did try to tell her that she had the wrong person, but she kept at it, seeming to grow angrier when I tried to draw my arm out of her surprisingly strong grip. She accused me of backing out now that I had a chance of joining that beautiful royalty and really, all I could do was shake my head and wonder in awe at what might have been going through her head because I couldn’t make sense of it.

Before too long, thankfully, one of the suits came backstage, possibly to deal with whatever small commotion had been seen happening on whatever camera system they had in the back. They managed to get me away from her and to the spot I’d been trying to make it to. There were no apologies, and I didn’t expect any of them. What I did expect, however, was to be kept at a distance from her and thankfully, I was.

I did play one song in which she sang, and I don’t think she even realized it was me. Also, I think I could have done a better job than her on that song but that’s for another time.

Um, excuse you! I’ve been there for you through everything! I helped you when you were down, I helped you when you didn’t want me to, and I was even there when you made bad decision after bad decision. You dare call me your worst friend?

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Charles Monet
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 820 words
 

---

Certain people are delusional. I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised but I still am.

Though, to be fair, I think I’m more surprised by the fact that Galvin, of all people I grew up around, would show up at my concert and then ask to be able to speak with me once all was said and done.

I didn’t play quite as many concerts as I used to and it was fine by me. There was maybe one concert every other month at this point. It still was plenty, it was a good bit of travelling for the ones that were out of the city though rarely out of the country anymore, and it just gave us an excuse to travel. A decade on the road, going from concert hall to concert hall, playing more than seventy concerts a year, it had been enough to burn me out to a point of near no return and it was only thanks to Pedro that I learned to slow down.

The concert had been a special holiday one; of course, all of the music was based on Christmas as most people know it here, Santa, his red suit, snow, being home for the holidays. I’ve done one concert that was more worldly holidays the year before but somehow, they’d opted for something more purely ‘American’ last year. There were plenty of people, all bundled up because, of course, it was a partially outside concert. It was in an amphitheatre setup, so I had some heat up front but not as much as I would have liked. If you’ve tried playing the piano outside in the winter, you might have an idea of what it feels like to play a full concert out.

I still was trying to get proper feelings back in my fingers while quietly settled backstage with a cup of tea in my hand and Pedro not far from my side. There was a slight commotion closer to the front and there, barging his way through because he was pushing people aside, was Galvin. I only recognized him because his face hadn’t really changed since I’d last seen him so many years ago. He’d grown, yes, but it was hard to mistake him for anyone else.

I hadn’t expected him there, but as I recognized him, I just set my hand on Pedro’s arm; it made him relax a little. It was rare I got any visitor but it was clear in his purposeful walk that he was coming right up my way.

Now, what came next still confuses me. I’ve tried to look at it from all angles and I still don’t know how, in the years we spent at the same school, he could have gotten any idea at all that we were even just friends, let alone good friends.

He just stopped right there in front of us, looking down at me because I was settled in an almost comfortable chair and I was just tired and didn’t feel like getting up, and he started ranting. He started going on about how he’d been there for me through everything, how he’d helped me while I was down, how he helped me when I didn’t want him to and even after I’d made bad decisions after bad decisions. He ended his tirade breathlessly by accusing me that I dared call him my worst friend.

I might have gaped at him a little. It actually took me a moment to realize that yes, the concert had taken place in the city I’d grown up with, it was the only reason why Galvin would have ever been here. The rest of his words, though, they still make no sense. Galvin was the worst tattletale there ever could have been, he would go to people and tell them what everyone else said behind their backs. He only ever had the same words to tell me because I never befriended anyone. I was too busy just doing what my parents wanted me to do.

So yes, I was confused. He’d never been there for me. I’d never been allowed to make my own decision up until I was an adult and even then. By that point, I had Pedro with me. Galvin had never spoken anything more to me than those few words telling me that everyone thought I was the fun sucker.

All it took was a little motion and Pedro was quietly accompanying Galvin out of the backstage area and that was that. We didn’t stay much later after that. I think both of us were more than ready to go back to the hotel before getting on a train home. I like taking trains whenever I could, seeing the scenery drift on by is nice and planes are uncomfortable with my ear problems.

We didn’t hear from Galvin after that and I can’t complain about it, not really.

Everyone calls you the fun sucker behind your back.

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Charles Monet
Race: Human
Age: 26
Final Word Count: 639 words
 

---

I know I grew up in a privileged house. I’m not going to deny it. I was the only boy of quite a few siblings and the only one with hearing problems. I was also the only one who took to singing the way I did and I was playing the piano and singing before I could properly write.

The house was in a good neighbourhood, my parents could afford to send all of us to private music school, I had everything I wanted, really. That was, I had everything I wanted except friends. I had everything my parents wanted me to have, too, that still didn’t include friends. No amount of surgery could help me with my hearing either and I know that, at first, they were worried that it would cause issues for my musical career because I had to have a musical career, I was a natural with the piano and my singing voice, well that was worthy of the angels, they tell me.

Even while at the private school, I never managed to make any friends. There was this one boy, Galvin I think his name was, who was the biggest ‘tattletale’ of anyone I’ve ever known and I’ve crossed a world of people in my life, especially during the ten years I spent on the road going from concert hall to concert hall.

Galvin used to go from person to person and told them what other people were saying about them behind their back. I’m sure you can imagine what kind of reputation that gave him. No one wanted to befriend him and yet some still did. Out of pity or because they could use him, I don’t know and it doesn’t even matter.

All he could ever tell me was that people, behind my back, used to call me ‘fun sucker’. The thing is, though, that wasn’t news to me. I was just so focused on doing what my parents wanted me to do that it really was all I did. I knew I never had any fun, I knew I didn’t go out to the gatherings like everyone else. I didn’t need Galvin to tell me that people didn’t like me.

Once I started in on the concerts, things changed but it didn’t change because people liked me for who I was, they liked me for my voice and my piano skills. They liked my music.

Everything changed when I first met Pedro, of course. There just was this connection. We were from two different worlds but I think that’s why the connection happened, I think that’s why we clicked so easily.

I was so afraid that first time I just ended up on his doorstep unannounced. I’d had a week to myself, a week. I’d never really had that from the time I’d been fourteen and we’d been on the road and I’d asked my parents to let me visit this pen pal I’d had for years. They weren’t pleased with the idea but I promised them that I’d practise every day and I’d call them every day as well.

We hit it off. After years of letters, mostly one way because I was constantly on the movie, it was touch and go for the first day but I could feel that we hit it off, I loved it. I didn’t want to get back on that plane but I was able to get him a cellphone that I kept topped off and paid because it meant a lot to me.

What meant even more, was when we managed to get him at my side in a permanent way and I’ve loved settling down in a house with him. After a decade spent on tour and never settling down anywhere, this is the best thing that I could ever have hoped for.

Can we watch something else? This is scary.

Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Charles Monet
Race: Human
Age: 25
Final Word Count: 583 words

---

Living with Pedro has been a discovery. Our lives are so different; they’re so far apart from one another that I admit that I was a little uncertain at first. Sure, we kept in touch with letters though I sent him things most of the time since he couldn’t easily reach me, not considering how often I was being moved around for concerts, but mostly one-way letters do not really help with the building of a friendship or anything else.

There still had been a connection when we’d accidentally met that first night and that was what I was basing myself upon when we got into the idea of getting him involved as my security detail. It has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs and I’ve truly loved learning everything he was willing to teach me.

One of the things we both learned to about together is anything relating to sitting back and relaxing. Now and again we’ll settle together, each with a book and we’ll read in silence—something I love to do—other times, we’ll turn the television on, keep the volume a little low and watch discovery channels or something just there on the last channel we were on.

Something I’ve discovered about Pedro is that he loves all things horror. It’s like it’s in his blood. He’d watched horror movies late into the evening and night and he never has any issues sleeping whereas I just can’t handle the genre very well. Comedic horror is one thing and I usually take well to it but true horror movies just don’t sit well with me. I don’t know if it’s my partial deafness that makes me jumpier or just the fact that I’ve never actually been comfortable sleeping in a pitch-black room, but when we find a horror movie, I tend to watch a little bit of it but when I realize I won’t be able to watch it through, I tend to either ask him if we can watch something else or I leave him to it, settle in another chair with headphones on, low music and a book to read.

It’s the little things though.

It’s how he’ll carry me to bed once he’s done watching what he was watching and I’ve drifted off in my own musical world, despite the fact that he’s my height and skinnier than me though he’s wiry strong and that’s just one of those things that I crave. It’s how he’ll come into the kitchen to help me prepare the meal without me needing to ask him to help. This is a recent development, being able to prepare our own meals. Up until just a year ago, I still was on the road so often—ten years now, ten—that I didn’t have a place I could call home. I spent the last ten years in hotels, eating at classy restaurants and just, you’d have thought that they’d give me time to settle somewhere.

I’m pretty sure I’m saving plenty of money by now having a home here, in this city and not just spending all my money on hotel bills and restaurant foods. I still play at concerts, that’s just slowed down a bit but I suppose that in the end, it doesn’t matter. I am doing what I love doing and I’m keeping my health in mind. That and I’m living the sweet life with the man I love at my side, what more could I want?

Sound – side01

It has been seven years since I sent in that first letter. Seven years. I never thought things would turn out this way. I was just a teenager from a no-name, other-side-of-the-tracks area. I don’t even remember what I was doing so close to the concert hall that night. A dare, maybe. Just like I’m not sure I recall why I wrote that first letter, why I stole that stamp to make sure I could send it.. but I did and I would not change anything for the world.

There’s something about him. It’s not even his uncanny ability to learn new songs so easily or that he fits so perfectly well against me at night, it’s just a pull, a magnet. Up until last year when we finally met face to face for the first time after exchanging letters for the past six years, I felt lost. Like I didn’t know what my purpose in life was meant to be. I hadn’t done great in school, I didn’t really have much of a passion for anything. I’d had a few jobs over time but they’d never lasted long.

So when he showed up on the doorstep of my meagre apartment thirteen months ago, looking like he still did belong to the other side of the tracks himself, the better side, I was baffled. We’d never even exchanged photos, or well, I knew what he looked like but I could never sit still for a camera and he’d actually never asked. He looked so hopeful when I opened that door, one bag hanging over his shoulders and that quiet, slightly, just barely uncertain ‘Pedro?’ that left his lips, I felt my heart fill and it was as though the ‘complete’ switch had been flipped on. He was my reason.

We spoke for a while, of nothing and everything, he told me he had a week long break, well deserved if you asked me, and he’d just decided that it was time to meet, even if he’d had no real way of making sure it would be me at that door but it was.

He stayed for a few hours, told me which hotel he was staying at and we walked back that way. It wasn’t even a really fancy hotel, something better than most seedy places but he could have had a room at the five-star but he told me he didn’t like the feeling of grandeur they gave off and I was grateful he didn’t seem to need to show off this way. I’ve seen a lot of artists who wouldn’t mingle with the lesser kind, after all.

We talked for a while more, about nothing and everything, just finding out more things that didn’t convey well through papers. He invited me to stay the night and we did, we just talked more until he fell asleep with his head in my lap and I stayed that way until he woke the next morning. It was a case of rinse and repeat until he went home. I’d go to work for the few hours I had to, go back to his hotel room, we’d eat, talk, he taught me how to swim a little in the indoor pool and there was nothing more to it.

I admit more than willingly that I felt a physical attraction to him, I’d felt that for a few years at this point but I didn’t even know if he would have been interested in me that way so I never said anything. On the morning of the day he had to go home though, things changed. He’d gotten me one of these cellphones that have the ability to have applications on them, programs. One of them was a video chat thing and he said he could better keep in touch this way, though he still was expecting a letter and I wouldn’t disappoint him.

We made it to the airport with some time to spare, I was feeling my chest constrict at the thought that he was leaving for just about the other end of the world again, if only for a week and just as his flight number was called.. he kissed me. It was a little sloppy but I didn’t care. I just kissed him back for all I was worth and when we broke apart we were both a little breathless, a little flushed and I admit I was more than a little hard. He gave me a letter, made me promise not to open it until I was back home and I kept my promise.

We shared another short, quick kiss and he was gone. I was terrified I’d never see him again.

~

When I made it back home, I was in a complete daze. I very honestly don’t even remember how I made it home. I assume I took the bus but I have no real memory of that moment. I put his letter down on my dresser, almost afraid of what it would contain and I flopped on my bed, curled to the phone he’d gotten for me and just.. waited.

It felt like an eternity before it rang, the sound was clear as day, just a call, not a video thing. He’d made it back to the other coast where he’d be getting on another flight to head to Europe. He asked me if I’d read the letter and I told him I hadn’t yet, so I opened it with him on the line, on speaker phone the way he told me how to manage it because he had time to spare before his next flight.

I opened the letter with trembling hands, terrified he’d be telling me he never wanted anything to do with me though it would have made no sense considering our kiss and this phone. I read it through once, really quickly and then a second time, more slowly, my breath catching in my throat and my ears almost not hearing his words as he more or less told me word for word what was on the paper. That he’d had a crush on me for years, that he felt a connection between us, that he’d wanted to meet at least once but now he wanted more, he wanted hope, he wanted an us, even with the distance.

I was more than willing to give him an us, to give us an us. The distance was a little frightening for me but we both promised that we would work well with that, we’d already been exchanging letters for years at this point, it wasn’t the same ubt it wasn’t that different.

When we hung up as he was preparing to board his second flight, with a promise of a text to let me know he’d made it home as it likely would end up with the middle of the night for me, I felt as though I’d just been lifted way up and everything was as it should have been. The world was heavenly.

~

It took us, well more like me, six months of working and saving every penny and dime I could before I had both a passport.. and a plane ticket in hand. I had a single suitcase, it fit everything I had ever owned and when I made it out of the plane after a flight I would rather not repeat, and yet still repeated times and times again, just for him, he was there, waiting for me, arms wide open and a smile that went on forever. I was home and I was staying with him. We had worked out a small ‘setup’ as was and that had actually worked out in our favour, they had needed someone they could trust to drive him around as necessary without needing to hire someone in every city and there I was. It gave me an excuse to be close to him.

I turned out more to be good at remembering places and spots to drives and others to avoid, and just the same I somewhat became his mechanic but it’s something I just loved doing, getting down and dirty while fixing up cars, so it was the best of both worlds.

—

He has nightmares, now and again, all I can really do is run my hand through his hair, let him settle against my chest again with his good ear so he can listen to the slow, steady beat of my heart. He amazes me.