Sometimes you have to ask yourself if this is the right thing to do and then do it anyway because it’s the only thing you can do.

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Pedro Coelho
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: Castres, France
Final Word Count: 836 words
 

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The decision was difficult, but it was necessary. It took us hours of weighing down the pros and cons. Though, if I’m being honest, right as we started discussing the issue, I already knew where I wanted things to be finalized, but I knew Charles would think differently. He loves his music so much that the idea of taking a break is something he would never have agreed to.

The thing is, is that the break mostly is just about the concerts. He still writes music—though he does so at a slower pace—and he still plays at home but that, again, he does for shorter bits of time and when he does play, it rarely is anything overly complicated.

When you tear a ligament in your wrist, your only way out is to rest. Especially when your life is all about playing the piano. He kept on looking at me during the discussion with the doctor, his eyes searching mine, desperate to hear an answer that wasn’t the one being laid out for him. I knew he didn’t want to stop playing, but it was the right thing to do if he hoped to ever heal properly. I know him, though. I know he would have kept on playing despite the pain, but I managed to convince him to stop.

It took hours to get through to him that if he kept on playing, even if his wrist was braced, that he wouldn’t be getting better, not really. As was, the brace would have made his motions stiff and while I know how he’s an absolute natural with the instrument, he still would have had a hard time of things.

I’m still angry about the whole thing, too. It was such a simple thing that could have been avoided if someone had done their jobs properly. It’s not because he plays an acoustic instrument that there are not yards upon yards of electric cords everywhere in the back. These usually are supposed to be secured if they’re going to be on the ground. There are cords to the speaker systems, cords to microphones when he’s playing with someone else, little things, here and there.

I’m not even sure where that one cord came from. I’m pretty good at touring the backstage and general area of where we’ll be going so I know what needs fixing before the show. I never saw that one. I was too far away when it happened, too, and I still remember the look in his eyes when he landed. He looked so happy as he was walking back. A brief interlude before going back to the stage so he could finish. One moment he’s walking, the next, his foot actually catches the start of a goddamned loop in a heavy extension cord, and he just went sprawling.

It would have almost been preferable if he’d tucked to fall. His shoulder would have taken the brunt of things, but I think he’d have been better. As most of us are when we’re falling, he protected himself with his hands outstretched to catch himself and, even then, that still makes me shake my head. Most of the time he’s so careful with his hands that he’s been known to mostly tuck when he falls. This just wasn’t one of these days.

I tried to run to get to him, I did. No one else seemed to react in time either and when he landed, I swear I heard that popping noise from my bare two or three feet away. So far and yet so stupidly close. The look of agony on his face was heartbreaking. Don’t let people fool you into thinking that a wrist sprain doesn’t hurt. It hurts like any other kind of sprain and, as someone who actually sprained his ankle about four years ago, I know how that pain feels.

Moving loving idiot, dedicated to his fans as he was, wanted to go back to the stage to finish the concert, despite the pain. I had to be a bit more forceful with him than I’ve had to be up until this point. Getting my point across that he would only make things worse if he went back was hard and, in a way, his excuse from the stage didn’t completely ruin the concert as he had been accompanied by a full orchestra and a small group of singers. They made do without him. He did try to let me get back to the stage at least to finish the concert with the singer, but his voice kept on cracking from the pain, so that didn’t happen either.

Little by little, he’s been getting back into playing more. He stops when he feels that his wrist begins to ache too much. That, too, is something that we’ve had to work on once the brace was removed. He is so passionate about his music that, at times, he forgets about his own body. That’s why I’m there, though.

Don’t make me go back there. I refuse and it won’t be pretty if you try.

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Pedro Coelho
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 692 words
 

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There still are concerts; I think there will always be concerts. Charles is meant for playing music so others can be swayed by its beauty. I’m just glad that these concerts don’t happen half as often as they used to be. I remember how it was while I still was living in my little village, while we barely knew one another. His parents kept him moving from one city to the next, one continent to the next and back around again. I don’t know how he did it. Just thinking about it exhausts me. He grew up travelling; rarely ever home; rarely ever anywhere steady for more than a few days.

Now, however, the concerts happen every other month or so, a series of two or three within the span of a week and then we get to go back home so he can rest and relax. People still clamour to have more of him in their lives but our primary focus is his health—and mine, certainly, but mostly his. So fewer concerts, but he also keeps on writing out new pieces, recording them and selling new albums. Our lives are now mostly peaceful.

Something strange happened during the last concert. One particular family had paid for VIP tickets, which, they’re not all that uncommon, usually only four or five people can get them and they have a more one-on-one talk with Charles, though I’m never far. Something about fans meeting their idols and he’s no different, no matter that his art is that of the classical type. I think it’s the best type.

Of the family that had the VIP tickets, there was this little boy; he couldn’t have been much more than nine or ten. I could hear the family come from down the hall but the little boy was nearly struggling against his father’s hold. He kept on going on about how he didn’t want to go back ‘there’, which I assume was backstage where Charles was currently resting with a small snack and a bottle of water. He then went on to say that if he were forced back there, it wouldn’t be pretty. It was a little garbled since it was in a language I’m only partially fluent in, but that seemed to be the gist of it.

By the time they made it to the little VIP area, I only saw three of the five people I knew had passes. The mother apologized and stated that her son was feeling ill and her husband had taken him to the bathroom and she was hoping that they would make it back in time for the greet-and-meet. I let it go, since I’d heard what I had, and it wasn’t my place to force parents to do one thing or another. In a way, I was just glad that they hadn’t forced their son into the little lounge; I don’t think it would have ended well, not really.

The whole little thing went well, beyond the two missing members. The mother and her two daughters were ecstatic to meet Charles and they talked about all things music while I kept an eye and an ear on them. I don’t think I would have really needed to; all three remaining members of that family were sweet and kind and left without a fuss when they were told it was time to go.

Not all VIP meetings go this well. I’ve lost count of how many turn out to be somewhat crazed fans; the type who would like for Charles to be the father of their children—that one creeps me out—or the ones who have gone to great lengths to own every type of merchandise he’s ever released to the public and even have something inked on their bodies that is related to him—to be honest, these creep me out too. Usually, we have to keep a much closer eye on them because their behaviour is never very normal or calm but, only about four times in all of the past years, have we really had an incident. So I’ll take it.

It’s been a couple hundred years since I’ve had a friend.

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Pedro Coelho
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 636 words
 

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I’ve met odd people while I first started playing chauffeur for Charles. That’s not to say I haven’t met odd people in the recent years but I think I was so unused to people from richer cities that I didn’t know what to expect.

One such person that still comes around now and again, as she’s more of a cousin of sorts than anything else though a distant cousin, is Amelia.

I met her only a few months after I first met back up with Charles, after I’d managed to get my passport and escape the life that had been waiting for me back in the little town I grew up in. She was a playful young woman, I think she was perhaps just a few years younger than Charles, I never asked her and it didn’t seem all that important. She came barrelling down the stairs, her skirt billowing around her legs and she just squealed as she glomped onto Charles and started chattering away at him.

It was only when he pulled her away from him that she seemed to notice me standing there, by the car and her eyes just went wider than before. It was a little comical and I didn’t know what to expect but she latched onto me the way she’d done him and she started talking away at me, more than with me. My understanding of the language she spoke was still a little rusty but I could get the gist of it.

What made me pause was when she heaved this dramatic sigh and said that she hadn’t had a friend in some two hundred years or so. Charles rolled his eyes, giving me this ‘ignore her’ sort of look and I went with it because I really didn’t know what to make of her and that behaviour. It was strange to me. I’d grown up in a family where affection wasn’t exactly easily given so that was something else as well.

There have been other people like Amelia that I’ve met along the way but she’s the only one who still spends time about. The only one who still treats me like I’m a normal human being and not just Charles’s chauffeur and his bodyguard. I’m more than that but, to most people, that’s not something they’re aware of. I don’t mind, it keeps him safer when people think I’m just someone he hired to drive him around and keep him safe.

That’s not to say we haven’t walked in the park while holding hands or that we haven’t gone to dinner together though we don’t do that often. I think both of us prefer to stay at home when it comes to eating and as far as walks in the park are concerned, we’ll settle for cuddling on the couch while watching a quiet movie.

It’s still a little strange to me, how this world seems to work. I don’t mean this in a bad way, though, I don’t. It’s still just so different. I came from a place that almost felt like it was on the edge of civilization, we didn’t see cars very often, people still made use of mules and the clip-clop of their steps in the streets are things I grew up with. I know that just a short distance away, there was a ‘proper’ city that I could have escaped to but it still isn’t the same as this place. It isn’t the same as all the places I’ve gone with him while he was on the road, going from concert hall to concert hall and playing for all those who had come to listen.

There are strange people out there in the world indeed but at times, I think that to some, I might just be the strange one.

You’d think you’d quit after the first twenty failures.

Timeline/World: Story: Sound
Characters: Pedro Coelho
Race: Human
Age: 25
Final Word Count: 564 words

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If there’s one thing I’ve always had a hard time doing is quitting. Dropping anything or stopping, even if I know it’ll take me forever and a day to get through it. I’m just that stubborn type and it has helped get me where I am now in life and without that I know I still would be home, in a small poor village, trying to make a living for myself and not really managing much of anything but here I am now, travelling the world with Charles. Playing driver and mock bodyguard for him when we’re out and about and to get him from his hotel room to the places he’ll play, I love it.

He’s been trying to teach me to play the piano, however. He’s been trying on and off for the better part of the time we’ve been together and I can’t learn. It’s one of those things that I can’t manage, no matter how much I much try to. My fingers are just too coordinated, in a way. I can play a simple one-handed melody but when it comes to trying to play anything with two hands? I fail so spectacularly that I could make a grown man cry, I’m sure.

I asked him why he keeps on trying to teach me, if it had been anyone else, they’d have stopped trying long ago, considering me an absolute failure but he still tries. I know he does it because he loves music, he loves playing it and listening to it being played and he’s so patient I could weep. He shrugged, told me that he was doing it because he could, because he wanted to and because it was interesting to see me try my best and I do give it my all every single time he tells me it’s ‘lesson time.’

He makes me smile, he makes me laugh, he makes my heart soar and he makes me wish to spend the rest of eternity at his side and that’s how I see how future. It was a lucky encounter that got us together and his perseverance that got us physically closer to one another instead of halfway across the globe from one another and I love him for it. I know I would have still been at home, trying to save extra money to meet up with him if it hadn’t been for him doing his best to get us together in any way possible.

That he holds my heart in his hand does not change anything. Even if he didn’t, I know I would worship him. He deserves someone who reminds him that he’s human but that he’s wonderful that he’s talented beyond compare, that he’s the stuff of wishful thinking and that no one will ever come close to being as good as him. Oh I know, all of it sounds like the rambling of someone who’s oh so absolutely in love with the guy and I am. I’m in love with him and I’ve been for years, I don’t care of everyone thinks I’m a sort of rambling idiot when it comes to him because all that matters in my life is being at his side. Seeing him smile, hearing him laugh, sing and play.

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.