Empty swimming pools ✓

27. Dead boys

It should have lasted longer, he snorted enough to get him through the concert. The stage doesn't comfort him, it makes him more depressed. The stage is the place where Lennon sings all the songs he wrote about him. It all comes back when he sings them. And now when William is back in London, so close to him, when William touched his skin back in the tattoo shop, when William looked like the sun when he smiled... When William is getting married and once and for all is out of Lennon's life. Then it gets even harder to sing all the songs on a stage.

He steps into the center of the stage, noise ear-shattering. The clicking of Sam's drum sticks in the back. He swallows thickly. Thousands of souls in front of his aching one. Scared, sad, hopeless, lost soul.

He sings.

He is on an auto pilot, one song fades into the next. It's a blur. Until he sees William's face in the crowd.

He must be imagining it at this point. It's the drugs, he got it bad. It hits him then, he wants to sing him that song. If William really is here, Lennon wants to sing it to him, remind him of it. He motions to his acoustic guitar and one of the roadies hurriedly gives it to him. Nate and Jorja exchange questioning looks but Lennon walks back to his microphone and is searching for William's face in the crowd again. He can't see him anymore. He could be there, he is the head of the record label.

The crowd cheers, they are impatient for him to start. Lennon is looking at that same spot, he has no choice but to sing. He shakily begins, his fingers trembling. His face is completely unguarded, features soft when he sings that one song that he wrote on the night that William left. It's the first time, he has never performed it live. Every once and a while his hands would move from the guitar strings, fingers drawing shapes into the air and lightly gliding up to the microphone. The music strips every barrier, every carefully constructed wall he usually likes to hide behind, until it's just him, delicate and vulnerable and achingly lovely.

He sees William again. Then his voice cracks at the last word, realising his face is wet with tears. He blinks into the bright stage lights a few times, looking dazed and disoriented.

The applause and roars that follow is deafening. He clutches the microphone tightly and utters a quiet Thank you before he hastily leaves the stage and rushes back into his dressing room.

*

When he gets out of bed the next day he feels like he got run over by a bus, which makes sense since, he only fell asleep around 7 in the morning when he finally swallowed sleeping pills.

He knows he fucked up last night, he left the stage crying before the set was even finished. Manager and the rest of the band found him in the dressing room, rummaging through his stuff, trying to find another fix.

He couldn't find any. Fuck.

They talked about it, not mentioning that he is desperate for some uppers, or downers - not picky, he told them he is sorry and that it won't happen again. Jorja and Sam took him home afterwards even though he really wanted to be alone. He was actually planning on calling Tinie in order to pick up something that will make him better.

He leaves his bedroom after he puts some clothes on and walks towards the kitchen. Jorja is there, eating cereal. Even though they all own their own houses and flats they are still so close that they hang around each other places often, coming in and going out without question unless someone specifically says that they're having a hook up or a family member over. But Lennon never invites his hook ups to his home anyway, even before, when he actually did hook up. And Lennon doesn't have a family.

Walking over the sunshine draped across the tiles of his kitchen floor, he sits down on a high chair, burying his face in his hands. For some reason he feels like he is about to cry, like everything he has been bottling up is just going to overflow any second. She is silent for what feels like eternity, but he can feel her eyes on him. Then she sinks down onto the chair next to him.