AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Please please try to get through the summary ish thing at the beginning. It's relevant, I promise. And kind of scary.
Really, you guys didn't guess this yet?
***
In 1931, a silent, moody baby was born to the O’Hanlon family. His name was Marcus. He grew up in a sort of chill grey fog that didn’t protect him from the world around him. Perhaps he was a dreamer; it didn’t last for very long. The world rose in steel and crumbling buildings around him, and the days ahead didn’t look promising. Whatever fire was in him that might have gone down but didn’t go down a better path sought an outlet. The boy seemed quiet at home, but all that quiet shivered into energy on the inside that crawled around in staticky coils erupting into lightning. The shouts, sobs, yells, or questions died within his racing heart as he ran down the street away from the hot metallic flames. He buried the matches with cold small hands and broke into a neighbor’s car, found by the police huddled inside the flame-heated metal frame of the car, hands pressed to the window as he watched his house erased into hungry orange and red and finally charred dust. The police could have cared less. Marcus, a little on the other side of the law, belligerently asked if he could live on his own. He distanced himself from the family that took him in and worked odd jobs to stay away from home. Something about their concern bothered him. He was polite enough, then hostile, then left when he was no longer required by law to stay with them. His aunt suspected something was up with him. Not what that might be, but the alternate hardness that came over his face and at other times the uncharacteristic vulnerability put her on edge, the speed with which his emotions changed. She had no chance to figure out anything; he only stayed with them for a brief flash of a time.
Marcus, little older than a boy, began to realize the older, toughened men and women he worked with were hiding something. Perhaps because Marcus, with a decent home, school he avoided, and life away from the worst of the city, was better off than them. Perhaps because he was a kid. They hid very similar things, both parties realized. Marcus spent some of his time off work fiddling around with scrap metal and gasoline. “They’re not for an’thing specific,” he yelled when his suspicious behavior nearly got him caught. The boy was honest enough. Nearly. His eyes were just a little shifty, and he had grown aggressive, roughened by something. Not work, not home, something else.
He seemed normal enough for his life, through his 30s. Never deliberately got into fights, not that he would admit. He confessed to what he had to. Most stayed hidden. He hung around Belfast for a few years, curious, recognizing a few of the people he knew. Someone had caught on that this kid was making bombs for no good reason, or so it appeared. Perhaps to take advantage of him, perhaps not. A sharp curiosity began. Did they want what he wanted? He didn’t have a particular outlet. He looked away while they meddled with the explosives, got caught for planting petrol bombs in British cars. Explosives went off in buses, in gutters, quietly fizzling in the chill rain outside a bar he was kicked out of. It died down. In his normal life, where he was clearly labeled with the clinical detached precision of society: Marcus O’Hanlon, middle-class, 25, passing good-looking, bit of a temper, he continued on like nothing had happened, reaching desperately back to that time he thought he could be good. He was just Marcus, on this side of the law, engaged already, spending his time with his fiancée who became his wife, trudging off to work without complaint in the daylight without complaints, oiling the wheels of the system. He scoffed at the news with sometimes a wonder in his eyes like a flashbulb beginning to dim. Even when his son was born, the fire burned on in unsteady whispers.
He wasn’t part of the IRA. He never really had been. But in 1979, something changed. The line blurred between the old Marcus and the new in the haze of ash. He felt himself slipping, slipping back. He was running back to the past, to a place where his son was alive. The new Marcus died. The old one stood outside the Black Cat with a smile playing on the corner of his mouth, his heart pounding, his head screaming as he looked down into the street at his son’s battered body. He knelt down and turned Isaac over so his eyes didn’t stare the way they did, so the blood crusting thick over so much of his face was no longer visible. Onto his stomach, his arm bent. Marcus felt sick, seeing the blood clotted at the back of Isaac’s head, feeling his fingers sink into that broken place, then pulling them away. The bone had dented, felt a little sharp.
He picked his son up roughly so he was slung across his arms. Marcus was struck still for a moment, firmly planted into now. He didn’t give a shit who had done this. The bastard had probably deserved it. But he felt himself…again…slipping. He looked down, eyes seeing over and over again that blood on the side of his son’s face. He began walking, then realized he wasn’t sure where he was going. A thin rain started to fall, masking Marcus in hazy obscurity, pinpoints of raindrops. Marcus laughed in relieved pain, realizing he was walking to the house of a man he knew and avoided who was still in the IRA. Halfway there he stopped dead still in the middle of the street. Had he heard something?
Isaac opened an eyelid in a squint and groaned. “M’head feels like shit,” it might have been. Mostly unintelligible.
Marcus began to turn back, unable to look at that face moving. A few steps later, he changed his mind and went the way he’d been going.
The newspaper a few days later proclaimed quietly in small neat print by the back of the obituaries, FEBRUARY 22 1979. A MAN IDENTIFIED AS AODAN ISAAC O’HANLON died sometime February 21st from a severe blow to the head, rendering his face unrecognizable. The bartender of the Black Cat, Seamus Fairleigh, identified him and said Aodan had been in a fight. The culprit could not be identified. It has been determined that Aodan died from a fall to the street. No evidence of foul play. The 22-year old man was unmarried, with no children and one parent alive.
There was still a chance, Marcus thought, reading the newspaper at the back of a bar, glancing around guiltily, that someone would figure out what had happened. No-one had asked around for the other young man who had been substituted. He chose not to know the other’s name and preferred to believe the man had already been dead, or headed there anyway.
But they needed to leave. Just in case. He couldn’t stop the little hitches in his glances, the shakiness in his speech. His palms were sweating like mad. He wasn’t used to this. He wished he had a lighter with him, but he knew those days were over. Or they had been. Someone would know. Someone would see through the ruse. He couldn’t stay safe here. Isaac couldn’t stay safe here.
And Seamus…he could use Seamus. Seamus Fairleigh knew very little about Marcus, and that was best. He’d know a little more before this was over. The man still thought well of Isaac, mistakenly. Seamus had been absent when Isaac did his worst. Anything Seamus knew, he’d keep silent. Marcus would make sure of it.
He could hear Seamus at the back of the Black Cat, saying something to Isaac. As if he wasn’t Marcus’ son at all. Marcus shook his head, went back, discarding the newspaper after carefully turning it away from the page he’d been looking at. Seamus looked up. Isaac couldn’t; his eyes were clouded. A mass of gauze peeked from beneath a hat someone had stuffed onto his head. Not to cause alarm, or suspicion, had been the reason.
The eyes shifted, focused onto him a little. Could he see? Marcus wondered with a yanking sort of disgust. The irises looked blank, opaque as sky. Isaac kept his eyes open, not squinting in pain like he should be. It was a hell of a concussion at least. Marcus didn’t want to think brain damage or anything else, though that whispered at the back of his mind. No, for now Isaac was high as a kite on whatever pain medication had been given to him to stitch his head shut. Marcus inwardly steeled himself for the pain that would come.
His son tilted his head. No, Marcus realized, narrowing his eyes, those eyes were calculating even in the painfree haze. Isaac whispered a monosyllabic name into Marcus’ ear, and Marcus jerked back, stared at him.
Why did the boy hope still? The stupidest thing to think. That someone could stay in love with him.
Marcus looked down into the haziness again, swallowing, thinking Now would not be the time to mention…the shards of that one brief love of his own, the passing notion that was his wife, being nothing more than having convinced himself she loved him back. Love didn’t work in this family. It was a ridiculous, impossible thought that it ever could.
But there was someone else going to America who wasn’t there already, Marcus knew, if he was right about what would happen. He proclaimed to both men, “We’re leaving Dublin.”
Seamus’ stare was accusing. The hell would they leave Dublin? “And go to where?” the man laughed bitterly. “Belfast? Fuck no. It would be even worse there. They’d turn on you. You need to stop assuming your friends are going to stay your friends after something like this. You might’a gotten one of their kids, you never know.”
So he did know more than he seemed to…Marcus squelched his anger down.
“No,” he said, thoughts racing across sky. “America.” No word in response from the other direction, but a narrowing and widening of the eyes that must mean yes.
**
Santa Barbara at this point was colder than it should be, low and sharply bright with the streetlights and the shiny windows of the shops or houses dark and closed. The palm trees huddled and scraped against the sky, and this street seemed to stretch on forever. How many blocks did it have to be before a restaurant, really?
Ali fell into an easy, exhausted silence, leaning on Adam as they walked in search of food. She let him take over and direct her wherever they were going, though occasionally she had to be yanked out of traffic if she crossed the street too soon or late. Even with nothing open, it was busy here…The tiredness had set in a few minutes after they started walking; she no longer felt enervated by the confusion and hurt Bono had given her, just small and weary. It felt like he’d kicked her out onto the street.
“Come on, love,” Adam said, tugging her inside a building that had lights that flickered the obvious message of OPEN, on the window. She looked up and fell back into the world, let herself be guided over to a table far from the window and the clutter of outside, and caught her breath, remembering she was starving.
She looked down at the menu, the words swimming before her, not really wanting the bassist to see her in this state. Too late, obviously. She ordered the first thing on the menu and leaned against the wall, looking at the other people in the restaurant and feeling…nothing. Then a growing consternation.
“This place is way too…too…” she gestured at some of the women wearing dresses. “I look terrible,” Ali winced, and ducked beneath her menu as if to disappear.
“They’re too busy looking at their reflections to look at you,” he pointed out, and removed her menu from in front of her face, handing it to the waiter. She didn’t look to see if he was right, just looked at the wineglass of water in front of her, the ice clinking about. She was tired. A little of the exhaustion lifted, but only made her notice she felt terrible. Ali sighed and covertly as she could, put her head in her hands.
“After I leave,” she said into her palms, “can you or one of the others tell me if anyone finds Ciarán?” She looked up. “And if Bon’s alright.” She added more quietly, “and if he’s with…” Adam shook his head as a no to that suspicion. “I doubt it,” he said. “Really.”
She attacked her food when it came, so as to avoid further conversation. It just felt awkward. Not Adam’s fault, but everything that had been going on. And she was starving. She hardly noticed what she ate. Even the roof of her mouth to her eyeballs freezing from the speed she gulped the water felt good. Anything but curling up into a little ball and crying over Bono. Or Ciarán’s absense. They both hurt so much she wasn’t sure where one hurt ended and one began. If she’d had just one of them with, it would have made the other loss bearable…no, not that. Tolerable. If she gritted her teeth and learned to deal with it.
“Shouldn’t you be with your girlfriend?” Ali asked Adam suspiciously after he paid the bill. It felt bad that she’d just eaten her way through her meal and half of his at a place like this. Adam looked up, startled. “We broke up,” he said shortly, then winced at that reminder of what she had just been through. “C’mon. You’ll want to drive back before it gets too late, or I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to Bon as to why you’re in the hotel still.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Was that supposed to sound dirty?” she asked with disbelieving exhaustion.
Adam groaned. “Sorry. It just slips out of my mouth.”
She swatted him, but grabbed his arm when they walked back. Really, she was glad he wasn’t his usual flirtatious self. That would be unbearable. Ali looked out past the car exhaust hissing across the road beyond the sidewalk they walked on, the hiss of cars on the highway audible behind it. The night looked cold and altogether miserable. Better than seeing Bono again, though. She was messed up enough by now. She could drive back in one night…she could.
They finally reached the hotel, where her car was parked outside, and she shivered at the entrance of the parking lot, trying to figure out where her car was in the sea of others. She glanced bleakly over at the hotel, having second thoughts. Adam, next to her, had unreadable eyes. He was tugging at her waist and she made a sound of confusion until she realized he was untying her coat from there. He handed it to her. “Don’t freeze,” Adam said reproachfully, his eyes suddenly much more distant sparks. “And please don’t crash.”
“I’ll try not to,” Ali said unhappily, looking back at the highway. If there were only some other hotel open, or this city was goddamned bigger…
She shoved frozen arms through thick coat sleeves determinedly, swallowing hard. The bassist’s hands were on her shoulders, and he hugged her briefly. She frowned, looking up at him in question. What was…her thoughts were stilled by the look in his eyes that knocked her off her feet before he even pulled her closer. Adam just looked at her for a moment with a world of sadness, brushing his thumb across the side of her face, and she couldn’t move. The look in his eyes intense as a kiss, as they leaned against each other, the cold air thick around them. Her heart thudded in surprise and outrage and she abruptly stepped away.
“Oh god,” Ali whispered even though nothing had happened. This wasn’t right. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to meet his eyes, so confused. Her coat fell to one shoulder. Because her eyes were focused on the wet blackness of the night, she saw the even more surprised little flutter of white from her coat pocket. She picked it up automatically, turning back to face him despite herself, then leaned hard against the nearest car.
He must have seen her expression. Of course. Adam was perceptive of late. “What is it?” he asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
Wordlessly she handed him the newspaper clipping she hadn’t seen for eight years, since Eve gave it to her with hardly a word of explanation.
“That’s from years ago,” Adam began. “And in Belfast, for Christ’s sake. So?”
Ali just shook her head. The night, so cool and protecting before, spun off its careful axis. She felt hot and out of place.
Without a word, she ran back to the hotel entrance. Just as she reached the door she realized the problem before her. When she looked to the side there Adam was. Shit. Well. Maybe he’d make it easier.
“What room…” she asked him breathlessly, face still white. He caught on completely, with surprise, and told her. She climbed the stairs two at a time, icy adrenaline overtaking her soul in pieces, the fight all but forgotten. Adam hung back in the lobby, shaking his head to himself. He should have just stayed, he thought. But he hadn’t been able to take the look in her eyes. That was probably a problem.
She didn’t knock on the door; it was open. She pushed it open completely. Bono sat at the end of the bed, looking like hell, she noticed a little angrily. He had no right to…mentally she told herself to shut up. That didn’t matter.
He looked up when she came in. His voice tore at her. “Ali,” he acknowledged painfully. His hair falling over his collarbone, the look in his eyes that made her want to slap him or kiss him…he sat a little bent over as if he could not support himself, his eyes still heavy from reflection. Hating himself. His fingers brushed a thick shot glass that was empty. He stood up immediately. His eyes weren’t how she expected; he just looked…lost. It hurt.
She knew she’d have to deal with this at some point. She just hadn’t expected for it to be so soon. Ali bit her lip, the pain raw again clenching around her organs, and blinked back sudden angry tears. Bono came forward and opened his mouth, but she pushed him away, her hand lingering on his warm bare chest.
“No,” Ali said with the force of tears. “Don’t—don’t move.” She was still pissed as hell at him, but his eyes…bastard. She deliberately looked away from him and refused to acknowledge his hand on her shoulder, his fingers tentatively trailing through her hair. The little catch in his breathing that meant he must have been crying. Him. Crying.
While she was angry at him, it did calm her down. He had been shocked out of the almost apathy towards her. She fumbled through her pockets for the small square of printed words, and thrust it at him. He gave her a long look and took it.
“There were always fires,” Bono said a little sadly, in that way he had. “Always bombs, always something. It felt so unreal.” So removed from his life. He’d known all of that had gone on, but it felt so far away at the time. “Why this one?” She had the feeling he wasn’t talking about the one he’d just seen on paper, in words.
“Eve,” Ali said shortly, finding it hard to speak with him around, though still fired up by the adrenaline overpowering her exhaustion. Somehow it just intensified her confusion. “Eve gave me this eight years ago, and said you and Lar and the rest should stay away from the boy Ruth was seeing. Do you remember?”
He narrowed his eyes in frozen memory.
“Why would it matter now, you might ask?” Ali gulped, eyes darting away from his chest and then his face. Being near him still tore nails through her. Her voice had a high-pitched edge to it, probably from everything earlier. Not quite turning to hysteria. She was still trying to keep the tears back, or keep from falling into his arms. “Why would this be anything important to remember now?”
She looked at him, into his eyes until she saw the understanding dawn in a panic in the blue.
“Eve suspected something. And you were all in the building when the fire happened. It’s like—it’s like it would have been…”
“I wasn’t in Belfast on that day,” Bono said, shaking his head.
“No, but Ruth was,” Ali cried in frustration. “Don’t you see it, Bon?” Her voice lowered as she finally took him in, his sad sorry state, the gentleness in his eyes she wasn’t sure she could take. The way he still held himself apart from her, but only because she had asked him to. It pulled at the back of her ribs silently, stitching together the jagged wounds into something a little more bearable. She still couldn’t look at his face without falling apart, though.
“It was him, both times.” Her eyes held his with desperate convinction.
Bono shook his head, his voice a whisper. “I don’t know, Ali,” he said in deep thought, and turned back eyes to her, almost afraid. “There’s so much that would have to be wrong to make that right.”
“We don’t know everything,” she pressed, “but why else would it fit together so well…”
He shook his head. “You may be right about some of it. They might be connected. It’s a very small chance.” He winced. “We can’t do anything more about it until we know.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. She was left looking at him with no obstruction. The similar conviction in his eyes, the desperate calm. She bit her lip again, unable to turn away. Her lip burned.
“I’m driving back home,” Ali said quietly, stepping away. His hand fell from her face.
Her heart ached and thudded when he didn’t reply, as she turned and began to walk away, but he spoke.
“Ali.” His voice rent through with pain. Deeper than when he had sung it into words.
He’s fucked up, Ali, he fucked up badly…her mind whispered to keep from turning around.
But…but he…
He had come up behind her. His hand on the back of her arm, feather-light. She could feel his breath when he spoke. Whispered.
“Ali, stay. Please. Please, love.”
She turned around and met his eyes, seeing something of what she felt. Like the world was ending and couldn’t stand up on its own. Or not the world, just herself. And the world going on fine. Their lives had gone out of control while life around them resumed.
“We have to get him back,” Paul Hewson said in the quietest voice she had ever heard, and would probably never hear again. The tears finally came when he slowly wrapped his arms around her, his hands holding her from falling down into the abyss the world spun closer and closer to. She held him tightly and let all her sadness spill out onto him and away. His face still looked pained, when they let go of each other at last. He was spilling strings of words that were painfully apologetic truth.
“I don’t,” Ali whispered. “I don’t forgive you.” The tears were cool now on her cheeks. He looked at her in sad acceptance, let her pull away if she wanted to. “I love you,” she added fiercely. “No matter what you do wrong. It hurts like hell, but that’s the truth.”
He kissed the tears away from her eyes, kissed the aching sadness from her mouth. She stole his explanations away, though one lingered in her head as they removed tearstained clothes and settled into each other’s bodies.
I love you not her you you are all I want
All I want is you, Ali
you.
Really, you guys didn't guess this yet?
***
"You say you'll give me
A highway with no one on it
Treasure just to look upon it
All the riches in the night
You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbor in the tempest
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you"
—U2, "All I Want Is You"
A highway with no one on it
Treasure just to look upon it
All the riches in the night
You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbor in the tempest
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you"
—U2, "All I Want Is You"
1979
In 1931, a silent, moody baby was born to the O’Hanlon family. His name was Marcus. He grew up in a sort of chill grey fog that didn’t protect him from the world around him. Perhaps he was a dreamer; it didn’t last for very long. The world rose in steel and crumbling buildings around him, and the days ahead didn’t look promising. Whatever fire was in him that might have gone down but didn’t go down a better path sought an outlet. The boy seemed quiet at home, but all that quiet shivered into energy on the inside that crawled around in staticky coils erupting into lightning. The shouts, sobs, yells, or questions died within his racing heart as he ran down the street away from the hot metallic flames. He buried the matches with cold small hands and broke into a neighbor’s car, found by the police huddled inside the flame-heated metal frame of the car, hands pressed to the window as he watched his house erased into hungry orange and red and finally charred dust. The police could have cared less. Marcus, a little on the other side of the law, belligerently asked if he could live on his own. He distanced himself from the family that took him in and worked odd jobs to stay away from home. Something about their concern bothered him. He was polite enough, then hostile, then left when he was no longer required by law to stay with them. His aunt suspected something was up with him. Not what that might be, but the alternate hardness that came over his face and at other times the uncharacteristic vulnerability put her on edge, the speed with which his emotions changed. She had no chance to figure out anything; he only stayed with them for a brief flash of a time.
Marcus, little older than a boy, began to realize the older, toughened men and women he worked with were hiding something. Perhaps because Marcus, with a decent home, school he avoided, and life away from the worst of the city, was better off than them. Perhaps because he was a kid. They hid very similar things, both parties realized. Marcus spent some of his time off work fiddling around with scrap metal and gasoline. “They’re not for an’thing specific,” he yelled when his suspicious behavior nearly got him caught. The boy was honest enough. Nearly. His eyes were just a little shifty, and he had grown aggressive, roughened by something. Not work, not home, something else.
He seemed normal enough for his life, through his 30s. Never deliberately got into fights, not that he would admit. He confessed to what he had to. Most stayed hidden. He hung around Belfast for a few years, curious, recognizing a few of the people he knew. Someone had caught on that this kid was making bombs for no good reason, or so it appeared. Perhaps to take advantage of him, perhaps not. A sharp curiosity began. Did they want what he wanted? He didn’t have a particular outlet. He looked away while they meddled with the explosives, got caught for planting petrol bombs in British cars. Explosives went off in buses, in gutters, quietly fizzling in the chill rain outside a bar he was kicked out of. It died down. In his normal life, where he was clearly labeled with the clinical detached precision of society: Marcus O’Hanlon, middle-class, 25, passing good-looking, bit of a temper, he continued on like nothing had happened, reaching desperately back to that time he thought he could be good. He was just Marcus, on this side of the law, engaged already, spending his time with his fiancée who became his wife, trudging off to work without complaint in the daylight without complaints, oiling the wheels of the system. He scoffed at the news with sometimes a wonder in his eyes like a flashbulb beginning to dim. Even when his son was born, the fire burned on in unsteady whispers.
He wasn’t part of the IRA. He never really had been. But in 1979, something changed. The line blurred between the old Marcus and the new in the haze of ash. He felt himself slipping, slipping back. He was running back to the past, to a place where his son was alive. The new Marcus died. The old one stood outside the Black Cat with a smile playing on the corner of his mouth, his heart pounding, his head screaming as he looked down into the street at his son’s battered body. He knelt down and turned Isaac over so his eyes didn’t stare the way they did, so the blood crusting thick over so much of his face was no longer visible. Onto his stomach, his arm bent. Marcus felt sick, seeing the blood clotted at the back of Isaac’s head, feeling his fingers sink into that broken place, then pulling them away. The bone had dented, felt a little sharp.
He picked his son up roughly so he was slung across his arms. Marcus was struck still for a moment, firmly planted into now. He didn’t give a shit who had done this. The bastard had probably deserved it. But he felt himself…again…slipping. He looked down, eyes seeing over and over again that blood on the side of his son’s face. He began walking, then realized he wasn’t sure where he was going. A thin rain started to fall, masking Marcus in hazy obscurity, pinpoints of raindrops. Marcus laughed in relieved pain, realizing he was walking to the house of a man he knew and avoided who was still in the IRA. Halfway there he stopped dead still in the middle of the street. Had he heard something?
Isaac opened an eyelid in a squint and groaned. “M’head feels like shit,” it might have been. Mostly unintelligible.
Marcus began to turn back, unable to look at that face moving. A few steps later, he changed his mind and went the way he’d been going.
The newspaper a few days later proclaimed quietly in small neat print by the back of the obituaries, FEBRUARY 22 1979. A MAN IDENTIFIED AS AODAN ISAAC O’HANLON died sometime February 21st from a severe blow to the head, rendering his face unrecognizable. The bartender of the Black Cat, Seamus Fairleigh, identified him and said Aodan had been in a fight. The culprit could not be identified. It has been determined that Aodan died from a fall to the street. No evidence of foul play. The 22-year old man was unmarried, with no children and one parent alive.
There was still a chance, Marcus thought, reading the newspaper at the back of a bar, glancing around guiltily, that someone would figure out what had happened. No-one had asked around for the other young man who had been substituted. He chose not to know the other’s name and preferred to believe the man had already been dead, or headed there anyway.
But they needed to leave. Just in case. He couldn’t stop the little hitches in his glances, the shakiness in his speech. His palms were sweating like mad. He wasn’t used to this. He wished he had a lighter with him, but he knew those days were over. Or they had been. Someone would know. Someone would see through the ruse. He couldn’t stay safe here. Isaac couldn’t stay safe here.
And Seamus…he could use Seamus. Seamus Fairleigh knew very little about Marcus, and that was best. He’d know a little more before this was over. The man still thought well of Isaac, mistakenly. Seamus had been absent when Isaac did his worst. Anything Seamus knew, he’d keep silent. Marcus would make sure of it.
He could hear Seamus at the back of the Black Cat, saying something to Isaac. As if he wasn’t Marcus’ son at all. Marcus shook his head, went back, discarding the newspaper after carefully turning it away from the page he’d been looking at. Seamus looked up. Isaac couldn’t; his eyes were clouded. A mass of gauze peeked from beneath a hat someone had stuffed onto his head. Not to cause alarm, or suspicion, had been the reason.
The eyes shifted, focused onto him a little. Could he see? Marcus wondered with a yanking sort of disgust. The irises looked blank, opaque as sky. Isaac kept his eyes open, not squinting in pain like he should be. It was a hell of a concussion at least. Marcus didn’t want to think brain damage or anything else, though that whispered at the back of his mind. No, for now Isaac was high as a kite on whatever pain medication had been given to him to stitch his head shut. Marcus inwardly steeled himself for the pain that would come.
His son tilted his head. No, Marcus realized, narrowing his eyes, those eyes were calculating even in the painfree haze. Isaac whispered a monosyllabic name into Marcus’ ear, and Marcus jerked back, stared at him.
Why did the boy hope still? The stupidest thing to think. That someone could stay in love with him.
Marcus looked down into the haziness again, swallowing, thinking Now would not be the time to mention…the shards of that one brief love of his own, the passing notion that was his wife, being nothing more than having convinced himself she loved him back. Love didn’t work in this family. It was a ridiculous, impossible thought that it ever could.
But there was someone else going to America who wasn’t there already, Marcus knew, if he was right about what would happen. He proclaimed to both men, “We’re leaving Dublin.”
Seamus’ stare was accusing. The hell would they leave Dublin? “And go to where?” the man laughed bitterly. “Belfast? Fuck no. It would be even worse there. They’d turn on you. You need to stop assuming your friends are going to stay your friends after something like this. You might’a gotten one of their kids, you never know.”
So he did know more than he seemed to…Marcus squelched his anger down.
“No,” he said, thoughts racing across sky. “America.” No word in response from the other direction, but a narrowing and widening of the eyes that must mean yes.
**
1986
Santa Barbara at this point was colder than it should be, low and sharply bright with the streetlights and the shiny windows of the shops or houses dark and closed. The palm trees huddled and scraped against the sky, and this street seemed to stretch on forever. How many blocks did it have to be before a restaurant, really?
Ali fell into an easy, exhausted silence, leaning on Adam as they walked in search of food. She let him take over and direct her wherever they were going, though occasionally she had to be yanked out of traffic if she crossed the street too soon or late. Even with nothing open, it was busy here…The tiredness had set in a few minutes after they started walking; she no longer felt enervated by the confusion and hurt Bono had given her, just small and weary. It felt like he’d kicked her out onto the street.
“Come on, love,” Adam said, tugging her inside a building that had lights that flickered the obvious message of OPEN, on the window. She looked up and fell back into the world, let herself be guided over to a table far from the window and the clutter of outside, and caught her breath, remembering she was starving.
She looked down at the menu, the words swimming before her, not really wanting the bassist to see her in this state. Too late, obviously. She ordered the first thing on the menu and leaned against the wall, looking at the other people in the restaurant and feeling…nothing. Then a growing consternation.
“This place is way too…too…” she gestured at some of the women wearing dresses. “I look terrible,” Ali winced, and ducked beneath her menu as if to disappear.
“They’re too busy looking at their reflections to look at you,” he pointed out, and removed her menu from in front of her face, handing it to the waiter. She didn’t look to see if he was right, just looked at the wineglass of water in front of her, the ice clinking about. She was tired. A little of the exhaustion lifted, but only made her notice she felt terrible. Ali sighed and covertly as she could, put her head in her hands.
“After I leave,” she said into her palms, “can you or one of the others tell me if anyone finds Ciarán?” She looked up. “And if Bon’s alright.” She added more quietly, “and if he’s with…” Adam shook his head as a no to that suspicion. “I doubt it,” he said. “Really.”
She attacked her food when it came, so as to avoid further conversation. It just felt awkward. Not Adam’s fault, but everything that had been going on. And she was starving. She hardly noticed what she ate. Even the roof of her mouth to her eyeballs freezing from the speed she gulped the water felt good. Anything but curling up into a little ball and crying over Bono. Or Ciarán’s absense. They both hurt so much she wasn’t sure where one hurt ended and one began. If she’d had just one of them with, it would have made the other loss bearable…no, not that. Tolerable. If she gritted her teeth and learned to deal with it.
“Shouldn’t you be with your girlfriend?” Ali asked Adam suspiciously after he paid the bill. It felt bad that she’d just eaten her way through her meal and half of his at a place like this. Adam looked up, startled. “We broke up,” he said shortly, then winced at that reminder of what she had just been through. “C’mon. You’ll want to drive back before it gets too late, or I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to Bon as to why you’re in the hotel still.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Was that supposed to sound dirty?” she asked with disbelieving exhaustion.
Adam groaned. “Sorry. It just slips out of my mouth.”
She swatted him, but grabbed his arm when they walked back. Really, she was glad he wasn’t his usual flirtatious self. That would be unbearable. Ali looked out past the car exhaust hissing across the road beyond the sidewalk they walked on, the hiss of cars on the highway audible behind it. The night looked cold and altogether miserable. Better than seeing Bono again, though. She was messed up enough by now. She could drive back in one night…she could.
They finally reached the hotel, where her car was parked outside, and she shivered at the entrance of the parking lot, trying to figure out where her car was in the sea of others. She glanced bleakly over at the hotel, having second thoughts. Adam, next to her, had unreadable eyes. He was tugging at her waist and she made a sound of confusion until she realized he was untying her coat from there. He handed it to her. “Don’t freeze,” Adam said reproachfully, his eyes suddenly much more distant sparks. “And please don’t crash.”
“I’ll try not to,” Ali said unhappily, looking back at the highway. If there were only some other hotel open, or this city was goddamned bigger…
She shoved frozen arms through thick coat sleeves determinedly, swallowing hard. The bassist’s hands were on her shoulders, and he hugged her briefly. She frowned, looking up at him in question. What was…her thoughts were stilled by the look in his eyes that knocked her off her feet before he even pulled her closer. Adam just looked at her for a moment with a world of sadness, brushing his thumb across the side of her face, and she couldn’t move. The look in his eyes intense as a kiss, as they leaned against each other, the cold air thick around them. Her heart thudded in surprise and outrage and she abruptly stepped away.
“Oh god,” Ali whispered even though nothing had happened. This wasn’t right. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to meet his eyes, so confused. Her coat fell to one shoulder. Because her eyes were focused on the wet blackness of the night, she saw the even more surprised little flutter of white from her coat pocket. She picked it up automatically, turning back to face him despite herself, then leaned hard against the nearest car.
He must have seen her expression. Of course. Adam was perceptive of late. “What is it?” he asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
Wordlessly she handed him the newspaper clipping she hadn’t seen for eight years, since Eve gave it to her with hardly a word of explanation.
“That’s from years ago,” Adam began. “And in Belfast, for Christ’s sake. So?”
Ali just shook her head. The night, so cool and protecting before, spun off its careful axis. She felt hot and out of place.
Without a word, she ran back to the hotel entrance. Just as she reached the door she realized the problem before her. When she looked to the side there Adam was. Shit. Well. Maybe he’d make it easier.
“What room…” she asked him breathlessly, face still white. He caught on completely, with surprise, and told her. She climbed the stairs two at a time, icy adrenaline overtaking her soul in pieces, the fight all but forgotten. Adam hung back in the lobby, shaking his head to himself. He should have just stayed, he thought. But he hadn’t been able to take the look in her eyes. That was probably a problem.
She didn’t knock on the door; it was open. She pushed it open completely. Bono sat at the end of the bed, looking like hell, she noticed a little angrily. He had no right to…mentally she told herself to shut up. That didn’t matter.
He looked up when she came in. His voice tore at her. “Ali,” he acknowledged painfully. His hair falling over his collarbone, the look in his eyes that made her want to slap him or kiss him…he sat a little bent over as if he could not support himself, his eyes still heavy from reflection. Hating himself. His fingers brushed a thick shot glass that was empty. He stood up immediately. His eyes weren’t how she expected; he just looked…lost. It hurt.
She knew she’d have to deal with this at some point. She just hadn’t expected for it to be so soon. Ali bit her lip, the pain raw again clenching around her organs, and blinked back sudden angry tears. Bono came forward and opened his mouth, but she pushed him away, her hand lingering on his warm bare chest.
“No,” Ali said with the force of tears. “Don’t—don’t move.” She was still pissed as hell at him, but his eyes…bastard. She deliberately looked away from him and refused to acknowledge his hand on her shoulder, his fingers tentatively trailing through her hair. The little catch in his breathing that meant he must have been crying. Him. Crying.
While she was angry at him, it did calm her down. He had been shocked out of the almost apathy towards her. She fumbled through her pockets for the small square of printed words, and thrust it at him. He gave her a long look and took it.
“There were always fires,” Bono said a little sadly, in that way he had. “Always bombs, always something. It felt so unreal.” So removed from his life. He’d known all of that had gone on, but it felt so far away at the time. “Why this one?” She had the feeling he wasn’t talking about the one he’d just seen on paper, in words.
“Eve,” Ali said shortly, finding it hard to speak with him around, though still fired up by the adrenaline overpowering her exhaustion. Somehow it just intensified her confusion. “Eve gave me this eight years ago, and said you and Lar and the rest should stay away from the boy Ruth was seeing. Do you remember?”
He narrowed his eyes in frozen memory.
“Why would it matter now, you might ask?” Ali gulped, eyes darting away from his chest and then his face. Being near him still tore nails through her. Her voice had a high-pitched edge to it, probably from everything earlier. Not quite turning to hysteria. She was still trying to keep the tears back, or keep from falling into his arms. “Why would this be anything important to remember now?”
She looked at him, into his eyes until she saw the understanding dawn in a panic in the blue.
“Eve suspected something. And you were all in the building when the fire happened. It’s like—it’s like it would have been…”
“I wasn’t in Belfast on that day,” Bono said, shaking his head.
“No, but Ruth was,” Ali cried in frustration. “Don’t you see it, Bon?” Her voice lowered as she finally took him in, his sad sorry state, the gentleness in his eyes she wasn’t sure she could take. The way he still held himself apart from her, but only because she had asked him to. It pulled at the back of her ribs silently, stitching together the jagged wounds into something a little more bearable. She still couldn’t look at his face without falling apart, though.
“It was him, both times.” Her eyes held his with desperate convinction.
Bono shook his head, his voice a whisper. “I don’t know, Ali,” he said in deep thought, and turned back eyes to her, almost afraid. “There’s so much that would have to be wrong to make that right.”
“We don’t know everything,” she pressed, “but why else would it fit together so well…”
He shook his head. “You may be right about some of it. They might be connected. It’s a very small chance.” He winced. “We can’t do anything more about it until we know.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. She was left looking at him with no obstruction. The similar conviction in his eyes, the desperate calm. She bit her lip again, unable to turn away. Her lip burned.
“I’m driving back home,” Ali said quietly, stepping away. His hand fell from her face.
Her heart ached and thudded when he didn’t reply, as she turned and began to walk away, but he spoke.
“Ali.” His voice rent through with pain. Deeper than when he had sung it into words.
He’s fucked up, Ali, he fucked up badly…her mind whispered to keep from turning around.
But…but he…
He had come up behind her. His hand on the back of her arm, feather-light. She could feel his breath when he spoke. Whispered.
“Ali, stay. Please. Please, love.”
She turned around and met his eyes, seeing something of what she felt. Like the world was ending and couldn’t stand up on its own. Or not the world, just herself. And the world going on fine. Their lives had gone out of control while life around them resumed.
“We have to get him back,” Paul Hewson said in the quietest voice she had ever heard, and would probably never hear again. The tears finally came when he slowly wrapped his arms around her, his hands holding her from falling down into the abyss the world spun closer and closer to. She held him tightly and let all her sadness spill out onto him and away. His face still looked pained, when they let go of each other at last. He was spilling strings of words that were painfully apologetic truth.
“I don’t,” Ali whispered. “I don’t forgive you.” The tears were cool now on her cheeks. He looked at her in sad acceptance, let her pull away if she wanted to. “I love you,” she added fiercely. “No matter what you do wrong. It hurts like hell, but that’s the truth.”
He kissed the tears away from her eyes, kissed the aching sadness from her mouth. She stole his explanations away, though one lingered in her head as they removed tearstained clothes and settled into each other’s bodies.
I love you not her you you are all I want
All I want is you, Ali
you.
I haven't been mentioning songs enough yet...I keep meaning to mention Exit because it's perfect but I feel like that would interrupt the flow or something.
Okay, that should be enough. I'm surprised at how they can record an album after all THIS... (and then it turns out to be one of their best)
