Out Of Control 5

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AnCatKatie

Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
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Okay, guys. :sigh: Things aren't so great on Katie's non-writing life. This chapter was going to be a little less sad and a little longer, but circumstances changed it a little. The two paragraphs just before the dream are sort of writing therapy.

I'll get more of '78 up soon. This one's just '86, sorry...it's easier to do more of each and scatter them a little, at the moment. I have more plot on '78 than I do in '86, though I also wanted to develop what Bono was dreaming, so it worked out nicely. I'm...kind of really excited to write the next '78 part actually...heheh.

And writing about California was fun. I've been to Santa Barbara, when I was littler, and might go to college there; it's awesome and has a beach and is generally windy, spirit-lifting, and rather beautiful. Stay tuned for other places Katie's been she feels like writing ;)

***


1986​

It was late afternoon by the time Bono got back home. He carried Ciarán and plopped the kid down on the couch as gently as he could, extricating the little fingers from their grip on him. Ali was more awake, came in from outside, bringing the sunshine with her. She came up behind him and embraced him, the warmth of her body comforting.

“How is he?” she whispered.

“The nurse said no painkillers, but he took some antibiotics.” He had sat in the pharmacy for about half an hour, flipping through magazines disinterestedly until the words blurred together and became unimportant. Ciarán had fallen asleep again, which was better than him being in pain, Bono supposed. His son woke up again during the ride home, when there had been an unexpected fork in the road and Bono had to swerve to get back the way he came. Ciarán had seemed pretty out of it, blinking fuzzily and then going back to sleep. Bono wasn’t sure about concentrating on music this evening; he was starting to get concerned. Ciarán was so small, and—all the memories were coming back, for whatever reason, and left Bono open and raw-edged in confusion.

He turned in Ali’s arms and pressed against her tightly, leaning his forehead against her shoulder and blinking away the moisture in his eyes—but no, she felt when he did that, and gave a sad, understanding little sigh.

“What is it, Bon?”

“It’s just—I thought it was something completely different wrong. And I’ve been having these dreams and…it’s just a lot. A lot to have on my mind,” he explained, shuddering into a calmer silence.

“Bono.” She looked at him. His face was a little red, a little drained, and an intensity had gathered around his blue eyes, that intensity that always came with vulnerability. It was a familiar look on his face, one he had had for months, almost years, in his life when he and Ali were picking up the pieces of who he had been.

He nodded. He knew what she was asking. It was what she thought; it was hard to forget.

“I’m sorry, Ali,” he said a little sadly. She took his face in her hands and leaned forward, that intense stare of his connecting with her eyes. Hers traced pathways over his skin, erased the troubles there. The fierce afternoon light faded around them, was blocked from his sight in sudden coolness as she kissed him briefly, speaking through movement and not through voice.

And there was still that edge of sadness about him, though it had relaxed. They sat facing the setting sun. Ciarán’s head was pillowed in Bono’s lap, his sleeping face was tight with pain. His father’s hand was connected to Ali’s. In an endlessness like the horizon, Bono turned his head so that he faced Ali, and spoke of the dreams he had been having.

It was a while before she spoke.

“I shouldn’t have seen you so soon after,” she stated quietly. “It was the wrong thing to do.” Seven years ago. She had put him back together again as best she could, and it resulted in his complete memory block of he and Cath, and Cath’s death, and Ciarán. Ali had blamed herself, a little, but…

“No,” he said, shaking his head and looking into her eyes. “There wasn’t any other way. I would have been a worse mess if it hadn’t happened.” His hand traced maps and pasts and futures over hers. “I would have never made another album,” he said softly, as if singing, “I would have never come to America, I would never have been the same man, never have fallen back in love with you, never found Ciarán, never have been happy. Don’t be sorry, love. You know I love you.”

“It used to be so simple,” she sighed.

“It is,” he said, his eyes thoughtful, unfocused. “It unravels, begins again…”

There was a scrap of a melody in his head, one that Edge had been humming the other day…

Nothing to win
and nothing left to lose
,”

he murmured to himself, and frowned, kissing Ali on the forehead in answer to her inevitable question of was this a new song. He fell into a brief, deep sleep, motionless, the sky unrolled and heavy far above and outside, the stars tracing and blinking along him, whispering slow lyrics he could only half-hear. He could feel Ali’s arms were still around him, and even that fell away; he was falling through night and day and time into a blackness of beginning.

Grief. He could only let go of it by experiencing it again. It was a tremendous wave of heat behind his eyes, a spreading disbelief that he let come hard back into his bones and weigh down on his shoulders: that someone he loved could be there, and then gone. Gone irrevocably. Those seconds between the pause of the world where she had looked up to the sky and felt only his arms around her and the endless roar of the ocean underneath, and when, shaking and scalding with fever, she finally stilled.

If you love someone totally, it's difficult to let go. And another part of him, in denial, had branched out and clung to Ali, and there was a melancholy happiness, and then amazement. That she could accept him so totally, when he was troubled, when he was too oblivious of everything to think of Ali without a sort of resentment. That she loved him, even then, like she had loved him from the first. That she let Ciarán be like her own child. Ali was steadfastness in the ebb and flow and sudden spark of his thoughts. Sometimes he lost himself. But she was always there finding him, bringing him back to himself.

Back to the beginning…there was less regret, less of an ache squeezing over his heart, less of a torn thought, Ali, with her understanding what he was going through. Perhaps he should not have been surprised at the next dream.

The overall amazement at being somewhere so new gave way to confusion, the euphoria fading. He could hear her thoughts, and it made him smile, though he didn’t know how corporeal either of them were in this dream: Great, Cath, you’ve gotten yourself here. Where the hell are you going to stay?

She still looked shaky and a little pale, like she had before Ciarán was born. Bono had to let go of the part of himself that wanted to focus only on her and forget all the rest, to end the dream and spare himself the pain, an impulse relinquished after a slow moment.

Calmer than the last dream, he let himself step back a little, and felt a little tingling numbness that tugged from his stomach to his knees. He sighed, closed his eyes, could still see, and was brought in a rush into her thoughts and introspections again.

The air outside the airport was prismatic and choked with dust and a heat shimmer. The area all around was one big sunspot, cars forming a sort of armor over the baking asphalt, the sun clear, the sky a little entrancingly toxic. LA? It seemed like LA. That wasn’t to far from him, actually…Cath walked in one direction and then gave a little laugh, realizing she had no idea where the hell she was going. She stared forward, the sun washing violet afterimages over her eyes and glowing across her face. He wished so badly he was there, that this wasn’t a dream.

It was a strange one, though, he noted.

The air drank the moisture from her skin and left a dry, relieving heat, the likes of which were pretty much unheard of in Ireland. She gaped, sitting on her suitcase, for a moment, and in a spur-of-the-moment decision decided she had enough money to go somewhere more out of the way; everywhere she looked was lights dancing across her eyes, pulling her into strange convoluted busy society, and the city was too much for now. She smiled nervously at the cab driver and fell asleep with the highway humming underneath the car’s wheels.

When she woke, she realized the man had pillowed his coat under her, and had probably waited a couple hours while she slept, without demanding she wake and give him his fare. Outside felt right. It was raining, and the rain whispered under her skin already, more comfortable than the heat for now.

“Thanks. Sorry, where did I ask we go?”

“Santa Barbara.”

She looked outside confusedly, rolled down the window. The rain pattered over her skin. Bono, whatever form of himself was in this dream, sighed.

“It’s raining?” She shook her head in amazement, and then looked clear out a little ways. Past the buildings, past a few restaurants and wide sidewalks and trees was a great, flat horizon that shifted a little the closer it came to the buildings and the sand, the rain hissing into the ocean. Cath smiled and apologized to the driver, handed him the last of her money, half of which he gave back, and stood with the rain falling around her, feeling both sad and exhilarated. She was missing something, but she wasn’t sure what.


When he woke, his heart was pounding. He went and got a glass of water, checked on Ciarán—he was a little warm, but that was probably from the sun—and fell against Ali when she woke too, the edge of confusion still in his mind. He kissed her reflectively.

"We should see how Ciarán's feeling, and maybe if he's alright I'll go and work on some songs with Edge and the rest. I have—"—he waved his arms emphatically with a frustrated look on his face, and she laughed—"—all these lyrics running through my mind..."
 
I don't know why, but it made me happy. :p Just pleasing to see some WOWY lyrics there, and realize that this is writing for The Joshua Tree... :)
Well, I liked it. The dreams are kind of disturbing, though...
 
With Or Without You's been stuck in my head for some reason...it needed out even though it totally didn't fit what I'd planned, and I'd planned something different to happen in this chapter and no dreams for a while, but disaster struck and I could not write Bono happy, period. Hopefully the next chapter will be somewhat more normal.

Yeah...the whole idea kind of freaked me out after I wrote the first chapter and realized, oh crap, this is getting kind of odd. However, they do have a purpose that'll make sense later in the plot. :whistle:
 
Hey there, lady! Sorry that it's taken me so long to respond to your story. And sorry I haven't been on GChat either. I haven't quite been myself for the past week or so. Perhaps I'm working too much? They do have me working for eleven days straight. I'm quite worn out.

However, I'm here now and just caught up. To be honest, I'm enjoying this story a lot more than ACD. I'm not sure why, I can't put my finger on it. I like your writing style better in this one and I like the year shifts. And, I LOVE your Larry! There are very few Larry stories out there, he's one tough cookie to write, but I'm SO infatuated with yours! He's so mysterious, moody and yet a tenderness lurks beneath his hard exterior. He is described exactly as Larry should be!

And I love little
Ciarán! He's so adorable! I loved how he was getting into things at the doctors office. :cute:

As for Ruth and Eve, I'm liking Eve a lot better than Ruth already. Again, I don't know why. Maybe I'm supposed to feel that way? :hmm:

But keep going! This is interesting!:hug:

 
@Blue—Hopefully not anything that weird. Cath is dead. Dead dead dead. But things do get interesting; there's a reason he's having those dreams.

HI JESS! I miss you too ^^

Really? That's odd. I liked ACD a lot more...I miss it...I was at a happier place when writing it, so I can't really do this plot justice yet...but yes, Larry is so much fun! It's interesting I was able to write him at all without devolving into a pile of mushy goo. Perhaps because it's all PG for now. Thanks :)

Ciarán is kind of the personification of a bunch of evil adorable small children I know. Who would not poke around in the doctor's office? He's not as bad as Peter Rowen though, thank god. But he may irritate Larry later. Ooo, fun!

Yeah, that's the way it's supposed to feel. I actually feel kind of bad for Ruth, but that's cause I'm writing. She's kind of confused and it's not her fault. It'll make sense later.
 
What adult themes? :giggle: Adult themes has always meant sex in my translating. I am...though I'm not proud of any of the angst. It's necessary for me to transition out of ACD, but makes me feel bad...

I'm considering having him tackle him or something. Whee! Grumpy Lar. Win. I'm really enjoying the idea of the two in the same room. So much adorableness at once.
 
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