AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
It was hard to get writing again after such a long break. I had my birthday, finals week, my first U2 concert (ahhh it was great), and probably a whole lot more I don't remember...
I should stick with the obvious meanings for songs, shouldn't I :/
Those earrings were bugging me, since I've been rereading a bit of ACD. I didn't mention that Larry and Edge each have...well, now I guess, had...one.
No worries, Bono's all right. For the most part.
***
After the funeral and Marcus’ trial, things had settled down somewhat. Marcus hadn’t admitted to anything, but the evidence there was sentenced him to death. Ruth had been the only one to sit in on the other side of the glass, not looking but not feeling either, something painful twisting through her stomach. Aside from that, which felt like a rip in the universe, life continued as usual. Bono watched Ciarán’s eyes grow slowly less painful; the kid was starting to focus on lyrics with a furious intensity. Once that started though, it never stopped, Bono thought amusedly.
But there was still something. Rippling jaggedly underneath the floorboards of everyone’s consciousness. For Bono it was an unbearable energy dancing around his waking dreams, like someone had captured the sun and let it inside his head and now it demanded release. Edge had an itch to let it all into the notes of the guitar, and did. Adam lay back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what Ali was thinking. He had less of the sudden urge to create, just now; his thoughts were slow and pensive, a little like Ciarán’s.
And Larry didn’t understand what it was. He tried to check himself, stop from snapping out at Eve. He just felt…restless. The energy for him was less definable, and right now it drove him crazy; it was practically intolerable. He made an effort to be good to Eve. For some reason, however, instead of the desert or the darkness, he saw behind his eyes a different reddish glint, that coalesced to become Ruth. And this, this made no sense.
Behind Ruth’s eyes there was something more unsteady. She woke up a week after Marcus died with a lingering warning spreading through her body, weighing in her bones. It dissipated, leaving just a knot of panic that cooled slowly as she shifted around, trying to get back to sleep. She did without even noticing it, then felt someone next to her and nearly jumped until she realized it was Oisín. Her stomach clenched and flipped coldly; she’d seen Isaac for a moment wavering pale behind her eyes.
What was it that made one person different from another? Ruth wondered, pressing her face against Oisín’s shoulder and trying to stop her stomach from wanting to heave. Perhaps it was the little give in ‘Sheen’s skin; of course it was him; Isaac tended to lie there rigidly and Isaac—was dead. He’d been dead for a month.
Ruth made a face as the sunlight hit her eyes with a sour brilliance. She felt terrible, like the earth itself was trying to heave itself through her.
She heard a little halt in Oisín’s breathing, and ‘Sheen turned around, face shaded by half-dark. He looked puzzled at her expression. She buried her face into the vacated pillow, groaning.
“I don’t feel so good, ‘Sheen,” Ruth managed to say, then folded her arms under her head and peeked up at him, trying to stop her head from spinning. The light stabbed today like it was pinching her brain, flooding it with a slight twinging nausea.
“Ruth,” ‘Sheen sighed, “d’you want to go to the doctor’s?”
“Nuh,” she said through pillow.
He laid a hand briefly on her shoulder, which relaxed instantly at his touch. “Well, I don’t want to catch whatever it is…I’m getting up. I’ll get you some water, kay?”
“Mmf.” As soon as the room was quiet, though, she felt a little of the dizziness go away. Ruth scrunched up her face and cautiously raised her head a few inches, then when she didn’t feel worse from that, swung her feet down and stood up, feeling shaky for a moment. She walked downstairs without a problem. It still felt like someone had turned up the sun, and the air slid with unsurety over her arms and face.
“I think I’m alright, ‘Sheen,” Ruth said quietly, reaching the table and leaning her head against her arms, the feeling of something solid comforting in that moment.
“You sure?” Oisín asked, turning around with surprise on his face, a glass of water paused in his hand. He set it down. “Maybe we should just not go.”
She looked over at him, saw the steady concern somewhere beneath his eyes, and swallowed.
“I think it’ll be better if we get away from here for today. Really.” She closed her eyes.
There was a beat of silence, before she heard him mutter, “Might just be shock.” She opened her eyes.
“What?”
“I’d forgotten everything that…happened. You were like this right after,” Oisín explained.
“I don’t know,” Ruth yawned. “I’m going to go up and have a bath, and then we can go.”
“Want breakfast?” Oisín called after her.
She made a face. “No, definitely not.”
“Don’t fall in! I’d have to come up and fish you out of the drain…”
“Can’t make any promises,” Ruth answered. “No, I’ll be fine.”
The lights in the bathroom flickered like fire over the water; she reached to turn them off and yelped as she nearly slipped. Somehow ‘Sheen was there and grabbed her under her arms, rolling his eyes. “C’mon Ruth,” he said, lifting her out and setting her on her feet.
“It’s slippery,” she said with her mouth set. His slanted after a moment. His arms lingered oddly warm around her waste for a moment before she forgot that there had been a moment in contact that she’d not known it was him, and flinched.
She tried to convince herself that that reaction had to do with the shock of Marcus dying so recently. Marcus, after Isaac, and Marcus the worse of the two. Yet she remembered the sudden leaping spark in his eyes just before she turned away and he was restrained, behind the thick wall. That little hint of almost humanity.
She turned in Oisín’s arms, neither of them caring she was soaking wet, and leaned against him a moment, looking up at him with her mouth slanting for a moment. “Sorry, ‘Sheen,” she murmured, and stood up properly on her own. Her eyes flickered back to him.
“I’m fine,” she pressed. He looked doubtful, then nodded. Her stomach twinged, but she felt a whole lot less shaky than before, lightheadedness replaced by a warm feeling. It came to her suddenly, flooding her body, that the one thing she was really certain of was that she loved him. Oisín. Like when she’d been sitting alone on the plane from Dublin to America and the only little spark of promise was what was ahead, but this felt more real. Ruth swallowed, and noticed the cold burn of the ring.
“Go on, you,” she nudged Oisín out, and dressed, sitting against the edge of the bath for a moment and thinking.
There wasn’t a set reason for why they were all returning to the desert briefly. The vague one that Edge was working on music and Bono wanted to drag him out of the hole of the studio. The urge to vacate Santa Barbara for a short while because every way she turned there was some memory of Phoenix laughing, or Ciarán running down the long stretch of State Street. Or even the sundazed nothing of a glimpse of another’s dream, something achingly sad and hopeful. No, the unspoken reason they were all meeting again had to do with something that couldn’t be clawed out from the darkness of Ruth’s memory anymore. It was a powerful heady darkness that had to be released somewhere, and they all realized it at around the same time.
Stop it, you, Ruth thought to herself, swallowing again. The last thing she needed was to be reading minds again. That part of herself was only a little nudge at the back of her mind. Mostly it just told her whatever Oisín was feeling, and at the moment that was a clear sharp reflection of what she felt herself…
*
Everything that had happened lay overhead like a cloud, or some thick undigestable thing buried beneath the last month of nothing. Adam didn’t try to make sense of it. He was first to arrive at Bono and Ali’s place. Coming through the door, he saw Edge sitting on the couch looking intently at the guitar in his lap. There were footsteps and Bono was there with a relieved grin. “Good to see at least one of you didn’t get lost on the way,” he said.
Bono looked tired. He was barefoot, still unshaven, and there was a reflective look in his eyes. Some of it showed in Edge, too, who had been the one around to deal with the man. Ali had been busy with Ciarán, for the most part, a little weary of trying to understand what the hell Paul Hewson was going through.
“You alright, B?” Adam asked, frowning.
“For the most part. A lot’s been happening is all. Edge’s helped with the worst of it,” he said exhaustedly, walking over to the couch. “Trying to distract me with music…bloody nuisance but it’s working.” He didn’t sit down like Adam expected but stood by the window, looking out at the sun burning across the sky, casting blue-red-gold shadows that stretched over the horizon.
Bono didn’t quite understand. It had been a month, but he still felt something burning through him. Some energy he wasn’t comfortable with. It raised the hair along his arms and kept him awake long after the night cooled into morning.
He turned and gave a small smile when he heard Ali come into the room. She leaned against him, yawning.
“It feels early,” she winced.
“Even though it’s not,” he said quietly, with a slight amusement. The energy had gone in interesting directions the night before. They were both bloody tired now as it was. She caught his thoughts and gave a similarly amused smile, then blinked after a moment, turning, realizing Adam was there. She said hello and something else and Adam felt…like he didn’t have enough air. He shook his head, came to, and replied, but there was a troubled look on his face. Looking out to the same places Bono did, for a moment all he saw was shadow, and swallowed.
Adam turned back, suddenly unable to look outside. It felt vast and familiarly isolated. There was a sound to this kind of place, far away from cities where he tended to feel more comfortable. It was echoing, lonely, and revealed too much.
He was greatly aware of Ali sitting down by the counter, like something had just brushed past him. That was a different undercurrent to the sudden powerful feeling that times this bad were familiar. He remembered seeing a different dual landscape years before, but ocean, that he was only a figure against as he wondered whether the band would make it through or not. So he didn’t ask anything personal, because he knew that could go in a dangerous direction, and he didn’t make the strange hypersensitivity clear. The one that felt Ali’s eyes watching him.
“You said you’d been working on some songs,” Adam said to no-one in particular. Edge looked up, Edge who he’d almost forgotten about because he was wrapped up in unspoken tension that Bono didn’t pick up on at all.
“A few, maybe five ones sketched out a little,” Edge replied with a sharp gaze. He definitely was picking up on something. Or maybe he just wondered what Adam was thinking.
“So what do they sound like?” Adam asked, nudging Bono. The singer blinked, the sun falling away from his eyes as he replied startled, “What?”
“The new songs.”
“You can hear for yourself when more people show up,” Edge pointed out.
“Larry, mainly,” Bono sighed, not really looking forward to this. Larry had sounded a little…edgy on the phone. “We definitely need bass though,” he said pointedly.
“Yeah, Adam, you’ve been sitting on your arse up in the city the last couple weeks,” Edge grinned. “Time to get some work done.”
“Alright!” Adam laughed, throwing up his hands in mock surrender then rolling his eyes. “Cool it. I’ve only just arrived. I’m surprised you haven’t been going at the usual ‘your bass is terrible Ad’” he said, twisting his mouth. Bono surprised him by sticking out his tongue.
“Well it is,” the front man dared to venture, looking mischievous. Edge snickered. Adam shook his head and tried to swat Bono, who quickly ran for cover, sitting down next to Ali . She laughed and put her arm around him and Bono was lost for a moment, faint patterns of light and shadow from the morning trailing across his memory. He stared at her.
The bassist was very, very uncomfortable. Edge was silent, on the couch, his hands still over his guitar strings, his eyes reflecting the room as he tilted his head towards Adam, seeing a little but not saying.
The stillness was broken by the doorbell ringing. Loudly. Edge got up and opened the door and Bono tore himself away from his wife. Ruth and Oisín stepped inside, practically glued at the hip. Ruth’s eyes were a bit hazy but she saw the desert outside and stared a bit in amazement. It looked nothing like Santa Barbara. She’d been here for years but had rarely left the city…Oisín had grown quiet, after greeting Bono and the rest warmly. He’d been here before; it’s where he had gone when he first arrived with his mother and the just-born Ciarán. It was wide and aching and colored the same as it had been.
“I’m going to be going to America soon,” he’d told Cath that day, the promise of another country already stealing him away. “If you want—maybe—“ She’d shaken her head with finality but whispered in his ear.
“Take Ciarán when you go. Paul will understand. I don’t think he can handle this right now.” Then she’d smiled and said goodbye.
He noticed as Adam had that desert was a sort of ocean in itself. He’d faced it before. Then he looked away.
Ruth could feel some of his reaction, because it could never be entirely shut off from her mind. His thoughts. She sat on the edge of the couch near Edge, closing her eyes for a moment, a warm stillness settling over her. She felt much better than she had earlier, but something was beginning to twinge in her body again.
All of this happened in the space of a minute or so; the door was still open and Bono was about to close it when another car rolled into the driveway and Larry and Eve popped out. Larry stumbled out of the car, looking irritated. Eve looked amused.
“Feck,” Larry cried, “you guys didn’t have to go so far ahead! It was bloody impossible to try and get here…”
Oisín cringed apologetically and Ruth struggled not to laugh herself. “I didn’t know you were following us,” he said, then laughed. “So it wasn’t some stalker.”
“Good to see you too, Lawrence,” Bono rolled his eyes. Larry muttered an apology then looked up in slight excitement.
“So what’re we all here f—“ he began, but was cut off by something careening into him. Someone small and with a very mischievous look about him. Ciarán detached himself from the drummer who struggled not to glare or laugh in response.
“Haigh,” he said to everyone assembled then plopped down on the couch beside Ruth and gave a little yawn.
“It’s midday,” she said incredulously.
“They were up,” Ciarán frowned. “All night.” She raised her eyebrows. Larry snickered.
“I don’t want to know,” she replied, trying very hard not to laugh, then felt the relief that Ciarán was alright again quickly change into the feeling of eyes upon her from a little farther away. The fact that her palms were sweating and her stomach twisted and the warm hazy tiredness she had slid into something else. She looked up and saw Larry’s eyes, and quickly stood up. Bad idea.
Someone was saying that they should go to the studio and see what Bono and Edge had been working on.
Ali saw something in Ruth’s expression and drew her aside.
“Are you alright?” she asked. Ruth nodded and bit her lip. “I think I’m going to go with them,” she said. The rest were practically out the door, on their way to the studio. “Have fun” Ali said, and gave a big yawn. “Sorry. I kinda…need sleep…I really was up all night…”
Ruth raised her eyebrows again and laughed. Ali blushed.
She began to make for the door to follow them, feeling warm and a little stronger again, when she felt someone beside her. She looked down and saw Ciarán, who wrapped small arms around her waist and said in a muffled voice, “You are ok, right, Ruth?”
She nodded then replied in assent, bending down and giving the kid a quick hug. A sharp brief sadness; she remembered a month ago. He seemed fine now, but she remembered then so vividly. Something about the relief with which he realized they were all there and okay was what had made her sad.
Ruth ran ahead, strength gathering into her body. The studio seemed small, from about halfway the distance away. She didn’t realize that distance was greater than she thought, and slowed down, the air cool around her. She just walked for a bit, watching the stretching sun beginning to set the ground on fire with afternoon light, then finally caught up. Her heart caught into her mouth and beat painfully when she felt that someone was beside her. She looked to the side and realized that this person was not Oisín but Larry. Eve was ahead, up near Bono and Adam. Oisín was just a few feet ahead.
She looked at Larry’s eyes nearly transparent blue in the bright sun, and a little of the strange warm feeling began to make sense, because a little was his fault. It was like how she’d felt when he’d unexpectedly kissed her a month or so back. Memory of that meant them being this close was very, very awkward.
Neither of them spoke. Ruth set her mouth angrily, not meaning to, but feeling a bit betrayed.
He’d just been distracting her from running after Isaac and getting herself into a mess. Hadn’t he?
“About that.” Larry said. Ruth’s eyes widened. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud?
“Sorry,” he continued, and looked at her another moment before looking away. Neither was ready to say anything more at the moment. She nodded and tried walking faster, her eyes burning. Winced when the movement felt like too much. Fortunately they made it to the studio then and he was the only one to see her stumble at the door. His hands caught her arms and he held her standing in the doorway of the studio. It looked perfectly normal to the rest, who were really just looking aghast at the clutter of lyrics and notes and instruments in the small room.
Ruth swallowed again. She didn’t hear the first beginning of a song, the bare bones of the next one. Oisín sat down on the floor, trying to avoid the instruments. Eve sat in the windowsill, her arms crossed.
“Ah, that’s the one we know the drums for,” Larry spoke up, letting go of Ruth. He sat down at the drumkit a couple feet away and started drumming a light steady beat.
Ruth could feel the pull of the guitar chords as if they were alive, filling her with some heat she did not understand. Perhaps because she wasn’t sure what was going on, perhaps because she understood all too well what was happening with everyone, she could hear the sadness behind the exultant building guitar before it rang out.
“I want to hide,” Bono whispered with eyes closed, his body held still with a sort of excitement. He opened his eyes and Ruth saw a little sadness there too. She didn’t know that the lyrics had took shape a few weeks ago, and weren’t as happy as they sounded.
“Fuck, that’s not right,” he cut off, and Edge stopped the guitar abruptly, sighing. Adam put his head in his hands and groaned, “Edge, you have to get those guitar bits to merge together properly or I’m not dragging my arse here to work out bass chords.”
Larry stood up from the drumkit, then tilted his head and Ruth could feel it, feel that movement of his, strange shivering across her. This was bad. This was just because she was sick, wasn’t it? That she could remember so intensely. She hoped so. Unconsciously she turned his way.
He held out his drumsticks and asked quietly, “D’you remember how?”
“What?”
“They’re going t’argue for a while, and I have to…” He sighed, “I’ve got to make up things with Eve. She isn’t looking happy. Maybe she wants to leave.”
Ruth blinked and tried to distance her feelings for him. That was right—it was Larry and Eve together, as it had been. But she felt so confused. Maybe because she was, in some part, exhausted. She felt too close to everyone.
She took the drumsticks, smiled challenge at him. “I all too recently drummed in a band too, mister. D’you remember?”
He was already across the room, talking to Eve. Ruth felt a sharp sliding feeling. She couldn’t stop herself thinking that if things were repeating themselves like this, everything was going to shit…
The long mutter of musical conversation halted and Edge looked up in surprise to see Ruth at the drums, then they all accepted it, Bono with a raised eyebrow. Oisín grinned.
“Don’t worry,” Ruth said, “I’m not taking his place.” She felt too damned crappy, anyways. But that didn’t stop her heart from racing when the song escalated farther than it had the first try. The music was saying something that couldn’t be expressed through words. Bono had tears in his eyes; he couldn’t help it.
There was a little pain in his voice, as it flew over the guitar chords. Edge had his eyes closed.
“I want to run…
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside”
Ruth breathed out sharply, feeling the pass increase and moving her arms faster, thinking maybe there should be a clearer sound than this drum Larry had started with…yes, there it was. She varied the sound a little.
“I want to reach out
and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name…
We’re still building then
burning down love
burning down love
And when I go there,
I go there with you…”
When eventually the song ended, Ruth couldn’t get over the feeling that she was flying. Her racing heart refused to settle. Her arms hurt; she handed the drumsticks over to Larry.
Something about the song filtered in to Ruth when she saw Larry get up from the drumkit and press something small into Bono’s hand with serious eyes. Bono looked down and saw a tiny silver cross made of wire.
“It’s from when—“
He nodded and handed it back. “I know. I can’t. I can’t think of…” I can't think of her. Not now. Bono turned away so no-one would see the jagged reflections in his eyes.
Edge remembered suddenly a little wire cross that matched it, then realized with a start he’d bent the earwire into a loop and it was on a chain around his neck. Still. Edge walked over and pulled the chain over Bono’s hand. The man looked up, startled, then held the little bit of wire in his hand, swallowing.
Ruth thought of the Ocean that Oisín had seen briefly in dreams, and the song clicked. It wasn’t about desert like it seemed to be. It was nothing so near and attainable. It was a place glimpsed briefly in dreams, bright with lights and feeling. It was perhaps the thought of a man who had been quietly, briefly, in despair.
Where the streets have no name…
And when I go there
I go there with you…
It’s all I can do.
She shook her head when Eve, returned from making up with Larry, enthused about what a happy song it was. It wasn’t. Ruth turned away and found a scrap of paper and a pencil and wrote down something deeper, something darker and more on the surface, as if that would will this all away. Their lives could return to normal when it had left them through music.
The hands that build, she was left thinking, can also pull down. Not any dark sentiment, not even a simple statement. A choice. The music was a road ahead of these four men and there were at least two ways it could go. Ruth wondered, knowing a little of what was going through Bono’s mind, which way they would all turn, at the fork of the road.
I should stick with the obvious meanings for songs, shouldn't I :/
Those earrings were bugging me, since I've been rereading a bit of ACD. I didn't mention that Larry and Edge each have...well, now I guess, had...one.
No worries, Bono's all right. For the most part.
***
(1986)
After the funeral and Marcus’ trial, things had settled down somewhat. Marcus hadn’t admitted to anything, but the evidence there was sentenced him to death. Ruth had been the only one to sit in on the other side of the glass, not looking but not feeling either, something painful twisting through her stomach. Aside from that, which felt like a rip in the universe, life continued as usual. Bono watched Ciarán’s eyes grow slowly less painful; the kid was starting to focus on lyrics with a furious intensity. Once that started though, it never stopped, Bono thought amusedly.
But there was still something. Rippling jaggedly underneath the floorboards of everyone’s consciousness. For Bono it was an unbearable energy dancing around his waking dreams, like someone had captured the sun and let it inside his head and now it demanded release. Edge had an itch to let it all into the notes of the guitar, and did. Adam lay back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what Ali was thinking. He had less of the sudden urge to create, just now; his thoughts were slow and pensive, a little like Ciarán’s.
And Larry didn’t understand what it was. He tried to check himself, stop from snapping out at Eve. He just felt…restless. The energy for him was less definable, and right now it drove him crazy; it was practically intolerable. He made an effort to be good to Eve. For some reason, however, instead of the desert or the darkness, he saw behind his eyes a different reddish glint, that coalesced to become Ruth. And this, this made no sense.
Behind Ruth’s eyes there was something more unsteady. She woke up a week after Marcus died with a lingering warning spreading through her body, weighing in her bones. It dissipated, leaving just a knot of panic that cooled slowly as she shifted around, trying to get back to sleep. She did without even noticing it, then felt someone next to her and nearly jumped until she realized it was Oisín. Her stomach clenched and flipped coldly; she’d seen Isaac for a moment wavering pale behind her eyes.
What was it that made one person different from another? Ruth wondered, pressing her face against Oisín’s shoulder and trying to stop her stomach from wanting to heave. Perhaps it was the little give in ‘Sheen’s skin; of course it was him; Isaac tended to lie there rigidly and Isaac—was dead. He’d been dead for a month.
Ruth made a face as the sunlight hit her eyes with a sour brilliance. She felt terrible, like the earth itself was trying to heave itself through her.
She heard a little halt in Oisín’s breathing, and ‘Sheen turned around, face shaded by half-dark. He looked puzzled at her expression. She buried her face into the vacated pillow, groaning.
“I don’t feel so good, ‘Sheen,” Ruth managed to say, then folded her arms under her head and peeked up at him, trying to stop her head from spinning. The light stabbed today like it was pinching her brain, flooding it with a slight twinging nausea.
“Ruth,” ‘Sheen sighed, “d’you want to go to the doctor’s?”
“Nuh,” she said through pillow.
He laid a hand briefly on her shoulder, which relaxed instantly at his touch. “Well, I don’t want to catch whatever it is…I’m getting up. I’ll get you some water, kay?”
“Mmf.” As soon as the room was quiet, though, she felt a little of the dizziness go away. Ruth scrunched up her face and cautiously raised her head a few inches, then when she didn’t feel worse from that, swung her feet down and stood up, feeling shaky for a moment. She walked downstairs without a problem. It still felt like someone had turned up the sun, and the air slid with unsurety over her arms and face.
“I think I’m alright, ‘Sheen,” Ruth said quietly, reaching the table and leaning her head against her arms, the feeling of something solid comforting in that moment.
“You sure?” Oisín asked, turning around with surprise on his face, a glass of water paused in his hand. He set it down. “Maybe we should just not go.”
She looked over at him, saw the steady concern somewhere beneath his eyes, and swallowed.
“I think it’ll be better if we get away from here for today. Really.” She closed her eyes.
There was a beat of silence, before she heard him mutter, “Might just be shock.” She opened her eyes.
“What?”
“I’d forgotten everything that…happened. You were like this right after,” Oisín explained.
“I don’t know,” Ruth yawned. “I’m going to go up and have a bath, and then we can go.”
“Want breakfast?” Oisín called after her.
She made a face. “No, definitely not.”
“Don’t fall in! I’d have to come up and fish you out of the drain…”
“Can’t make any promises,” Ruth answered. “No, I’ll be fine.”
The lights in the bathroom flickered like fire over the water; she reached to turn them off and yelped as she nearly slipped. Somehow ‘Sheen was there and grabbed her under her arms, rolling his eyes. “C’mon Ruth,” he said, lifting her out and setting her on her feet.
“It’s slippery,” she said with her mouth set. His slanted after a moment. His arms lingered oddly warm around her waste for a moment before she forgot that there had been a moment in contact that she’d not known it was him, and flinched.
She tried to convince herself that that reaction had to do with the shock of Marcus dying so recently. Marcus, after Isaac, and Marcus the worse of the two. Yet she remembered the sudden leaping spark in his eyes just before she turned away and he was restrained, behind the thick wall. That little hint of almost humanity.
She turned in Oisín’s arms, neither of them caring she was soaking wet, and leaned against him a moment, looking up at him with her mouth slanting for a moment. “Sorry, ‘Sheen,” she murmured, and stood up properly on her own. Her eyes flickered back to him.
“I’m fine,” she pressed. He looked doubtful, then nodded. Her stomach twinged, but she felt a whole lot less shaky than before, lightheadedness replaced by a warm feeling. It came to her suddenly, flooding her body, that the one thing she was really certain of was that she loved him. Oisín. Like when she’d been sitting alone on the plane from Dublin to America and the only little spark of promise was what was ahead, but this felt more real. Ruth swallowed, and noticed the cold burn of the ring.
“Go on, you,” she nudged Oisín out, and dressed, sitting against the edge of the bath for a moment and thinking.
There wasn’t a set reason for why they were all returning to the desert briefly. The vague one that Edge was working on music and Bono wanted to drag him out of the hole of the studio. The urge to vacate Santa Barbara for a short while because every way she turned there was some memory of Phoenix laughing, or Ciarán running down the long stretch of State Street. Or even the sundazed nothing of a glimpse of another’s dream, something achingly sad and hopeful. No, the unspoken reason they were all meeting again had to do with something that couldn’t be clawed out from the darkness of Ruth’s memory anymore. It was a powerful heady darkness that had to be released somewhere, and they all realized it at around the same time.
Stop it, you, Ruth thought to herself, swallowing again. The last thing she needed was to be reading minds again. That part of herself was only a little nudge at the back of her mind. Mostly it just told her whatever Oisín was feeling, and at the moment that was a clear sharp reflection of what she felt herself…
*
Everything that had happened lay overhead like a cloud, or some thick undigestable thing buried beneath the last month of nothing. Adam didn’t try to make sense of it. He was first to arrive at Bono and Ali’s place. Coming through the door, he saw Edge sitting on the couch looking intently at the guitar in his lap. There were footsteps and Bono was there with a relieved grin. “Good to see at least one of you didn’t get lost on the way,” he said.
Bono looked tired. He was barefoot, still unshaven, and there was a reflective look in his eyes. Some of it showed in Edge, too, who had been the one around to deal with the man. Ali had been busy with Ciarán, for the most part, a little weary of trying to understand what the hell Paul Hewson was going through.
“You alright, B?” Adam asked, frowning.
“For the most part. A lot’s been happening is all. Edge’s helped with the worst of it,” he said exhaustedly, walking over to the couch. “Trying to distract me with music…bloody nuisance but it’s working.” He didn’t sit down like Adam expected but stood by the window, looking out at the sun burning across the sky, casting blue-red-gold shadows that stretched over the horizon.
Bono didn’t quite understand. It had been a month, but he still felt something burning through him. Some energy he wasn’t comfortable with. It raised the hair along his arms and kept him awake long after the night cooled into morning.
He turned and gave a small smile when he heard Ali come into the room. She leaned against him, yawning.
“It feels early,” she winced.
“Even though it’s not,” he said quietly, with a slight amusement. The energy had gone in interesting directions the night before. They were both bloody tired now as it was. She caught his thoughts and gave a similarly amused smile, then blinked after a moment, turning, realizing Adam was there. She said hello and something else and Adam felt…like he didn’t have enough air. He shook his head, came to, and replied, but there was a troubled look on his face. Looking out to the same places Bono did, for a moment all he saw was shadow, and swallowed.
Adam turned back, suddenly unable to look outside. It felt vast and familiarly isolated. There was a sound to this kind of place, far away from cities where he tended to feel more comfortable. It was echoing, lonely, and revealed too much.
He was greatly aware of Ali sitting down by the counter, like something had just brushed past him. That was a different undercurrent to the sudden powerful feeling that times this bad were familiar. He remembered seeing a different dual landscape years before, but ocean, that he was only a figure against as he wondered whether the band would make it through or not. So he didn’t ask anything personal, because he knew that could go in a dangerous direction, and he didn’t make the strange hypersensitivity clear. The one that felt Ali’s eyes watching him.
“You said you’d been working on some songs,” Adam said to no-one in particular. Edge looked up, Edge who he’d almost forgotten about because he was wrapped up in unspoken tension that Bono didn’t pick up on at all.
“A few, maybe five ones sketched out a little,” Edge replied with a sharp gaze. He definitely was picking up on something. Or maybe he just wondered what Adam was thinking.
“So what do they sound like?” Adam asked, nudging Bono. The singer blinked, the sun falling away from his eyes as he replied startled, “What?”
“The new songs.”
“You can hear for yourself when more people show up,” Edge pointed out.
“Larry, mainly,” Bono sighed, not really looking forward to this. Larry had sounded a little…edgy on the phone. “We definitely need bass though,” he said pointedly.
“Yeah, Adam, you’ve been sitting on your arse up in the city the last couple weeks,” Edge grinned. “Time to get some work done.”
“Alright!” Adam laughed, throwing up his hands in mock surrender then rolling his eyes. “Cool it. I’ve only just arrived. I’m surprised you haven’t been going at the usual ‘your bass is terrible Ad’” he said, twisting his mouth. Bono surprised him by sticking out his tongue.
“Well it is,” the front man dared to venture, looking mischievous. Edge snickered. Adam shook his head and tried to swat Bono, who quickly ran for cover, sitting down next to Ali . She laughed and put her arm around him and Bono was lost for a moment, faint patterns of light and shadow from the morning trailing across his memory. He stared at her.
The bassist was very, very uncomfortable. Edge was silent, on the couch, his hands still over his guitar strings, his eyes reflecting the room as he tilted his head towards Adam, seeing a little but not saying.
The stillness was broken by the doorbell ringing. Loudly. Edge got up and opened the door and Bono tore himself away from his wife. Ruth and Oisín stepped inside, practically glued at the hip. Ruth’s eyes were a bit hazy but she saw the desert outside and stared a bit in amazement. It looked nothing like Santa Barbara. She’d been here for years but had rarely left the city…Oisín had grown quiet, after greeting Bono and the rest warmly. He’d been here before; it’s where he had gone when he first arrived with his mother and the just-born Ciarán. It was wide and aching and colored the same as it had been.
“I’m going to be going to America soon,” he’d told Cath that day, the promise of another country already stealing him away. “If you want—maybe—“ She’d shaken her head with finality but whispered in his ear.
“Take Ciarán when you go. Paul will understand. I don’t think he can handle this right now.” Then she’d smiled and said goodbye.
He noticed as Adam had that desert was a sort of ocean in itself. He’d faced it before. Then he looked away.
Ruth could feel some of his reaction, because it could never be entirely shut off from her mind. His thoughts. She sat on the edge of the couch near Edge, closing her eyes for a moment, a warm stillness settling over her. She felt much better than she had earlier, but something was beginning to twinge in her body again.
All of this happened in the space of a minute or so; the door was still open and Bono was about to close it when another car rolled into the driveway and Larry and Eve popped out. Larry stumbled out of the car, looking irritated. Eve looked amused.
“Feck,” Larry cried, “you guys didn’t have to go so far ahead! It was bloody impossible to try and get here…”
Oisín cringed apologetically and Ruth struggled not to laugh herself. “I didn’t know you were following us,” he said, then laughed. “So it wasn’t some stalker.”
“Good to see you too, Lawrence,” Bono rolled his eyes. Larry muttered an apology then looked up in slight excitement.
“So what’re we all here f—“ he began, but was cut off by something careening into him. Someone small and with a very mischievous look about him. Ciarán detached himself from the drummer who struggled not to glare or laugh in response.
“Haigh,” he said to everyone assembled then plopped down on the couch beside Ruth and gave a little yawn.
“It’s midday,” she said incredulously.
“They were up,” Ciarán frowned. “All night.” She raised her eyebrows. Larry snickered.
“I don’t want to know,” she replied, trying very hard not to laugh, then felt the relief that Ciarán was alright again quickly change into the feeling of eyes upon her from a little farther away. The fact that her palms were sweating and her stomach twisted and the warm hazy tiredness she had slid into something else. She looked up and saw Larry’s eyes, and quickly stood up. Bad idea.
Someone was saying that they should go to the studio and see what Bono and Edge had been working on.
Ali saw something in Ruth’s expression and drew her aside.
“Are you alright?” she asked. Ruth nodded and bit her lip. “I think I’m going to go with them,” she said. The rest were practically out the door, on their way to the studio. “Have fun” Ali said, and gave a big yawn. “Sorry. I kinda…need sleep…I really was up all night…”
Ruth raised her eyebrows again and laughed. Ali blushed.
She began to make for the door to follow them, feeling warm and a little stronger again, when she felt someone beside her. She looked down and saw Ciarán, who wrapped small arms around her waist and said in a muffled voice, “You are ok, right, Ruth?”
She nodded then replied in assent, bending down and giving the kid a quick hug. A sharp brief sadness; she remembered a month ago. He seemed fine now, but she remembered then so vividly. Something about the relief with which he realized they were all there and okay was what had made her sad.
Ruth ran ahead, strength gathering into her body. The studio seemed small, from about halfway the distance away. She didn’t realize that distance was greater than she thought, and slowed down, the air cool around her. She just walked for a bit, watching the stretching sun beginning to set the ground on fire with afternoon light, then finally caught up. Her heart caught into her mouth and beat painfully when she felt that someone was beside her. She looked to the side and realized that this person was not Oisín but Larry. Eve was ahead, up near Bono and Adam. Oisín was just a few feet ahead.
She looked at Larry’s eyes nearly transparent blue in the bright sun, and a little of the strange warm feeling began to make sense, because a little was his fault. It was like how she’d felt when he’d unexpectedly kissed her a month or so back. Memory of that meant them being this close was very, very awkward.
Neither of them spoke. Ruth set her mouth angrily, not meaning to, but feeling a bit betrayed.
He’d just been distracting her from running after Isaac and getting herself into a mess. Hadn’t he?
“About that.” Larry said. Ruth’s eyes widened. Had she spoken her thoughts aloud?
“Sorry,” he continued, and looked at her another moment before looking away. Neither was ready to say anything more at the moment. She nodded and tried walking faster, her eyes burning. Winced when the movement felt like too much. Fortunately they made it to the studio then and he was the only one to see her stumble at the door. His hands caught her arms and he held her standing in the doorway of the studio. It looked perfectly normal to the rest, who were really just looking aghast at the clutter of lyrics and notes and instruments in the small room.
Ruth swallowed again. She didn’t hear the first beginning of a song, the bare bones of the next one. Oisín sat down on the floor, trying to avoid the instruments. Eve sat in the windowsill, her arms crossed.
“Ah, that’s the one we know the drums for,” Larry spoke up, letting go of Ruth. He sat down at the drumkit a couple feet away and started drumming a light steady beat.
Ruth could feel the pull of the guitar chords as if they were alive, filling her with some heat she did not understand. Perhaps because she wasn’t sure what was going on, perhaps because she understood all too well what was happening with everyone, she could hear the sadness behind the exultant building guitar before it rang out.
“I want to hide,” Bono whispered with eyes closed, his body held still with a sort of excitement. He opened his eyes and Ruth saw a little sadness there too. She didn’t know that the lyrics had took shape a few weeks ago, and weren’t as happy as they sounded.
“Fuck, that’s not right,” he cut off, and Edge stopped the guitar abruptly, sighing. Adam put his head in his hands and groaned, “Edge, you have to get those guitar bits to merge together properly or I’m not dragging my arse here to work out bass chords.”
Larry stood up from the drumkit, then tilted his head and Ruth could feel it, feel that movement of his, strange shivering across her. This was bad. This was just because she was sick, wasn’t it? That she could remember so intensely. She hoped so. Unconsciously she turned his way.
He held out his drumsticks and asked quietly, “D’you remember how?”
“What?”
“They’re going t’argue for a while, and I have to…” He sighed, “I’ve got to make up things with Eve. She isn’t looking happy. Maybe she wants to leave.”
Ruth blinked and tried to distance her feelings for him. That was right—it was Larry and Eve together, as it had been. But she felt so confused. Maybe because she was, in some part, exhausted. She felt too close to everyone.
She took the drumsticks, smiled challenge at him. “I all too recently drummed in a band too, mister. D’you remember?”
He was already across the room, talking to Eve. Ruth felt a sharp sliding feeling. She couldn’t stop herself thinking that if things were repeating themselves like this, everything was going to shit…
The long mutter of musical conversation halted and Edge looked up in surprise to see Ruth at the drums, then they all accepted it, Bono with a raised eyebrow. Oisín grinned.
“Don’t worry,” Ruth said, “I’m not taking his place.” She felt too damned crappy, anyways. But that didn’t stop her heart from racing when the song escalated farther than it had the first try. The music was saying something that couldn’t be expressed through words. Bono had tears in his eyes; he couldn’t help it.
There was a little pain in his voice, as it flew over the guitar chords. Edge had his eyes closed.
“I want to run…
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside”
Ruth breathed out sharply, feeling the pass increase and moving her arms faster, thinking maybe there should be a clearer sound than this drum Larry had started with…yes, there it was. She varied the sound a little.
“I want to reach out
and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name…
We’re still building then
burning down love
burning down love
And when I go there,
I go there with you…”
When eventually the song ended, Ruth couldn’t get over the feeling that she was flying. Her racing heart refused to settle. Her arms hurt; she handed the drumsticks over to Larry.
Something about the song filtered in to Ruth when she saw Larry get up from the drumkit and press something small into Bono’s hand with serious eyes. Bono looked down and saw a tiny silver cross made of wire.
“It’s from when—“
He nodded and handed it back. “I know. I can’t. I can’t think of…” I can't think of her. Not now. Bono turned away so no-one would see the jagged reflections in his eyes.
Edge remembered suddenly a little wire cross that matched it, then realized with a start he’d bent the earwire into a loop and it was on a chain around his neck. Still. Edge walked over and pulled the chain over Bono’s hand. The man looked up, startled, then held the little bit of wire in his hand, swallowing.
Ruth thought of the Ocean that Oisín had seen briefly in dreams, and the song clicked. It wasn’t about desert like it seemed to be. It was nothing so near and attainable. It was a place glimpsed briefly in dreams, bright with lights and feeling. It was perhaps the thought of a man who had been quietly, briefly, in despair.
Where the streets have no name…
And when I go there
I go there with you…
It’s all I can do.
She shook her head when Eve, returned from making up with Larry, enthused about what a happy song it was. It wasn’t. Ruth turned away and found a scrap of paper and a pencil and wrote down something deeper, something darker and more on the surface, as if that would will this all away. Their lives could return to normal when it had left them through music.
The hands that build, she was left thinking, can also pull down. Not any dark sentiment, not even a simple statement. A choice. The music was a road ahead of these four men and there were at least two ways it could go. Ruth wondered, knowing a little of what was going through Bono’s mind, which way they would all turn, at the fork of the road.
Your husband's with you? Oh man, that might make for awkward times. I doubt he could actually tell, though...I realized it's actually rather difficult for people to tell with me, at least, which one I like...ha.
I don't know, I really loved this one, but that's probably a repeat of what I said last chapter... it's so long ago that I can't remember. 
