#but that’s a lot of effort so instead i’m just gonna say abc i’m kissing you on the mouth

[panikkar]

i can’t believe ravi is finally back i missed him sm <333

[ohblackdiamond]

but there’s room for you and me (paul/ace) (unfinished) (pg-13)

While digging around on Ace’s birthday, I found an unfinished Stehley one-shot from probably over a year ago. I don’t think it’d take much clean up, but in case I don’t ever put it anywhere official, or finish it, I figured I’d post it here. Inevitable mentions of Ace/Peter and your general blanket list of rockstar warnings. Stehley always gets me feeling some kind of way.

“but there’s room for you and me”

by Ruriruri

“You got your ear fixed.”

“It’s just cosmetic. Still can’t hear out of it, but it looks better.”

“Could’ve told me.”

“We weren’t touring.”

“We weren’t touring? Fuck, Paul.”

“So fucking tense. You didn’t fix what’s wrong with you any better than I did.”

“Let’s eat.”

He realized, dimly, that Paul wasn’t even bothering with sunglasses or a scarf these days in public. He wondered when that had happened, when the mystique and interest had faded so much that even Paul, the vainest man he’d ever known in his life, realized there was no point in hiding a face no one cared about anymore.

No point.

Ace shoved a five at the girl at the counter and didn’t bother retrieving the change. Carried the red plastic tray stacked with the Styrofoam to-go box and the throwaway cup of Sprite to the dingy table Paul was already sitting at. God. As a kid he wouldn’t have ever imagined this. Would’ve thought they’d set up all sorts of colonies on the Moon first like Von Braun used to talk about on ABC. Instead everyone had just dug their heels all the deeper into Earth, filling it with more skyscrapers, more crap, inventing microwaves, cellular phones, malls. Making everything easier but the living.

Paul raised his head when Ace sat down, scooping up a crouton from his grilled chicken salad and pushing it over to one corner of the box. He was lining up the croutons like sunburned soldiers in formation. Hadn’t taken a bite yet. Ace wondered if he was still on that workout kick he’d started a few years ago. Wondered if that wasn’t so much an attempt to beat the clock as it was another effort at winning back a crowd that didn’t give a fuck. Look better, feel better, be better, as if KISS had ever sold a single album via the attractiveness of its members.

He could see it, and he guessed Paul could, too. The change in the air. It wasn’t just KISS hitting rock bottom now; it was everything their entire fucking generation ever said they wanted going south. The hippies with their free love bullshit and flowers in their hair, the hippies he’d fallen in with back in high school, they’d all run off in droves to Wall Street. They’d wanted to tear down the establishment and instead they’d built it up all the higher. A tower of babel hanging up high above their heads.

Ace waited for Paul to start in, say something, anything. Talk about the contract. Fifteen million on the line. You can buy a lot of therapy with fifteen million, Ace’s lawyer had said, and Ace had closed his eyes and asked if he could buy his life back, too.

His lawyer hadn’t answered. Ace didn’t figure he’d keep him much longer.

 “You’re real good at cutting people up, you know?” Conversational. “Always have been. Used to wonder where it came from.”

Paul reached over for his drink, fingers on the straw.

“Did you ever figure it out?”

“I figured it out the first time we fucked.” Ace opened up the container. The smell of teriyaki chicken and steamed vegetables and noodles was almost overpowering, but he grabbed a plastic fork anyway and started to eat, waiting to see if Paul would argue or change the subject again. But he didn’t do either. Maybe he was so self-absorbed he wanted to hear it. Wanted to hear anything about himself, no matter how unflattering. “You’re scared, Paulie. You’ve always been scared as hell.”

Ace closed his eyes. The pressure was right there, directly between them. He’d blame a hangover, but he’d been clean for three days now.

“You any better, Ace?”

“At least I’m not shoving everyone away with both hands and crying about it afterwards.”

Paul didn’t say anything, just scraped at the salad. He hadn’t bothered with dressing.

“You shouldn’t have done Peter like that. You and Gene.”

“You voted him out, too. Don’t make out like you didn’t.” Paul’s voice was deceptively even and public-ready. Ace could feel the claws just beneath.

“It’s the way you did it.” The oily noodles were already a little cold by the time they reached his tongue. Ace forced them down anyway. “Just put on goddamn suits and took him into the office like he was a fucking—a fucking employee, like he wasn’t your friend—”

“He—”

“You cut him out, Paul. You had to. But not ugly like that.”

“You didn’t even show. You were too busy getting fucked-up—”

“You’re damn right I was.” Ace swallowed. “I wasn’t gonna face him like that.”

“Didn’t have the guts to watch a guy you used to fuck get fired?”

“Would you?”

Paul didn’t answer.

***

“Paul, we’re losing it. We’re losing it.”

“You’re right. We’re losing it and you’re jumping ship. Find the nearest lifeboat and just paddle out, huh?”

“Is that what you think this is?”

“You’re gonna tell me it isn’t? Fuck, Ace. Fuck. Don’t you dare call me scared when you can’t handle one bad album.”

“It isn’t the album.” Ace lifted his head. “You don’t get it. You can’t—we can’t keep it up. We can’t even tour in our own country. They don’t want us anymore, you know?”

“Then we’ll tour Europe again. We’ll go back to Australia. Whatever. I didn’t know the audience was so damn important to you.”

“You’re a hell of a guy to tell me that, Paulie.”

“And you’re a hell of a guy to lie to me, Ace.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Paul reached out, hand resting on top of his. No rings or anything. Not even the customary Rolex on his wrist. Ace wondered, dully, if Paul’d still have it in another three years.

“Why do you want out? Why do you really want out? Just tell me. Just tell me, all right?”

“Paul, please, Jesus—”

Paul hadn’t moved his hand yet. Ace could feel the calluses on it, the sweat on it. A case of nerves that fifteen fucking years of spilling his guts to a shrink hadn’t gotten rid of. Paul couldn’t ever calm down. Couldn’t ever calm down because he didn’t want to. That anxiety hung all over him like an old lover. Ace’s fingers curled up beneath Paul’s hand, but that was all.

“Ace.”

“I’m gonna die if I stay in this band. I’m gonna kill myself.”

“You what?” And now Paul was clutching his fingers, clamping onto them. Actually trying to lace their fingers together, Christ, he was, he was and Ace was letting him do it. “What do you mean? You can’t—you have a daughter, Ace, you can’t—”

“Not like that. I don’t—I don’t wanna die—”

“What do you need? Do you need a doctor? I can get you somebody, I can get you anybody, anybody you want, name it, I’ll—”

“I said I don’t wanna die, Paul.” An exhale. “I wouldn’t do it on purpose.”

“You’d overdose?” Paul was staring at him. Big brown eyes locked on his face. Ace wanted to see some coldness there, some indifference, some—some calculation, just to make this easier, but there wasn’t any. Paul’s nails dug into his knuckles. “You think we couldn’t keep the coke away from you?”

“No. I know you couldn’t.” A smirk, false and hollow, was trying to pull at his face. He didn’t let it. “Christ, Paulie, everyone’s on it. Everyone’s done it. Everyone I know but you and Gene and poor little Eric.”

Paul went silent.

 “And don’t you get all high and mighty on me when you used to keep a fucking drawer of speed on hand—when you still got prescriptions for shit you don’t even have—”

“I didn’t say anything! Ace, listen, you think it’ll get better if you’re out of the band? You think the band’s what’s keeping you coked up? The hell it is. You—you wouldn’t have anything to distract you from them without KISS. No tours you gotta get ready for. No concerts. Nothing. Y-you’d just be an even bigger fucking mess.”

Two guys messing around in the backseat of a Cadillac. It could’ve been ’68, Paul melting and smoothing out into Jeanette in his mind, pale, pretty Jeanette who’d been his girl, stayed his girl long enough to add one more ring to his finger. Was still his girl, somehow. It could’ve been ’73, Paul himself in all his painful shyness, too nerved-out to initiate much more than a kiss even in Ace’s bedroom; it could’ve been ’78, Paul a little less fragile and a little less frayed. There’d still been a softness to his face then, a sort of gentility that five years of touring hadn’t yet obliterated. That was gone now. That was all gone now.

He could wish it back. He could try. God knew Paul was trying, his mouth on Ace’s, tongue desperate for an entrance, his hands roaming down Ace’s chest like he was feeling for bitemarks he hadn’t left there in years.

“Say it, Ace. Say it.”

“No—”

“You’ll get clean, you’ll do it, whatever it takes, just please—”

“I can’t, Paul.”

The silhouette of Ace’s house looked like a sailor’s leviathan, all mass and tyranny, before the winds broke it down into drunken dreams.