Meli had a butter-smooth hum, her unutterably sweet husky voice better than velvet, making the puffing of the kettle she was boiling for hot water beside her music. The tune sank deep down into his bones before he realized what he was hearing; his fingers paused with the needle and thread and an old shirt, listening to his Holder.

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness; I'll love you with all the madness in my soul -

He'd stabbed himself accidentally with the needle before he'd even realized it. Fuck, shit, fuck. That stung.

Someday, girl, I don't know when -

Perfect pitch, too. The notes washed over him numbly, made the wound turn ice-slush like Popsicle mix, made him feel naked and vulnerable and wanting to pull his bandanna up around his mouth like a blankie. Brian, you jerk, turn the tape up, I love this one - aw, Emmy, you know I can't dance with him, his hands touch me. In places. C'mon, Wendy - And he was sent back years; sent back before Meli's pale platinum hair, back before everything.

- we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go -

"And we'll walk in the sun," Xi suddenly burst out, deep scratchy-husky bittersweet voice stilling Meli's, so loud Evan and Nikki probably heard it across the hallway. His mouth made it harder to round his vowels nowadays; but he had relearnt how to wail it, bluesy and dark, rougher with age since the days where he had put on really tight leather pants and rocked out with a microphone next to three other beautifully androgynous young men. "But till then - tramps like us, baby, we were born to run - !"

She would have smiled at him, fingers careful with the substance from the kettle that could burn her without even realizing it, the sensitivity of her body requiring extra attention lest she get hurt and Kort scold her. Something in his eyes, though, stopped her; the silence in their bond was like a bitten-off scream, something quiet and awful and filled with horror.

"I'm sorry, Xi, honey," Meli said, gentle as she could make it, his own cracks worn across her heart through their Eternus Infinuum. She didn't need to know why she had to be horribly, shamefully sorry; just that she was. One day he would crack open a packet of fudge and tell her. "I didn't mean t' - "

"I know you didn't, Brigitte," he said, with difficulty, her codename not reproach but affection. "I know."

He set his needle down, staring blankly at the wall, his gaping maw of sharp teeth making it harder than usual to tell his expression. "Least it wasn't Thunder Road," he muttered, and Meli knew he was more than half talking to himself rather than her.

She stirred in the grounds. That week Xi refused to let her waste her precious real coffee on him and made her make him Instant, which was not so much coffee as hot brown water flavoured like waste. The Holder laid his drink in his hands, sitting down on the table he was working at, watching as he set down his needle and gratefully accepted the hot cup. He just blinked once and hard before he looked up at her, smiling now, in the Here instead of in the horrible sterile Faraway.

Hazel eyes met red-pupiled chocolate; her gaze was measured, and even, and kind. "Past sometimes comes and bites us in the ass, don't it," she murmured.

Only if we let it, sweetcheeks. His voice in her head, very very careful as he drunk his coffee with all those rows of fangs. Mine just kinda - rips off my balls sometimes. Meli?

"Yeah?"

He swallowed his mouthful and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, not so much bad manner as necessity. She could make even instant taste good. "You got a pretty voice."

"Thanks, Xi."

"I'd like to hear it again." Lopsided smile again, flashing white. "Just not - "

" - the Springsteen."

Not if you catch me off guard. It makes me cry like a maudlin trucker at a country & western concert. I hear you, all bourbon-smooth and Cajun, and then I hear - "Just not the Springsteen. Not yet."

There was an awkward pause, as she clasped her reddened hands. He sipped. "Coffee tastes good."

"It's instant, Xi. It's crap."

"Maybe one day we can take out my tapes. I have his Live In Michigan concert."

Guilty for his own unbidden sorrow? Meli resisted all sisterly urges to ruffle the older man's hair and stood, giving him one of her lopsided smiles, chunks of feathery white-blonde hair falling in her eyes. "I'd like that."

He picked up needle and thread again, squinting at the shirt, setting the mug down on the table as he went to war once more with tiny stitches. "Now get back in the kitchen and make me a pie or something. That's why you're there, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. Bastard."

If the Eternus Infinuum was a marriage, theirs wasn't going so bad. Even if his ex-wife constantly had loud sex with her new partner at three in the morning, embarrassing Kort and anybody else within hearing distance. Life wasn't so bad.