Entitled: For Lack of Wanting
Notes: The scenes aren’t in order. Bear with this. It all makes sense in the end.

Hiro keeps banging on the drums.

“Hey,” says Wesley, just a little edged, “Stop that.”

Hiro smashes on the high hat, and yells wordlessly, holding his drumsticks aloft. His feet pound at the floor, shaking his stool. Wesley’s frown deepens, one eye squinting, “Stop that,” he says again. Hiro beams at him, panting and sweaty. His chubby face dimples, eyeglasses smudged but shining.

“We are Maximum Whisper!” he screams, “Thank you!” he goes back to pounding on the drums, the low, hollow sound choking over itself, the beat kicked up.

James looks over at Wesley and grins, his eyebrows up. “He’s going to steal your job, West.”

“Job,” Wesley repeats scathingly, scratching at his stubble. He somehow manages to look intimidating, even with his eyes half-open and bumming around in yesterday’s clothes. “I already have three jobs, and this one doesn’t pay.”

“You have no artistic soul,” James comments, his expression mournful as he strikes a wailing chord. He grins at Wesley’s murderous expression. “Feel the music, West. Feel it. Let it flow into you.”

“Have you noticed that you are set to be a total drop out?”

“Whatever, this is important.”

Wesley glares back, expression sour, before shaking his head, picking himself up and diving towards Hiro. “Get off my drums, man! We aren’t calling it that!”

“Two out of three! Two out of three!” Hiro wails, and sticks out his hands, pudgy fingers curled and ready for some intense rock-paper scissors. Wesley hits him without even blinking.

“I already won, I get to be the drummer.” he snaps, and tries tugging the drumsticks away, shooting James a dark look when the other man laughs.

The three of them are so loud, they miss the tentative hand knocking at their door, and it is that same timid person who finally opens the door, peering inside. She shrinks, slightly, and does her best to edge out. James looks over, peering through his glasses. “Hey!” he says, more surprised than welcoming. The girl looks at the guitar in his lap, the one he plays with idly, even as he speaks to her. She smiles automatically.

“My roommate,” she begins awkwardly, “She told me this was where I could find the music club?” she keeps her hands behind her back, bouncing on her heels. Her eyes are very blue.“Yeah, it is. What do you play?”

“The kazoo?” she shakes her head, “I just need to be in a club, or they aren’t letting me into grad school.”

“Okay,” James nods, and scoots over, leaving her a generous amount of couch, “Welcome to the band. You can be our manager.”

“Really?” she sits, and after a moment of examining the three of them, folds her legs beneath her primly and asks, “Is this it?”

“Hiro’s girlfriend brings us food sometimes,” he points towards Hiro, losing a tug-of-war for the drumstick, “So she’s technically a member too. I don’t know, we’re just sort of screwing around. What year are you in?”

“I’m a freshman,” she winces slightly when Wesley accidentally kicks over one of the microphones, “I transferred in a few days late. Is—are they—alright?” she gestures towards the squabble vaguely. James nods furiously, but never actually looks at the struggling pair.

“Oh, yes. They’re fine. This is all part of the warm up. I’m James.”

“Natalia,” she says slowly, and bites her lip, looking like she was having some serious second thoughts.

“Maximum Whisper sounds like some girl-rock, pseudo emo crap. Situational Turret’s will shut down half our market. Phantasmagoria is severely overestimating the public’s ability to read. I have this feeling that High Voltage has already been taken by someone. Flying Monkeys sounds like something off of Discovery Channel. Survived Abortions is liable to make us out to be Satanists. Michael Jackson Is Dead is practically asking to get us all sued—”

“We could always name it after me!”

“We are not calling our band Hiroshima.”

“I quit my job.” Natalia says, and throws her purse, hitting James in the stomach. He wakes up with a cough, blinking at her, so she says it again, “I quit my job,” and watches him register this. He rubs at his eyes. Her name is written backwards across one cheek.

“Okay,” he says, after a minute, “Why?”

“My boss,” she says robotically, “My boss—I think he was hitting on me. No, I know he was. He’s married and twice my age and it wasn’t my job to—do those things. So I quit.” She sits on the couch beside him, mouth set in a prim line. She retrieves her purse and sets it on her knees. She waits for comfort. It doesn’t come. When she glances over at him, his face is slack with defeat, lips set in a tired sort of hopelessness.

“Great,” he says, ringing hollow, then leans forwards and rests his forehead against her shoulder, his breath puffing against her skin. “So did I.”

“What?” she starts, and shifts, slipping away, “Wait, why did you quit?”

He looks ashamed, but even more than that, lost. Dazed, like none of this was real. Like euphoria had turned to liquid, and fell from his hands to feed the ground. “For the band,” he says, “I thought—it was just going to be for like a month or so, so we could all really focus on it, you know, but if you don’t have any work, then…” he trails off, waiting for reassurance. She doesn’t offer any.

He looks at her then with a tired, lost sort of stare, and shakes his head. He takes a step backwards. “I can’t,” he says, almost wonderingly, and swallows. He cuts his losses and reaches for the door.

“James,” she says, afraid of the wide city, the maze of buildings, the millions of faces sliding in and out of sight. Thrumming with syncing heartbeats, “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll take care of it,” he says, blankly, and runs. She listens to him, his sneakers slipping down the landing, splashing through puddles left around potted plants, the results of sloppy watering.

Then, after she’s gone to the door and clicked the lock in place, does she return to the couch and lift the envelope he had slept on, the one marked with her name.

Natalia opens the door on his sixth attempt knocking. She isn’t wearing any make-up, and she leans against the door like a drunk, or an invalid. She speaks carefully, like she might be double-guessing the words, like nothing makes sense. “Hey, West.”

Wesley holds up his bag hopefully. “Here. I brought you something to eat.”

Her lips part slightly, and she stares at the bag for a long second before lifting her arms and taking it. “Thanks,” she mumbles, and then after a moment, shuts the door. He stands there, listening to her drop the bag of food and walk away…and then an angry, glass-shrieking smash.

He hammers on the door, “Natalia—hey, Natalia! Open up!” and when she doesn’t, he kicks at the door until the handle gives and the cheap wood splinters, and he sees her standing in the middle of chaos, a trophy strangled in one hand, and the television scattered across the floor, a jigsaw puzzle. Her wrist bleeds. She drops the trophy numbly, and watches him as he steps over the food, the glass, the rotting vegetables, watches right until the point when he slaps her across the face and yells, “Stop it.”

For a moment she doesn’t move, just stands there with her head turned to the side, a criminal print on one cheek. Her hands curl. Natalia turns back to back to him with her eyes narrowed and wet, sobbing whenever her screams pause, fists beating at his chest while she yells, “You stupid bastard, how could you?!” over and over again, and he knows she isn’t really talking about him.

When she’s done, he wraps up her wrist with ice cubes and a dishtowel, and they sit down on one of the cleaner patches of floor and stare at the television’s black eye.

“West,” says Natalia, says the girl who always dated other guys, “Can you help me with something?”

It’s a man’s guitar. It’s too heavy and makes her back ache, too wide for her hands. She refuses to play anything else.

“I can give you a different one,” Hiro says, not looking at her directly, tuning and retuning his bass, “My sister started playing a few years ago. It’d fit better.”

Natalia just stares at him, not blinking, until Wesley sighs and climbs out from behind his drums. “Adjust the strap, at least,” he says crossly. He does it for her, and because it feels wrong to be standing so close, asks the room at large, “So, who’s going to sing?”

“I will!” Hiro cheeps. He warbles through a couple scales, and then stops when he notices their pained expressions. “Was I flat?”

Wesley closes his eyes, “Please, don’t.”

“I’ll do it,” Natalia chimes in, her eyes bright. She flexes a cramp from her hands, “I can sing okay.”

“Fine,” Wesley says, and hands over a sheet of music. She takes it from him, her nails clipped short, and holds it by the corners, her eyes narrowed. There is a long silence.

“Could you hum it, or something?” she says, finally. Hiro cackles. Wesley digs through his pockets for an Advil.

“He never showed me this,” Wesley says, his legs crossed, feet stuffed into a borrowed pair of socks. He hadn’t noticed earlier how cold the apartment was, with the heating shut off. Natalia watches him expectantly.

“Is it any good?” she asks, a thread of hope crossing into her speech. Wesley looks up, and then shrugs. He takes James’ guitar from her and starts plucking out the melody. The notes stammer awkwardly in the air as he hesitates between each beat. Maybe that’s why it sounds so odd.

“He wrote this?” he flips through the pages, trying to decipher James’ cramped scrawl, the lyrics he hid between bars of scratchy notes. No subliminal political messages. No rambling, repressed frustration. Not a single cry to arms. It’s something, he just doesn’t know what. “I don’t know.” he says finally, tapping out the rhythm against his thigh, “I guess. Yeah.”

“I need to learn how to play this,” Natalia tells him, adjusting her makeshift bandage, “This one’s mine.” To elaborate, she pulls out a manila envelope, torn raggedly at one end, with ‘Natalia’ written across it in careful block letters. James’ handwriting.

She spends five months practicing. Fine months of building up blisters, the calluses thickening her fingertips. She sings in the shower religiously while the neighbors all bang on the walls and yell things through the plaster.

The three of them huddle up in the eaves, Hiro with his hair caked in neon orange spray paint, Wesley looking more exasperated than ever to cover up his nerves. She plucks at her shirt, at the clothes she hasn’t worn since high school, and realizes that she’s lost weight. She touches her guitar strap, then the sleeve of Wesley’s shirt, Hiro’s stupid hair. She closes her eyes. This feels right.

When she walks out and into the light, she blanks, feeling blind. It’s unreasonably hot. Wesley taps the cymbals, Hiro checks the amp, she feels her voice sticking, clogged at the back of her throat. When she blinks again, she can make out the mike. Her/His guitar is too heavy. Her whole body tilts slightly to support it. “Okay,” she says, her voice echoing, and counts down to the rhythm, her dirty shoes bouncing.

For the next hour and a half, the only moments of clarity are between the songs, when she lists off their names. The Underwear Song. Down With Peanut Butter. Methods of Procreation. Thou Shalt Not. We’re All Balding. And then, finally, just, “My Song,” because it doesn’t have a name. Her fingertips throb. Her throat feels all raw, and halfway through she’s hit with a rush of sudden clarity, of total understanding, that the notes falter, and Wesley has to cover her with an improvised solo. Upon reflection she thinks that she’d probably been playing like a hot mess, but the last song, she knows she got right.

She stands panting, sweat running down the arch of her spine, her clothes feeling like they’d been coated with a layer of wet glue. “Thanks,” she says faintly, and can’t even register the applause; just lets Wesley drag her backstage so she can cry in private.

The song is over.

On the third day, he hits his speed dial number one, and waits.

“Where are you?” she demands, right off, but doesn’t give him time to answer, “Do you know how—I thought you were dead or something, you asshole—” she hiccups, and puts her hand over her mouth, shutting her eyes hard.

“I’m fine,” he says, sitting back on his motorbike, hunched over in his uncomfortable, dirty clothes. “I just stayed at work. I slept in the office.”

She sniffs, “Look, I—” she stops, pulling at her hair, “Come home. My parents sent me more stuff from the farm, and it’s just going to rot.”

“Broccoli for breakfast,” he recites tiredly. She gives a strained little laugh, and then just waits.

He closes his eyes and reaches for his helmet, “I’m not going to play, anymore,” he says, feels every word drop, but isn’t really sure if he’s the one saying them. “I can’t. It isn’t going anywhere. It’s time to grow up.”

She doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure what there is to say.

“I’m coming home,” he promises, and listens to her breathe.

She puts his voice right next to her ear.

“Listen,” she says, and tries to say, “I love you,” but then her battery dies, and all he gets is an inhale, and a click.

They both look down at their respective phones.

“I’m coming home,” James repeats, his hands tightening. He puts on his helmet, the straps flapping around his chin, too long. When he looks up, the skyline crouches between rooftops, impossible and narrow. The tips of his feet tap along the ground, rolling the bike out, before he clamps onto the acceleration and flows into traffic, trembling at the slow parts, smooth when it’s fast. He races along with the cars, feels the artificial wind and tips back his chin to stare up, up at the streetlights.

“I’m coming home,” James says again, in a soft, absent way, can only feel the words as they form in his throat, can’t hear them over the roar of the traffic. He smiles. He should, right? He’s happy. He’s perfect.

The light turns red and he presses harder on the acceleration, harder, listens to the cars screaming, listens to the people on sidewalks, listens to himself—feels the scream even if he can’t hear it, his eyes burning, until he hits something—something, and is thrown up, flipping, helmet slipping back, hands open and waiting to catch.

For a moment of perfect stillness he looks up, up at the sun in its cold distance, and in that moment the sky is so enormous and so terrifying that he feels himself grin, vicious and burning and alive and he thinks, Oh wow, I’ve seen that shade of blue—with tears matting his eyelashes and his smile too tight, head exploding from the back and in.

He lies there on the asphalt with his neck wet and hot and looks at the sky—at the pure possibility, and wonders how he could have ever lost it.

After living together for roughly three weeks, she feels it more than safe to breech the question, “So, are we going out?”

“Uh,” James thinks for a moment, “Yeah, I guess so.”

She reflects upon this, and is slightly offended by the order by which this happened, “Don’t I get a confession? A plea? Can’t you say, ‘I love you?’”

“Someday,” James adds to his list of promises, “I’ll tell you.”