Disclaimer: The song is a slightly modified version of one by Plastic Tree, a Japanese band with the most beautiful of vocalists. Everything else is mine.

Warnings: Language.

By desoul

He sat, stock still, for hours, pencil dangling between two loose fingers as he battled the paper. Gray eyes remained unfocused, hidden under frowning brows and framed by lashes that contrasted starkly with his deeply red hair. Oversized boots meant to make him taller were left, unneeded, against the far wall, forgotten and waiting, watching the silent argument. Man versus thin white sheet of paper….

Undoubtedly, the paper was winning.

Eyes narrowed as a frustrated crease made itself known on the man’s forehead, and minutes later the pencil found itself flying for the wall. It hit, leaving a sharp mark, and bounced on to the floor with a loud clatter.

The paper had won.

Hands grabbed the offensive sheet and crumpled it, hurling it at the wall much as they had the pencil before it. It floated with a rather unsatisfying air, falling short of the target to land in the left boot. He uttered a soft obscenity, and laid his head on the table with a solid thunk, admitting defeat and remained that way for a good thirty minutes.

Useless, useless, useless…. Can’t even write a song properly. Stupid fuck…. The internal scolding was interrupted by the lightest of touches on his head. Blunt fingertips massaged his scalp, and he couldn’t help but sigh, but the sound came out wistful and unhappy rather than satisfied.

“Oh Lius…” began the compassionate voice he knew would come, “The song’s still giving you trouble.”

He nodded, though it hadn’t been a question, or at least he tried to nod, but his head was pressed against the table after all.

“Don’t let it get to you like this, honey! We understand! Muses’re fickle things… They come and go as they please.”

“Cass,” he moaned, muffled by the wood, “it was due yesterday. Sam’s not about to understand anything… He’s gonna kill me!” It was true. Sam, their manager, had been complaining about the wait for a follow up album for a good while now, concerned that the band would lose their fan base if forced to wait much longer. Lius had gotten Sam to agree to a single instead of a full album, provided that he handed the lyrics in by a certain date: yesterday. He’d claimed stomach virus and hidden in his locked apartment to get out of that one, but the angry voice on the answering machine erased any suspicions that Lius could use the same excuse another day. Like Today.

“Sam can shove it,” Cass’ voice held her scowl securely, “He’s never done anything creative in his life. You can’t put deadlines on this kind of thing.”

“Sam’s gonna shove something, alright. But it’s gonna be in me.” Cass laughed and leaned down, giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek for encouragement.

“Just don’t let yourself get stressed like this, and you’ll do alright. Your muse’ll come back to you… You’ve just got to be patient, okay?” she earned a nod and, after patting Lius on his back, left him to slump his way to the balled up paper, uncrumple it, and resume his fight, new pencil in hand but still without any inspiration.

Sam was screaming in his ear and it was doing nothing for his headache. There was still no song, and it was now two days late. Lius sighed -- tuning the irate man out and staring down at a new sheet of crumpled paper. He’d made progress, if you were willing to use the term loosely, in the shape of several scratched out lines of lyrics. But there was still one, written while his ear was abused, and his pencil point tapped down a steady beat beside it.

It was a good question, and Lius almost smiled. He’d tried out for the band because he thought it would make him happy, and of course sometimes it did. When they had first made it to a larger gig, he’d been no less than ecstatic. When sales for their album rocketed, when he realized that people were actually out there, listening to him sing and the others play… God but he had never gotten so drunk in his life. It was great.

But this was not what he signed in for. With a sigh, he cut Sam off with the dial tone, flinging the cordless phone over his shoulder to land on his futon. All that happiness was gone suddenly, probably off in Bermuda with his delinquent “muse”. He was back with the same feelings he had tried to run away from, although quite a bit more wealthy than before, and he almost wished he could go back to the way things were.

This was too much responsibility. The band, Sam, and whatever fans they still had left were all waiting on him. Knowing this, Lius couldn’t get pencil to touch paper and write something decent for his life. He was unhappy. He was more than unhappy. He was... He was…

“Stuck on a hill of despair.” A laugh. “Oh Jesus, I am getting so fucking corny.” A sigh. But for some reason he wrote it down anyway, just before pushing the paper to the side, laying down his pencil, and introducing his head to the table for the second time in two days. He’d have to stop doing that, he told himself, or there’d be an imprint on his forehead in the morning.

He wasn’t answering the phone, and he sure as hell wasn’t answering the door. If Sam wanted to kill him, he’d have to break it down to do it.

There was very little progress from yesterday. His hill of despair waited, by itself, in the upper right hand corner of the abused paper, while that one line sat, lonely, near the center. But there was something: a few timid lines written so lightly that the crinkles threatened to swallow them from view. A tentative first stanza, as it were.

It was totally different. And it was terrible. But it was there, solid, written. He didn’t know why he was stuck doing the writing anyway… He never said he was good at it. He never said he wanted to.

And suddenly there it was again, the pounding on his door. Sam, demanding to be let inside, to have the song so he could tear it apart… And then tear Lius apart. The wood shook as the manager kicked at it, but eventually he must have grown tired because he left again, probably with plans to return in an hour or so and try again. Lius ‘humph’ed softly, staring at the paper that was staring back up at him. He’d forgiven it for being difficult. The paper couldn’t help it if his muse was being a horrible asshole. They were all tired. Lius was very tired. He was speaking to a piece of paper, for heaven’s sake, but then several nights without sleep could do that to a person. And he wouldn’t sleep until he wrote the song. He wouldn’t run away.

But he wanted to.

Blinking with sudden inspiration, he wrote a few lyrics down, then a few more. When he stopped he had half a song. A horrible, bad, potential bomb of a song, but it could be sung. Lius sat back, relieved, and looked out of the window through the fire engine hair in his eyes.

He’d actually finished at two am, but had simply sat there, stunned, for at least an hour longer. He was exhausted. He was hungry. He smelled and needed a shower and his muse was still in Bermuda. And yet, he had a song. A song! He screamed it to his empty apartment, and his boots against the wall applauded him politely.

Getting up from his desk with a creak, Lius walked to the bathroom with a spring in his step. He showered, then made himself some breakfast, and eventually sat down with some bacon and eggs to rewrite his lyrics legibly. He was on the second to last line when there was a now familiar pounding on his door, and with one of his many curses, he scrambled to finish the ending. Then he rushed to answer the door.

“You sonovabitch!” rushed Sam, the irate, “What that fuck do you think you’re doing? You piece of--” the lyrics were shoved into his hands and read.

Reread.

“You know… I didn’t mean any of that…” Lius blinked at his manager, and then choked as he was hugged by the huge bear of a man. “I was just worried, for your health I mean!” Sam amended, “It’d be a shame to lose a genius like you!”

Terial, dwarfed and lost in the man’s huge torso, could just manage a mumble as a reply. That seemed to be just fine with Sam, however, because he continued on undaunted. “Where the hell’d you come up with this anyway? The fans’ll love it! It’s so…. So…” Lius mumbled again, “Yes! Just that! Dear God, but I love you man!” the hug tightened a few notches and Lius choked, feeling his lungs start to compress under the strain.

Cass had seen the song that same Friday, and had absolutely fallen in love with it. She had, however, given Lius a gentle hug, careful of his abused ribs, and whispered that they’d have to talk if he really felt the lyrics in his heart, but made it very clear that she was proud of him. She’d called it a “soul expansion” or something, and Lius could only smile. Cass could be overly deep sometimes.

The lyrics had made the rounds of the group members, each of them giving a thumbs up at it or the equivalent, before handing it over to Keane to have lyrics fit to it. He’d finished after an all nighter on Saturday, and worked out the kinks the next day on Sunday.

Apparently Keane’s muse didn’t like Bermuda. Either way, it was Monday, and everyone was together to try out the song for the first time. It seemed like Lius was the only uncomfortable one.

Everyone loved the song. Everyone thought it was a great step forward for the band. Everyone but Lius, who thought the song was shit. He worried that the others would come to their senses when they heard it and not just read it. There was a vast difference between the ears and the eyes, of course. But he had no choice as the music started to play, Cass opening with her guitar as she bobbed her head to keep time, and eventually he started to sing, face as white as rice in his nervousness.

Lius sat down in the hard chair, hands fidgeting with the overly long sleeves of his baggy shirt. Sam had called the studio in the middle of a practice session and, without a word of explanation, demanded to see him in the office immediately. Lius had set the phone down with hands that quaked slightly, looking around the room with what must have been a very nervous expression judging from the various responses he received from the band.

“Sam wants to see me,” he explained quietly.

Keane blinked over at him with one eyebrow arched liberally, hands going still on the strings of his guitar. “Bad? Or good?”

Lius shrugged hopelessly, “I donno…. But whatever it is it’s got to be major.”

Cass shot him a smile but she was obviously worried for her friend. “Well if he wasn’t cursing you out then it could be some great news!”

“Or I could be in some deep shit…” responded Lius, eternally the optimistic one. The following hugs and pats on the back made him feel like he was being sent to the slaughter house, and he had left the room very concerned for his well being.

Sure, Cass had been right; this all could be something great. The single might have hit the charts and done well, or it could have just been played on the radio and Sam wanted to congratulate him for it. Maybe they had a gig set up that would put all the others to shame. Yet Lius, who really hadn’t thought the song was more than half decent in the first place, really doubted that he could be brought in here for anything remotely positive. In his mind, it was more likely for Sam to come in with an axe and start swinging for his head. Maybe he was getting fired. If so, that would be one hell of a way to do it.

Completely lost in his thoughts, Lius missed it when the door opened behind him, admitting a carefully bland manager. It wasn’t until Sam sat down at his desk and started to speak that the singer snapped out of his daze and shrunk back in his chair.

Non-expressions were never good things…

But at least there wasn’t an axe.