Don't Pretend that You Know Me

[acacia59]

Title: Don’t Pretend that You Know Me

Author: Acacia

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Pete/Roger, unrequited John/Keith

Time Period: 1975, on tour for Who by Numbers

Warnings: Drinking, swearing, two grown men snogging each other. What more could you want?

Disclaimer: I don’t make any money on this but I do get to make four delectable men do what ever I want. In a completely figurative, fictional way, of course.

Summary: Pete is determined to learn Roger’s secret. If only to distract himself from his own inner demons.

So I am not trying to step on entwizzle’s toes (Go read their fic right now, it’s great!), but here is the long awaited (maybe) sequel to Two Names on a Screwed up Piece of Paper. This one ends on a cliffhanger, and I have the basic plot of the next piece sketched out, so I think it will end up being a trilogy. Stay tuned.



Pete Townshend sat alone in the dark gloom of his dressing room. There had been people in here, milling about, and light and laughter, but when they had seen his face, they had started to drift away. The last stragglers had asked him if he needed anything. He had told them to leave, tiredly, shut off the lights and retrieved an unopened bottle of brandy from the well stocked table in the back of the room.

He clutched the bottle desperately, unable or unwilling to stop the relentless whirlwind of thoughts in his head. Things were going well, he reflected, although after the downward spiral of resentment and desperation that had been the last year and a half, it was hard to see how his life could go anywhere but up. That or stop, and God knows he had come close enough…but it was behind him now. After his self imposed exile from the press, he had reached a shaky truce with Roger. They were carefully polite to each other off stage, pouring whatever frustration and anger remained into the music onstage. The show displayed the effects of that and the music sounded better than it had in years. They had pulled Keith out of California, so they didn’t have to merely imagine whatever self destructive behavior he was engaging in. And John seemed happy to be performing with the Who again, or at least he kept whatever he thought about the last couple of years hidden from Pete.

So why am I sitting in the dark, alone, afraid to get drunk, afraid to go back out there sober? He knew something was still missing, that despite this present lull, the roots of his depression were still lurking. He was still responsible for an aging rock group that mostly felt like an anchor tied around his drowning body. He still felt that crushing weight of having no place in the emerging culture. He was terrified to simply trot out the Best of the Who each night, but there were the fans, screaming for it, always screaming for him. When he was with his family, he could push back these demons and pretend to be a normal person, albeit a normal workaholic who spent most of his time locked in his studio, but out here on the road, the questions came crowding back.

Pete set the bottle down with the exaggerated care of a man who had actually had too many drinks. It took all his will to painfully unclench his hand from around the bottle’s slender neck. He stood up and started to pace. If only there was someone who understood. He felt so bloody alone in a crowd. Maybe that was why he had sent everyone away. Feeling lonely when you are alone isn’t quite so pathetic. But whenever he tried to articulate what he felt to someone, it always seemed to end badly.

I just want someone to talk to. Is that so much to ask? Someone who won’t guilt me like Karen or idolize me like the fans or expect so much from me like the band.

Abruptly, a scream split the soft darkness. A full-throated cry that was as familiar to Pete as the sound of his own voice. He stopped dead in his tracks and only vaguely realized that he was clenching his fists so hard that his ragged fingernails were biting into his palms.

God damn him, he thought viciously. Here I am, fucking suffering for my fucking art and he’s shagging some chit of a girl senseless not thirty minutes after the gig. Pete snorted, as if I should be surprised. I doubt a serious thought has ever passed through that curly head of his.

Without admitting to himself that he knew what he had thought wasn’t fair, Pete slowly reached for the brandy bottle, opened it with shaking hands and took a long swallow.

***

Another day, another town. The steady noise of the road, bus tires humming over the rough asphalt and the swoosh of passing cars, had pulled Pete down into an uneasy dose, but something had woken him.

“Fluffy kittenpoo.”

Pete glanced over at Roger. He was listlessly working on a crossword in the paper, but he looked up at Keith and John sitting together on a bottom bunk with a slight frown.

“Sir sweetums pumpkin.”

Pete sighed and closed his eyes. If he could get an hour of sleep, tonight would be a whole lot easier.

“Sugar sweet cheeks drummer boy.”

Pete heard the sound of Keith dissolving into helpless laughter and he opened his eyes. “That’s it, I give up. You win, you win,” Keith managed to gasp out, shoving other man away from him. “You cold hearted bastard, have you no mercy?” he shrieked.

John smiled one of his rare, sweet smiles, the ones he only bestowed on Keith and his antics. As he looked down at the grinning drummer, Pete saw a look of unguarded tenderness cross John’s face and he felt a pang of jealousy spasm in his chest.

With a snap that seemed impossibly loud in the crowded bus, the pen in Roger’s hand broke in two. Everyone’s heads swiveled towards him as he slammed the pieces down on the table and stood up.

“Right. Can’t you two shut up for a bloody minute and let the rest of us have some peace?”

Pete looked at Roger in surprise, “Jesus, Roger, it’s just that stupid game they play.”

Roger crossed his arms over his chest and tossed his blond curls. “I don’t give a shit. It’s bloody annoying and I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in days with all this damn giggling and as you so kindly keep reminding us, Pete, I’m not as young as I once was.” With that, the singer stalked away to the toilet, slamming the door behind him.

Keith scampered behind the irate man and rattled the door handle. “He’s locked himself in,” he reported to the band with wide eyes. “What did you do to him, Pete?”

“Me?!” Pete exclaimed, indignantly.

Keith rolled his eyes, “He’s a pain in the arse to all of us, but he only really goes round the bend when you two have gotten in a tiff.”

Pete looked at the door to the lavatory thoughtfully, “I haven’t done anything, we’ve barely even talked. He must have something else on his mind.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw John carefully lean back into the pile of cushions and clothes on the bunk  and only then did he realize how tense the other man had been throughout the confrontation.

***

John sat at a corner table in the back of the cruddy hotel restaurant and stared at his drink morosely. He knew he was sulking, but fuck it, he thought and slowly lit a cigarette.

Keith had tried to get him to go out on the town, like they normally would after a show. He remembered the hurt in the drummer’s big brown eyes when he told him he felt like being alone tonight. But he couldn’t seem to shake the incident with Roger on the bus. It had seemed like some looming portent and he couldn’t face a night of reckless abandon with the irrepressible younger man. Not with Keith. I don’t dare lose control like that again.

It had been Keith that had coaxed Roger out of the loo, in the end. And Keith had convinced him to come down to the bar. John watched the two of them standing there through the haze of the smoke filled room lit with the dreary light of the dust covered fixtures. Keith was telling a gaggle of girls and fans in various states of inebriation a story which seemed to require the use of a wide assortment of paper hats made from the bar’s napkins. Roger was drinking with a grim determination that seemed destined to have him passed out on the floor while the night was still young. From time to time, Keith would seek validation of some point or another from his band mate, who would belatedly respond with increasing animation as the drinks caught up with him.

John’s eyes narrowed as Keith put a paper miter on his head to the raucous guffaws of the spectators. Keith’s face lit up, basking in the adoration of his audience. He never looks at me like that. And believe me, I would notice. It was like an old toothache and John took macabre pleasure in probing the pain thoroughly. He was staring at the band’s jester so intently that he didn’t notice the lanky guitarist take the chair next to him.

“You should just talk to him.”

“Aww, sod off, Townshend.” It was an old argument between them. Leave it to Pete to not know when to let things rest.

Pete exhaled, resignedly, and stole a sip of John’s drink. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The worst?” John sputtered, “Look at him!” Keith was trying to turn a handspring but seemed to be under the impression that the ground was on a different plane than the one it was currently occupying. “He would laugh right in my fucking face. He would think it was all some grand joke. Bloody hell, he’s probably right, it is a fucking joke.”

Pete shook his head and seemed to be willing to let the matter drop. John tried to relax, no matter how many times that script ran out between him and his oldest friend, it never ceased to make him tense up like a too tightly wound clock. He could feel the beginning of a headache pulsing in his temples.

As John rubbed the side of his head, Pete stared at the group by the bar himself, until John assumed that he was lost in thought, content to sit there in silence, nursing John’s drink. The quiet lull stretched on, companionably, as John finished the cigarette and started another.

Despite everything, John was cautiously optimistic about the tour. Though he’d be damned if he let Pete’s mercurial moods and roller coaster depression yank his life around like a dog on chain, he had to admit that there was no point in fighting Pete’s opinion of the band. If Pete thinks we’re shit, then that’s that. Best occupy yourself elsewhere. That’s a lesson Roger has never gotten through that thick skull of his.  But Pete seemed to be really trying for this go and it had been going okay. On the surface. Until I went and fucked things up. John shook his head. Just exactly what were you fuckin’ thinking, Johnny boy? Oh, yeah, you weren’t thinking, were you?

“Do you know what’s wrong with Roger?” Pete’s words so neatly intersected with the direction of John’s thoughts that he nearly fell out of his chair in shock. The thump of his hand on the table as he caught himself was loud in the quiet corner of the bar. To cover for his start and give himself some time to think, John took a deep drag on his cigarette. Pete was trying to look nonchalant, but his eyes kept darting over to the man by the bar.

“Who says anything is wrong with him? So he yelled at us on the bus, some days it seems like he never stops yelling,” John shrugged and bowed his head, carefully watching Pete from beneath his eyelashes.

“Roger isn’t like us, John,” Pete said, slowly. “He doesn’t keep anything bottled up inside. He isn’t complex or dark or introverted. When something upsets him, he lets you know. It’s a right bother, of course, but sometimes it’s kind of nice, don’t you think?” Pete glanced sidelong at the bassist.

Is that a not so subtle jab at our own relationship, Mr. Townshend? Whatever it was, John wasn’t in the mood for Pete’s philosophical games. He merely grunted and returned to his smoke.

“But right now he’s upset and he’s hiding something. He isn’t a very good liar,” sighed Pete, tapping his lips with a long finger. John watched Pete’s hand, the edge of the plastic bandage wrapped around his index finger was tattered and peeling. “I thought you might know something, he seemed pretty normal before Houston.”

As John opened his mouth to react to how close Pete had gotten to the truth in his musings, to protest, to deny, they were interrupted by a very sloshed Keith crashing into their table pulling a similarly inebriated Roger down with him.

“Whoops, there we go!” Keith shouted as glasses, napkins and the splintered remains of the table rained down on top of him.

***

Roger was drunk. How drunk was a little difficult to pin down at the moment, but at least much drunker than he had been in a while. He wasn’t quite the lily white choir boy the other’s liked to make him out to be, but it was true that he hated to feel out of control, hated the toll it all took on the body he worked so hard to maintain.

Most of all he hated to feel out of control. He saw how Pete could surrender to the impulses of whatever primal force took him over on stage and it terrified him. Roger planned everything, he never surprised himself. So when his body had reacted to John that dark night in Houston, it had been the ultimate betrayal. His thoughts kept running in tight circles in his head. Did you want it? If you didn’t want it, why didn’t you stop it, you pitiful little coward? You must have wanted it. No! God, I don’t know anymore.

His body could not be trusted. Moreover, his mind could not be trusted to keep his body in check.

As he lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling lights that seemed to be swimming through thick honey, he realized that this was perhaps not the optimal way to resolve that paradox.

***

Pete and John stood up, pushing their chairs away from the wreckage. Pete disgustedly tried to wipe off the remains of John’s drink which had wound up all over his white shirt.

Keith seemed temporarily down for the count, but Roger was slowly staggering to his feet, shedding coasters and wooden splinters. He looked up at John and Pete watching him and turned a faint shade of red.

“What? You two have never seen Keith destroy anything before?” Roger stopped and then his own joke seemed to register and he dissolved into helpless laughter.

“Roger, you’re drunk,” Pete said, tersely, upset at the interruption and the sight of Roger weaving slightly as he stood.

Roger stopped laughing and frowned. “Ha, that’s a switch, ain’t it? Roger, you’re drunk,” he responded in a high, nasal mockery of Pete’s voice. “It’s normally the other way around, me telling you you’re drunk. Isn’t. It. Pete.” Roger emphasized each of his words with a shove to Pete’s chest.

“Come on, let’s get you bed.”

“You can’t bloody well tell me what to do.” This time the shove was real and Pete staggered back from the force of it, nearly tripping on the remains of a chair. Recovering himself, the gangly man tried to catch John’s attention for help.

“John, help me get him up to his room,” Pete pleaded when the other man refused to meet his eye.

John glanced at Roger with disgust and rubbed the side of his nose with one ringed finger, “I’m not touching him.”

“Oh, you won’t touch me, huh? That’s funny, because it seems like…”

“Roger, that’s enough,” John snapped, “You’re drunk.” He grabbed the singer’s wrist and pulled hard enough to set the already tipsy Roger off balance. As he staggered against the taller man, John growled in his ear, just loud enough for Pete to hear, “Go to your room with Pete like a good little boy.”

“You can go to hell, Entwistle,” Roger snarled and started to lunge at John but he was thrown off as Keith attempted to clamber out of the wreckage on the floor by climbing up Roger’s trousers. This threw off the singer’s shaky balance once more and the two ended up in a heap on the floor, Keith laughing maniacally.

John threw his hands up in the air in frustration and then managed to fish Keith out of the tangle on the floor. Growling obscenities under his breath, John frog marched him out of the bar, the drummer loudly protesting the entire way. Which left a sadly sober Pete to deal with Roger. Great, thought Pete, watching the other two go, am I this much of a bother when I drink? Probably.

Roger was sprawled out on the floor, eyes closed. Pete briefly contemplated just leaving him there, but glancing up at the gathering crowd, sighed and pulled him up and to his feet with a grunt of exertion. Roger shook his head in a futile attempt to clear it and clutched weakly to Pete’s shirtfront.

“Uh, Pete? You know, I think I am a little drunk.” He swayed, his grasp reflexively tightening on Pete’s shirt. This shirt is probably a total loss. “Okay, a lot drunk.”

“I know, mate. Let’s just get you upstairs.” The two slowly made their way out of the bar and back to Roger’s room. The flickering, fluorescent lights in the hotel hallway seemed to prematurely age the singer and Pete noted with astonishment the dark circles under his eyes and a raw patch on his lip that looked like he had been chewing on it.

They arrived at Roger’s door in silence. He rested his forehead against the door for a moment before fumbling in his pocket for the key. The door creaked faintly as he opened it and Pete decided that it was as good a time as any to ask the question that had been nagging him since the episode in the bus.

“What’s wrong, Roger?” Pete burst out in a harsher tone than he had quite intended. He pressed on. “I’m not fucking blind. If it is something that is going to fuck up the tour, then out with it right now.”

Roger turned and gaped at Pete. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before answering, “It’s nothing like that.”

“It’s something with John, isn’t it?” John had given him a skillful runaround in the bar and Pete was damned if a mostly trashed Roger was going to manage the same. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing! Jesus Christ, Pete, can’t you leave well enough alone?” Roger was shoving his hair back in the way he only did when Pete was pushing his temper to the edge.

Pete rushed on, despite the warning signs, knowing that when Roger was defensive like this it made him say reckless things, things he would want to take back later. Careful, Pete, there is a better way to get the information you’re after.

“Did he steal your favorite girl? They aren’t in it for the long haul, you know.” Shit.

Roger’s nostrils flared and he went white. “At least I know how to please them,” he snarled. He paused and then went for the kill, playing out the familiar old routine. “At least I’m not living in a shed outside my own goddamn house, unable to look my wife in the eye.”

Pete nearly staggered under the weight of his anger. How is it we can know each other so well and still keep using that knowledge only to put the dagger right where it counts and give it a good twist, Pete thought faintly through the overriding rage.

“You little shit,” Pete spat, his voice rising.

Roger smirked humorlessly and shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, “I learned from the best.”

Pete wanted to strangle the other man in frustration. “You know, Daltrey, this is why I wanted to call it off. We can’t even stand in a goddamn hallway for more than a minute without going for each other’s throats. The music was worth it when we were younger, but is it now?” Pete took a shuddering breath, “I can do this on my fuckin’ own, you know.”

Roger blinked and then seemed to recover himself. “Oh, yeah? The Pete Townshend solo career has really taken off,” he said, snidely.

“I could stop writing for the Who in an instant,” Pete said, his voice low and deadly, his shaking finger thrust in Roger’s face. Abruptly, he whirled away. “I can’t do this, Roger,” he gasped. He took a step down the hallway, “I really can’t do this anymore.”

Pete tried to calm himself as he left Roger behind. His wounded pride was calling out for him to go back there and settle things once and for all, but he was just so bloody tired. His anger and his exhaustion battled each other like wild beasts in the pit of his stomach, leaving him feeling vaguely nauseous.

“Pete, wait,” Roger called out suddenly.

Pete turned, head spinning. Roger was leaning against the frame of his hotel room’s door, unsteadily clutching at the door knob for support. Pete watched him; his eyes were slightly glassy and lips pursed slightly in that vacant look he got when he was distracted or thinking about something.

“I…” Roger whispered and then trailed off. Through the haze of his anger, Pete stepped closer to hear the other man better. Unexpectedly, he was far too close to Roger and the presence of him filled Pete’s senses, already heightened by the stress of the fight. He heard the quiet rasp of his breath as he sharply inhaled, smelled the alcohol laced smoky leather musk of him and saw a single golden curl fall across one of his widening blue eyes as he looked up at the taller man. It was as intoxicating as the rush of anger had just been, or perhaps it was why the anger had been so enthralling.

Looking into Roger’s eyes, Pete didn’t see any of the things he usually saw. He didn’t see the cocksure school bully that could always make Pete feel like an idiot little kid. He didn’t hear the reflexively aggressive words that burned like acid. He saw a flash of the loneliness he too felt and suddenly, inexplicably, he felt a powerful urge to touch the other man.

Pete leaned forward. Roger stumbled away from him but was trapped against the door frame. His breath hitched in a small gasp that parted his lips slightly. Pete’s hand seemed to have a will of its own as he reached out and laid his hand along Roger’s jaw, his thumb tracing the soft lips that registered dumbfounded surprise so sweetly. As he watched his thumb, mesmerized, Pete thought, what the hell, I’ve done dumber things, and he kissed him.

For a split second, Pete was in heaven. Roger’s mouth was hot and he tasted salty sweet and alcoholic. He pressed himself against the other man, shocked at the force of his desire, wanting to crush or envelope the other taut body into his own. Pete felt the tension seem to grow in Roger’s body as he held himself motionless against Pete’s onslaught until Pete thought that one of them must shatter from the brittle strength of it. Pete delved deeper into his mouth, their lips crushed together. It was completely unlike kissing a woman, harder and warlike. Gradually, slightly ahead of the tidal wave of arousal that threatened to swamp the long-limbed guitarist, the realization began to dawn on him that Roger was not responding to the kiss.

He pulled away slightly, dazed, to apologize or explain, fumbling for words in his shell shocked mind. He barely had time to register the panic in Roger’s white, pinched face.

As quickly as he had gotten swept up in it, Pete’s heaven came crashing down around him as Roger’s fist came crashing into the side of his face

Caught completely off guard and off balance, Pete staggered against the opposite wall before falling in a graceless heap on the floor. He looked up to see Roger staring back at him, his hand pressed to his lips as though he had just been burned.

“Why did you do that?” Roger hissed, his blue eyes pinning Pete in place on the floor. His shirt had gotten hitched up slightly in the confrontation and Pete’s ebbing need surged at the sight of the pale sliver of flesh.

Pete tore his eyes away from the singer and looked down at the floor, wordlessly shaking his head.

“I wanted…”

Roger exhaled slowly and sunk down against the door frame until he too was sitting on the floor, his knees clutched to his chest. “You don’t know what you want.” Roger closed his eyes. “Please leave,” he said in a keening voice that was not his own.

Pete slowly got to his knees and then pushed himself upright. Things that had always managed to work without complain before now creaked and protested. I’m getting too old for this shit, Pete thought, yet again, not looking at the other man as he turned away.

Walking away down the long hallway, Pete did not look back to see if Roger watched him leave. Only when he rounded a corner did he stop and lean against the wall with a deep-seated sense of fatigue.

As Pete massaged his sore tailbone, he reflected that he had just done a monumentally bad job at figuring out what was bothering Roger Daltrey.