Fic: Is There Life in a Hotel Bar?

[v-angelique.livejournal.com]

Title: Is There Life in a Hotel Bar?
Author: Viktoria Angelique (v_angelique)
Pairing: BB/DM
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not in the realm of possibility. That's why it's called AU.
Summary: I was listening to "Life on Mars" and a ficlet attacked. AU, slightly angsty monaboyd.


Billy will always remember the song that was playing that night—the man at the piano in the hotel bar was no aficionado, but his voice was pleasant and rough, tinged with too many years of cigar smoke and a hint of remembered pain. He wasn't a Bowie fan before then, and he hasn't listened since, but somehow he imagines he is a Bowie fan, wherever he might be now.

It's a god-awful small affair to the girl with the mousy hair, but her mommy is yelling no and her daddy has told her to go...

Billy's Scotch swirled in mellow spirals in his glass, sliding effortlessly along the curved surface of the tumbler. His eyes were red rimmed, not from tears but from exhaustion. The man at the bar spoke in a high, frenzied tone, and he was nothing but a minor annoyance to Billy until he looked up.

But her friend is nowhere to be seen. Now she walks through her sunken dream to the seat with the clearest view, and she's hooked to the silver screen...

There are moments, sometimes. Moments you just know, two things—one is that you'll never see the person again, and the other is that things will never be the same. Billy knows that this is true, both for him and for the strange young man in the fedora and the too-long pinstriped coat, fluorescent flash of flavoured martini spilling over the rim of his glass and onto his fingers.

But the film is a saddening bore, for she's lived it ten times or more…

The man didn't look away as he raised those three fingers with their cheap chipping nail varnish to his lips, as he sucked them into his mouth and traced his tongue across the skin, chasing the flavour. He didn't look away, and Billy licked his own lips, imagining the conflicting tastes of sweet and sour, the bite of vodka against some expensive dulcet liqueur.

She could spit in the eyes of fools as they ask her to focus on sailors fighting in the dance all, oh man, look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show...

Billy wonders now, a year later, whatever happened to the man in the hotel bar. If he ever wonders, in his spare time, why Billy was so tired that night, why his eyelids were sagging and his hand gripping compulsively at the glass. He wonders what the man's name is. He will never know.

Take a look at the wrong man beating up the wrong guy. Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know, he's in the best selling show. Is there life on Mars?

Comments

[pippins-penny.livejournal.com]

Well done, bittersweet.

[v-angelique.livejournal.com]

Thank you :-)

[owlgrey.livejournal.com]

Lovely descriptions even though it is so sad.

[v-angelique.livejournal.com]

Thanks, hon... don't know why the sad bug bit me, as it so rarely does, but there ya go :-)

[feelforfaith.livejournal.com]

This is so good. . I love such little slices of life and you tell us just enough to make me care about the characters and to intrigue me. I want to know more about them, what happened to them, but at the same time I don't, because it's perfect as it is. Really lovely.

[v-angelique.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Truth be told, I always skip lyrics too, hehe. The idea was just that that song was playing and for people who know the song, you can imagine it, but it's not actually necessary to read them ;-) For someone who used to hate songfic so much, I certainly do write it a lot these days!

[glenda11.livejournal.com]

I like it. I like Billy and Dom. I like David Bowie. Well done. Просто класс!!!

[v-angelique.livejournal.com]

David Bowie, quite simply, owns my soul :-) Oчень спасибо!