Title: The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

Author: Silk

Fandom: Velvet Goldmine

Pairing: Curt/Arthur

Rating: NC-17

Summary: What if Arthur was a catalyst who changed Curt's life?

Archive: If I sent it to you, please feel free.

Email: silkn1@att.net

Series/Sequel: I'm working on the sequel to this now.

Disclaimer: Velvet Goldmine and its characters belong to Miramax and Todd Haynes. Not me. This work is not for profit.

Warnings: m/m, bad language, angst. Spoilers for the movie.
*****

The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys
By Silk

Arthur smiled at no one in particular. Eyeliner accentuated his eyes. He'd finally learned to apply it with a steady hand. He wore blush as well, which gave him a slightly feverish look, but all in all, he thought he'd done a fair job with the make-up.

He wanted to be beautiful tonight. Tonight he stood in a crowd with hundreds of other people, awaiting the arrival of Curt Wild onstage. All of them decked out in outrageously glamorous clothing and cosmetics. Most of them boys.

He wanted to stand out. He wanted to be noticed. For the first time in his life, he felt free to be Arthur, not some pale suburban imitation of his father's son.

Maybe someone would want to know him.

Maybe that someone would be Curt Wild.

*****

When Curt took the stage, the auditorium echoed with thunderous sound. Some applause. Mostly shouting. Curt Wild had come a long way from the days when rowdy English soccer players blithely dismissed him as a wanker. "Get off the fucking stage!" used to be the battle cry halfway through his set, if he was lucky.

Now he was an icon of sorts. He didn't know what the hell it was he was supposed to stand for, but he took the good as well as he'd taken the bad. The truth was, Curt didn't believe in much of anything anymore. Once he'd left Brian, he'd gone to Berlin and found Jack Fairy. He'd tried desperately not to look back, and eventually, he'd come to terms with what happened.

It was his fault. He was just no fucking good. That's what his parents had told him when they'd sent him away for being sexually abused by his older brother. That's what the doctors had told him when they'd given him shock treatments to eradicate his homosexual tendencies.

At first, he had blamed Brian. For not valuing him more than his fucking career. Fuck Maxwell Demon anyway. Curt laughed as he dragged a hearty mouthful of whiskey down his throat. He *did* fuck Maxwell Demon. At the end, Brian *was* Maxwell Demon. And when he had no more use for Curt, he'd discarded him with a flurry of profanity and a martyred look. "Goodbye, goodbye," Curt muttered to himself, echoing the ballad that had taken Brian
to stardom.

But now he saw the truth. Curt Wild could never rise above his position as Brian's kept boy. He was a fucking joke. Whatever had drawn them together at the beginning...fell apart at the end. Brian couldn't help but despise him. What was he anyway? A has-been rocker who went back to doing what he did best. Drugs and one-night stands.

That was when the pain became a living thing inside him. Tearing at him constantly until the only thing he could do was to drink himself into a stupor.

His problem wasn't that he couldn't feel anything. It was that he couldn't stop feeling. His heart ached for what he could no longer have because, God forgive him, he couldn't stop loving Brian. No matter how desperately he hated him for casting him out of his life.

*****

By the time Curt reached "Gimme Danger", his voice was ragged and hoarse from shouting. He grabbed the cigarette out of the bass player's mouth, ignoring his cry of outrage, and tried to fill the void inside him with its smoke. But it tasted dead to him. Pah! He threw it to the floor and ground his booted heel over it. When the bass player protested, Curt gave him the finger and laughed.

Gently rocking his hips back and forth, Curt began to sing. He started low and built the intensity until the tension within him reached the breaking point. All that pain, all that unrequited love, needed an outlet. "I wanna feel it..."

He caught the eye of a pretty boy in the audience and pretended that he was singing directly to him. Nice face. Too much eye make-up. He looked like an overgrown schoolboy. God, was he ever that young?

Arthur smiled brightly, hardly able to believe his luck. Curt Wild had noticed him.

But there was an odd vibration in the air, striking his senses with all the subtlety of a train wreck. He would never know what made him look.

But he did.

His eyes swung towards the door. It was the only exit for the venue. There were a couple of people hanging out just inside the opening and Arthur could make out the well-lit corridor behind them. When someone left, the sudden flash of light was just enough to briefly illuminate the face of someone standing in the shadows.

It was merely a silhouette. But it was unmistakable. He'd know that face anywhere.

It was Brian Slade.

*****

What's he doing here? Arthur asked himself, feeling his hopes of seeking out Curt and winning his favor dwindling. They broke up. I don't think they've even seen each other for a couple years.

His eyes slowly traveled back to the stage where Curt reigned. Curt looked like he was having a major breakdown. He was lying on his back, seemingly transfixed by the ceiling, rasping out the last few choruses of "I wanna fucking feelllll it..."

He was obviously in pain. But it was equally obvious that Curt hadn't seen Brian.

Just as it seemed as though Curt would disintegrate before their very eyes, he drew a shuddery breath that sounded like incipient heartbreak. As startling as that image was to Arthur, he tore his eyes away from Curt, searching for where he'd last seen Brian.

He was just in time to see Brian hike up the collar of his coat and disappear into the corridor beyond.

Arthur stared after him incredulously. Brian was leaving without seeing Curt.

The night was not yet over.

*****

After the concert, Arthur waited backstage, blending more or less unobtrusively with the other hangers-on. When a sweaty Curt Wild appeared, his wet mascara trickling down the side of his face, Arthur immediately took note of the seemingly casual glance Curt gave him. He was interested.

Arthur couldn't believe it. His dream of meeting Curt Wild was moments away from being realized.

He stood uneasily a few feet from Curt, nervously anticipating what might happen next, when someone suddenly broke free from the throng and embraced Curt. Arthur's mouth nearly dropped open. It was Mandy Slade, Brian's ex-wife.

He had no idea that the two of them even stayed in touch with each other, much less were this close. Forehead to forehead with Mandy, Curt grasped her upper arms with tense fingers, hard enough to bruise. "Did you see him?" Curt asked anxiously.

The light in Mandy's eyes died as she responded somberly, "No."

Arthur frowned. Were they referring to Brian? Wasn't this news? Both of Brian's exes still cared about him. Enough to ask whether he was paying them furtive visits at Curt's concerts. Didn't they know?

Apparently not.

Arthur dismissed it from his mind the next moment when Curt kissed Mandy on the cheek, his hot eyes still on Arthur. Murmuring that he would be in touch, Curt released Mandy and approached Arthur.

*****

That was how he came to be on the rooftop with Curt Wild. Curt's questions were disarming, even if they were calculated to make him feel more at ease about giving himself to a man for the first time.

Arthur was grateful that his first time was with Curt. Curt was a gentle lover, as though he'd learned the hard way what it was like to be handled roughly and without consideration for his feelings. The older man undressed Arthur, slowly, almost painstakingly, and for a moment, Arthur wondered if Curt really wanted to do this.

Then Curt's hands were on him, teasing and stroking his cock to silken hardness. He turned Arthur around to face the street and wrapped his arms around his chest. With a soft sigh, Curt kissed the back of his neck. "See the stars?"

"Yeah," Arthur replied, looking up at the sky. It was a clear night. It seemed like each and every star was visible. All of them sparkling silver against the midnight canopy that was their backdrop.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?"

Arthur could hear the nostalgia in Curt's voice and suddenly he knew that Curt was emembering Brian. He would have said something, but Curt slid his hands down over Arthur's hips and held him fast for his entry.

Arthur gasped at the unexpected pain, but Curt soothed him with unexpectedly affectionate kisses until his body forgave the intrusion. He relaxed against Curt's chest and closed his eyes, suddenly wanting to blot out the all-seeing stars.

They moved together as one, peaking and ebbing as their bodies flowed in synch. When Curt came, Arthur wasn't far behind him, his harsh cries falling into the maw of the great night beyond.

But Arthur wasn't so out of it that he didn't notice something else. As Curt collapsed against his back in what seemed like utter abandon, Curt whispered something. At first, Arthur's mind refused to process what he heard. But when the name was repeated, Arthur couldn't ignore it.

"Brian..."

*****

Oh, crap. It was a perfectly beautiful morning and it was about to be seriously fucked up by his usual morning after blues. Curt shifted away from Arthur's pale young body and hunted for his pants, knowing he would find a cigarette there.

Curt lit the cigarette and blew a huge smoke ring out through his nose. He couldn't keep doing this. Fucking sweet young things and pretending that they were...you can say it...Brian, his mind reluctantly finished.

Everyone he'd fucked, including the girls, was Brian in his head. He didn't want anyone else. His body refused to get it up for anyone else. But he couldn't go on this way.

Arthur opened his eyes to find Curt staring at him thoughtfully. "You thought I was Brian."

Curt snorted and took another puff of his cigarette. He was a master at feigning indifference. No, wait, that was Brian, his mind corrected him with glee. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Why what? Are you complaining? Didn't you get off plenty of times last night?"

"Yeah, but...why? Why don't you see him anymore?"

"We broke up, kid. Then there was this little matter of him faking his own death. Remember that? I think it made the papers," Curt said sarcastically.

"You hate him," Arthur said, as if feeling out Curt's reaction.

Curt laughed bitterly. "Not hardly. If I did, my life would be a fucking breeze."

Arthur saw things in the clear light of day that weren't obvious the night before. He liked Curt. He enjoyed sleeping with him. Okay, he blushed inwardly, he liked fucking him. Maybe he'd just wanted to touch the stars for a little while. But he wasn't *in love* with him.

Suddenly Arthur knew that he couldn't keep Brian's secret, even though he hadn't realized that was what it was at the time. "He was here," Arthur blurted out before he could change his mind.

"What?"

"I said Brian was here. Last night. At the concert."

"You actually saw him?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"He was by the door. Where no one could see. In the shadows."

"How do you know it was him, kid? It was fucking dark," Curt said skeptically.

"I know. It was just a glimpse. But I know."

"He came," Curt said, more to himself than to Arthur. All at once, Curt frowned. "How did he look? Did he say anything?"

"I didn't go near him," Arthur admitted.

"Oh." Curt couldn't hide the fact that he was disappointed. All this time without any real news of Brian and now this.

"You should see him."

Curt threw his cigarette off the rooftop with a sharp gesture. "Yeah, right."

"I mean it."

Curt huffed, "Doesn't it fucking bother you that I fucked *you* and I can't fucking think of anyone but *him*?"

"No." Arthur began pulling on his clothes. "You need to see him one more time."

"I don't think so. What would that prove?"

"Even if it's the last time, you have to, Curt."

"Why?"

"Cause otherwise you'll never ever fucking know."

"Know what?"

"What could have been."

Arthur pushed his feet into his boots with a brusque motion. "You still love him." He waved off Curt's automatic protest with one hand. "And I think...he still loves you."

"Most people don't get that lucky, kid."

"You did. Don't be stupid and screw it up."

Arthur left Curt standing there, half-dressed, a thoughtful look on his face, and he knew he would never see him again. But he hoped that Curt found what he was looking for...and he hoped that Brian let himself be found.

End