Stevie swore she had just fallen asleep when she heard scratching at her door. Not a knock, not a palm beating against it, but long scratches like a cat. She groaned as she rolled out of bed, dragging the sheets with her.
She had never developed the healthy bedtime routine of 'an adult'. Touring had made it a useless attempt; bags got lost, flights delayed, and buses broke down. All a girl could depend on was what she had on her back. She slept in her shirt and underwear, make up smearing on her pillow and under her eyes. Her hair was a porcupine. The scratching was relentless as she stumbled toward the door.
She jerked it open and blinked at the bright empty hallway.
Something warm and heavy fell against her legs. She looked down to see Marnie sitting on the floor, shoulder slumped against Stevie's bare legs.
"Hey kitty cat," Marnie giggled. Stevie rolled her eyes and took a step back to allow Marnie to crawl into her dark dorm room.
Stevie dropped hard onto the mattress, leaving the bedding whirled around her. Marnie crawled up after her, still completely dressed.
"Where were you?" Stevie muttered with her face shoved into her pillow. The faint smell of beer, cigarettes, and aftershave followed Marnie into the bed.
"Second floor."
"And you didn't stay there?" Stevie lifted her head to look at her manager. Marnie looked younger curled on her side, her eyes were closed but her brow was furrowed. Headache most likely. The memory of being on the other side of this exchange pressed down on Stevie.
Normally, Marnie would be the one pressing water bottles into Stevie's hand and shaking aspirin onto the bedside table. Stevie had none of these things. Instead, she sat up and clumsily started pulling off Marnie's boots. Marnie grunted, but didn't protest.
"Wasn't that good," she answered, giggling to herself.
"Was it that funny?" Stevie dropped the boots onto the floor and flipped half the duvet over her manager.
"He wanted a signed CD," Marnie sighed, curling up into the pre-warmed blanket nest.
"And?"
"I told him I didn't sing," Marnie snorted.
"Was this before or after?" Stevie slid closer to Marnie. She was awake now, her nerves about the next day bubbling up out of her sleep.
"After, thank God."
Marnie went quiet, her body a soothing weight in the bed. Stevie watched her doze, the window was beginning to lighten between the sliding blinds. She contemplated telling Marnie about Thelwell, about the odd intimate moment outside the elevator.
Except she knew that would worry Marnie, and Stevie didn't want to do that. She suspected Marnie saw more than she let on, saw that Stevie was clinging a little too hard to this new project. Letting herself cling to Thelwell, even knowing he thought poorly of the entire situation, would be a bad decision. Stevie clung to everything, that was her problem. She would see the signs of danger ahead, but didn't have the self preservation to get off the ride.
"Marnie," she whispered. Her manager hummed beside her. "Are you drunk?"
"Mmm."
Stevie pinched her tongue between her teeth, trying to formulate her swirling thoughts into a coherent question.
"Have you heard from them?"
They both knew who 'them' was, Lisa, Mel, and Dani. The members of Pegasus, her soul sisters until they had all been quarantined away from each other. Stevie felt like a severed limb, cut away and discarded.
"Kid," Marnie cooed. She reached without opening her eyes. Her hand fell on Stevie's back. "Get some sleep."
Marnie began patting Stevie's back in a slow rhythm, like she was a small child. It worked, the sleep that had eluded her began to creep up. Now, Stevie fought it.
"Have you?"
Marnie's hand paused, before taking up the rhythm again. Stevie wondered if she missed them too.
Marnie was the perfect age between older sister and mother, they had tagged after her during their early tours before they could get into their own after parties. She had understood their world, their teenage hormone-laced feelings, while still having authority. The gap between them had closed as Pegasus grew up, they began to feel older and wiser than their manager. They got frustrated faster, and pushed back against her, like a second puberty.
It must have been hard, disorienting, and heartbreaking; Marnie toured with them, spending long weeks away from Tiffany. Or during the summer when Tiffany came with them it spread Marnie's time thinner.
Marnie sighed again, sorrow and exhaustion slipping from her lips.
"Mel is still in rehab. The doctors update the Label of course, they say she is good, but who knows. Dani is back home in Pittsburgh. She'll call when she's ready."
"And Lis?" Stevie pushed. There was a reason Marnie had trailed off. Lisa the betrayer, Lisa the thief, Lisa the heartbreaker.
"Kid," Marnie warned.
"I want to hear it from you."
"Nothing has changed."
Stevie swallowed the unexpected well of tears. She probably wasn't even sorry. She probably thought the others had overreacted. Maybe they had, but if she hadn't run away - Stevie stopped herself. She couldn't go back to that time, not right now when she had only hours before she needed to be on set. Not when her Christmas Miracle was just outside the door.
---
His phone was ringing. He was aware of it in the distant cavities of his brain, but he resented having to chase the sound with his hand. He wasn't scheduled until the afternoon, he was meant to have hours to screw his head back on straight.
The sound stopped, but Lionel could still feel its echo. He had learned to let go of missed calls, to not feel like a monster when he silenced the ringer. Tawny had taught him that, the endless cycle of aloof silence followed by a cacophony of phone calls. He had fallen for it at first, dropping everything to answer when she was being attentive.
It had soured eventually, and he had discovered loneliness was possible even beneath a heap of affection. He had learned the hollowness of her apologies eventually, ironically not through the ones he had received. No, it had been seeing Sunny blossom and fade with the inconsistent light of her mother's love. Only then he had seen how little it cost Tawny to pick them up and put them down.
And yet, what he wouldn't give to have Tawny beside him in the bed; cold or loving. He found the solitude confusing, time slipped away without anyone to witness it. Did it matter if he woke up at dawn if there was no one else asleep to groan against the hour?
Did him staying in LA really help Sunny if he couldn't see her?
He was saved from his melancholia by his phone ringing again. The search for it in rumpled sheets began again.
His hand landed on the hard plastic shell. It buzzed against his palm. The evening was creeping back to him. He had drunk a lot, and quickly. He had been an island in a sea of gin and Americans. They hadn't talked to him, and he had barely made the effort to be polite. He was tired of assuring people he was harmless, that like them he had a job to do.
He brought the phone to his ear, making some noise to indicate he was listening.
"Who'd you piss off?" Neve asked, her voice bright and awake. Was it afternoon in London?
Her question woke him up.
"No one," he growled. He had behaved. Or at least - he paused as the memory of a soft cheek under his lips floated up from the gin. His heartbeat accelerated, and he rubbed his free hand over his sternum. No, it had just been the cheek. It had been courteous. Innocent.
"Uh huh," Neve sounded nonplussed. "Your call time has changed, a PA should be running a script over to you now."
Like magic there was a knock at the door. Lionel staggered upright, he realized he was still dressed.
"Is that them?" Neve asked.
Lionel grunted, he reached the door and cracked it open. A short, plump redhead was holding an armful of papers, a headset ran to a radio on her waist. She barely glanced at him as she shoved the script through the narrow opening.
She was gone before he could thank her.
"We need to get you an assistant, " Neve said, as he shuffled back towards his bed.
"Why?" His voice creaked. The last thing he needed was someone running after him.
"This schedule is packed and getting worse by the hour. I can't run this from London, and you don't handle change well."
Lionel sat on the bed and flicked on the bedside lamp, the script bristled with pink pages. "This is ridiculous. They have rewritten a third of this script."
"Welcome to day one, Li." Neve was tapping in a keyboard. He could hear the clicking an ocean away. "Shower and shave, you have to be in make up in forty-five."