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Entry tags:	ai, american idol, american idol: fic

American Idol Fic: Black Bird Singing 12/13
TITLE: Black Bird Singing
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17 eventually
SPOILERS: Uh. This is AU. This is deeply, deeply AU. No one has wings, that’s about as much contact with “canon” as it actually has.
PAIRING: Michael Johns/David Cook.
SUMMARY: Somewhere, Michael’s life went wrong, and he’s not entirely sure where.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven



Part Twelve

The stage was hardly more than plywood, and the lights were one step up from commandeered table lamps. There were still a lot of them. Michael felt sweat starting at his hairline and along the line of his spine; it was harder to breathe than it had been a moment before. He strode over the stool that had been set up for him and took a seat on it before he began to unpack his guitar. The bright lights were picking up every speck of dust that he had neglected to wipe from the case, Michael knew, and he very carefully did not look out at the crowd as he shifted the strap across his shoulder and made sure that everything was in place. I can’t do this, Michael thought, and realized that he had not even decided what he was planning on singing before stepping onto the stage.

He took a seat and arranged his guitar across his lap. He had still not made any effort to acknowledge the crowd. Ripples of discontent began to radiate out from them with every second that he did not begin to sing; the shake in his hands that he thought he had left behind in the apartment came back.

I can’t do this, Michael thought again. That part of his life was gone, that man was dead, and whatever David thought that he had seen had in truth been nothing more than a pale shadow that did not have the sense to realize when it was no longer wanted. He started to rise from the stool and heard someone snicker from the back of the crowd. Michael lifted his head to glare and saw a head of brown hair turn away quickly. His eyes widened, thinking...thinking that a miracle had happened, was what he was thinking, but the man turned back again a bare second later, and it was not him.

You’re better than this, is what I’m saying, David’s voice found its way into his head again. Michael was starting to think that he would never be able to dislodge it. If it was all that he was to have left from here on out, however, then he supposed that he ought to take what he could get. It wasn’t as if he had not asked for what had happened between them. It was not as if he had not been living his life for a full three years before that by the lowest common denominator, being only as good as he had to be to avoid running afoul of the law.

Maybe what David really should have meant, when he told Michael to stop just lying there and bemoaning his fate, was that it was about time that he manned up and took some responsibility.

However much that might ache.

Michael stole a second glance at the head of brown hair by the entrance. Now that he looked again, he had no idea how he possibly could have mistaken them. From that distance, there might be some similarity of bone structure, but up close Michael already knew that there would be no comparison to the original. Not in the mouth, not in the beautiful, clear eyes.

“For fuck’s sake,” someone yelled from the depths of the audience, their voice thick with alcohol, “will you get off the stage so that someone else can actually do something with it?” A rising murmur of laughter rose up from the crowd; they agreed.

And maybe every single thing that David had ever told him was right. And Michael knew what he was going to sing.

He took back the stool that he had been rising from, amidst more frustrated noises from the crowd, and arranged the guitar back across his lap again. He did not, could not, look out across the crowd.

“When I find myself in times of trouble,” Michael began. He started out too low, too rough; and heard the first mutterings of the crowd as they made note of this. Michael took a breath at the end of the lyric to compensate and then tried again, expanding his lungs to reach for the note. His ribs had had one full month to heal, and they barely even ached any longer. It was something else that hurt, and something else that also felt good. “Mother Mary talks to me.” He hit it this time, he knew that he did by the way that the crowd went suddenly, respectfully silent.

He was not doing it right if he was paying attention to them, though. That was not the point. Michael remembered a time when he had been able to disappear so thoroughly into the music that he had been touching the very rhythm of the universe itself, all kinds of crap that he had thought were melodramatic, overblown cliches until he had actually felt the awesome power of doing it, and in moments like that the crowd was nothing more than an afterthought. He wasn’t quite reaching it. He knew that he needed to try harder.

“Speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’” There it was. Michael exhaled on a deep sigh and barely remembered to inhale again for the next line, closing his eyes hard against the sudden flow of tears again. He would not have dreamed that it was possible, but the universe was talking to him again.

“And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me.” The crowd was silent, but Michael did not dare open his eyes to look at them. If he shattered this moment, then he was not certain that he would ever be able to get it back. He could hear his voice straining, not for lack of breath or inability to hit the notes, but from something else entirely. He had not imagined that it would hurt like this. He had not imagined that he would still be so wholly unable to stop all the same.

Michael’s hands took over the work of his fevered brain just as they had in the apartment, moving over the strings with a grace that he had not imagined himself still capable of. “Speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’”

His voice rose and leveled out, “Let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’”

As Michael’s fingers continued to dance over the guitar strings and his eyes remained stubbornly shut, he felt his voice rising into an imitation of the power that it had once had. Not there entirely, not yet, but even that much was almost enough to undo completely whatever self-control he still had left. And, as he entered the final lyrics, he felt it, the rhythm, the beat, of something else in the universe responding and pulsing back to him.

“And when the broken-hearted people living in this world agree, there will be an answer. ‘Let it be.’
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see.
There will be an answer, ‘Let it be.’ Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. There will be an answer, ‘Let it be.’
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, ‘Let it be’.”

Michael finished the last note and exhaled on a ragged breath. He still could not quite make eye contact with the crowd.

All was silent for a span of three heartbeats as Michael rose from his seat to leave the stage behind, and then the crowd erupted into applause. Michael did not acknowledge them, just stubbornly hunched his shoulders, put his guitar away, and exited so that the next performer could come on. They thought that the way that this voice had shook, the raw sincerity of it, had been the artifice of a gifted performer. They did not, could not, know what it had cost Michael to walk up those steps and what he had gotten back in return, and he did not intend to share it with them.

Michael hefted his guitar in his hand and headed for the bar’s pay phone, intending to call a cab to pick him up and take him home again. He had rushed out of his apartment with such a single-minded purpose that he had forgotten his cellular phone entirely. This involved pushing against the crowd, all of whom wanted to clap him on the shoulders, touch his hands, and otherwise congratulate him on a performance well done. It was all that Michael could do to tolerate even this well-meaning contact. Something had come back to life on that stage, something that he had resigned himself to believing had died a wasting death long before, and it hurt him now to acknowledge it again. Hurt him, even as he knew that he would throw himself off of a building before he saw it gone again. He felt too new, too shiny and fragile, and thought that any careless touch on the part of the crowd would shatter him.

Michael had nearly reached the phone when a voice behind him said, “Son.”

He turned. It was the man from before, the one with the drinks. He was looking Michael up and down as if he saw something there, and Michael could already see the wheels turning in his mind. Beth had looked at him with a stare close enough to the way that this man looked at him to make the fine hairs on the back of Michael’s neck rise defensively, but there was a light of compassion in his eyes along with the calculation that Beth had either never possessed at all or had long ago buried so thoroughly that there was no way that it could ever see the light of day again. It was the calculation that made Michael want to run; it was the compassion that made him shift his weight back from the balls of his feet and decide reluctantly to stay.

“Yeah?” Michael said. His voice was hoarse from emotion and from actually using it again for the first time in years; he scarcely sounded like himself.

“You were good up there,” the man said to him. “Best that I’ve seen tonight, easily.”

“Thank you.” Michael turned back towards the phone, thinking that the man had intended to pay him a compliment and nothing more.

“And it made me wonder if you’ve ever thought of pursuing a career in music,” the man continued, as if Michael had not just performed an act of unaccountable rudeness by turning his back on him at all. Michael spun back, stared. He was sure that there was a naked terror in his face, but that did not seem to bother the man in the suit at all. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s grab a seat and talk for a moment.”

The urge to run was back, and higher than it had ever been before. Michael did not know what it was, then, that made him instead follow the man in the suit to a booth that had vacated moments before. A waitress materialized almost immediately, making Michael wonder how often the man in the suit was actually in here. He gave Michael a long, sharp look that saw too much before he said to the waitress, “We’ll have two coffees, thanks.”

“Do you know who I am?” Michael asked without preamble as soon as the waitress was gone.

The man in the suit blinked and leaned back. Michael liked that; it took the upper hand away and gave it back to Michael himself for what felt like the first time since the man had spoken to him by the phone. The sensation lasted for only a second. “Well, son,” the man said slowly, his eyebrows crawling up in an amusement that he was not entirely trying to hide. “You’re playing Open Mic Night at a bar that still has to be hosed out on some mornings. I’d say you’re a long ways off from being able to be recognized on sight.”

Michael shook his head and didn’t care that the gesture made him look desperate, even a little unhinged. He had been all that and more for some time now. “Yeah, I’ve thought about music,” he said. His voice was still raw from the stage and from discovering that he had not been completely abandoned; he noted that the man was eyeing him with some concern and wondered if he was now regretting that he had approached Michael at all. “I’ve had three record contracts. Every single one of them fell through. I can’t....I don’t know who you’re representing, but you don’t want to get involved with me.”

“Really.” The man only stopped watching him long enough to flash the waitress a smile of thanks as she brought their coffees. He leaned further back in his seat, folded his arms over his chest, and stared at Michael further with those eyes that reminded Michael both of Beth and not. They reminded him a little of David, too, making Michael’s entire body crawl with the urge to be away. Everyone always seemed to think that they saw more in him than they could possibly prove, and they were always wrong. Michael had come here only to see if he could maybe find a little peace again, nothing more. He realized that he was scooting towards the edge of the booth.

“The music industry is in a sorry state right now and has been for the better part of a decade,” the man answered. He froze Michael less than six inches away from freedom. “I don’t like to judge myself based upon what my competitors do. Since the entire point of being the competition is that their business model is wrong, it seems a little counterproductive to me.” Those eyes, taking Michael’s measure. He hated it. “And if I’m wrong, well, financial solvency was bound to get boring eventually.”

“Who are you?” Michael blurted out. “What do you want?”

“My name is George McCartney,” the man told him at last, and produced a business card from his pocket so that he could slide it across the counter at Michael. Michael took it against his better judgment, glad only that his fingers were no longer shaking, and stared at several dark silhouettes fluttering across a white background. It took Michael several moments to realize that they were birds. “Fly Music,” the card read. Michael looked up.

McCartney smiled. “You’re not the only one who’s a Beatles fan,” he said.

“I don’t understand--” Michael started.

“I’m saying that I’d like to work with you,” McCartney interrupted him. For the first time, there was a hint of annoyance in his voice. It made Michael glad to hear it, made this all seem real again. “If you’re interested.”

Michael paused so that he could digest this thought at all, let alone give an answer. “Did you hear me when I said that I’ve had three record contracts?” he asked.

“I’m neither deaf nor stupid, so yes.” McCartney shrugged. “Did you sing like that back then?”

Michael had to pause again. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember ever being as desperate in his life as he had been when he walked up that stage. He couldn’t ever remember being so desperately glad to be making music at all that it had been everything that he could do not to weep onstage.

McCartney pulled his answer from Michael’s silence. “Then maybe we’ve found our missing ingredient,” he said.

Michael bowed his head, put his face into his hands. He could still feel McCartney watching him and at the same time could not bring himself to care. It had been enough to go back onto a stage at all, but to...to what? Try again? Make another record, risk another shot at failure? This person that had arisen while he was singing again, this man who was a mix of who he had once been and something entirely new, could barely stand to be touched on the shoulder in congratulations. He didn’t know if he could stand to fail again.

He also, already, didn’t know if he could stand to turn it down. If he couldn’t pay his rent, well, hell, he was only a few months away from not being able to pay his rent now. When you hit rock bottom, there was nowhere else to go but up.

Oh, but he was being given such a steep and miraculous incline back up. Michael could still not quite bring himself to believe that it was real.

McCartney apparently decided that he had given Michael enough time to digest his words, for he went on in a brisk tone. “It ought to be obvious that I’m not a major label, and that means that they’re won’t be major label money for a hell of a long time, maybe not ever. And I don’t want you ever smelling like alcohol in my studio. I’ll put that clause in the contract if I have to, but if you come in drunk you’re done. I won’t waste my money and time on half a CD and then go to ID a body.”

Michael’s head snapped up. “I’m not--” he began in a heated voice.

McCartney’s sharp look killed the words in Michael’s throat. “How long has it been since you’ve had a drink, son?” he asked. “I’m guessing no more than a week. If it’s been longer than that and you’re still in so sorry a state, then you have a much bigger problem than either of us realizes.”

“Three days,” Michael said feebly. Three highly unpleasant days, and every word out of McCartney’s mouth was only making him want one that much more.

McCartney nodded as if this was all confirmation of what he had already known. “If you agree to this, I can’t control what you do outside of my studio,” he said. “So take this in the vein of friendly advice. Maybe once upon a time booze was your friend, but however much you like it, it doesn’t like you any more.”

Still feeling stung and defensive, Michael snapped back, “And what? You’re going to be my friend instead?”

McCartney smiled at him. “You must think that you’re watching a movie, son,” he said. “I’m here to make money, and make music, not hold you up. If you can’t learn to do it yourself, then I won’t be able to it, anyway, and there doesn’t seem any point in wasting either of our time.” McCartney’s face grew sober. “But I don’t like watching human beings destroy themselves, either, so even if you walk away from this booth tonight and we never see each other again...keep my advice in mind.”

Michael nodded without making any explicit promises. He could see in McCartney’s eyes that he was making note of his difference. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re insane?” he asked.

McCartney took a sip of his coffee. It invited Michael to do the same, but he doubted if he was going to get any sleep that night as it was. “It’s been suggested,” he said. “I don’t agree, though. Different opinions are what makes the world go around.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Well?” he asked Michael. “I’m missing a lot of performances by sitting here and talking to you, so do you want to tell me which way you’re leaning so that I can get back to my job? Keep in mind, this is a business that hardly ever awards second chances, let alone fourth ones.”

He was right there. Michael had no idea why they kept landing at his feet, why people kept trying so fucking hard for him, but he was already opening his mouth to give his answer before he knew what he was doing.

On the stage at the other end of the bar, a dreadlocked young man sang, “Love is not a victory march, oh, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah...but remember when I moved in you, and the holy doubt was moving, too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah.”

End Part Twelve

Continue to the thirteenth, and final, chapter.