Chapter Text
There are grooves worn into the floor from years of pacing—deep, long ravines carved into the hundred-and-something-year-old wood. Troughs where thousands of feet have marched before him, and where thousands more will march after.
In the here and now, his own soles leave no visible impression. Still, there's something satisfying in knowing he’s part of that slow erosion. A small, shared culpability in the wear and tear. Just as all things break down eventually.
Theatre just had that effect on people, after all.
No matter how seasoned, no matter how many times you’ve stood in the same place with the same script and the same crew, the nerves always come.
The house lights rise, and the butterflies return—hands wring, feet tap, voices stretch and scale and warm up with arpeggios echoing like distant screams behind dressing room doors.
Buzzing, raw, and filled with untapped energy—that’s what made Broadway feel like home.
The chaos of live performance, the thrill of leaning into the freefall, of being both the cause and the effect of a machine barely holding together...
Sometimes, Buggy regrets switching to film where there were re-takes; illusions of perfection, dressed up and projected onto a silver screen.
But sometimes... Sometimes the threat of failure was the key to success. Sometimes, failure meant failing upward.
Now, the thought of falling flat on his face makes his skin crawl; sends a gnawing itch through his core; makes him want something—anything—to still the butterflies trapped in his gut.
“Curtains in five, sir.”
Buggy blinks, catching the reflection of a stagehand in the mirror. The young man stands in the doorway, one hand still raised like he isn’t sure if he already knocked.
Buggy nods. Clears his throat. Rolls his shoulders back and straightens. One last, miserable look at the man in the mirror—cheeks too puffy, eyes too bloodshot from jet lag and rehearsals. All of it hidden beneath thick makeup and flashy clothes.
He used to love this.
He was a thespian, after all. Over-the-top. A natural-born spectacle. Addicted to drama and aesthetics. It only made sense that he'd go into a life among the like-minded—people who craved the spotlight like oxygen.
Now...
He spins on his heel and regards the stagehand who is dressed in black, with dark hair and darker eyes. He’ll disappear completely behind the curtain when the lights hit, as he’s meant to.
Buggy feels a twinge of envy.
He wonders if he’d be good at disappearing. At fading into the background, unnoticed, untouched, unbothered.
Instead, he offers a sweeping gesture. “Let’s hope someone breaks a leg tonight, hm?”
He walks carefully the rest of the way. Afraid his own body might break first.
He tightens the mask. Fortifies the illusion before it cracks.
🎭
Afterward, they celebrate.
Buggy doesn’t want to go, but he does anyway. There are hands to shake, names to memorize, strangers to pretend to like. Every one of them wanting to take a little piece of him with them.
The job doesn’t end when the curtain falls. It never ends.
It’s nearly 1 A.M. before he’s alone. No one’s hanging on his arm, no one's hand at his wrist, or, thank god, lower.
The drink he’s been nursing for over two hours has gone warm, the ice long since melted.
His options are limited: rejoin the cast or slip to the bar before last call.
He chooses the latter.
Buggy maneuvers through the crowd with the ease of someone who’d done this dance a thousand times before — chin tilted high, smile fixed like armor, body angled just enough to slide past groping hands and lingering stares. It was all performative. Always has been.
Someone calls his name but he doesn’t look, pretends to be too preoccupied with waving at one of his co-stars in the distance, who waves back, confused.
Another person claps him on the back, spilling half their champagne on his sleeve, and laughs it away like they were old friends. Buggy doesn’t know them. He doubts very much that they know him, either — not really, at least. Just a painted face, a loud voice, a man worth knowing for as long as it was convenient.
The music was too loud. The lighting too hot. The attention he used to crave too much.
He needed out.
He doesn’t announce his departure, doesn’t offer farewells or flash one last grin for the crowd. He just peels himself off the group like dead skin, slipping between velvet curtains and hallway shadows until the noise dulls to a low murmur behind him.
The back bar was quieter — not by much, exactly, but it was enough. The air of forgottenness away from the crowds filtering the chaos to a tolerable level; just the ambient hum of conversation and the rhythmic clink of glassware.
He slides onto a barstool, elbows resting on the polished surface, jaw tight. The mirror behind the shelves catches his reflection; lipstick smudged. Eyes tired. Too much makeup hiding too little sleep.
The bartender clocks him, gives a nod from the far end of the bar, but doesn’t rush over. Buggy appreciates that. The illusion of normalcy.
He doesn’t look up when the piano starts — just a few soft chords, simple and clean, drifting like smoke through the still air. At first, he thinks it’s piped-in ambiance. Something recorded. Background music to drown in.
Then: a missed note and a fumble of deft fingers to correct it, muscle memory adjusting the stuttered error.
Most people wouldn’t catch it.
Buggy does.Because he’s lived with the echo of those mistake before. Slept beside it. Fought with it. Fled from it.
His stomach turns. He’s grateful when the bartender slides a double scotch across the bar without a word.
Buggy wraps his fingers around the glass and watches the amber swirl. The low light fractures across its surface. For a brief moment, he thinks about drowning in it.
Then, he hears a voice.
A voice he hadn’t heard in fifteen years.
Not really.
Buggy’s spine goes rigid.
He looks up — slow, unwilling, like his body already knows better — and turns toward the stage tucked in the corner of the room to find him —
He’s not seated at the piano, someone else already occupies that space which is unreal in and of itself because that was not —
Shanks is instead perched on a stool in front of a microphone, hair longer than Buggy remembers, a little unkempt, curling around his face in loose waves. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, one freckled arm braced on his hip, casually, the other —
Not there. Gone.
He’s half-smiling — that crooked, tilted, aggravating smile. Like the song is a secret, and he’s playing it just for himself.
The world doesn’t stop.
But it contracts — narrowing into a single, searing point.
Buggy forgets the scotch in his hand. Forgets the party behind him. Forgets the aching fatigue that’s wrapped around his bones since curtain call.
Because Shanks is here.
And Shanks — that bastard — just keeps singing.
And nothing — nothing — could have prepared him for that.
🎭
Shit, was Buggy's first thought. Then, shit followed by, fuck.
Because of course it’s him.
Buggy doesn’t move, either. Just watches.
Shanks grins through the second verse like the stage was built for him and no one else. Like he doesn’t notice the way the crowd leans in, like he’s not soaking up every second of it—like it’s nothing.
Buggy hates him for it. Hates how easy he still makes it all look.
And he hates himself more—for feeling the pull. For remembering, too clearly, how it felt to be the only audience Shanks cared to play for; how it felt to hear that voice inches from his ear and think mine.
That’s all long gone now.
He swirls the drink in his hand and drains half of it before the ice even has a chance to melt.
This was a mistake. Coming here -- back to New York. Letting proximity draw them together like two magnets.
And yet—
As the song crashes to its end and the final chord lingers like smoke in the rafters, Shanks looks up.
Just a glance.
And in that single breath of silence, just before the crowd erupts, their eyes meet.
A blink.
A flicker.
Recognition like a slap.
Shanks falters—only barely. Just enough for Buggy to see the moment hit him like a punch to the gut.
Then the applause comes. Loud. Raucous. People cheer and whistle and shout his name like he’s some kind of god on a stool.
He wonders—for the first time in a long time—if the spotlight ever burned him this brightly.
Buggy doesn’t clap.
He watches.
Waits.
And sure enough, Shanks doesn’t look away.
The bastard smiles.
Soft. Real. A little too wide at the corners. A little too familiar.
And Buggy knows, right then, that the night has taken a turn it won’t come back from.
🎭
The man before him now has acquired a few wrinkles over the years—crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, laugh lines bracketing his lopsided smile.
He wears aging well, Buggy thinks. Wears it with an easiness, just like everything else in his life.
Buggy, on the other hand, wears his age like a battle wound. He hides his lines under expensive creams and heavy concealer. His bones ache from years of physical performance, sitting jagged beneath thinning skin. He holds himself awkwardly, uncomfortably—always over compensating for something.
Shanks wears time like a medal of honor. Buggy wears it like a punishment.
It’s the truth. But still…
"You look good, Bugs," Shanks says, the liar that he is—though his eyes are earnest, imploring, swimming in a look that makes Buggy want to gag, or bolt, or scream at him to stop—stop looking at me like that, damn you. Stop!
"You look drunk," Buggy replies instead—cruel honesty of another kind. A petty way to dodge the more dangerous truth brewing in his stomach. He wants to mention the missing arm—holyfuckwhatevenhappenedtoyouShanks?—but the words catch in his throat. Because he’s not sure he’s ready to hear the answer.
Shanks just smirks. “That I am,” he says, chuckling.
Buggy is close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath—and, traitorously— he wonders if he’d be able to taste it, too.
Muscle memory is a real bitch sometimes.
It would be easy—too easy—to reach out and grab him by the collar. To lean into that familiar warmth.
To let Shanks steal his thoughts and lap up the liquor on his tongue, to bite the bitters from his lips until they bled iron—and then drink that, too.
And Shanks would let him.
He’d hold him gently, reverently; touch Buggy’s painted cheeks and over-powdered skin like he still believed in the man beneath all that makeup. He’d chase the illusion until the world bent out of shape and left them alone in their shared delusion—if only for a moment.
But Buggy doesn’t move.
Once a coward, always a coward.
Even when the treasure’s right there, within reach.
Temptation doesn’t undo the hurt. It just dresses the wound in gold.
And maybe—maybe—Shanks feels that, too.
Because something clears in his gaze. He blinks back the haze, takes a small step back. Creates space Buggy himself couldn't.
Shanks opens his mouth, and Buggy knows what’s coming. The apologies. The platitudes. Maybe a joke to ease the tension, like he wasn’t the one who put the crack in the foundation to begin with.
Buggy braces for it. Normally, he’d be on the verge of tears by now. But he’s older. Wiser. More damaged and therefore less of him left to break; scarred in all the wrong places.
Still, the way Shanks is looking at him...
Mercifully, a glass shatters nearby. Their bubble bursts. The world comes rushing back in.
“Do you want to go somewhere quieter?” Shanks asks.
Buggy almost laughs at the bluntness. Of course, some things never change.
“You mean home with you?”
“Well. Yes.” A beat. Then, quieter, amused. “I guess that is what I’m asking.”
“It’s late.”
“I have a guest room,” he blurts, and then, as if catching himself — “If… that’s something you’d want.”
Twenty years ago—hell, even ten—that look would have undone Buggy completely. It would’ve had him calling a cab while Shanks fumbled with the check, and they’d be breathless before they even made it through the door.
But he’s not that man anymore. Not entirely.
“When have I ever not done what I wanted to do?” he says, and raises his glass to take another sip of courage.
Remarkably well, he’ll tell himself later. I held it together remarkably well.
Until—
“Never,” Shanks sighs. A quiet, reverent sound. “It’s a part of your charm.”
His fingers twitch on the bar, like they’re dancing on invisible piano keys. Buggy wonders if the song in his head is whimsical or mournful. He imagines those fingers playing along his spine instead, and hates himself for it.
“At least it was, ten years ago,” Shanks adds, smiling crookedly.
Buggy’s breath catches. Takes the bait, like a fool. Asks smugly, “Do you find yourself charmed now?”
Remarkably well, yes—but not unbreakably .
His body leans forward against his will, and they’re close now—too close. Close enough for Shanks to have to whisper, “Positively spellbound.”
Buggy isn’t sober, but he knows it.
And Shanks? He’s given in. Fully. As he always does.
Even now, swaying forward on the stool, eyes soft, mouth parted—
Buggy wonders if he’ll have to justify this later. If he’ll chalk it up to the scotch.
Pretend it didn’t matter.
But something in Shanks’ eyes says otherwise.
Says it always meant something. Still does. Always will.
Buggy’s hand lands on Shanks’ shoulder. Firm. Holding him back before the inevitable fall.
“You’re not going to like yourself very much tomorrow,” he warns.
Shanks blinks, a little glassy, a little too honest. “Will you?” he asks. “Like me, I mean?
“Depends. Are you going to throw up in the cab?”
Shanks grins, wide and shameless. “So you are coming home with me.”
Buggy lifts a hand to flag the bartender. “I’m making sure you get home. That’s it. Purely selfish. I’ve got a reputation.”
Shanks pulls a face. “I remember,” he says, yawning. “Never cared much for reputations.”
Buggy wants to say I remember too. The fights. The ideals. The way everything small seemed so monumental back then.
But he doesn’t.
He swallows the memory along with the rest of his drink.
And when Shanks leans a little too heavily into him on the way out—when Buggy throws up an arm to hail a cab and pulls that too-familiar weight across his shoulders—he remembers.
Every second of it.
Every late night and early morning. Every fight, every laugh. Every time he thought this is it—and every time it wasn’t.
And god, more than anything, he wishes he could forget, because maybe then he wouldn’t want it so badly.
🎭
Shanks' apartment is an upgrade to the one in Buggy's memory.
The view alone must cost a fortune—floor-to-ceiling windows framing a city soaked in warm, artificial glow. A skyline that hums with money and distance. It’s a long way from the cramped walk-up they once shared, back when Shanks had fifty-six bucks in his pocket and Buggy got by on charm, dumb luck, and favors he never intended to repay.
Buggy wanders into the space like he’s afraid to touch anything. The air feels too clean. Too quiet. Everything is organized and polished. Not at all like the man still lingering by the door, keys bouncing in one hand like he hasn’t decided if he’s staying or bolting.
He’s watching Buggy carefully, like he’s thinking the same thing about him — Like he’s still not convinced he’s real yet.
Then, out of nowhere, Shanks says, “I released a record.”
Buggy plants himself in the middle of the living area, hands on hips, pretending to study the sleek decor but not really seeing any of it.
Buggy stops at the baby grand by the window—the only familiar thing in the room. His fingers trail along the lid, then drift to the scattered sheets of music on top. The handwriting is unmistakably Shanks’, but warped—sharper now, slanted wrong, full of uneven lines and frustrated cross-outs. The kind of mess that speaks volumes. The kind that says: I’m still learning how to do this with my non-dominant hand.
It hits harder than he expects.
“Did you?” Buggy says at last, the words masked flat, carefully neutral—an old habit to hide the way something tight and unspoken is clawing up his throat.
Of course he knows about the record.
They hadn’t spoken in years, but he’d seen the album — the one with the cover art of a rowboat adrift on an endless ocean, sky bleeding into water at the horizon. He saw it on some producer’s desk, a maybe for a moody indie soundtrack.
He almost bought it once. Even held it in his hands at a record store, stared at it for twenty minutes before walking out empty-handed.
He kept the radio off for a year after that. Just in case.
So yes, he knows Shanks made it for all of fifteen minutes. Knows the album made waves, then slipped quietly back into cult-favorite obscurity.
Buggy wonders if Shanks ever regretted giving so much of himself to strangers — letting his soul play out over grocery store sound systems and late-night college bars.
The thought turns his stomach.
Suddenly, the sleek floor tiles look smeared with grime. The countertops and chrome fixtures glint like blood money. And Shanks — standing behind him now, too quiet — looks like he’s waiting for Buggy to clean up the mess.
“I didn’t listen to it,” Buggy says flatly. He says it to wound. To remind them both who he is.
Shanks nods once. “Figured,” he says, shrugging the shoulder with his attached arm. “Didn’t mean I didn’t hope you would.”
“Still the optimist.”
Shanks ambles fully into the room, settling at the end of the piano but, thankfully, not coming any closer. His fingers trail lightly along the polished surface, almost like they’re dancing. “I didn’t have your number,” he says, voice easy but with an edge underneath.
“What?”
Shanks laughs, but it’s humorless—more a bitter shake of his head than anything else. “I mean, I tried,” he says, shrugging like it’s no big deal. Then he turns to the window, gaze distant. “Asked my manager to reach out to yours, but they never got through. I even flew out to L.A. once or twice. Tried to find you, but… you’d already gotten too big for a washed-up nobody like me to track down.”
Bile rises into Buggy’s mouth, bitterness coating his tongue. “I didn’t know any of that.”
“Yeah,” Shanks says. “Took me a long time to believe that. Easier to think you never got the messages than believe you were just ignoring me.”
Buggy swallows hard, pushing the creeping guilt back down. “Maybe if you’d reached out sooner…”
“Would you have answered?”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
“No. I guess not.” A beat. Then: “I missed you.”
“Because you’re a sap.”
Shanks laughs softly but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sap’s just another word for a fool in love.”
“Don’t—” Buggy cuts in, sharper now. “Don’t say that.”
“What, love?” Shanks asks, like it’s nothing. “After all the words we’ve thrown at each other, that’s the one that offends you?”
Buggy glares, feeling the old defenses flare up. “It’s insulting.”
“I’ve done worse than insult you, Buggy. Loving you isn’t one of them.”
He turns away.
His gaze drops to his hands, clenched at his sides, then to his shoes—scuffed leather catching the light from the window—and finally to the floor, cool marble veined like frozen smoke. Anything to avoid looking at the man in front of him.
The man dredging up their shared history like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t ache. Like it didn’t gut them both the first time around.
Buggy's jaw tightens. The silence stretches, heavy and electric, like the space between lightning and the crash that follows. His chest feels too tight for the air in the room, too full of things he won’t say.
Because if he looks up—if he meets Shanks’ eyes—he’s not sure what’s going to come out of his mouth. Anger. Regret. A plea. Maybe all three
“You’re an idiot,” is what he ends up saying.
“I know.”
“And stubborn.”
“Guilty.”
“And a coward.”
“I’d argue that point—”
“You let me go,” Buggy spits. He finally looks up—eyes glassy, voice cracking under the weight of it. “I told you I’d never come back and you—you just stepped aside. You opened the fucking door.”
Shanks doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch.
“I thought…” he starts, but the words stick. He exhales, slow. His hand grips the edge of the piano like it’s the only thing keeping him grounded. “I thought letting you go was what you needed. What we needed.”
Buggy shakes his head, one sharp, bitter movement. “No. What you needed was an excuse. And you used me to make it.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Shanks says quietly. “I wasn’t going to make you stay where you didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be an anchor.”
“An anchor?” Buggy repeats, voice unsteady. Then he laughs—just once, sharp and joyless. “I was the one dragging you, you idiot! The parties, the shows, the talent meetings—God, you hated every second of it. And I hated watching you fake it.”
His breath catches, but he doesn’t stop.
“I hated that you were pretending. Smiling for cameras, nodding through interviews, acting like it didn’t kill something in you every time.”
Outside, a siren wails in the distance. The city pulses like it always has, indifferent and eternal. But here, in the hush between them, something ancient and fragile holds its breath.
“So, yeah,” Buggy breathes out, voice raw. “You let me go. But don’t pretend it didn’t hurt me too.” He pauses, just long enough for it to land. “Because I was losing you before I ever walked out.”
Shanks closes his eyes. His voice comes low. “I loved you. I love you. That never changed. Even when everything else did.”
Buggy's ears ring. His heart pounds so loud it makes his head hurt.
His legs move on instinct, carry him toward the piano like gravity has changed.
He sits on the bench.
“What do you want me to say to that?”
“Nothing you don’t mean,” Shanks says. “I’d rather you walk out that door again than lie to me.”
Buggy considers it — wants to take the easy way out once again. He doesn’t move. “Fine.” Buggy inhales sharply. “I hate this. All of it.”
“I hate that you made me choose. I hate that you didn’t fight harder. I hate that I made the wrong decision. And sometimes—sometimes I hate myself more than I hate you.”
Shanks opens his mouth to respond.
“No,” Buggy says, cutting him off. “Shut up.”
Buggy doesn’t look at him when he says it.
He stares down at the ivory keys under his fingers. Lets his thumb ghost over middle C. The pressure in his chest is a vice. The silence that follows is almost enough to make him speak again, to fill the space before Shanks can.
Shanks, always the diplomate, obeys and doesn’t say a word.
Buggy glances up, just once, and it’s worse than expected—because Shanks isn’t angry, or smug, or even devastated. He’s just there, taking it, nodding like he knew that’s what would come out. Like he knew Buggy still had a few more knives to throw and was letting him.
And that—that patience—makes Buggy’s throat burn.
“I’m not good at this,” Buggy mutters, the words slipping out before he can stop them
“I know.”
“I mean it.” He leans back, as if putting distance between himself and the moment.
His hands leave the piano keys like they’ve burned him. “I don’t do the whole—honesty, emotional vulnerability bullshit. I didn’t even care when that stupid carnival fish died.”
Shanks tilts his head, one brow lifting. “You flushed him down the toilet.”
“It was dignified,” Buggy snaps, too quick. “He got a Viking funeral.”
There’s a pause. Then, finally, Shanks laughs—soft at first, then fuller, real. It cracks through the heavy quiet like sunlight.
Buggy doesn’t laugh with him, not quite. But his shoulders ease just a little, the tension giving way to something else. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But maybe something like it.
Buggy hates how much it makes him want to cry, just hearing that sound again.
“I missed this,” Shanks says, quieter. “You.”
Buggy closes his eyes. He’s so tired of missing things.
“I didn’t listen to the record,” he says again, softer this time. “But I read the liner notes.”
Buggy opens his eyes, voice low but pointed. “You said the album was for someone who once told you that if love didn’t hurt, you were doing it wrong.”
“Well,” Shanks replies, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “I didn’t intend for you to take it as a challenge to prove your point.”
Buggy lets that sit. Doesn’t deny it.
Finally, Shanks asks, “You gonna play something?”
Buggy blinks, surprised. “Me?”
Shanks smirks, motioning to his empty sleeve. “I would, but the harmonies just don’t sound the same.”
That guilt claws at the edges of his conscience, threatening to resurface. “About that,” Buggy says, voice low and steady, “Don’t think I’m not gonna get the whole story out of you.”
A long moment. Then Shanks moves—quiet, fluid, like muscle memory takes over again. He sits beside Buggy on the bench, just close enough that their legs touch at the knee.
Shanks, had taught him how to play a long, long time ago — another lifetime ago — but he hasn’t tried in years.
His hands hover over the keys, now.
“I wrote this one for you,” Shanks says, nodding toward the messy scrawl on the sheet stand. He laughs softly, rubbing the back of his neck with his remaining hand. “Hell, I wrote all of them for you.”
Buggy blinks, smirking. “All of them, huh? What, couldn’t find anyone else to inspire your muse?”
Shanks shrugs, but there’s a flicker in his eyes. “Trust me, after your left I tried. A lot.”
Buggy makes a face at the implication. “Gross.”
His fingers find a few notes scrawled into the hand-drawn bar—a welcome distraction from thinking about exactly what Shanks may or may not have been up to in his absence.
It’s soft. Simple. Messy in places. Nothing like the polished sound Shanks used to make. But Buggy hears him in it—in every note, every pause, every breath drawn and left hanging like something sacred.
Shanks nudges him as the first page ends, and Buggy turns to look at him fully.
“There’s only one of you, Bugs,” he says it like a prayer and a promise and a hope —
And Buggy lets himself remember what it was like to be loved this way—loud and quiet, flawed and perfect, all at once.