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"Monkey, do you hear that?"
"Stop calling me 'Monkey', Pete." Daltrey grouses, grumbling "All I hear is your fruity Russian opera."
"It's NOT opera, it's ballet, and it's not MINE, it's Tchaikovsky's. Not that you'd know the difference, but I'm talking about belligerent backbeat reverberating through the WALLS, not wafting from the speakers."
"Oh, you're ALWAYS hearing music nobody else can hear. Why ask ME now?"
"Because it's coming from OUTSIDE my head, this time, so you SHOULD be able to fucking pick it up..." This is not the first occasion upon which Pete has worried about his own sanity. "...unless I'm going crazy."
Monkey smirks "Going? Not that anybody cares what I think, but you're pretty well gone."
Pete is beginning to believe this might be true, since everything he's tried to listen to lately has resonated with all-too-familiar repercussions. [I WROTE the bloody beats, but I could never make those sounds, myself. It couldn't be...could it?]
*****
"Roger, do you hear that?"
"All I hear is your shitty American bebop."
"It's not bebop, it's jazz." John huffs, disinclined to go into the difference with a man who wouldn't care. "Seriously, there's something thumpin' the fuckin' FLOOR. Can't you FEEL it?" [I know who it is, but to say so would sound crazy. Maybe I am. Miss him so much I'm losing my mind...]
"No..." Daltrey regards Entwistle with serious concern "I don't feel anything. Are you high?"
"Maybe a little." John admits, pretending percussive pulses beneath his feet are only in his head.
*****
[I don't dare ask...he might cry.] "Happy Halloween." Pete proclaims, trying to ignore pervasive pounding as he welcomes John inside, delighted to behold The Ox wearing skintight skeleton suit he's so often rocked onstage.
[Goddammit, it's going on here, too. He doesn't hear it, or he'd have said so.] "Yeah." John smiles, regarding Pete enrobed in Union Jack Jacket he recognizes as the one cut for him. "Are you dressed up as me?"
"Eh..." Pete gives a self-effacing shrug "Maybe your funny-looking little brother." Watching John's eyes dart around the room, the pulse thrum in his throat and reflexive tightening of his fingers in time to otherworldly tempo bolsters bravery. "You hear him, too, don't you?"
"YES!" John falls into Pete's embrace, sobbing against stalwart shoulder while gripping in desperate clutch. "What the fuck is wrong with us? It can't REALLY be him, I've tried asking and got no answer. He wouldn't ignore me, so what the FUCK is going on?"
Pete pulls anguished Ox close to him, murmuring into anxious ear, hoping to touch troubled mind with honest admission. "I don't know, but we can figure it out together. If it really IS him, he can't possibly ignore us together. If it's some malignant monster...well, we can beat it together." He draws back to blaze determined gaze into John's fraught visage, asking so intently as to nearly demand "Can't we?"
"How?" John shakily whispers as the room reverberates around them, trusting (as he has so many times before) that Pete knows what he's doing.
"Call his name." Pete insists, taking John's hands in his. "While we make a circle."
"KEITH!" Both bandmates cry as one, and an electric crackle courses entwined fingers as crash and thump suddenly ceases.
Pete knows John's eyes are not brown, but the ones into which he looks suddenly are as The Loon's voice issues from the Ox's mouth. "I'm sorry, Pete. It wasn't on purpose. Please don't give up."
John knows Pete's blue eyes intimately, but icy irises darken to resemble coffee when he speaks with Keith's sweet spirit. "I love you, John. Please don't leave. Give another drummer a chance."
Pete and John regard each other in solemn silence as they note the other's eyes returning to familiar hue while they continue to hold hands, both well aware nobody else could ever understand what just happened.