Work Text:
The lodge is luxurious, even for them; all marble benchtops, accents of velvet and silk, warm low lighting, and expensive dark wood paneling, with molded edging that separates it from the cloth wallpaper above.
Eddie is at the grand piano, framed by the massive picture window (surely a nightmare on the heating bill) and the scenic view of the snow-covered landscape outside. His fingers dance across the keys, playing something Jeff doesn’t recognise, but it sounds polished and well-formed, even as Eddie occasionally pauses and scratches notes in his music book.
Frank is in the kitchen – Jeff knows this, because he can hear cupboards being shut with more force necessary. Gareth is on the plush, outrageously-sized couch that Jeff swears could easily fit twenty people on it comfortably. He might have been dead, if not for the intermittent, indistinct groans about how hungover he is.
For his own part, Jeff should be doing something productive. But he keeps getting distracted by the corner of the wood paneling that’s lifting away from the plaster. It’s such a jarring detail, amongst the surrounding luxury.
“Ugh, I think I’m dying,” Gareth groans.
“I told you the jäger bombs were a bad idea,” Eddie says from the piano, and though his tone is mild, it’s completely without the fond, indulgent teasing it would have held when they were twenty.
Jeff spreads his music book open on his knees, looking over the songs they’ve written so far. There’s some promising material, none more so than the last song they worked on, but it feels like there’s still something missing, like the bridge is a bit weak, and the chorus could be tighter. But God, it had been a hard fucking slog to even get to this point – half-a-dozen half-finished songs, nowhere near enough to fill out the album they need to deliver in under two months.
Jeff’s gaze drifts back to the wood paneling.
When Fleetwood Mac locked themselves away to write, they’d been coke-fuelled, fighting non-stop, sometimes fucking, and always chaotic, but they’d emerged with Rumours – one of the greatest albums ever written. Jeff had proposed this lodge as a writing retreat for them, given their fast looming fourth album deadline, but so far, it hasn’t quite yielded the same results.
They are, objectively, very successful. Their second album had blown it all apart; a phenomenal, resounding, incredible success, fuelled by the excitement that touring their first album had brought on. Jeff has never seen Eddie like that before, or since; writing music like he was possessed, always tapping melodies against his own thigh, always testing new things out after soundchecks. The jam sessions they’d had in those days had been transcendent.
But now, Eddie is playing something on the piano – something he’s definitely written, because it’s got his indelible style in it – and it’s new and it sounds almost finished, and this is the first time Jeff is hearing it at all.
It never used to be like that.
Eddie used to play him riffs and melodies and snatches of lyrics the moment he thought of them, eager for input and ideas. Jeff stares at the dark gap created by the way that one corner of wood paneling sags away from the wall, and thinks that maybe it was sometime around album three that things started to change a little. Because Eddie was in love by then – or, he had been all along, but he and Steve had finally stopped pretending they were just the best of buds – and so his songs had all started coming out distinctly flavoured. Still metal, but certainly themed, and Jeff can admit they picked at him about it. He can admit they’d all kind of forgotten how vulnerable it made Eddie, writing music and giving it up for the consumption of others, even if it was just them, who’d known him so long, at first. Like sharing little pieces of his soul, from beyond the walls he’d maintained his whole life. Ed was the sort who feigned emotional openness, to make everyone around him comfortable being open too, while keeping the realness hidden, because he still saw his wants, his needs, his feelings as burdensome to others – some bullshit no doubt learned from his dad. But he couldn’t hide it in the music – it was just there, in the open; a raw, splintered edge.
Like a cracked piece of wood paneling.
Gareth hadn’t been cool about Eddie and Steve either, maybe still wasn’t fully on board even after years of proof that King Steve was dead – had maybe never even existed – and that was another crack in the wood. Jeff wondered if it was jealousy – Gareth had a nice girl for a long time, but she wanted kids ASAP and when it was clear the glittering Corroded Coffin success train wasn’t slowing down, she’d left. Gareth has drunk too much, taken too much, felt too much ever since, and they’ve all tried to help, they really have, but they’ve been tightrope-walking that whole situation for years with no improvement.
Frank’s sensitive; he feels the tension with all of them and it manifests in him as irritability – hence the current racket from the kitchen.
The phone rings, and the piano abruptly stops as Eddie gets up to take the call, like he knows instinctively it’s for him. In the other room, where he can pick up the line with at least a little privacy, Jeff hears his muffled voice saying, “Hi sweetheart. How are you? I miss you so much.”
Jeff’s eyes go once more to the broken panel. He thinks album four might break them, if they keep ignoring that crack, and the rot underneath. They’re surrounded by distracting opulence, like Corroded Coffin’s fantastic success. And all everyone sees is that success, and Jeff feels like he’s the only one who can see where the wood paneling is starting to crack and fall away.