“Marco, Marco, Marco.”

“What?” returned the boy in question’s voice, sounding rather irritated even though it was hoarse with sleep.

Grinning slightly, Keely kicked back in the chair, propping her feet against the side of the soundboard. It was nice to be the one doing the waking for once. It was much better than being the one always woken up. “You need to come down to the studio.”

There was a moment of silence then, “Huh?”

“We need you to lay down a bass track.”

Apparently those words helped Marco regain his footing, because when he spoke next he didn’t sound as befuddled. “It’s five in the morning.”

“Yeah,” she told him brusquely, “Bring coffee.”

“You can’t be-”

Not bothering to listen to what he was saying, Keely pulled the phone from her ear and hung up before tossing it carelessly onto the end table.

Stifling a yawn behind her hand she let her legs drop from their propped up position, and leaned forward slightly, brushing her shaggy bangs away from her eyes. “How long do you think it’s going to take for him to get here?”

“Two hours

probably,” answered Seth without as much as a glance towards her.

Rubbing her temples sleepily, Keely stayed leaning forward. It felt comfortable there. “So what do we do until then?”

Kicking his rolling chair out of the way, Seth made his way to the board hurriedly, sending a quick glance back at the computer, a line deepening between his brows. “You,” he began, his voice sounding distracted as he changed something on the board, “Are going to go set up the mic.”

Frowning she dug a hand into her hair, shoving it away from her face completely while straightening in her chair. “For what?” she questioned.

“When Marco gets here,” he replied, leaning forward into the glow coming from the lights in the studio.

The light that hit his face only made Keely wince, the sleeplessness was beginning to show with dark prominent circles bruised beneath his eyes and she had no doubt that she looked any better. The album was due soon enough and there just wasn’t enough time. “I want to rerecord the vocals on Yesterday’s Gone,” she told him.

Finally he looked at her, but this time sending her an incredulous expression lit by the ghostly light from the studio. “We’re already getting Marco to redo the bass on it, why do you want to do the vocals too?”

Ignoring his question, she bit down lightly on her bottom lip, giving him a sheepish look. “And I want Colton to come in to do the drums on it.”

“What do you hate about this song so much?”

“It sounds like a freaking Michael Bublé song!” she exclaimed.

For a moment he stared at her, his eyes scouring her face intently. “Okay,” he decided eventually, rubbing a hand wearily over his face, “Now you’re just going insane. You like Michael Bublé.”

Rolling her eyes Keely dropped her hand from her hair, pulling the chair towards him carefully with her feet. “Yeah, I do, but that doesn’t mean I want my music to sound like him. This song is just too perfect and smooth, there’s nothing offensive or offsetting about it.”

“Since when do you want it to be offensive?”

A small smile twitched on her mouth as she tipped her chin up to look at him. “Isn’t that what rock and roll is, some kind of form of rebellion? “Rock has always been the devil’s music”,” she quoted.

Sighing, he replied, “What do you want to do then? Rewrite all the lyrics?”

Hastily Keely shook her head. “No, no, no, that’s not what I want. I’m not writing something to piss people off, I love our lyrics the way they are. That’s not what I meant. I don’t need it to be offensive in that sense, I just need something like an out of key chord to play; I really, really want that right now.”

“You’re going nuts,” Seth informed her after a long pause, “You need sleep more.”

Silently she just stared up at him beseechingly.

“Okay,” he answered, looking away from her gaze, making Keely grin excitedly at the victory. “You want a We Will Rock You vibe to it.”

Instantly she sobered, shaking her head. It was hard to explain what was going on her head, how was she supposed to explain it? “I want some Jimi Hendrix feedback on the guitar that has a bit of Smashing Pumpkins grunge sound to it, with a John McVie sounding bass, John Bonham heavy handed drums and I want to scream, shout and sing the lyrics. Think Territorial Pissings for the vocals with Knarl, Heartbreaker and The Chain.”

Slowly Seth nodded, his eyes looking distant as he thought it over. She gave a great sigh of relief, who else would understand a word of that?

“Flipper for the bass,” he said, meeting her gaze.

She smiled broadly, “Bruce Loose or Will Shatter?”

“Either, you could go through all the bassist even to when they were touring with Krist Novoselic. But I don’t know if Colton can do the heavy handed drumming you want, it’s just not the way that he plays.”

For a moment she pondered the options. “Well, he can get it eventually; we’ll just have to get him to keep doing it over and over again.”

“Do you want to record a new guitar track too?” Seth questioned.

Nodding eagerly, Keely sent a quick glance to the guitar case that was propped in the corner. She’d already recorded a fair bit with the old beat up guitar, but she could barely pry her hands away from it anymore. “I’m thinking roughing the guitar more than we’ve ever done, the notes can still be heard in what I have in mind but it’s-”

“Really grunge?” finished Seth, sending her a cocky smirk. “This is going to be a real throwback to the nineties, isn’t it?”

“It’s going to be incredible; it just has to be exact to what it sounds like in my head.”

It appeared Seth had been right, Marco showed up an exact two hours later.

By that time they’d finally managed to get the guitar right for Yesterday’s Gone, and it had turned out flawless to what she heard in her head – though it had taken a while to get there. The chords were distinguishable, but they’d gotten the nineties grunge sound mixed to perfection with the sixties pioneering with feedback, completely skipping over the redundant eighties stadium guitar solos thankfully.

In fact, Keely thought it sounded better than it had in her head when they played it back. She’d stood tapping her foot, hands cemented on the edge of the soundboard with her head bobbing unconsciously while Seth sat beside her, both of them completely immersed in the single guitar track.

Her fingers were aching, but she barely noticed.

And, in the ending thirty seconds of the song, Marco had burst into the sound room looking worse for wear.

“What is this?” he asked over the thumping speakers. Well, shouted over would be more accurate.

With barely a glance at him, Keely held up her hand, moving it along with the guitar. “Yesterday’s Gone,” she bellowed, her hand slashing down triumphantly when one last loud chord reverberated through the room to end the song.

“It’s good,” Seth announced, leaning back in his chair.

Rolling her eyes, she slapped him lightly in the back of the head while smiling hugely. “It’s fucking perfect is what it is,” she corrected, watching when Seth smiled with the dimple up at her.

“Excuse me,” interrupted a voice, loud in the sudden silence. The two peeked over their shoulders to watch as a frustrated looking Marco slammed a tray of coffee onto the dinky end table set up in the cramped sound room. “But you woke me up at five in the morning to record for a song we did only two days ago?”

Shrugging, Seth shoved up from his seat, shoving a hand through his always messy hair. “It wasn’t right,” he answered, stretching slightly.

Distracted easily, Keely felt her eyes dip down to where the Sonic Youth tee he was wearing had lifted while he stretched, showing an appealing amount of the sculpted hips his torn jeans hung off of. It really was unfair; she thought absently while she bit down on her lip, she never used to be distracted by him and his body the same way when they’d been in New York.

When he moved, Keely jolted slightly, bringing her eyes up hastily to his again. Only to find him smirking at her, an eyebrow raised and the gold in his eyes glinting slightly as he crossed his arms in front of his chest, the strong biceps flexing slightly as he did so. Decisively ignoring that fact, Keely narrowed her eyes at him, hoping to pretend like she wasn’t affected whatsoever.

What a lie that was.

In response Seth just shook her eyes, sidestepping around her to get into the studio. She forced herself not to turn around to watch him, pulling in a deep breath as she stood stubbornly still.

“I can’t believe you two,” grumbled Marco, finally making her turn around to him. “You could have let me...”

A quick glance through the glass showed her what Seth was doing; she couldn’t help herself from watching as he set up the studio the way they’d agreed for the bass on the song. She was beginning to annoy herself with her behaviour.

“... I mean, you might as well have had Seth do the bass for it since he was already here.”

Dragging her eyes back to Marco, she sent him a quizzical look, grabbing one of the coffees that she’d ordered him to bring. “What do you mean?” she asked, laughing lightly in the back of her throat, “You’re the bassist, not him.”

He just sent her a flat look. “Do you really think I’m the best bassist in the band?”

“Well... yeah,” she answered slowly, “You are the bassist. Even Seth said that you were probably one of the best bassists.”

“He said that because I’m his best friend,” Marco pointed out, shaking his head at her as if she was a small child who could not grasp the simplest concept. “I’m not that good, I’m good enough to be able to play behind Seth and not fuck up, same with Colton. We’re not the musicians, Seth writes all the music, he’s mastered all our instruments and more, he’s the singer.”

She rolled her eyes at him, what was he going on about? “You’re in a famous rock band, you’re good,” she replied taking a deep gulp from the disposable cup.

“I’m not being an idiot,” he assured her, “I know I’m good. But Colton and I didn’t start playing instruments because we wanted to make music; we did it because we wanted to be famous. Every little kid wants to be famous.”

“You’re just being annoying because I woke you up.”

He laughed, sipping on his coffee in response. “We’re not like you or Seth, we like music, but not the same way. You can always tell, you’re solo, we know you can make on your own. And we all know Seth could do a solo album on his own too. But do you really think me or Colton could do it?”

Not knowing how to answer, Keely gave a shrug. How was she supposed to tell him no? Because they didn’t write their own music, they’d never wanted to or tried. As much as she loved them, they weren’t Stevie Wonder.

“You know,” Marco began thoughtfully, “If he wasn’t my best friend it’d be freaking annoying that he’s better at playing my instrument than me.”

At that moment Seth pushed open the door from the studio, instantly heading to the coffee. They’d been living off of it for the past few days. They’d be lumps on the floor if it wasn’t for the wonders of caffeine.

“The studios ready for you, and we want you to play it...”

Keely stopped listening while Seth coached Marco on how they wanted the song to be as she thought about the latter’s words from before.

He said he and Colton had just wanted to be famous when they started playing, what about her?

Sure, she’d been like every little kid, having big dreams where they played a guitar in front of a stadium packed with people, maybe people from their lives writhing with jealousy in the crowd. But she hadn’t done this to be famous... why had she done it then? Being famous was a plus, so was money, not that she was using it much now. Yet she didn’t think about buying a new car when she wrote a song, she just thought about the music and what she was writing about.

Was that the difference between people like her and other musicians? Because she’d heard musicians talking about writing songs solely to have a hit, she didn’t think about that when she was playing or writing music.

Frowning slightly at the questions she was posing to herself, Keely focused back to the two boys with her.

Marco gave a loud yawn, covering his mouth with his hand lazily. “Do you guys really think that you’re going to be able to finish the record in time the way you’re going?”

Narrowing her eyes at him, she stood stock still as a grinning Seth brushed past her back to his seat in front of the soundboard. “Belief is a beautiful armour,” she responded with the song lyrics.

But suddenly her attention was grabbed by the tempting voice from her other side. “But makes for the heaviest sword, Like punching underwater, You never can hit who you’re trying for,” Seth responded with the rest of the verse, still smiling somewhat as he began to fiddle around with the board.

“Seriously?” she asked, wanting to give him a right thump on the back. “Did you really have to totally screw up my quoting that way?”

Sending her an adorable smile with the dimple in his left cheek flashing, he looked up from the board. “You chose the wrong verse of that song if you were trying to make a point about it, rebel.”

“And of course, there’s no song in the world that you don’t know,” responded Keely snippily.

His smile turned into an easy going smirk. “Well, that’s off a good album. Continuum was the closest John Mayer ever got to brilliance, the blues with tiny bit of offset jazz worked.”

“Okay, I’m going to go leave you two to speaking in riddles and go play that bass track,” Marco announced.

But no one was bothering to listen to him.

Thoughtfully, Keely pulled up her own chair beside him, propping her elbow on the edge of the soundboard and leaning her head against her palm. “I’m betting you know more than one song off that album than Belief and the Jimi Hendrix cover then, right?”

For a long moment he held her eyes, making her pull in a deep breath. It was so... strange when he looked at her like that, so deeply. It was as if Keely didn’t know whether to move closer or run away for her life.

Finally he dropped the gaze, turning back to the job at hand, but surprised her by speaking even as he refused to look at her, speaking in lyrics. “No, I’m not the man I used to be lately. See you caught me at an interesting time. And if my past is any sign of your future, You should be warned before I let you inside. Hold on to whatever you find, baby. Hold on to whatever will get you through. Hold on to whatever you find, baby. I don’t trust myself with loving you.”

This time her breathing halted for a moment and she just stared at him, searching the side of his profile.

But her attention was dragged away by a sharp tap on the glass beside them.

Wide eyed, she looked up to see Marco standing there expectantly. “What do you want?” asked Seth, pressing his finger on the intercom.

The boy in the studio just moved to the mic plugged in so he could be heard in the crappy little recording space. “I was just wondering how long it’s been since you two slept more than three hours at a time, you seem to start speaking in lyrics more when you don’t.”

Thinking about it, Keely wrinkled her nose before answering, “Two days, we’ve been stuck in the studio the whole time.”

“Christmas for me,” answered Seth, “Now play the freaking track, Marco.”

Surprised, she didn’t even look at the grumbling young man with his bass guitar, instead looking towards Seth. “Why haven’t you slept since Christmas? That’s way too long, you’re going to crash soon.”

“Don’t worry about it, rebel,” he replied, rubbing a hand over his eyes before sliding his chair over so he could reach the computer with ease, “I’m fine.”

“That long without more than a couple hours of sleep? No you’re not fine, Seth, why aren’t you sleeping?”

He gave a sigh, clicking something on the laptop before moving back to rearrange the soundboard. “Memories that haunt you in your sleep are dreams, so I guess not so great haunting memories would be nightmares.”

Instantly her eyes softened and she reached out a hand thoughtlessly, brushing her hand lightly across the stubble covering his cheeks and chin. “You really hate it here, don’t you?”

Understanding what she meant, Seth gave her a small nod. “I’d never come back to this town if I had the chance.”

Not liking the fact that dark light had come back into his eyes when he spoke, Keely brought her hand away slowly, but didn’t take her gaze away from him. “Are you feeling alright, though?”

He gave a derisive sound in the back of his throat, slouching back in his chair and closing his eyes as he leaned his head against the head rest. “I’m having trouble trying to sleep. I’m counting sheep but running out. As time ticks by, Still I try. No rest for the cross tops in my mind. On my own here we go. My eyes feel like they’re gonna bleed. Dried up and bulging out of my skull. My mouth is dry, My face is numb. Fucked up and spun out in my room. On my own here we go.”

“So... not feeling so well?” she replied, recognizing the lyrics from the album Insomniac.

“My eyes literally do feel like they’re going to be bleed, rebel.”

She winced, that did not sound pleasant.

“Hey! You two, I know you’re all screwed up without any sleep, but are you going to listen to the bass track at least?”

At Marco’s voice, Keely gave a little giggle, turning back to him and getting more comfortable in her seat. “So sorry, Mr President, the floor is yours now.”

Three days later as the ending dropped of the song, Keely jumped in the air, holding the last shout as the drums and guitar cut out in time. There was no fading out, just a hard and heavy hit and then it was gone.

“We did it!” she exclaimed excited, rocking up onto her toes and clapping her hands together.

“No more recording for the song?” questioned Marco grumpily, shifting in his seat.

Even though she could see the irritation in Colton and Marco, she could also see the look in their eyes from hearing the song. They’re created something so far from perfection that they’d made a grunge masterpiece. And every single person sitting in the cramped crappy studio knew it.

“No,” she laughed, hooking her arms around Colton and Marco’s shoulders and pressing a friendly kiss to the cheek of the latter. “No more recording for you, mommy and daddy just have a day left to finish mixing.”

Laughing despite himself, Marco shook his head. “You really do need to sleep, you’re getting delirious.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Keely replied, giving him a little shove. “Now get out of our studio, we have five hours to finish mixing and you guys just get annoying.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” said Colton sarcastically.

Yet, still, within mere minutes they’d cleared out of the studio leaving her and Seth alone to finish the job.

Dropping into the seat that Colton had vacated, Keely pulled herself up towards Seth, looking at him through her heavily bruised and sleep deprived eyes.

He stared back.

“Do you think we can finish?” she asked, suddenly her voice lowering.