The score is supposed to be written by Friday. I’ve been quarantined in this room for days, left with my own increasingly psychotic thoughts. The last scenes are being filmed, and the music won’t come. If I wasn’t already insane, this would do it.

Tapping one piano key over and over, I glare at the half-finished page of notes. The block doesn’t ease away. The one thing I can’t intimidate is myself; that’s fucking convenient.

I will not throw the piano bench. I will not throw the piano bench. I will not throw the piano bench…

And suddenly there comes a rapping, rapping on my chamber door.

It’s a meek little knock that I would have missed, if I’d been working. Somebody’s been spreading rumors about the man-eating composer who works in the basement, I see. Smirking as I get up and start walking towards the door, I open it and find myself face to face with a mousy girl in glasses and a rumpled suit. Literally face to face. There are times when I really resent not being taller. So I make up for it by glaring.

The girl pales, a lot. I feel better now. Pushing her glasses up her nose, she blurts, “Mr. Burton wants to see you. Sir.”

Ah. Tim’s assistant. The poor, poor girl. “What’s he want?”

She pushes a hand through her hair, looking harried. “He didn’t say.”

I’m tempted for a moment to send her back just to prove a point, that nobody fucks with me when I’m working. But something tells me Tim would just send her back anyway. “Right. He’s pissy again, huh?”

She cracks a weak smile, but still backs up a step when I walk out of the room and pull the door shut behind me. Her gaze follows me out of the corner of her eyes while we move down the hallway, like she expects me to do something ‘spooky’ out of reflex. I should’ve tossed the shrunken head at her when I had the chance.

It’s fairly obvious when we get close to Tim’s self-claimed room. I can hear him muttering to himself through the wall. The assistant hovers behind me while I stand with my hand on the doorframe, waiting patiently- or not- for her to leave. “Are you going to need anything, sir? Any coffee, or your notes, or-“

She babbles on, nervously. Obviously she’s not going to go away by herself. With a sigh, I let my psychotic grin spread across my face, growing until my jaw aches. It's not long before her hand touches my shoulder gingerly. “Sir…?”

I turn on her, moving into her personal space until my face is inches from hers, and, grin firmly in place, grit out, “Go away.”

With a squeaky noise, she damned near runs down the hallway. It’d be funny if it wasn’t vaguely pitiful. Assistants these days…

The doorknob turns easily under my hand, letting me into a room that’s only half lit by a bare-bulb lamp on a desk piled with sketches and papers stacked so high they’re threatening to tilt. Pacing among those papers is Tim. He looks even more crazed than usual, his hair sticking up in at least twelve separate directions- which, admittedly, isn't an unusual thing in his case- and his eyes too bright. The disjointed babbling isn’t helping.

“Working with idiots… why don’t they get it, is it that hard to understand? Stand there and get killed, you don’t have a fucking motivation, just hold still and look pretty you goddamned media whores-“

I clear my throat, and he jumps. Wild eyes jerk up and fix on my face. “What’re you doing in here?”

“You told your gofer you wanted to talk to me. I was working.”

He blinks, looking genuinely bewildered. It's almost cute. Then he frowns. “That was twenty minutes ago!”

“She walks slow. What’d you want?”

“The score. How’s the score coming?” When I don’t answer right away, he starts to look desperate. “Danny, please tell me the score’s at least coming along well. Please.”

“If I could, I would.”

The profanity that follows is detailed, creative, and largely incoherent. I'm impressed. With a groan, he collapses into the executive chair, the force of it moving the chair back a few feet. Letting his head hang backwards, he stares at the ceiling as he mumbles, “This whole movie is a disaster. I’m not going to be able to finish it.”

I seat myself on the floor beside his desk, mostly because his couch is piled high with papers and empty cartons of catered food, and ask helpfully, “Does that mean I can go home?”

He laughs painfully, closing his eyes against the light and making a vaguely graceful gesture with his hands. “Sure. Fine. Go home. Everybody else did an hour ago.”

“Then why the hell are you still here?”

“Because I wanted to pace around and rant for a while.” Waving distractedly at the paper filled with red like a snowy massacre, he goes on. “And I’ve got to go over the script. And I’ll probably have to call up a few of the idiots and offer a personal apology for calling them idiots.”

I watch him struggle to get to his feet, reaching for the phone, and debate the merits of letting him call his star actor at 3 in the morning. Then I speak up anyway. “Might want to wait until after dawn to try that one.”

“Oh. Right. Other people sleep. I forgot.” Slumping back in the chair with the beginnings of a wistful, far-gone smile, he murmurs, “I miss sleep. It was always good to me.”

Oookay. Tim’s slap-happy. Damn me for forgetting my camera. Barring blackmail, though, I can't afford to waste time like this. Which means I ought to get up.

With a sigh, I start the painful climb back to my feet. “Do you need me for anything else?”

I could almost swear that he mutters something.

Turning on him, I demand, “What?”

He half opens one eye and asks intelligently, “Huh?”

Right. Well, there goes any hope for an interrogation. Crossing my arms over my chest, I spare another few seconds to stare down at him. He blinks at me upside-down when I comment, “You’re not twenty anymore. If you throw your back out, I’m just going to laugh.”

“I should be on the couch,” he agrees, and doesn’t move.

I ought to walk out. If he wants to kill himself, it’s not my problem. I’m not his girlfriend, his daddy or his fucking keeper. He still owes me. If anybody’s going to throw their backs out hauling someone across the room, it should be him.

Yet I pull him out of the chair anyway. He lolls against me like a broken doll, warm and heavy enough that I stagger. His hair smells like sickly sweet hotel shampoo. My back is screaming by the time we get to the couch, and I end up dropping him on the only clear space there harder than I intended. He blinks up at me when I shove the trash off the other half and on to the floor. Fuck it, the go-fer can clean it up.

Standing over him just because I like the novelty of looking down at him for once, I shake my head at him. “I’m going to get you some coffee.”

“That’s what the assistant is for.”

“Your assistant’s in the fetal position under a table somewhere right now. I’ll get the coffee.”

With the first trace of himself I’ve seen since coming in, he manages a slight crooked smile and closes his eyes. He doesn’t thank me. He hasn’t thanked me since I agreed to score a movie in ‘95. Not his style.

Offering up silent thanks to whatever genius invented coffeemakers, I pour out two doses of lukewarm coffee into already used but convenient mugs. It’s decent coffee, flavored the way it was intended. None of that vanilla almond hazelnut shit. Taking in a deep breath, I turn back to the couch.

Tim’s asleep.

Actually, unconscious would be the better term. Maybe comatose. I can barely tell if he’s breathing, the way he’s slumped over on the couch. I thought only cats had the flexible spines. Apparently not.

With a sigh, I set the coffee down on the end-table and kneel beside the couch to shake him awake. The first couple of shakes don’t get anything; the third only gets a twitch and a mumble. Wonderful. A little more roughly than really necessary, I push him over on to his side. He’s probably not going to be able to move tomorrow. Serves the bastard right, really.

Nobody ever said I wasn’t bitter.

His coat’s draped over the back of his chair. The leather creaks when I haul it off and throw it over him without much hope that it would jar him awake. No joy there. He doesn’t even have the decency to stir. Letting out another sigh, I put my fingertips on his eyelids and tap them absently. It’s a vulnerable thing, having someone’s hands that close to your eyes. It’d be easy to kill him like this. Blind those damnably quick eyes.

Funny thing, how you never realize how fragile we are until you see someone sleeping. The stubborn manipulative infuriating prick of a director is gone; all that’s left is frail human flesh. Beauty and power are only a few skin layers deep. Cut that away and all that’s left is a body and a bloody spot on the floor. We’re all just slick, ridiculous things underneath.

There’s no real and permanent beauty. Nothing in the marble-pale skin or the curve of his cheekbone or the form of his nose or the ungodly long eyelashes or those thin little gashes where he cut himself shaving with shaking hands. He’s imperfect, and one day he’ll just rot away. Time will ruin him like everything else.

Dead to the world. It’s a true concept. I could do anything to him right now. I could… I could…

I could get back to the studio and stop acting like a fucking stalker.

Pulling my hand away with the urge to hold it under scalding water until it’s clean again, I knock back both cups of coffee. He can damned well get his own whenever he decides to wake up. I’ve wasted enough time in here, on him. I’ve got work to do.

I lock the door for him and leave my colleague- nice impersonal term, colleague, speaks of insincere and shallow five word conversations over coffee and paperwork- behind. The studio welcomes me back with open arms. I prop up a chair under the door, even though I think I traumatized the assistant girl badly enough that they’ll all leave me alone from now on. I prefer it that way.

Sitting in front of the piano, I lay my fingers on the keys and find myself facing the same abyss of creative nothingness that I left. Back to the one key tapping, then.

The piano feels cool against my forehead, and the dramatic bang of my head knocking into them had a nice effect. Maybe I should throw that into the score, call it "Composer's Frustration”. I have to amuse myself somehow.

Closing my eyes, I try to summon up the music in my head. Even if I have to offer up what’s left of my sanity as a bribe, I’ll do it. It’s better than thinking.

Unbidden, the image of dark hair and white-pale skin springs up behind my eyes like a monster in a particularly cheap haunted house. Tim, curled up on that couch, with his haunted eyes and silver tongue and the demons that live in his head.

And the music slowly starts to come, muted like something from a distance.

Well. There goes that sanity, then.

No. No way in hell did that mean anything. Just because I was coincidentally thinking about him at the same time my subconscious finally decided to start working isn’t some sick sign of anything other than that I need to get some sleep. And see my girlfriend.

‘Hey, honey, guess what I was thinking about the other night!’

The music gets louder in my head, demanding to be laid on paper, distractions be damned. I pick up the paper and pencil and start writing. I’m not going to think about the way my hands are shaking.