Title: Rock 'n' Roll Dreams Come True
Author: aldiara
Recipient: Dechro
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Deniz/Roman, and… ??? [surprise!]
Summary: When Deniz inadvertently finds Two Tickets To That Thing He Loves instead of his favourite cock ring, he and Roman embark on a grim adventure of ear-raping agony that eventually leads to a chance encounter with DESTINY.
Rating: PG-13. Alas, no actual ear rape occurs.
Warning(s): Mars. Loquaciousness, soap plots, crack. Hm, better safe than sorry: THIS FIC CONTAINS NARRATION AND DIALOGUE, REPRESENTED BY LETTERS ON A SCREEN. CORRECT GRAMMAR MAY OCCUR. ALSO, MARRRRS.
Word Count: 3500
Author's Notes: Thanks to my wonderful cheerleading beta L.! And shoutouts go to Queer As Folk (UK) and The Shoebox Project, from which I've rudely stolen a couple of lines. Also, I blame someone else for Mars. Someone not me. You know who you are.






It was entirely an accident, Deniz claimed later, and Roman had no one to blame for but himself. Unfortunately, he was right. One moment he'd been innocently rummaging through Roman's gym bag, looking for his favourite cock ring – the leather one, made supple from frequent use and fitting just right – the next he straightened up with two tickets in his hand and an intrigued expression on his face.

"What's this, then?"

Roman dove for him with a yelp. Unfortunately he had forgotten that his shirt was unbuttoned and his trousers tangled around his knees. Instead of the heroic leap he had envisioned – snatching the tickets from Deniz's hand and making them disappear up his sleeve in an impressive feat of slight-of-hand – he ended up stumbling over his own trapped ankles, and only Deniz quickly stepping forward to catch him saved him from a nosedive into the linoleum.

"You okay?" Deniz looked down at him worriedly, checking for damage, although strictly speaking his gaze did perhaps linger on his groin a bit longer than a mere visual medical check might warrant. Hands clutching at Deniz's upper arms, Roman blinked up at him sickeningly, feigning dazedness.

"I… think so," he murmured, and when the concern in Deniz's eyes deepened and he shifted his grip to hold him more securely, Roman made a grab for the tickets. Deniz was so easy.

"Yes. Gimme those."

Deniz quickly held the tickets up high over his head, out of Roman's grasp. Okay, perhaps not that easy.

"Wait, what? What are these?"

"Hand them over right this second! I swear, sometimes you are like a goddamn-"

"Don't say puppy," Deniz said quickly, eyes spitting dark fire. "I'll hurt you, and not in a good way."

"-fine, like a goddamn magpie, okay?"

"Magpies go after shiny things."

"These tickets are shiny. And I'm not kidding around. Give me them!" Roman fumed. He was trying hard for Furious, Intimidating Ice Prince, but that was a difficult stance to pull off when you were mostly naked.

Deniz – 98% naked himself, the remaining 2% made up by his socks – just laughed, fending Roman off with one hand and craning his head back to read the two slips of paper in his outstretched hand.

"Admit… two… to… dude! A Mars concert? Seriously?" His boyfriend stared at him incredulously. Deniz had acquired a taste for the phenomenally tacky pop rocker from Vanessa, and Roman happened to know they'd sworn a holy oath never to tell Nina – who genuinely loved Mars – that it was a fondness entirely built on mockery. Nevertheless, Roman regarded it with deepest, long-suffering scorn and had spent an embarrassing amount of time and energy on finding creative hiding places for Deniz's CDs. To say that he didn't like Mars would be like stating that Bulle wasn't entirely fond of alternative lifestyles.

But damn it, it was Christmas, and love made you do stupid things.

Roman took advantage of Deniz's slack-jawed incredulity and jumped the missing five inches to the tickets, but Deniz recovered from his momentary frozen state just in time to whisk them out of reach.

Deciding a change of tactics was in order, Roman stopped reaching high, and instead reached low. Deniz yelped in a very – dare one think it – puppy-like fashion when Roman's fingers closed, less gently than they might have, on his unprotected balls. "No fair! Bad tactic! You'll need those intact!"

"Give. Me. The tickets," Roman said in a measured voice, increasing the pressure just slightly. Very suddenly, he held the two tickets in his free hand, but before he could so much as smirk, his boyfriend's fingers closed firmly on his exposed nipples, holding one pinched lightly between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. The pressure was very comparable to the force Roman was exerting on his own handful; the threat of squeezing agony anything but abstract.

They stood locked in stalemate for a moment, chest to chest, staring at each other. Then Roman took a deep breath and reluctantly proposed, "Let go on three?"

Narrow-eyed, Deniz nodded.

"One – two – three."

They both took a step back at the same time, hands demonstratively raised, although Roman hid his – still clutching the recaptured tickets – behind his back almost immediately, futile though it was.

"You were not supposed to see those," he declared defensively. "They're part of your Christmas present."

Deniz was still staring at him, delighted and confused. "But you hate Mars."

"I do. With a passion. Their lyrics are a joke, and that Mars guy's voice always makes me feel like I need a shower. Not in a good way. They're worse than Ingo and his two-song repertoire."

Deniz wasn't even listening to him. "Oh my god, this is awesome! I haven't even heard them since they got their new drummer! This is going to be brilliant! And you're coming with me? Seriously?"

He pounced, trying to kiss Roman, who fended him off and awkwardly shuffled backwards towards his gym bag, tickets in hand. "Well, of course. I want to see you enjoy it. And I'm glad you're pleased, but it's bad luck for you to see your presents before Christmas."

Deniz furrowed his brow. "I thought that only applied to wedding dresses," he said sceptically.

Roman glared and attempted to step out of his pants at the same time, with mixed effects. "It's true for Christmas presents, too."

"Oh." Deniz looked devastated, something he was exceedingly good at. Then his eyes travelled down Roman's mostly-undressed body, and he cleared his throat. "Is there, uhm, anything that could be done to make me forget I saw them?"

Roman considered this carefully while leaning over his bag as surreptitiously as possible and dropping the concert tickets back into it. When he straightened up again, he triumphantly held up the leather cock ring instead.

"Maybe one or two."

*


There were some things, Roman knew, that passed for necessary compromise in any functional relationship. You might, for example, find yourself required to watch all the Rocky movies more than once; to consume the abomination that was eggplant jam with a straight face in order to please a tetchy father-in-law hailing from a barbaric culture; and to occasionally tolerate socks in bed.

It was all worth it if in return your partner put up with your musical soundtracks, your hour-long gossip and work-related rants and your obnoxious little brother's untidy wanking habits. And if you got to teach him the finer points of rimming.

There were, however, certain limits to what love could stand, and on December the eighteenth, soon after entering the concert venue, a spacious nightclub that Roman quickly classified as the straightest of clubs – no darkrooms, no lube dispensers, toilets that looked like no one had ever had sex in them – he started to wonder if his Christmas present didn't cross those limits. Shortly after the concert had actually begun, he became increasingly sure that it did.

"Schaaaaatz," Roman yelled over the infernal noise, gritting his teeth as much as it was possible to grit your teeth while shouting, "you cannot possibly tell me with any degree of seriousness that you actually think this officially qualifies as 'music', much less good music!"

On stage, the guitarist was committing public first-degree murder, or at the very least rape; his instrument screamed with all the tortured agony Roman imagined a blow-up sex doll might voice if it could vocalise its history of unceasing abuse and sad perversion. It was a long, drawn-out death. Hands wrapped around a microphone, Mars himself swayed slowly at the front of the stage, long oily locks brushing his shoulders and thankfully obscuring half his face. Eyes closed, he crooned something into the mic about his baby who just needed some lovin', baby who just needed to trust her man. Roman marvelled at how the man in question managed to make even his voice sound oily; Maximilian von Altenburg had nothing on him. The bassist plucked a chord with a wide beaming grin of accomplishment, which wasn't entirely unwarranted given that he only had a single note to play. In the background, the new drummer, a skinny guy in a rumpled shirt and a pair of dark shades despite the dimness of the club, was playing a rhythm that managed to be both completely out of tune with anything the other band members were doing, and wildly discordant in its own right.

"Oh, no, no, they're awful!" Deniz shouted back, suspiciously cheerfully. "Total crap!"

He had wrapped his arms around Roman from behind, bouncing slightly along to the… noise, Roman supposed, refusing categorically to think of the ongoing mixed screeching/yowling/vocal leering as "music." He craned back his neck, attempting to see his boyfriend's face. "And that's a good thing because…"

Deniz shrugged. "It's a cult thing. I told you. They're deliberately bad." But he was frowning in mild confusion as the din from the stage continued. Mars had stepped up his seductive voice-leering to active lyrical molestation, crying out against the injustice of baby's cruel eyes are so cold to see / Her quivering thighs shy away from me.

Roman felt quite sure that if he were a quivering thigh, he'd not only shy away from this greasy charmer; he'd find his quivering thigh-mate and wobble the hell out of the immediate vicinity.

"There's stuff that's so bad that it's good, and then there's stuff that's so bad that it goes beyond good and comes all the way back around into fucking awful," he declared loudly, pressing one side of his head against Deniz's shoulder so he could at least block one ear. "I may not be young and hip to the current jive or groovin' with the happening beat…"

"Uh, baby? No one really talks like-"

"…but even I can tell the difference," Roman finished firmly. "This is not cult."

Apparently he wasn't the only one who held that opinion; the densely packed crowd all around them had been growing increasingly restless, and the occasional burst of incredulous laughter and jeers steadily rose into a near-constant commentary of booing and cries of "Dudes, you suck!"

By the third song, when Mars was abusing the mic with a pained howl about the fuckin' bitch who left me so blue, and my balls, too, even Deniz was looking doubtful. "It's the drummer," he rationalised while Roman chewed on a button on Deniz's shirt in a desperate attempt to distract himself, hoping he wasn't bleeding too obnoxiously from the ears. "The drummer ruins it all."

Roman dared a quick glance at the stage. The drumming was particularly atrocious, it was true. The drumsticks whirled between the guy's fingers in a crazy pattern vaguely evocative of a spider weaving an invisible web while on acid, and the overall result was about as rhythmical and appealing as Alexander banging his miniature kendo staff against his grandmother's finest Meissen china.

Even so, between the guitar's lingering and noisy demise and Mars' voice, which seemed to be actually crawling down from the stage now to ooze into cleavages and up miniskirts, there was only so much the drummer could ruin.

Roman frantically scanned his options. Considering the fact that this was his Christmas present, said options were deplorably limited. He could drag Deniz to the toilets to ravish him, but even if he had five mind-blowing orgasms in quick succession, he feared he'd still retain some basic hearing. He could dash for the bar and ask the bartender for whatever would get him drunk the fastest, but any alcohol-induced hallucinations might actually enhance the effects of Mars and band's pop rock diarrhoea nightmare rather than dull them. Same problem with drugs.

He was just about to cave and speak the unspeakable, the ultimate no-no in functional relationship communication, the one that began with "Deniz, if you love me…," when Deniz put him out of his misery of his own accord.

"Okay, this is painful," he shouted over the noise, wincing as he hugged Roman close. "Let's get out of here."

Oh, thank god, thought Roman. Out loud, he said, "Oh, are you sure?"

Deniz rolled his eyes at him. "That my eardrums are about to burst and you look like all the happiness has been sucked from your world forever? Yeah, I'm sure. Come on!"

Roman nodded, grasping his hand so tightly he felt bones shift in his grip. They pushed through the crowd – noticeably thinner now than it had been initially; apparently they were not the only ones who had exodus on their minds – towards the entrance. Their route took them close by the stage. Thankfully the band was between sets, taking sips from drinks and stoically ignoring the crowd's vocal displeasure. In passing, Roman saw that one side of the bad drummer's face was disfigured by the melted-wax look of burn scars; they pulled up the man's thin mouth at one corner, raising it into a permanent sneer that looked oddly familiar.

It wasn't until the man took off his dark-tinted shades, though, that Roman recognised him.

He stopped dead in his tracks, staring. Pulled back by the hand Roman was still clutching, Deniz stopped too, started to say something inquisitive, then followed Roman's gaze and froze as well. "No way," he breathed.

The man on the stage was running a hand through his lank brown hair and arranging it so it half-covered the burned side of his face. The scars were unfamiliar. The deep lines bracketing his mouth, the sneer and the cynical glint in the bloodshot blue eyes were not.

"Yes way," Roman murmured back.

As if he'd either heard them or felt their eyes on him, the drummer raised his head. For a moment, he just stared at them blankly, then his gaze sharpened in alarm.

"Mike," whispered Roman.

Mike's head whipped back and forth, his eyes hectically scanning for an escape route. Before he could find one, Roman and Deniz had scrambled up the stage, pushing past the confused bassist and ignoring his stammered protest.

Mars himself stepped in their way, frowning. "Hey, you can't come up here," he drawled. "If you want autographs, you'll have to wait until-"

"Honey, I need an autograph from you about as badly as I need pre-used toilet paper," Roman told him. Deniz didn't bother with polite refusal; he simply shouldered Mars out of the way. Roman made a note to remind him to wash the grease stain out of his shirt later.

Mars' brief distraction had given Mike enough time to jump off the other side of the stage, but he was no match for Deniz's long legs and Roman's agility in ducking around people. Mere seconds later, they had him cornered against the dark side of the bar.

Trapped, Mike gave up trying to escape and went for the next best option, reaching across the counter for a half-empty vodka bottle. He gave them a lopsided grin. "Uh. Hey, guys. Long time no see."

Phrasing the initial questions took some effort. Deniz only got as far as "Mike, dude, oh my god! I don't even…you… what the fuck?"

Roman fared marginally better. "Why the hell aren't you dead?"

Mike's grin widened, though he looked extremely shifty. "I, erm, escaped."

"You escaped?" Roman demanded. "But there was an explosion! Lena saw it! Orange construction trailer go boom!"

Mike made a dismissive hand gesture. "There was a man-hole and tunnel right underneath. Getting out was a piece of cake, or would've been if that fucking Greta hadn't pushed me back to get in first." He touched the burned side of his face, testament to what the delay had cost him.

"But… but… why didn't you come back? Why didn't you let us know?" Deniz stammered.

Mike took a deep swig from the bottle. "I meant to, only… well, first I was in hospital for the burns. And Greta was after me, so I had to lay low for a while. Didn't want her following me back home or lead her to Lena and the kid, so…" He shrugged and drank again. "Then I worked at this bar for a while, under a false name. Couple of kids came there to play gigs a few times a week, and that reminded me – back when I was young, before I settled on figure skating… well, to be honest, I'd always kind of fancied being in a band. So I played with those kids for a few months, and then one night I ran into Mars in this strip club while I was… uh… laying a false trail for Greta. We got into talking music and we really hit it off, so… yeah. That was that."

Roman stared at his former trainer, aghast. "Wait, let me get this straight. You faked your own death to become a rock star?"

Mike fidgeted. Took a swig. Nodded. "Sorta."

"But… we had a funeral!" spluttered Deniz. "With sausages and everything!"

"And beer."

Mike made a face. "Ooooh. Classy."

Roman glared. "Appropriate."

"I guess. Look, guys, I'm sorry, okay? I meant to come back, I really did. I just thought… with my face and all… maybe I'd be more impressive if I'd made something of myself. That Lena would want me back if I was successful," he finished, rather lamely. Roman felt some of his outrage draining away. Mike looked entirely pathetic.

Deniz hadn't quite arrived at sympathy yet; he was still struggling through the quagmire of indignant shock. "I don't believe it! Is this some kind of fashion this year? Fake your own death, follow idiotic childhood dream? You're worse than Jenny!"

Mike looked up at that, suddenly sombre. "I heard about Jenny. I'm sorry, Roman – I know you were friends with her."

Roman waved the awkward condolences away. "Oh, don't be silly. Jenny isn't dead."

"What?"

"That's what I'm saying!" growled Deniz. "Off they go, exploding or crashing their planes and skipping off to greener pastures – or snowier pastures, I guess, in Jenny's case – without so much as a by-your-leave. What the hell?"

"Jenny died-but-not-really," Roman explained when Mike only stared at them as if they were the ones who'd gone completely insane. "Crashed her plane, laid false trails, the whole shebang. She emailed me, though. She's managing the Russian elite skating team in Moscow now."

"Oh," said Mike, looking slightly dazed. "Huh. Good for her, I guess." He paused awkwardly, twirling his fingers around the mouth of his bottle. "And… how's Lena?"

Roman exchanged a glance with Deniz. "Good," he said cautiously. "Happy."

"Single," Deniz added, in a rather rude tone.

"And if you seriously think she'd be happier about you being a rock star than about you being alive," sniped Roman, "then you need a reality check more badly than your band needs a sense of rhythm."

Mike looked chagrined. "Was it really that bad?"

"No, no, not at all! It was, erm, really…"

"Yeah, it was very, uhm…"

"Bloody awful," Mike said glumly.

"…yeah."

"So bad."

Mike sighed, fiddling with his shades. "Is my job at the Centre still vacant?"

"No, that's my job now," Roman said, a tad too quickly. "I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, to be honest, because whenever I show up for practice, they stare at me all weird and they always seem surprised when I say anything about, you know, skating. And the first time I showed up at a competition and brought extra water bottles and made Katja eat breakfast, Jenny got the giggles and couldn't stop and we couldn't figure out what was wrong, she just kept saying 'You showed UP!' and wouldn't stop laughing and eventually we had to call in Oliver because she got the hiccoughs but she ended up being better."

"That was before she died-but-not-really," Deniz supplied helpfully.

"Aha," agreed Mike, visibly straining for comprehension like a street urchin grasping for bread. Roman found himself wishing he could just hand it to him; he looked that lost.

"Yeah. Anyway, you can't have your job back because it's mine."

"Damn," sighed Mike.

"Oh, but!" Deniz bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. "The boxing club needs a manager!"

Mike looked thoughtful. His eyes slid back and forth between them and the stage, where Mars was currently adjusting the height of the microphone, using his hair to grease the recalcitrant clamp. Then he straightened his shoulders, put his shades back on, and gave them the Mike Hartwig version of a rakish grin, meaning a slightly more humorous sneer settled on top of his usual one.

"Alright, then. Let's go. And first thing we do when we get back is I write you a workout schedule, Romännchen. You're awfully chubby."

"I've changed my mind. Fuck off and die, Hartwig."

"Awww. I've missed you too."