Track Sixteen: “You’re Still The One”

 

The stage was dark for perhaps three seconds.

Then a single spotlight found Nael at centre-stage with an electric guitar slung across him, and he leaned into the mic and drawled the opening line of Love Shack in a voice that was not entirely his own, and the stadium erupted before he had finished the phrase.

The other four members of Warp Five Forward danced back onto the stage in a loose cluster, all of them grinning, all of them in the specific pop-band mode of five friends who had picked a cover for the tour because they loved it.

The full band track kicked in behind Nael, brass and all, and the disco ball above the stage started to spin, and ninety thousand people were, within a bar and a half, dancing.

In the box, Beatrice screamed at a pitch nobody would have believed her capable of an hour ago. “IT IS LOVE SHACK, ALFIE.”

“I hear you, Bea.”

“THEY ARE PLAYING LOVE SHACK. AT THIS CONCERT. THIS ONE. THE ONE WE ARE AT. NOW.”

“I am aware, Bea.”

“ALFIE.”

“Bea.”

“LOVE SHACK.”

At which point, Karyn, who had said very little all evening and had swayed politely through Rock Me and Waffle House, turned to James, held out one hand, and said, entirely calmly, “James. On your feet.”

“I am on my feet.”

“James. Dance with me.”

“In front of everyone?”

“In front of ninety thousand people, James, none of whom are looking at us.”

“Fair.”

James took his wife’s hand and let her spin him under her arm, at which point Alfie discovered a fact about his mother he had never previously suspected, which was that his mother could, if she chose to, dance. Karyn was doing what appeared to be a small precise version of a very old Earth swing dance in the middle of the box, and James was, without appearing to have practised this ever, keeping up.

“Your mother,” Jordan said, at Alfie’s ear, delighted.

“I did not know she could do that.”

“Your mother has depths, Alfie.”

“I am learning that in real time.”

Behind Karyn and James, Beatrice grabbed Jib by both hands.

“On your feet, Jib.”

“I am on my feet.”

“You know what I mean.”

She spun him. Jib, who had been dancing to himself contentedly since the third bar of Rock Me and was, on the balance of evidence, one of the great natural movers of the cohort, submitted with the immediate delight of a young man who had been waiting for exactly this. Athena, one seat over, grabbed Will by both hands and, without asking, pulled him into a two-step. Will, who had spent his life on planets before coming aboard a starship and had, on the balance of the evidence, never before been forced to dance to an old Earth pop cover in front of his own family, submitted with the specific dignity of a young man who was, quietly, having quite a nice time about it.

Jameel grabbed Brook. Lillia grabbed Jameel away from Brook, and Jameel, without missing a beat, grabbed Parker instead, and Parker, laughing openly for the first time all evening, let himself be spun by Jameel around the back of the box.

Scott, at the back of the cadet line, watched Parker being spun and smiled the specific smile of a man who had realised, over the last four days, that the person he had been quietly falling for was, in the right mood, joyful.

At the far end of the box, Henri and Maya were, quietly and without anybody looking, having their own private slow dance to a song that was not, by any reasonable interpretation, a slow song.

Down on the stage, Nael was doing the tin roof line with his tongue in his cheek. Theo was doing backing vocals with an air of pure delight. Lian, who had spent the whole of Kiss being a sex symbol, was now, with the same face, doing a small comic old-Earth-lounge-crooner impression at the back of the stage. Harren and Luris were dancing shoulder to shoulder, which was, for the two of them, business as usual.

Max and Tobias, at the back of the box, were also dancing, in the small easy way of two people who had been married for enough years to have found each other’s rhythm.

The song hit its final bang bang bang on the door, baby, and the whole stadium, ninety thousand strong plus one small side-of-stage private box, sang it back with them.

Beatrice, at the front rail, threw both her hands in the air.

“THIS,” she informed the box, “IS THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE.”

“Bea,” Alfie called over the noise, “the concert is not over.”

“IT DOES NOT MATTER, ALFIE. IT COULD END NOW. THIS. THIS.”

Karyn, still dancing with James, laughed at her over her shoulder.

The band came out of Love Shack into a long, breathless applause.

Theo and Lian, side by side at the front of the stage, let the crowd carry it for a full thirty seconds before Lian raised a hand.

“Alright,” he said into his mic when the stadium had come down enough to hear him. “Alright. That was a lot. Well done, everyone.”

The crowd cheered.

“Right. Now,” he continued, entirely level, “as many of you know, we do not stay this loud for the whole show. We are going to slow it down for a bit. Because. Well. Some of the songs we love the most are the quiet ones.”

The crowd, in the specific way stadium crowds do, gave the collective sound of assent.

“I would like everyone to stay standing,” Lian added. “Nobody sit. But breathe. And, most importantly, remember the little something you were given at the gates as you came in tonight.”

Theo stepped up beside him, grinning. “You will have found a small photon candle in your concert packs. Right about now would be the moment to switch it on.”

Around the stadium, ninety thousand small handheld photon candles were quietly produced from pockets and bags and lifted into the warm dark, each one a soft point of gold light held at chest height.

In the box, everyone found theirs. Alfie switched his on and passed it into Jordan’s hand for a moment before Jordan found his own. Beatrice held hers up and made a small awed noise. Max and Tobias lit theirs together. Scott lit his and, without looking at anyone, quietly touched Parker’s elbow to remind him. Parker pressed his on, and something in his face relaxed.

Alfie caught his mother’s eye. She was holding hers up with a specific small smile. The first Warp Five Forward concert she had ever been to, and she was, quietly, ready for the next song.

A single amber spotlight came up centre-stage.

Harren stepped forward, and immediately clutched his chest with an expression of catastrophic longing. Luris walked out from the other side of the stage, saw him, and stopped dead as though the sight of Harren had physically struck him. The stadium was already laughing.

The opening chord of Hopelessly Devoted to You played.

Harren sang the first line to Luris in the voice of a man in immense romantic distress, one hand still pressed to his chest, the other extended toward Luris in a gesture of pure telenovela suffering. Luris sang the second line back to Harren while backing away as though the intensity of Harren’s feelings were more than he could bear. Behind them, Theo, Nael and Payn Lian arrived on stage as a coordinated backup vocal line, all three of them with hands clasped at their own chests in mock sympathy, harmonising softly under the melody, occasionally exchanging looks of exaggerated concern about the state of the two lead singers.

The crowd was already gone.

Harren fell to one knee for the second verse. Luris turned his back for two lines and then whipped around at the third, mouth open in horror at his own weakness for Harren. Theo, in the back line, mimed dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. Nael and Lian did a small, coordinated head tilt of shared distress on the same beat.

It was, in the strictest possible interpretation, a joke. Two professional pop singers doing an over-the-top duet as a comic showpiece for their fans, with three of their bandmates hamming it up behind them.

In every other interpretation, it was something else.

Karyn, next to Alfie, watched the whole song without moving. Then, halfway through the second verse, she leaned across and said quietly, “Those two boys are extremely close, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“How long has that been going on?”

“I do not know exact dates. A while.”

“Do their families know?”

“I do not think so, no.”

Karyn nodded once, and did not press further. “Right. I will not be the one to tell.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Also,” she added, with the smallest amused smile, “their song choice does them absolutely no favours.”

“No, Mom, it does not.”

Karyn paused, then leaned across a little further and, entirely conversationally, added, “It does remind me of another young couple I know who tried very hard to keep their relationship quiet from their families and failed absolutely miserably at it.”

Tobias, on the far side of Karyn, leaned in immediately, held his hand up in the air, and said, “Preach it, sister.”

Karyn high-fived him without breaking eye contact with Alfie.

Alfie put his face in his hands. Jordan, next to him, laughed openly at both of them.

“Our parents,” Alfie said, muffled into his palms, “are trying to be cool.”

“Our parents,” Jordan agreed, “are trying to be cool.”

“They are cool,” Karyn told them, entirely calmly.

“They are cool,” Tobias confirmed.

“Mom.”

“Yes, love.”

“Please stop.”

“No. Never!” Karyn replied as she leaned in to James and swayed some more to the romantic song.

Down on the stage, Harren and Luris hit the last chorus at full theatrical volume, staggering into each other’s arms in a display of comic exhaustion. Theo, Nael and Lian collapsed into a coordinated backup-vocal swoon behind them. The song ended with all five of them in a heap at centre stage, laughing openly.

The stadium roared.

The stage went dark, and when the lights came up again, they came up soft and gold, and five stools were waiting at the front of the stage.

Nael walked out with his guitar, sat on the middle stool, and settled it against his knee. Theo, Lian, Harren and Luris took the other four stools around him.

Ninety thousand photon candles were still lit around the stadium, and now, in the soft new stage light, they read as a great slow field of small warm points stretching all the way back from the front row to the highest rear tier.

Nael began the opening of Perfect.

The stage was quiet. The song was slow. The five of them on their stools, Nael leading on guitar, the others coming in on soft harmonies underneath. The whole stadium settled. Nobody was dancing. Nobody was screaming. Ninety thousand people were, simply, listening.

In the box, everyone settled with them.

Scott and Parker were at the back of the cadet line. Nobody was looking at them. Scott, in the warm half-dark, with ninety thousand small lights held around them, quietly and without ceremony slid his hand across the small space between him and Parker and took Parker’s hand into his own. Parker did not turn his head. He just, after a beat, closed his fingers around Scott’s tightly. They stood with everyone else.

Alfie leaned his head briefly against Jordan’s. Karyn leaned briefly against James, and James, at the same moment, leaned in against her; not the way a Rear Admiral might, but the way a husband does at the end of a very long day, quietly, resting the weight of himself against the person he trusted most in any room he had ever walked into.

James turned his head into her ear. “Do we tell them,” he whispered, “that this is the song we had played at our wedding for our first dance?”

Karyn kissed him back, quickly, and shook her head. “No. Some things are just for us, Mister McCallister-Reyas.”
James smiled and put his arms around her and nodded into her hair. “Understood, Mrs McCallister-Reyas.”

Max and Tobias, at the back of the box, had their arms around each other, their photon candles lifted, and were looking at Theo, who was singing his part of the harmony with his eyes half-closed.

Beatrice, at the front, was still. Not screaming and not dancing, just listening. At some point during the second verse, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw Scott’s hand in Parker’s. Her face did a small precise thing. A yes-I-noticed-and-I-am-not-going-to-say-a-word-about-it-yet-but-boys-I-love-this thing.

Then she turned back to the stage.

The stage rearranged itself while the applause for Perfect was still fading.

Lian stayed on his stool for a moment longer than the others, watching them go. Then he stood, walked slowly to centre stage, adjusted his in-ear piece, and looked out at ninety thousand people with the small smile of a man about to change the room again. Behind him, Nael was still on his stool, but the acoustic guitar had gone. In its place was a bright, clean electric that Alfie had not noticed him swap for.

Lian raised his mic. “Alright, folks. Photon candles down for a bit.”

Around the stadium, ninety thousand small warm points of light dimmed together in one great slow tide.

“And cowboy hats on!”

The crowd laughed and lifted itself into a warmer, brighter energy. Somewhere in the standing crowd, actual replicated cowboy hats began to appear on heads that had, until this moment, been entirely bareheaded.

“We are going country western for a minute.”

A soft mechanical rumble began beneath the stage. Front-centre, the panelling parted, and a hydraulic lift began to rise. Sitting at a full black grand piano, hands already resting on the keys, was Theo. The lift settled into place with the specific gentle thud of showbiz engineering doing its job.

Theo looked up at Lian.

Lian nodded.

Theo hit the first chord of Need You Now, and ninety thousand people recognised the song at once.

Nael came in on the electric guitar behind him.

Lian took the opening verse alone, standing beside the piano with one hand resting on the top of it, singing the words with the specific care of a man who had spent a lot of time working out how to deliver a country song properly. Theo’s piano moved gently underneath him. Nael’s guitar shone bright and clean over the top.

Then Theo joined in at the bridge, and Lian sat down next to him on the piano bench, back leaned against Theo’s shoulder. The two of them did the duet from there, Theo playing and singing, Lian resting against him with his mic held loosely in one hand, their voices weaving in the specific way two singers do when they have sung a song together three hundred times.

Harren and Luris came out of the wings quietly and joined them at the piano, one at each of Theo’s shoulders. Nael crossed over from his stool, still playing, and stood at Theo’s other side.

All five of them sang the chorus together, standing around the piano. Ninety thousand people sang it back at them.

Then Theo took over from “Another shot of whiskey...”. He took the second verse alone, still at the piano, playing the whole way through, his voice sitting inside the melody with the specific relaxed warmth of a man who had grown up singing his brothers to sleep with country songs from an Earth catalogue three centuries old.

Jordan leaned into Alfie. “Your brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Doing his thing again.”

“Doing his thing again.”

Beatrice, at the front of the box, took a moment. She had been full-throttle all night. This one she was going to let breathe. She stood with her hands on the rail and her mouth moving with the lyric, and she watched Theo at the piano.

Then, for a specific ten seconds around the bridge, she glanced back at Scott and Parker at the back of the box.

They were still holding hands.

Beatrice made a small satisfied noise nobody in the box was close enough to hear, and turned back to the stage. Her big-sister energy was doing double work tonight: superfan at the front, guardian at the back.

Then the song came around to the last chorus, and Theo and Lian, at the piano together, leaned into their mics and belted it out — “Oh baby I just need you now” — the full weight of both voices at full power, Nael’s guitar carrying over the top of them, Harren and Luris coming in underneath on the harmony line. Ninety thousand people belted it back at them.

Theo held the last note at the piano, and let it fade.

The song ended.

The applause was enormous.

The applause carried for a long moment. Theo, still at the piano, let it. Lian was still leaning against his shoulder on the bench. Nobody moved.

Then Theo lifted his mic and shifted forward slightly on the bench, and Lian, without needing to be told, slid off it and stepped a small distance back. The other three followed him. Theo, at the piano, was alone in the light.

He looked out at ninety thousand people. He smiled.

“Alright,” he said into the mic. “Alright. I need to say something before we go on.”

The stadium settled.

“I sang my first song in public at a wedding. My godfather’s wedding, actually. Uncle Tobie, right there in the box up on my left.” He looked up at the box and pointed, and the stadium’s cameras followed, and up on the great screens above the stage, Tobias’s face appeared for one warm second, standing at the back of the box in his ridiculous jacket with the ridiculous t-shirt underneath. The crowd cheered. Tobias, on the screen, waved at himself.

Theo grinned. “And Uncle Tobie married the man of his dreams that day. Who, and I am flagging this now, because it is honestly a bit of a flex, also happens to be one of Starfleet’s most senior captains, currently commanding the U-S-S Whirlwind. Uncle Tobie is married to a starship captain and is his first officer. Talk about a Starfleet power couple! That is the level of overachievement we are working with in this family. Uncle Max, we all see you. Uncle Tobie, we salute you.”

Max, on the screen, put a hand over his face. The crowd howled.

“Family,” Theo said softly, “is the thing I care about most in the world. Everything I have got, this stage, this band, this life, all of it comes back to the people who raised me and the people who love me. My mom and dad, up in the box, who are another Starfleet power couple, have both come a very long way to be here tonight, the Delta Quadrant in fact! And who deserve to be told out loud that everything I have I owe to them. I love you both so much!”

The cameras found Karyn. She had one hand pressed to her mouth. When she saw herself on the screen, she blew a small, quiet kiss up toward Theo on the stage. Beside her, James’s eyes had gone bright. Both of them, on the great screens above ninety thousand people, were looking down at their son with a specific kind of pride and a specific kind of very-quietly-not-crying.

Theo saw them on the screen. He looked away quickly, at the piano keys, for a second, and then back up. “My brothers, up there too. Alfie and Henri. Two of the best men I know. Two of the best men anyone knows.”

“But when you grow up as one of three brothers, you spend a lot of time thinking about what a brother is. And then, a few years ago, I met four more of them.” He glanced sideways at Nael, Lian, Harren and Luris around the piano. “My other brothers who I got with to make something together.”

Nael put a hand briefly on Theo’s shoulder. The crowd roared.

“And, most of all tonight,” Theo went on, “my brother Alfie, and his future husband, Jord.” He paused. “Yeah. Alfie. Not me. I know some of you, a few weeks ago, thought Jord was going to marry me because certain sections of the press mixed up my brother and me, and I woke up to about six hundred congratulatory messages. Let me clarify. Jord is marrying Alfie. Not me. That said, I do love Jord, but I have also walked in on Jord doing things I will not describe, in places I will not describe, at times of the day I will not describe, and I have, let us just say, professional opinions about what Alfie has taken on.”

The stadium howled. Up in the box, Jordan buried his face in Alfie’s shoulder. Alfie was laughing so hard he could not stand up straight.

“But Jord. Genuinely.” Theo’s voice softened. “My future brother-in-law, up in that box tonight, engaged to my brother this year, getting married soon, and I cannot wait, cannot wait, to stop calling you my future brother-in-law and start calling you what you actually are, which is my brother.” His face went very serious. “But hear me, in front of ninety thousand witnesses. If you break my brother’s heart, Jord, I will personally come and find you. And I will bring all ninety thousand of these people with me. You understand?”

The stadium screamed with laughter. Jordan lifted his face from Alfie’s shoulder just enough to shout back, at nobody in particular, “I understand!”

Theo grinned. “Good.”

The crowd howled again.

“So.” Theo smiled at the piano. “This song. I sang this song at Uncle Tobie and Uncle Max’s wedding, all those years ago, as my dedication to the two of them. And tonight, I would like to sing it for them again, because they are still those two people, and I still love them the same, and, this time, for every other loved-up couple I am lucky enough to know. This is You’re Still The One.”

Nael brought his acoustic guitar back to Theo’s side and settled it against his knee. Lian, Harren and Luris moved into position around the piano. Theo hit the first soft chord.

The stadium began to sway quietly.

In the box, nobody moved for a second.

Then Karyn wiped her eye without pretending not to. James put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in. Max, from the back, whispered something to Tobias that made Tobias laugh once, wetly, and put his head briefly on Max’s shoulder. Beatrice, at the front rail, turned around to look at the whole box, saw all of it at once, and her big-sister face did the smallest, most contented thing it had done all night.

Alfie leaned in against Jordan’s temple.

“My brother-in-law-to-be,” Jordan said, very quietly.

“Soon to be just your brother,” Alfie corrected, just as quietly.

Theo sang the opening line, and the stadium sang softly along with him.