Brock

Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as cold and lonely as the north pole – Vicki Baum

"You're just going to lay there all day?" Brock asked as he tugged on one of his sneakers. On the other side of the doorway connecting the two hotel rooms, Jay was lying face-up on the bed in a pair of grey sweat pants. His chest was bare and he had an arm thrown over his eyes, concealing them from the overhead light above.

"Everything hurts," Jay groaned. "I might just lay here for the rest of my life."

"Need me to get you anything? Muscle relaxants? Advil?"

"Just a coffin. You know, in case I die while you're gone."

Brock laughed, grinning as Jay grimaced. "That's a little overdramatic even for an actor, don't you think?"

Jay lifted his arm up enough to glare at where Brock was shoving his foot into his second shoe. "You'd be saying worse if you felt as sore as I do. Ginger wasn't lying when she said I'd be stiff today. I think a board of wood would be more relaxed and flexible than I am right now."

"How'd the first lesson go by the way? Aside from the horrible after-effects of today, of course." Brock leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest as he stared at his friend. Jay had hardly moved since waking up that morning. He'd been persuaded to take a hot shower but it seemed to have done very little to help ease the strain on his muscles.

"Horses are no joke, dude. I know Gypsy was gentle but man it seemed like a far fall to the ground."

Brock had to bite his lip to hold his smile in. All he could say was, "Rather you than me."

"Ginger's a good teacher though."

"Oh yeah?"

Jay hummed under his breath and a quieter look crossed his face. Softened his expression and the lines of discomfort vanished a bit. Replaced by intrigue. "Yeah. She's interesting, too."

"How so?"

For a moment, Jay was silent to the point where Brock wasn't sure that he would answer. Then, he slowly sat up. Wincing, he brushed his fingers through his messy dark hair. "She reminds me of Claire."

"Huh. Do they look similar?"

"No. It's in the... demeanour."

Shadows darkened Jay's normally bright green eyes. Brock almost felt bad for asking about the girl that had broken Jay's heart a few years ago but it also seemed like his friend needed to get this off his chest.  He'd never had the chance to meet Claire personally but though Jay had been scarred enough by her that he'd fled from New York to L.A., the man had never said anything remotely horrible about her.  In fact, Brock had only ever heard kind things pass through Jay's lips whenever Claire came up in conversation.

Even though he was supposed to be meeting Bailey soon, Brock took a couple of steps into the room and collapsed into the desk chair.  "Good reminder or bad?"

"Good, I think. One of the best parts about Claire was that she was upfront with me. Never cared about sparing my feelings because I was famous and whatnot. Ginger's the same. She's already told me off more than a few times. I'm pretty sure that she also thinks I'm an egotistical self-absorbed dick – but that's beside the point."

"Why would she think that? What did you do?"

Jay sighed. "I asked her a couple of personal questions and she freaked out. Accused me of fishing for stories to mock normal with during talk show interviews."

"You wouldn't do that."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Did Claire ever accuse you of that?"

"Claire treated me like I was normal. My fame never seemed to phase her much.  The only time she even really acknowledged it was when she was keeping me from getting mobbed by fans."

Brock's brow furrowed as he contemplated this. Then, he murmured, "I'm not really seeing much of a resemblance between the two, then."

Mild amusement flitted across Jay's face. There and gone again in quick succession. Hardly noticeable unless you knew where to look which, after living together for so long, Brock did.

"Claire often acted like my fame didn't exist. Ginger acts like she knows it's there and doesn't give a shit about it unless it's going to affect her life. I'm pretty sure the only reason she let me escape that diner unscathed the other day is that it would have been a lot more inconvenient for her to deal with all those people trying to hound me for selfies and autographs than just shoving me out the back door as she did."

"Well," Brock said, "she seems nice from what I know about her. I haven't had much of a chance to chat with her so all I know is that she's dating Bailey's brother."

Travis.

Rugged and handsome with those dark features and intense eyes. The entire afternoon that Brock had spent walking around the town with the cowboy had been a personal test to see how well he was able to keep himself from falling into the intensity of that gaze. There was something a little guarded in Travis' expression, understandable given how they were virtually strangers, but the cowboy seemed to have a way of looking into people.

Or, at the very least, that was how Brock felt every time that Travis looked his way despite the fact that the man did little more than quickly glance at him and then away again. Still, Brock's palms had begun to sweat and his mouth had dried with each and every look no matter how stupid and fruitless it was.

Travis wasn't even gay.

He was dating Ginger and that meant that Brock had absolutely no license to even look at the guy, no matter how tall, dark, and handsome Travis was.

"Yeah," Jay said a little absently and Brock's attention snapped back to his friend. "She is nice. Though I think she may be trying to kill me with this horseback riding stuff. I honestly might just collapse onto this bed and stay here all day. Maybe I'll call my folks, too. My mom has been hounding me to make arrangements to come to New York for a visit...Or maybe I'll just watch television."  He gazed at the TV longingly and released a long breath.

"Sounds like a good plan. Productive."

"Shut up, Brock." 

Brock laughed and bade Jay goodbye as he ducked out the door and departed for Bailey's house.

*~*

"Sorry about yesterday," Bailey said as she and Brock arrived in the studio. Blowing on the curl of steam that emanated out from the mug of tea in her hands, she sat on the piano bench and turned to face him.

"Don't worry about it. Did the wedding fiasco get resolved?" Brock pulled up a chair nearby and plunked down into it.

"Yeah, thankfully. I hope your afternoon wasn't ruined after spending it with my brother."

"Not at all," Brock refuted smoothly. "In fact, we had a great time. He's a fun guy to be around."

She arched a brow delicately. "Is that so?"

Her reaction had him raising a brow in turn. "You don't believe me?"

There was only fondness on her face as she murmured, "Of my brothers, Travis is the one who is more outgoing and he's always been a bit of the class-clown type.  But he's not overly fond of strangers, even more so when they're of the celebrity variety.  He's a bit protective of me and knows I've gotten burned in the past by people in the industry.  Makes him a bit wary, I think, when people come into town to work with me.  When I heard that the two of you ended up hanging out, I thought he'd probably end up boring you to death with talk about rodeos and horse training."  Bailey rolled her eyes, mouth twitching up in a faint smile.

Brock grinned. "Well, we did talk about that a bit but I thought it was interesting. It's so different from what we do on a day-to-day basis. Though, I guess you know that. Travis mentioned that you used to compete in rodeo."

"That was ages ago but I did my fair share of barrel racing." Bailey sipped from her tea and added, "It was a fun period in my life but I'm more than happy to relinquish that to the professionals like Travis and Noah."

"Noah's just coaching now, right?"

"Yeah, he's retired. Mostly. Travis and another one of Noah's buddies like to talk him into signing up for the odd event but he likes the coaching more, I think. Less wear and tear on the body. Plus, he's really good at it. The kids he trains all respect him and he's great with them."

"Has Caroline ever competed?"

The other woman was missing today, noticeably absent from the small studio.  She was quiet, Brock had come to realize, but when she did speak it was with strong conviction.  He found her impressive, even more so after learning that she'd contributed to some fairly significant tracks in country music over the last year.

Bailey shook her head, the strawberry blonde curls swaying around her face, and set her mug back down on the coffee table in front of them. "Not that I'm aware of. I know Caroline did show jumping, though."

"Is she joining us today?"

"At some point. She had to hop on a call this morning with the label. She's working with a couple of other artists and songwriters so there was some other work that needed her attention."

"Seems like the two of you write a lot together."

"We do. What about you? Much songwriting experience?"

It seemed rather pathetic to admit, "Not really. Frontier controlled our music pretty strongly when I was in Tallahassee and even more so when I went solo. They said that they knew what musical direction suited me best. I had the option of following their lead or getting released so I sang what they gave me."

Bailey wrinkled her nose. "That sounds like a rather confining and stifling career."

"It was," he agreed. As Bailey pulled her songwriting book from her bag, Brock asked, "Where do you get all of your inspiration from? I looked at your album credits before coming out here and you're listed as a songwriter on nearly all of your songs from your solo album."

A self-conscious smile graced her lips as if it was something she was proud of but not enough to boast or brag about. "Life, mostly. The good and the bad and everything else in between. Sometimes, I find inspiration from what's happening in the world or what's happening just at the end of my street. Depends on my mood."

"Well, it's impressive. You have a real gift."

"Thank you, Brock." Bailey flushed just slightly, her cheeks tinting pink. "Now that you have the freedom to do it, what kind of music do you want to write?"

Brock wasn't sure. It wasn't a question he'd ever been asked before in his music career. He was so used to being given tracks to sing that it was the first time he was allowed so much freedom. It was both liberating and daunting.

"The honest kind," Brock said at last. "The kind of music that is fun to sing on stage and makes me proud to be a musician. I've had some good hits in my career but none that I'll be remembered for. I just want to write a song that means something to someone, you know?"

"I do."

Of course, she did, Brock thought. She's already had some of those songs. In one solo album, Bailey had already written music that had meaning.

When Brock truly thought about it, there was only one thing from his life that he could think of that could mean something. One thing.

And it happened to be the one thing he couldn't tell anyone. Writing a gay-centric song would be suicide. A catastrophic career-ender where country music was concerned. Brock wouldn't need Trace Strickland to ruin his image if he wrote a love song about two men. He could do it all by himself in one fell swoop.

Brock already knew what would happen. His name would be slandered across the internet, his label would drop him, and he'd end up teaching children how to play guitar for the rest of his life instead of being on stage where he belonged.

So clearly could Brock see that future. Almost instinctively, he felt himself begin to recoil away from that mental image, banishing it from his mind. The hard thing was that Brock knew what it would mean. What it would have meant to him when he was a kid by seeing a fully out and proud male country singer.

But there was a reason they were virtually non-existent. Not many were willing to gamble their careers for such a thing. There were only a couple Brock could think of but they were all few and far between. Certainly, none of them had ever written and sung a gay country song. The ones he did know of still sang lyrics about hooking up with women. Brock feared that going outside of that mold would be the end of him which meant that for now, at least, he needed to find another source of inspiration.

"Can you teach me?" he asked Bailey. "I want to learn how to write music like you do."

Bailey's answering grin was bright, those freckles across her nose dancing as she wrinkled her nose and turned towards the keys of the piano. Her fingers danced across them, leaving trills of music that echoed through the studio. "Thought you'd never ask. Get your notepad ready, Brock. It's time you got a crash course in how to take your career into your own hands."