Title: Mr Brightside
Author: Rogue
Rating: Um... PG-13/R to be safe
Archive: Of course
Pairing: Bono/Larry

A/N: This is for Challenge #2 at anothergrape, which I didn't think I'd get to enter, but it seems I'm not too late, I hope. I used this picture, and loosely based the fic on "Mr Brightside" by The Killers. It's 999 words, which was as close as I could make it, and as always I'd appreciate questions, comments, criticisms.




The camera has gone, and the room is silent, but they're still stood there together.

"Adam, can you come get me?"

"Don't go…"

His voice is plaintive from the bed, shirt half-ripped from his shoulders, body a tight jangle of nerves and frayed lust - they stopped again. They always stop.

"Adam, please."

His voice is strained, and he's calling out to be rescued. Checking his watch, Bono knows that Adam is far too drunk to drive now, too drunk to brave the Berlin weather.

He feels that curl of jealousy in his stomach and rolls onto his side - he can't look now, at the kiss bruised mouth and the smudged lipstick across Larry's lips, because he'll still want him. And he can't have him, because someone has self-control.

"Don't go."

He says it again, as though repeating it will make it truer, or will make Larry listen, but nothing makes Larry listen. They've spent the past months here, in this infernal rain, not listening and not loving and running away when it hurts.

"Don't go."

This time even Larry can't ignore the rawness and pain in his tone - this isn't frustrated lust demanding satisfaction, but is the lost and aching feeling of having lost something really important.

"How did this happen?"

As everything else had deteriorated, so had their relationship and Larry had gone… straight into the arms of Adam, into his bed and his head and that world that they inhabit as rhythm.

"Larry."

He takes out a cigar, and fights with his Zippo - fingers clumsy and uncertain, trying not to let his hand shake.

But it's too late, he's called a cab and he stops at the door on his way out.

"I never…"

But he doesn't finish. He's gone.



They're tired, and it's gone on too long with the dresses and the make up and the singing and the songs.

Bono's had enough, and that makes everybody testy.

"Bono. Will. You. Sit. Still!"

Anton is snappish, unusual- but he's worried he won't have the footage he needs, or that it won't look just right and that it might compromise everything. Even he feels the looming shadow of the Joshua Tree.

"Makeup!"

In come the makeup artists, and Larry moves away to be by Adam, and Bono can't tear his eyes away, and there are things clicking into place left, right and centre, and Bono doesn't much want to complete this jigsaw puzzle.

After touch ups, Anton wants Bono and Edge together, and this time it's Larry who looks less than well at how they sit together, how they lean against each other. When Bono grins, he feels it personally, and when he starts cracking jokes it's too much. Too much for him, and he has to turn away, and he's the only one who can't see that the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.



It's when he sees Larry's hand resting over his heart that Adam's heart sinks. They're alone, just the two of them in the kind of intense conversation they have together.

And so he watches, from the doorway, at the most heartbreaking goodbye he's ever seen. And he wonders how he missed it, and what he missed, and why there was something to miss in the first place.

Except there's something about them that belongs there, together, and he can't help it, he can't stop how it feels.

He just hopes that it's an innocent goodbye.



On Tuesday it's still all new, and a little bit exciting, and the make up and the frills are all adding a creative license to behave in a certain way. It's funny when Edge and Adam try to both run in high heels, and almost as funny when Bono puts his hand up Larry's skirt.

Everyone's laughing, and they don't see the possessive angle of the singer's hand, the way he squeezes Larry's thigh and the shiver that runs through the drummer.

And noone notices when Bono whispers something into Larry's ear that makes him look uncertainly at Adam to make sure he didn't see, and makes him squirm back a little into Bono's grasp and lets himself be held against the stocky body as the only man dressed like a man in the entire room.

"Larry looks like an extra from a skin flick."

It's funny for everybody except Adam, who looks at Larry and then at Bono, and then looks away again.

And he wonders.



He looks at him in the dress and laughs - laughs at the wig, and at his narrow body encased in Lycra and tulle and then stops laughing because there's something in that.

Something about Larry like that changes the dynamic because he's always been pretty, only now there's something sordid about him, and something a bit risky, and since he heard about Larry and Adam he's been having these thoughts.

Which is how they find themselves in the changing room, mouths devouring each other - Bono's hands everywhere like a teenager at a school dance, twisting a nipple, feeling his arse, resting between his legs. And it's the first time they've felt warm in a long time, and the first time they've felt close, and the first time sex has entered the equation.

And it's become the be all and end all as they buck against each other for something, and they're swimming on it, and every time Larry opens a sticky mouth, Bono's is there to catch his cries until they're a quivering, messy heap together.

There's something about the shooting on the first day, when they're all together - they've got that sparkle that Anton loves about them.

"You're wearing a secret smile, Bono."

And noone can resist the grin that shines from the boyish singer. Refreshed - maybe it was a good night's sleep last night, or the better food, or maybe they've hit on something.

And noone thinks to look at the drummer, and think that it's maybe him.

Not on Monday, at least.