For solcita: "Chris/Justin, alternate universe, chance meeting, any sort of ending you like."

Justin's fingers were going kind of numb, because the cold snap had come in from nowhere and threatened to dump a few feet of snow on them by midnight, but he hadn't made his rent for the month yet and there were only three days left, so he had to at least try. One of the other buskers had taught him the trick of wearing a pair of knit gloves with just the first knuckles cut off, so that he could feel the strings of the guitar, and slipping those portable chemical heat packs into the palms so that his fingers stayed as warm as they could. It didn't much help, but it kept him from frostbite and that was good enough for him.

He went through another chorus and wished, hoped, prayed that there'd be a message waiting for him when he got home. He thought he'd done well enough at the audition, and they'd called him back, at least. They'd given him some sign that maybe they'd want him. Then again, it was the fifth audition this month that had called him back and then told him thanks but no thanks, so he couldn't get too worked up about it or else he'd go nuts. His roommate Brit told him that was just how the business worked in Manhattan. "They'll always call three people for the callbacks, even if they know who they want already. Really, it's a good thing that you're on the call-back list this soon, even if you're not the one that they want. It means that they remembered you." He can't bring himself to really believe that, not when that little bit of hope might mean the difference between eating ramen for the month and actually getting a real meal that didn't come out of a plastic package, but Brit was hopeful on his behalf and that was maybe good enough.

"Hey," came the voice from his elbow, and he looked up to see an older guy in a old and faded pair of jeans and a leather bomber jacket that didn't look like it was nearly as warm as it should be. Justin would peg him at about ten years older than Justin himself, but something about him looked like he'd be perpetually young. He had dark hair and kind eyes, and he hopped back and forth from one foot to another as though to keep warm. Justin found himself smiling in return before he was even thinking about it.

"Hey," he said, and slipped through a quick chord progression.

"I see you here all the time. You're pretty good. You also look like you're pretty cold. You wanna go and get a cup of coffee or something? My treat."

Justin might have been a small-town boy from Memphis, but he knew better than to go off with a stranger in Manhattan, no matter how nice he looked. "Nah. I gotta stay here, make the rent. My roommate'll kill me if she's got to cover my share of things again this month."

"Okay," the guy said. "Hey, you know any Leonard Cohen?"

"I can probably fake it," Justin said, and shifted his fingers on the strings. "Tower of Song" wasn't designed for guitar, but he'd been working his way through transposing it, idly, and figured that it was about ready to bring out on the street. The guy pulled a bill out of his wallet while Justin was going through the second "I ache in the places that I used to play", folded it around something white which he scribbled on, and tossed it in the guitar case, before slipping away to fade into the crowd. Justin was a little irritated, because he had thought the guy was cute and, you know, he was cold and coffee was starting to sound kinda good, they could always go somewhere really public, right?

And then he looked down into the guitar case, and his heart nearly stopped, because that was a hundred dollar bill sitting there, and the business card proclaimed his mysterious benefactor to be Chris Kirkpatrick, talent scout for BMG Records, and the back of the card said "Call me once you pay your rent."

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