Warm, small, cramped. The sense of touch and space awakens first, swimming up through a haze of dream. It takes him a long moment before he stirs enough to remember that he is in his bunk, on the bus, traveling from ... somewhere to somewhere else. It's not really important, anyway.

Chris is asleep, because he can hear Chris snoring from the other bunk, which means that it's past the witching hour and firmly marching towards the time of day when people start to rise. For a minute, he thinks that he's the only one awake on the bus, except for the driver of course, but then he summits another layer of consciousness and realizes that what woke him was the soft sound of guitar from the lounge.

Justin, he thinks, working on something for the next album, because it's off-kilter and limping the way it would be if Justin were searching for the right note to put next the same way that someone else might search for precisely the right words. There's a chord, then a silence, then four notes leading into a chord again.

He can almost see it, Justin with his head bent down over the guitar, watching his fingers the way that he always does if he doesn't yet have the progression written bone-deep. The light in the lounge would be off, the only illumination coming from streetlights and the track-lighting running along the edges of the aisle. Justin would have his shirt off, and his fingers would curl around the neck of the guitar, and there would be a moment when the light shone off his necklace and reflected up into his eyes, turning them dark and deep.

He presses his face into the pillow and breathes in the scent of his own shampoo, unwilling to open his eyes.

Except it's not Justin working on something for the next album. It takes a minute, while Justin fits his fingers into the right configuration. There's a stretch, and a twang of string plucked wrongly, and a few moments where he thinks that Justin might just give up entirely. And then all of a sudden the notes fall into place, guitar skidding across the piano and vocals of the original, and he's listening to a song that Justin shouldn't have any right to sing.

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places that I used to play,

-- comes Justin's voice, all warm honey spread softly over the bread of lyrics full of old pain. He never gets to hear Justin's voice in that range. It's pitched it up a fifth from the original, because none of them could hope to hit those notes except for Lance on a good day, but it's still Justin's rich and smoky baritone, sliding over the notes like a lover's hands sliding over the body of his beloved. It takes a moment before he even realizes.

And I'm crazy for love, but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song

It's Justin singing, the way Justin never sings.

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

Justin shouldn't be able to do that, summon up that aching throb, not when it isn't deliberate for the cameras and the microphone. Justin shouldn't be able to sing those words and mean them. Justin shouldn't know what that song is about, shouldn't know what it's like to have that aching clawing pain deep within his chest and struggling to get out.

For a moment he thinks that he should make some noise, send some sign that he was awake and listening. It seems so private. More intimate than running his hands over Justin's naked head. More direct than digging his thumbs into Justin's tensed shoulders. More real than holding Justin while Justin struggles between getting it all out and bottling it all back behind the smile-pretty and show-your-teeth.

Justin pauses for a second, almost as though he's going to let his fingers fall away from the strings, as though he's going to switch to something that sounds less like his heart is pouring through the voice of the guitar and spilling on the carpeted floor of the bus.

Or maybe he's just trying to work his way through the vagaries of transposition. The guitar falters for a moment. It doesn't matter. Justin is singing.

I was born like this. I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song

Justin is singing, and for that moment there's no question of whether or not Justin should be allowed to sing that song, because no one could hear that voice on those words and not believe. They've all taken turns mocking Lynn for her belief in destiny, in Justin's destiny, when they think that she can't hear, but in the dark and warm and quiet it couldn't possibly be any other way. It's Justin's voice alone, missing the background chorus of the original, and it doesn't matter, because there's enough pain there to carry it whole.

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll

-- and there it is, written across the notes the way it could never be written across Justin's face, all of the anger and betrayal and confusion that he's been holding in ever since he came back into Joey's hotel room holding his phone in bloodless fingers. The look had only lasted for a minute, but it had lingered in his eyes since; the bare and naked wounded animal tied tightly behind the media darling, never daring to let anyone know just how badly she'd cut him to the core --

I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all
I'm standing by the window where the light is strong

-- twisted, torn, not hiding behind the refuge of chord and melody but cut free in the quiet moments when no one else is there to hear.

Ah, they don't let a woman kill you

he murmurs, glossing over each note even though they fall like little knives,

not in the Tower of Song

and Justin is singing, every word a promise to himself.

He feels like an interloper, caught in this one private moment between Justin and his own thoughts, but it's too late now to say anything. Justin hurts, so tangibly that the notes bleed with it, like they could fall to the ground and build the castle of pain and numbness that Justin's been surrounding himself with. He knows how Justin feels, when it's so raw and fresh that there's no way to get it out except with someone else's words. It's too new to put into words of your own. He felt like that once; a long time ago, but even now, he couldn't write it. He wonders if Justin will ever be able to.

Now you can say that I've grown bitter, but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song

It rings through the words, lingering there for anyone to come across and trip over. Anyone who heard. Which shouldn't have been anyone, not this late, not this quietly. Justin sounds different when there's no one there to hear. If we could record this, he thinks, we'd make millions, and then he feels cheap and dirty, because this isn't for anyone's ears and they've already got their millions. Maybe that's what Justin means when he sings those words.

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when

-- and there, there it is, the break that Justin's been staving off by trying to remember the lyrics, trying to fight with the guitar to hold the line of melody; his voice cracks, he misses the note, his fingers still and there's a long quiet nothing before the guitar takes up again, right where it left off.

He wonders if Justin is crying.

And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again

He can almost see it, Justin with his eyes fixed on fingers that slide over the frets and strings. Or maybe Justin's eyes are closed, not caring for once if he misses a chord, and isn't that fucking something. In his head the lounge is dark and Justin's face is that old familiar mixture of exhausted and sleepless and maybe it's raining outside. It should be raining outside. In his head, Justin tips his face backwards and takes a deep breath and just lets it go, all of it, lets it loose.

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song

In his head, Justin is saying all the things that he wishes he could have said, all the things that he didn't think of until much later, threat and promise all wrapped up into one. Justin is thinking of old promises, and saying new goodbyes, and wrapping all of it up and presenting it like a Christmas gift to someone who will never hear him even if he speaks. She stopped hearing Justin a long time ago, he thinks, and wonders if that might have been the cause of the problem. But Justin stopped speaking long before she could have ever been expected to hear.

Yeah, my friends are gone

-- and maybe this time it's a little less hopeless, maybe this time there's a little less despair, because no matter what, Justin's got people to stand by him, even if they don't understand, even if Justin doesn't know how to let them in --

and my hair is grey

-- but maybe that doesn't help, maybe that's nothing more than a reminder that Justin is one of those people who are most alone in the middle of a crowd. Justin's always been like that, as far back as any of them can remember, all the way back to when he was a far-too-old man in a child's body.

I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on

Justin misses another note, fingers exhausted by the task of trying to keep up, and by now the song is falling downhill to its inevitable conclusion, so he just lets it go. It's just his voice, those last few notes, just the voice that's small and sad and choked and quiet against the hiss-thrump of wheels moving over asphalt.

I'm just paying my rent every day

-- and Justin is singing, and there is no one else to hear, and this, this is what they all mean when they confess, late and drunkenly, that they love what they do but sometimes wish that they could have been born mute and voiceless to a family in middle America, could have been born without that need deep within them, that need that consumes even as it nourishes, that need that changes everything it touches and turns it into something strange and foreign written in Linear A across a stone tablet that's been cracked and broken for years, cracked and broken like Justin's voice as it drops again and bleeds the last few notes --

-- in the Tower of Song.

There is silence for a few long minutes, and then Justin rakes his fingernails over the strings of the guitar in discordant cacophany. He mutters something that could have been a curse, and could have been "goodbye, baby," and then there is silence again.

Tomorrow morning, there will be nothing but a smile pasted on Justin's lips.

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