Tommy chuckled mirthlessly to himself, checking first to make sure he was far enough away from the long, vertical recording device so that the reaction was away from audience attention. Hedwig never could let anyone else have the last word, could she? Well, actually, he’d become quite aware of that over the years - why should it surprise him now? Though, such predictability never failed to be any less torture for him. She couldn’t move on with things. It seemed to be very against her nature—a complete psychological impossibility—to let there ever be still water under the bridge. Probably yet another quirk about herself she constantly blamed on him, Tommy was sure.
Under different circumstances, he’d even be more confident that maybe only five of these people were here to watch Hedwig perform. However, with him fighting the law, he actually did have some doubts that he’d had much stock in that audience, after all. Or, at least…much that hadn’t been just a few more accusations away from full-on conversion from his to Hedwig’s. Guess she doesn’t care where their love comes from, or if it’s there to last when she stops looking so good in the public eye.
The audience’s collective reception to the kiss he’d just given Hedwig spurred a sly grin to spread across his face. He had a feeling they’d like that. And, Hedwig, as he predicted, seemed to be rather into it, too. Guess she didn’t count on him realizing those legal papers and tabloid headlines she was utilizing to distract him didn’t keep him from noticing that, really, she hadn’t changed a bit, when it came to hi–
They all seemed to roar with greater favor, somehow, for her sarcastic commentary and her gratingly notable lack of a reaction, other than accepting the kiss, reciprocating it, and putting her hands on him some more to denote where he stood with the rest of her belongings. Upon evaluating his surroundings, the only real feedback closer to what he had been looking for was from Hedwig’s band and, of course, her husband. It was they, apparently, who showed any emotion he could actually use for this…improvisation, if only they’d been Hedwig’s. This turnout seemed to have went and raised at least a few other eyebrows, though, including his own.
Tommy pulled the microphone in his direction and made sure that the"Yeah? Well, if you liked it, then…um…I-I should tell you: there's—there’s so much more where that came from…you know…if…you’re interested.“ He winked quickly at Hedwig, while his hand slithered down from her hip, matching the place hers came to a stop on his body, daring to give her ass a deceptively dedicated squeeze. He hoped it was deceptive, anyway. None of his actions should be the least bit transparent, even to him. So, good thing they really, really weren’t.
When he heard the soft, almost ballad-esque chords coming from behind him, the gravity of the situation began to tug on him again, reminding him if he didn’t think fast, he would be lucky to be at the most a very modest blurb in the paper, where the print wasn’t repeating how horribly he crashed and burned after Hedwig discovered him sneaking out of his own scheduled show because he could barely find an audience.
“Oh, this—this totally takes me back,” he smiled as he commented breezily, as if the sounds struck into the air provoked something of sweet nostalgia. When, really, they sounded much harsher to him. He listened a couple of seconds more, nodding to the notes, doing his best not to display the utter bewilderment he was feeling. The tune sounded the tinest, vaguest bit familiar, but no matter what, he couldn’t seem to place it.
He looked casually at the blonde nearby who blamed him for everything wrong with her life, relationships, and career, and couldn’t help but feel like she was very much onto him, at this point. She was using all her gathered resources and sympathies, now, and milking every disadvantage she could find. He couldn’t let it go down this way. He wouldn’t.
“…Why don’t you do the honors?” Tommy asked Hedwig, lightly nudging her, “After all, um…my…fans and I are all here in your domain. How ‘bout you give ‘em first taste? Yeah? How about that, guys?!” He looked to the audience again to cast their votes on his suggestion. Maybe she would buy him enough time to either remember, or get the crowd excited enough so he could effortlessly wow them with whatever he could think of. He mentioned nothing of the guitar that fraction of the Inch presented to him before; his fans had never seen him play it, so to see him perform without it would not come as a shock to them, he figured. At least he had that part figured out. Plus, Hedwig loved the limelight.
“Well, what do you think of that, ladies and gentlemen? Not even half an hour back in contact and already he’s having trouble keeping his hands to himself. Among other parts,” Hedwig said, playing up her asides and jokes to the audience as a way of remaining in control and avoiding acknowledging the effect Tommy may have been having on her. A little over half the audience responded the way she was angling for; laughing at the self-aware bawdy humour they had come to expect from her. Still, it was better than the shows she had been playing before certain events turned in her favour.
Hedwig found herself studying Tommy’s attractive, if unhappily set, features as he tried to place the song. It was only by a stroke of luck the band even knew it; they had needed a rehearsal song and after the twentieth rendition of Angry Inch, the band had started to get antsy. Hedwig suggested the first song that came into her head, not even realizing until part way into the first verse of the song that it was one that had originated with Tommy. And that then, playing it with a band that he had never met, was a weird way of cementing that they no longer were ‘Hedwig Robinson and Tommy Gnosis.’ They weren’t even ‘Hedwig Robinson featuring Tommy Gnosis”’ like they had been in the beginning. When his best chance at celebrity was still playing the guitar masses that were popular, but religious in the small town. She had sighed, setting down the guitar mid riff and leaving Skszp to piece together and guess at how the rest of the tune might have originally gone, even going so far as to add a better bridge than it had originally come with.
Of course he didn’t recognize it.
She pushed down the lingering disappointment… no, it was more than disappointment… the lingering anger that he could have forgotten something so relatively formative to who he was as a musician. To their time together. None of that even fucking mattered anymore did it?
“You sure this spotlight’s gonna big enough for you, me, and your ego?” Hedwig asked, a perfectly playful smile on her face and only the slightest edge to her voice to give the illusion of professional ribbing. The sort of thing that old band mates might engage in after an amicable enough breakup and the eventual reunion years later. She waited for the audience reaction before she went in like she was going to kiss his cheek.
“Why are you here?” she hissed, before pulling her face back to Broadway perfection and facing her audience again.
She strode over to where Skszp had left the spare acoustic guitar in the presumptive idea that Tommy might actually take some agency in this concert outside of trying to instigate Hedwig to very publically lose her shit. She held it up in a subtle gesture towards to the musical director, quickly checking with him that him that it was pretuned and not some sort of childish sabotage towards the man who just couldn’t stop rubbing it in. The breakup would have stung enough. But stealing her songs? Denying having ever known her? And now…what? Pretending that he still had some small vestiges of affection for her to…to… play the press? As if she was going to be some unwitting pawn in his game with popularity.
She took the guitar just slightly out of tune, exaggerating the movements in the spotlight to play on the audience’s reactions. “To make it sound more like old times,” she eventually explained, the same showmanship smile on her face as before. “What do you think, Tommy? Should I play it like you or should I play it correctly?”
“I’m kidding, of course,” she said, her comment directed to the audience after a small bit of uneasy laughter that seemed to sit on top of actual amusement like grease on top of cooling soup. “I’m going to play it correctly.”
