A/N - Written as an exercise in viewpoint; I don't usually write Daryan, and so when someone requested this pairing from me, I decided to go with him as my focal character. Also an exercise in style - I went a lot looser with this one, and am at least somewhat pleased with the result. Constructive criticism, as always, is highly appreciated.

The rating given is for language/profanity - and the fic starts with it early on, so consider yourself warned, I suppose.

Daryan has always had one of those voices, and the worst part is that he knows it - the kind of voice where "thank you" and "fuck off" carry the exact same tone, and it usually sounds like the latter; the kind that somehow makes asking someone to pass the salt sound like a request for the filthiest sex he can think of.

The smoking he's taken up recently doesn't help; it doesn't hinder, either, if someone wants to see it that way. He sits on the back steps of the concert venue after the show, in an area so heavily guarded they're shooting squirrels on sight, and lights up a cigarette. He's partway through his first drag when Klavier sits next to him, promptly startling him like hell; he swears under his breath, mutters something about Klavier somehow managing to have so much goddamn stealth in those combat boots he stomps around in, and tries to look like he didn't just jump half a mile.

"Smoking break, hm?"

"Does it look like it?"

Klavier smiles at him - and he's got one of those easy smiles that send the women diving at his crotch every time he cracks it, too; it's kind of driving Daryan nuts, how easy it is - and even though the expression is pretty as hell he somehow manages to look a little like Satan when he steals the cigarette and takes a drag.

"Do that again," Daryan says as he takes it back, "and I swear to God, I'll hit you."

"Well, do you have another?"

"Go get your own," he says, pulling the pack out of his pocket. He slams it against his palm a few times before he gives him one.

"Danke." Klavier sticks the cigarette in his mouth and holds it lightly with his teeth, patting his pockets down quickly; Daryan rolls his eyes and holds out his lighter, sparking it right in front of Klavier's face just to see him jump before he actually lights it and puts the flame to the end of Klavier's smoke. Klavier, to his credit, doesn't sulk for too long before he's fun to tease again.

"You're gonna kill that pretty voice of yours," Daryan says, in a tone that makes it plain that he doesn't give a damn either way.

"And what are you doing?"

"Not being lead singer, that's what I'm doing."

Klavier laughs, taking another drag and nearly choking on it. Daryan smirks; Klavier's always been the type who looks like an idiot when he smokes, like someone's geeky little brother trying to fit in with the cool crowd. It almost makes Daryan not care that he's going to be out of a cigarette later, unless Klavier pays him back.

Klavier almost never does.

"So what brings you out here, Gavin? Sick of the fans?"

"Never," Klavier says, now that he's caught his wind again. "I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"You're a prince, Gavin. A real goddamn prince. You know that?" Daryan inhales, long and slow, then taps the ashes to the ground as he lets out the smoke.

Klavier's face twitches a bit as he lets out a quiet "Ah...", and Daryan laughs at him.

"You crack me up, man. I swear, everyone on the planet calls you that and you don't give a damn about them doing it."

"Mmm, but they're not nearly as snide as you about it."

"Sorry," Daryan says, not sounding it at all.

When they were seventeen, they had practiced making out - not like either of them had needed to, but there was no point in being a rock star if you weren't going to be any good with anything physical, and at least they could count on each other to be honest. So they had used each other for practice, and somewhere between Klavier's bitching when Daryan's teeth slammed into his for the millionth time and Daryan snapping at Klavier to quit breathing straight into his goddamn mouth, they had gotten good enough to kill anyone who might happen to be watching - they were just that awesome.

Now that they're both twenty-four, they still haven't stopped, though neither of them give a fuck about practicing anymore. Daryan's fingers knead Klavier's inner thigh, and he's almost successful in distracting Klavier from the blond mess he's making with his other hand.

"Hey - leave the - stop playing with my hair," Klavier says, with as much authority as he can manage while he's writhing around on the bed like a lunatic and moaning for more. Daryan just smirks and finishes pulling Klavier's hair out of the sharp coil he usually has it in, then he stops playing with it and begins concentrating his touches on Klavier's chest.

Klavier twitches and lets out the most ragged sigh Daryan's ever heard; it's almost melodramatic, that sigh, and if Daryan didn't know better he'd say Klavier's faking it. But Klavier's always fake as hell anyway - and so is Daryan, actually, and he'd admit it if someone asked - and Daryan can tell that he's not faking anything at that exact second, so he leans down and starts saying things to him, muttering them into Klavier's ear, and he doesn't even know what he's saying half the time. He doesn't think it really matters, either; what matters is the way it's said, fast and low and unbelievably dirty, and he thinks he's talking about strip searches but for all he knows he could be telling Klavier about that time he had with the bimbo on Friday who was a lousy lay but had amazing tits. It's a sign that he's doing it right when he's not sure if he's talking about police procedure or some groupie slut backstage and Klavier is still moaning and writhing around uncontrollably - like he's in the middle of a seizure or something, and somehow he's still insanely, stupidly horny.

Daryan thinks sometimes that he should really write half the shit he says down one day, just to have a record of it. He usually ends up shrugging the idea off. Improvising works, and he already knows something Klavier keeps trying to tell him about lyric-writing - it has absolutely nothing to do with the content.

It's the delivery that sells.

Daryan's been in prison for nearly four months when Klavier shows up; he snorts when they let him right into the cell with him, more at the blatant stupidity of the system than anything Klavier did. To Daryan's complete non-surprise, Klavier decides to assume the snorting was aimed at his general presence and not anything that actually matters.

"Not pleased? I should think you'd want the company." Klavier looks a bit too amused, and it's driving Daryan nuts.

"No one said I wasn't pleased. I'm thrilled to see you, Gavin, really. Absofuckinglutely overjoyed." He picks a piece of fuzz off of his clothes, where it had been glaring all white at him from the darkness of his sleeve. He flicks it away from him, toward the ground, where he's satisfied he's condemned it to fuzzy hell. At the very least, he can't see it anymore - out of sight, off of his goddamn clothes.

Daryan's begun to wonder recently if he's losing his damn mind. Klavier's never going to hear about half the things he's been thinking about, because Klavier will probably say that Daryan's losing his damn mind - all in that painful little German accent, too; the one that sends the women diving into his crotch even more easily than his smile - and it'll just piss Daryan off and make him want to rearrange his face. So he's not going to tell him anything.

"You haven't changed, have you?" Klavier sounds weird when he says it, like he's being hit on by someone he doesn't like.

"You haven't either, man."

"Ah…" Klavier shakes his head. "Only you could make that sound like such a bad thing, Daryan. Some would say I've changed too much."

"Yeah, well. You make it sound like a bad thing when you say I haven't changed at all." Daryan smirks at him then. "Did you really hate me that much?"

Klavier, to Daryan's surprise, looks like he doesn't know what to say to that. He falls silent, and though his face doesn't really register everything he's thinking about, the easy smile suddenly looks a lot more difficult to manage.

"Hey." Daryan tilts his head slightly. "You look like hell all of a sudden."

Klavier looks up at him as though he's just had the hell scared out of him. "What?" he says. "Sorry, I..."

Daryan's smirk returns. "Okay, so you're not pissed, you just zoned out on me?"

"I...ja, it's nothing." Klavier gives him that look again, the prized smile that earns him millions a year, and it's almost good enough to look like a normal expression and not the same goddamn look he gives absolutely everyone.

"You don't have to fake it for me, man. If you're pissed, go ahead and be pissed. It's creepy when you do that."

"Do what?"

"That...thing. Where you're smiling but you're not."

"Everything is fine."

"No, it's -"

"Daryan. It's cool, okay? Everything's fine."

It's at that point that Daryan starts feeling like being a bastard; anything to wipe that stupid look off Klavier's face. To make Klavier realize that everything's not fine; that he's absolutely sick of that word. That he's absolutely sick of Klavier, and that their final performance really had ended months ago, and all he really would want now, immature though it is, would be for Klavier to get the hell out and go die somewhere.

"Yeah, your crazy-ass brother says that all the time, too. He says it way too much, considering how he ended up. Did he tell you they've been trying to get him to talk to some shrink since he went psycho all over everyone? Well, more psycho than he was already, anyway."

"You need to shut your -"

"Yeah, didn't think he'd mention that. He's been refusing any sort of treatment, though, and it's really been pissing everyone off, since that little freakout at the courthouse let pretty much the whole goddamn planet know that he's batshit insane -"

"Daryan."

"...but I guess we can't trust the crazies to know what's good for them, huh? Hey, if you ever want to see something classic, all you have to do to make him freak out - really freak the fuck out - is mention something about videotaping; his reaction is goddamn near priceless -"

Daryan is prevented from saying anything further by Klavier's fist connecting with the side of his head, and though it's an attempt at what Daryan assumes was supposed to be a devastating right cross, it's a really lame one that succeeds more at surprising him than causing him pain. It shuts him up anyway; surprise does that to him sometimes.

Klavier is led out pretty quickly after that one, with Daryan shouting that maybe Klavier really has changed too much; maybe he's just as crazy as his crazy-ass older brother. The wording, in hindsight, could have been a hell of a lot better, but he doesn't really care. After all, it's the delivery, not the content, that matters.

And his delivery has always been pretty damn good.