"The Saddest of the Keys", a This Is Spinal Tap fanfiction story by Lamia.

This story is set during Nigel's return to the band. Rated PG, slash and angst. No beta readers, as usual.

Please review. These characters aren't mine except for Marisioux, so please don't sue!

Nigel felt as nervous as if he were waiting for his pod to open at the beginning of "Rock and Roll Creation", not sure if all would go well or if he'd wind up trapped and humiliated like poor Derek, frantically gasping for air as Mook pounded away at the plastic shell with a hammer.

He had run into Ian and received some unexpected news. "Sex Farm" had hit number five in Japan. Japan! If Spinal Tap reformed, they had the opportunity to tour the Land of the Rising Sun. Nigel remembered the gentle words of Marisioux the wise and gentle groupie as she sat with him in the hotel bathroom in Seattle. "Do not be surprised if you receive some unexpected news. A new day dawns in the East. Fortune may smile upon you and David yet."

It was all up to David. David! The man who held his heart like a heartsurgeon, unaware that anisthetick hadn't worked and that he was filling Nigel with a painful agony that could only be cured with his tender embrace. David! His only reason to live, who he would gladly die for. David! The man who haunted his dreams. Nigel had slept bad since he had left the band in Seattle, troubled with strange dreams that he was pregnant with David's child. Pregnant! What was that supposed to mean? He didn't know. His mind was a boiling turmoil of confusion.

As he entered the dressing room, he saw him for the first time in days and the look he gave him pierced his heart like a knife of fire and ice.

He had been a fool to come. How could he ever forgive him for leaving the band? He didn't deserve forgiveness. He didn't know what he had been thinking. He had every right to be angry. Who did he think he was? He didn't even know anymore. He spoke to him awkwardly, trying to explain himself without embarrassing himself, but he kept interrupting him. He could hardly keep track of who was speaking.

Suddenly Jeanine said, "Yeah, I think it's time to go in, we don't have time to discuss this now."

Jeanine! Jeanine, that cobra-eyed viper whom had turned him against him and destroyed the band. Nigel felt sure that even Yoko Ono would be repulsed by Jeanine's manipulativeness. Nigel had been so focused on David that he had hardly noticed her when he entered, a miracle considering the hideous skin-tight printed bodysuit she was wearing. Nigel felt sure that even the fashion sense of a heterosexual man would have been offended by the sight of Jeanine. How could David stand the sight of her? She must have bewitched him with some sort of New Age astrology voodoo love spell.

Nigel realized with a chill that Jeanine was wearing three colors of eyeshadow at once. He had seen that style of makeup before, years ago, back in England. What's his name's wife. Angie. No, Mandy. Mandy Slade. They met once at a party, years ago, back in England. She'd said "Hey, that's my coat! No, see, it's mine, these are my gloves and lipstick." What a bitch. And her poncy (that means "gay" in England) husband still owed him a pack of fags (that doesn't mean "gay" in England). Nigel wondered if there was a secret conspiracy of rock and roll wives and girlfriends plotting together to destroy the lives and bands of the men in their lives and their bandmates.

As Spinal Tap Mark II, Tap-minus-Nigel, left the dressing room, Jeanine made a point of stopping David and kissing him as Nigel watched. She knew. That was the worst part. She knew. Nigel knew that she knew, and he knew that she knew that he knew that she knew. She knew exactly what she was doing. As she kissed David, Nigel felt as though she had cruelly torn his skin away to reveal his exact inner structure, just as it was shown on his favorite t-shirt.

Nigel wondered, briefly, if it was green. Surely it could be none more green than the eyes of the jealous monster that gnawed at his heart.

Suddenly he was alone with David.

Nigel felt strangely detached from it all, as if the whole thing were some ridiculous farce played out on a movie screen with an audience full of people mocking each blunder and laughing at his pain. Yet perhaps in that audience was some sympathetic person, some kindhearted girl, a girl perhaps like the lovely and gentle Marisioux, who would wish Nigel luck as he made his appeal to David. Would Fortune smile upon him and David yet?

This was his one chance. He felt that David would feel his feelings if only he could find the right words to express the feelings that he felt inside himself.

"David...do a good show, alright?"

"Yeah, OK."

And suddenly he was gone.

Nigel felt a void of nothingness sucking at his heart, an empty black hole of despair blacker than the blackness of the cover of "Smell the Glove", a cover that none of them had wanted but that had been forced upon them by a cruel and misunderstanding world.

Nigel collapsed on the couch, sobbing, unsure if he would ever rise to stand again. He felt as sad as D minor, which he had always found was really the saddest of all keys really, that always made people weep instantly as he was weeping now at this instant.

He suddenly felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. He looked up into the gentle green and gold orbs of Marisioux's gentle eyes. Marisioux! She was so wise, gentle, and beautiful. Could she help heal the hurt in his heart?

"Nigel," she said gently, wiping his tears with a gentle touch, "Do not despair. It is always darkest before the dawn. The lover stands between two choices, and he will choose the path less taken. You will see the sign. The sun shines upon you. All shall be well." She kissed him gently on the forehead, then offered her hand to help him to rise from where he had been sitting.

"Get out there and knock them dead, Nigel." Marisioux smiled her gentle smile and flashed him the devil's horns hand sign.

Nigel ran to the door, down the hall, and up the stairs. He could hear the opening strains of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight". As he reached the side of the stage he saw David onstage, as shining as the sun. That was where they belonged, Nigel and David together. The other band members came and went, but David and Nigel together had been Spinal Tap for nearly twenty years. Nigel knew that his righteous place was together with David onstage, but he had left the band. He had no right to be there anymore now. Not unless David wanted him.

At the opposite side of the stage, in the wings on the opposite side, he saw Jeanine.

Nigel mouthed the words to the song like a prayer to the gods of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Jeanine danced slowly like the temple prostitute of a maneating snake goddess. David stood halfway between them, like the radiant sun who he so resembled, holding them both in his orbit with the magnetic force of attraction.

Suddenly David turned and nodded at Nigel.

Nigel couldn't believe his eyes or what they saw. David must have merely been tossing back his beautiful golden blonde hair. But no, he looked at Nigel again and nodded with unmistakable emphaticisness. It was a sign! Fortune had smiled upon him and David yet!

Nigel ran onstage and grabbed his guitar. The crowd cheered wildly. Blissful joy filled Nigel's heart as he joined David in "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight."

Suddenly, in that perfect moment of joyous happiness, something horrifyingly terrible happened. Neither Fortune nor the Law of Averages smiled upon Mick Shrimpton, Spinal Tap's fourth drummer. In an explosive blaze of light and sound, he spontaneously combusted.

Nigel gasped at the singed drumkit, unsure what would happen next.

tbc?

Back to Spinal Slash.

Back home.