title: shake down the stars, pull down the sky authenticity note: you just can't jitterbug to sinatra. but the title's pretty

rating: g stands for gen.

summary: peter listens.

a/n: drabble (or flopsy?) length. some of it comes out as stilted and over dramatic, but i tried to make it as rhythmic as i could, having no rhythm whatsoever.

Peter listens as Arvid plays his guitar like Django Reinhart and Thomas sings like no one else, belting it out as he swings his way from girl to girl, and, when they stumble out into the night air, it tastes like 'young' and 'rebellious' and 'free.' They jitter jive all the way down the rain-slicked street to the tune of the faded music, tangling limbs and scarves, matching footsteps beat for beat. At his stoop (always the first, somehow, no matter where they come from), Afrid moves on, pulling his hat down further over his face with a smile and limping less than usual, his guitar case seeming lighter on his shoulders. Thomas follows him up, though, until they reach his door and, suddenly, a sharp chin on his shoulder and a sharper whistle (no, it don't mean a thing) right in his ear, and he is gone.

He listens to the dulled sound of wet shoes until they disappear entirely, leaving nothing but that ache of a musical echo at the opening of the stairwell, halfway to his ears. Lately, he hasn't liked for anything to be quiet.

It is just as he expected when he gets inside. Everything is cast a shade darker with that time just past twilight, and he can only barely make out the sound of breathing, from further distances. They have stopped waiting up for him, like he used to beg them to do, before all of this started to mean something. He passes his mother's room (with the door opened just a crack so she'll wake if something -they say this like they don't know what something is -happens) without looking in, straight to his own. His brother is curled up, asleep, with nothing but a crown of almost-white hair showing from a bundle of sheets, so wrapped up that he can't even tell if he's breathing.

He listens for a few seconds and can't stop himself from checking afterwards, shaking the boy gently before accepting his stirring and the high whimper, child whimper. Was he ever that small? It seems impossible. Almost unfair. His hands are shaking as he hangs up his coat and his scarf on the headboard and lays down in his clothes. A lot of nights, he doesn't sleep. It's easy to see that this will be one of them.

The sun eventually pushes away the night-time with saving fingers, inching over the window sill and spilling onto the floor, and soon he'll be going to school and soon he'll be dancing again and maybe that will end the war (even though he knows it won't).