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He hadn’t slept.
Of course he hadn’t. If he’d been honest with himself he wouldn’t have even tried. But he wasn’t very good at reading his inner signs and he’d gone to bed, only to toss and turn and get scared and ultimately, not sleep.
So he hadn’t exactly been at his best when the time for the audition had come. He’d drunk coffee after coffee to try and give himself the energy. It hadn’t worked, he was still feeling like death reawakened and he’d got fidgety on top of everything. When he’d walked in the studio, he couldn’t bear to look at them.
Afterwards Sid told him that they had been wearing their masks, but he had to take his word for it because he hadn’t seen them. He’d dropped the drumsticks too many times to count and felt like maybe this would be a good time to stop being clumsy.
The thought hadn’t really helped and the audition just went from bad to worse. He’d made all the mistakes he never made plus a few of those he usually did.
He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t started crying from frustration and he hadn’t felt the moment he’d torn his ankle open on one of the screws protruding from the drum riser either. The bottom of his jeans was soaked with blood and the material was stuck to his skin.
Chris honestly didn’t see how things could get any worse.
As he sat on the porch in front of Shawn’s house, a cigarette hanging at the corner of his lips, he tried to remember all the things the Clown had told him before the audition. He clung to the “formality” part of those.
He desperately wanted to be part of the band, desperately needed to do something worthwhile with his life. But after this morning he just knew he wasn’t going to make it in.
Grimly, he tried to decide what to do next.
Getting in a band had been his sole goal for the past five years, to the point that he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had sex. Blowing the smoke of his cigarette in fairly good circles, he figured he should get laid one last time. Then jumping from one of the inter-state cross-roads seemed appropriate. Preferably in front of one of those massive trucks. Preferably drunk, and high.
When Nathan – or Joey as he had decided to be called – opened the door, he knew what he was going to do. He was just waiting for confirmation. So, of course, he wasn’t surprised when the small guy told him he wasn’t good enough, they were sorry but he could remain Shawn’s drum-tech.
By that point, it was so totally not a surprise that he simply nodded, stood up and started walking away. Pieces of his life were crashing around him but he didn’t notice. It had been an interesting ride and he only wished he could have scored with Paul before it was over.
He was so busy being numb and trying to decide where to go to find booze and a girl that he didn’t hear the footsteps following him, nor the voice calling his name. It was only when a hand fell on his shoulder and turned him around that he realised things were not going according to plan.
Paul was looking at him with that huge dimpled grin of his and Chris really felt his heart miss a beat at all he’d never get.
Then Paul said something that made what little remained of his life dissolve away. It left him standing, blinking and looking so dumbfounded that Paul repeated himself just in case. The words sank in as slowly as a car in a quicksand.
“In, you’re in… A joke… You’re in!”
And finally Chris got it. He wasn’t going to jump off a road bridge after all and he wasn’t going to get himself a whore either. Instead he grabbed Paul’s head and pulled him in for a hard kiss, fully expecting to get punched in the guts but not caring one bit.
But Paul, after a moment of surprise, kissed him back as hard as he was being kissed and Chris could feel hands under his shirt and hips pushing into his, letting the warmth of another erection slip through his jeans.
He pulled away with a low moan.
“Let’s go somewhere…”
Paul grinned again, full of dimples and promises.
“Preferably a room.”
There was a nod and an echo. “Preferably.”
[the end]