Work Text:
Warped Tour 2004
Sometimes, David missed being young.
He missed being able to sleep at stupid hours and eat whatever he wanted and drink like a fish without being punished the next morning for his hubris. He missed when his bones didn’t ache, his bad knee didn’t twinge after an hour of walking on it, and his hand could still curl into chords. He missed when he could still hear music over the static screams of the crowd, and he missed when he could scream into a microphone for hours every night.
He especially missed how touring had been so exciting. Back then, all he’d cared about was playing music and feeding off of the energy of the crowd. The stage had saved his life and he’d sworn he’d never get off of it. It had been the thing that he lived for until right around the time that Kayleigh and his band had unceremoniously split up.
She’d wanted to stay independent. They’d wanted to sign with a major label. She’d warned them that the industry would break them and they hadn’t listened. David and the guys had signed a record deal and she’d called them a bunch of sellouts and gone back home to Ireland on her own.
Kayleigh had ended up being right, just like she always was.
Somewhere along the way, performing became work. It was a chore. It was months upon months of being crammed into his bandmates’ pockets and eating whatever garbage they could grab off the side of the interstate. And when they weren’t touring, they were in the studio, or doing press, or off on some album-writing-retreat. It was exhausting, and by the time David had realized that the weird tickle at the back of his throat and the cramping in his hands might be something to worry about, it was too late.
Retiring (if you could call it that) should have meant staying in one place. With how much he despised touring by that point, it had been something David was looking forward to. And yet, here he was ten years later, still on the road, only now he wasn’t even the one who got to play.
If he was younger, he would have spent his evening post-show getting shitfaced with his bandmates. There hadn’t been anything like Warped Tour in those days, this massive roaming punk festival overflowing with kids barely old enough to drink the beer they were drowning themselves in, but they’d still managed to spend half their nights too drunk to stand. It was a wonder they’d only wrapped the van around a tree one time.
David was still getting shitfaced on a bus, but now he was alone and relishing in the quiet. Nights off were almost as rare as a manager as they had been when he was the talent being managed. He’d made sure his bands knew not to call him unless someone was dying. As far as he was concerned, they were all Renee’s responsibility until it was time to roll out in the morning. He had a date with a DVD boxset that couldn’t be missed.
He was three episodes into the Twilight Zone when he heard the first knock. It was quiet enough that he dismissed it. There were dozens of bands filling the lot they were parked in and that didn’t even account for all the kids and crew members hanging around. A bump against the door could mean anything, even where he was tucked away in the back corner of the bus lot.
A minute later, a second knock followed. This one was a little louder and firmer. It sounded purposeful. David paused his show and set his beer aside. Before he could move to get off of the bed, the person knocked a third time. This time was desperate, more akin to beating on a drum than knocking on a door. It had David hurrying to his feet, reaching for his BlackBerry on instinct. In another life, he might have been reaching for a knife on his belt instead.
David expected to find one of his kids (as much as he was loath to call them that) on the other side of the door. He’d been anticipating it since they’d joined the tour. Nicky had managed to keep both of his cousins out of trouble thus far, but the calm was making David nervous. Calm never lasted long with The Monsters. And the Upperclassmen weren't much better. While he could generally count on them to play nice, David was well aware that all of them had been in their own brands of trouble. Seth, especially, could be a wild card.
With this in mind, he’d been prepared to see a lot of things when he flung open the door: Andrew holding the head of some poor fool who’d gotten in his way. Seth or Nicky halfway to blackout despite the still-early hour. His worst case scenario was Renee reporting that one or all of them had been arrested.
He had not been expecting to find Kevin Day, who looked like he’d been through Hell and back.
It had been years since David had been anywhere near Kevin. He’d only met him once when the kid was little. Kayleigh had brought him to a show when David had a stop in Dublin. It had been cold, winter, somewhere near the kid’s second or third birthday, and David remembered remarking on how Kevin wasn’t bothered at all by the loud noise.
Kayleigh had laughed, smiling in that way that showed her dimples and always made David’s heart pound. “He never was,” she told him proudly. “He could sleep straight through a set from day one.”
She’d already been teaching him how to keep a beat. David remembered the way she’d beamed at Kevin while he slapped tunelessly at the strings of her guitar in something close to a steady rhythm. He’d never seen her look more proud. Within the year, she’d said, she would start to teach him to play.
He could picture what she’d do with Kevin now, if she was there to see his bloodied face and mangled hand. He could imagine the way she’d grab his face to inspect the damage, the tension in her jaw as she threatened to hunt down the culprit. Kayleigh had never been soft, but she was a fighter. She fought for the things she loved. It was one of the things David had always admired about her.
David didn’t reach for him like Kayleigh would have, but he took careful stock of the quickly darkening bruises on the kid’s face. There was blood everywhere; it covered his clothes and stained his skin and made his dark hair stick together in clumps. There were horrifying welts on his face and arms, long and parallel and surrounded by huge bruises. He held his right hand to his chest protectively, but it was clearly badly broken.
He looked, quite frankly, like death half-warmed over.
“Shit,” David said eloquently. “Get inside, kid.”
Relief flooded Kevin’s face, stark enough that David suddenly realized he’d never seen the kid look anything other than serious. He stumbled across the threshold into David’s room with a limp that made David wince in sympathy. It was only after he half-collapsed into the chair in the corner that David realized how hard Kevin was shaking.
The kid curled further around his hand but not before David caught sight of how twisted it was, the bones clearly crushed. Something sour twisted in David’s stomach that he muscled down. He’d seen plenty of broken bones in his years and patched plenty of friends up after fights, but it always made him feel a bit sick, regardless.
“Kid,” David said quietly, startling himself with how rough his own voice sounded. He cleared his throat. Kevin avoided his gaze. “Do I need to call security?”
Kevin looked up sharply at that, his eyes wide. He shook his head. “Don’t,” he said. The word seemed to scrape its way out of his throat. He paused, then clarified, “Can’t.”
David was afraid he’d say that. There was something in the emptiness in his eyes and the defeat in his frame that had told David this was more than just a kid who got jumped. He frowned.
“Can I at least call someone to look you over?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about first aid.”
Kevin hesitated for a moment before nodding, curling further around his arm. David didn’t know how he was barely reacting to the pain. If David was in his place, he wouldn’t have been able to stop screaming.
Abby was quick to arrive at the door after David texted her. She immediately dispatched David to fill up the ice bucket, which gave him a moment to think.
Kayleigh had never wanted to be tied down to any one person, and David had certainly never even tried to convince her otherwise. She’d been a hurricane of a woman, and you couldn’t tame a hurricane. There’d been many long nights of drinking himself to sleep on the bus after a show so he wouldn’t sit around waiting for her to get back.
But there had been a moment, once, where David had thought that maybe, just maybe, Kevin was his. The dates lined up, as best he could tell; there was a certain slope to his nose and shape of his jaw that made David wonder. But when he’d worked up the nerve to ask, Kayleigh had laughed at him.
Of course not, David, she’d said, like he was ridiculous to even think it. And maybe he was.
She’d never said who Kevin’s father was, in the end. He’d ended up in Tetsuji Moriyama’s custody and eventually signed with Evermore Records, a subsidiary of Edgar Allan. David had assumed that he’d never see the kid again. He had no claim over him, and anyway, David preferred to stay as far away from Moriyama as possible. The man had always been perfectly pleasant to David, but something about him was unsettling. Like he was waiting for David to mess up and show a weak point. Like he was biding his time, cataloguing his weakness until there was an opportunity to strike.
The thought of Kayleigh’s son growing up with that man made something twist in David’s gut, but it had been what Kayleigh wanted. He barely knew Moriyama; hell, he barely knew Kevin. He’d had to trust her instincts.
As he watched Abby rub some kind of ointment into the bruises on Kevin’s face, he wondered if that had been the right call. Maybe Kayleigh’s instincts had been wrong, just this once.
Kevin made a pained nose as Abby gently probed at his nose, and she winced. “I think that’s broken too,” she informed him softly. Whatever she said next was much softer, too quiet for David to hear. Kevin was making eye contact with the ground next to her and shaking his head. As David got closer, he could make out the way Kevin’s lips moved, mouthing no, no, no in a silent chant.
Abby looked up at David as he approached, her expression grim. “He doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” she said quietly. “I think he’s shock-y, too. And concussed. David, there’s only so much I can do on a bus.”
She was right and he knew it. Abby was an EMT, not a miracle worker. But David had a bad feeling about attempting to get the kid some medical care, considering he’d shown up on David’s doorstep instead of anyone who worked with the tour.
David passed Abby the ice bucket and took her place in front of Kevin. He was a tall, broad kid, but being hunched inward the way he was made him look much smaller. He was young. All of these kids were, but it shocked David a little every time he was reminded of it.
“It was a skating accident,” Kevin said suddenly. David blinked at him. Kevin cleared his throat, suddenly seeming more aware than he had before. “I wanted to try skateboarding. I fell. It was… It was bad.”
David and Abby shared a long look. “Is that what you’re going with?” David asked.
Kevin looked up, nodded firmly, and winced as the movement jostled his head. “It’s a skate punk tour, isn’t it,” he said, a little too sharply. They all knew it really wasn’t, not in the last few years, but David opted not to call him on it. He would pry later, when the kid wasn’t teetering on the urge of a panic attack.
“Does anyone know where you are?” David asked, instead. It was rare to see one of the members of a Ravens band on their own, and rarer still for Kevin to be seen without his adopted brother.
Kevin shook his head, his eyes wild and shining with tears. “I can’t go back,” he said, near tears. “Please don’t make me go back.”
David wondered if the crack in his heart was as audible as the one in Kevin’s voice.
“You’re not going back,” David said. He reached out slowly, giving Kevin ample time to flinch away, and rested a hand on his shoulder. When Kevin’s gaze tried to escape his, David squeezed his shoulder. “You hear me, kid? You aren’t going back there. But you have to let us help you.”
He waited until Kevin nodded, something a little surer than he might have felt. It was good enough. He squeezed his shoulder again and shifted out of the way so Abby could work. As soon as she took over, David headed off of the bus.
Both of David’s bands had about a week left of the tour, due to finish off their runs at the stop in North Carolina, but it was clear that Kevin needed to be as far away from Moriyama’s people as he could get him. Preferably soon.
David hesitated outside the bus. Tetsuji Moriyama was somewhere around here, hidden amongst the sea of tour buses and vans stretching across this field. David knew the man wouldn’t let his bands travel the country without him hovering over their shoulders, watching for cracks in their carefully crafted images. David was not eager to present one on a silver platter.
But the way Kevin had hedged and hesitated and lied through his teeth made David’s fists curl with a rage that he normally kept tight under lock and key. It had been a couple of years since he’d thrown a punch, but the instinct was still there. He wanted nothing more than to feel Moriyama’s jaw crack under his knuckles.
The way Kevin had said “Riko doesn’t like to come in second,” bounced off the corners of David’s brain like the DVD logo on his still-paused television. The added, “I can’t go back,” had made something crack in David’s chest.
The memory of it made him reach for the Blackberry at his hip. He found Moriyama’s number in his contacts, though he had no real memory of how he’d gotten it.
The dial tone set his teeth on edge.
“Moriyama.”
“How much to buy out Day’s contract?” David said in lieu of a greeting. The silence on the other end of the line lasted long enough that David had to check that the call was still connected.
“David Wymack,” the other man said, finally. “I assume you know where my missing guitarist is.”
David gritted his teeth to keep from cursing at him. He took a long breath through his nose. “Kevin Day’s contract,” he repeated. “How much?”
“More than you could possibly afford,” Moriyama said sharply.
And normally, David would agree. Moriyama wouldn’t let any of his musicians go without a fight, and Kevin was an extra special case. David didn’t have a lot to work with, especially not compared to the Moriyama Music Group. Even entertaining the idea of buying out one of their contracts was foolish.
But Kevin had looked at him like it was life and death, and David honestly believed it might be. He exhaled through his nose again, swallowed the fury in his throat, and kept pushing.
“Humor me.”
Moriyama went quiet again. This time, David waited him out.
And then, finally, “He’s not for sale."
David bit down hard on his tongue to stop from verbalizing his frustration. He’d have to do this the hard way. “Alright, Moriyama, let me lay it out for you,” he said in a low voice. “One of your boys got a little rowdy, and Day showed up here with a broken face and a ruined hand. If you want this to stay between us, you let him go quietly.”
The pause was heavier this time. David might have actually surprised him.
“He wouldn’t say anything.”
“He could,” David said. He was pretty sure that Moriyama was right, but hell if David was going to admit it. If he admitted to that, he was giving the man a win. He had to present a compromise before Moriyama thought too hard about it. “Look. Things got messy. We intervened without asking. It’s not ideal. How about we make this fair — you let Kevin take a break, stay with us until he heals. We’ll take care of his medical bills and send you updates. When he feels better, Kevin gets to decide whether he stays with you, or buys out his own contract for a reasonable price.”
It was ridiculous. There was no way it would convince him. It wasn't like David’s word would do much in the scheme of things. Moriyama had the money to quash any rumors before they became a real problem. David had seen him do it.
There had been a lot of rumors floating around after Kayleigh died. About her death, about Kevin, about Moriyama and her other friends. Eventually, they’d gotten loud enough to catch Moriyama’s attention. David was never sure what he’d done to stop the gossip, but on the surface things had been pretty quiet ever since.
But the surface was just that — just because there wouldn’t be mention of it in AltPress or on the gossip blogs, didn’t mean people didn’t talk. The underground had a voice that even Tetsuji Moriyama couldn’t silence, and David knew that the Moriyama group couldn’t afford for that voice to get any louder.
“Say that I go along with this plan,” Moriyama said slowly. “What do you propose we tell the public about the sudden absence of Perfect Court’s lead guitarist?”
David didn’t allow himself to get excited yet. He wouldn’t let his guard down until Kevin was publicly in the care of his people, and maybe not even then. Luckily, Kevin had already given him the perfect lie. “There was a skateboarding accident,” he said. “Day fell and broke his hand. He’s staying with a family friend to recover.”
“That being you?”
David felt himself bristle. “Kayleigh and I were close,” he said. Closer than you, he didn’t say, mostly because he didn’t know that he believed it. “Kevin is a good kid.”
Moriyama hummed, deliberating. David held his breath. Just when he started to feel certain that there was no way in hell Moriyama was going to take the deal, he sighed. "I suppose that would be… amenable," he said.
"Amenable," David repeated. Something about the way he'd said it made David's skin crawl.
"Yes," Moriyama said. "For now."
David didn't like that either. But he hummed something along the lines of agreement and took half a step back towards the door to his bus. "Right," he said. "Well. I'll talk to you soon, I imagine."
"Yes," Moriyama said again. "You will."
David was saved from having to reply by the dial tone in his ear.
"Bastard," he muttered, shoving his phone back into his pocket. He rubbed his hands over his face. At least he'd gotten the man to agree to let Kevin stay with them for a while. David doubted it would be enough, but he'd cross that bridge when they came to it.
When David finally climbed back into the bus, he half-expected everything to have devolved into chaos. Luckily, things seemed mostly the same. Abby appeared to have cut Kevin's bloody hoodie off of him and put a temporary splint onto his broken hand. She'd also reset and splinted his nose. He was now wearing one of David's old band shirts and a pair of his Palmetto Records sweatpants. She'd scrubbed most of blood from his skin and hair, and cleaned and covered the open welts.
Without all the blood, he looked less like a horror movie victim, but that didn't mean he looked good. Whoever had hurt Kevin had clearly been brutal about it. It made David's heart hurt and his blood boil at the same time.
They'd moved from the small living space over to the dining table. Abby was gently trying to coax him into eating some of the cup noodles they kept in stock in both buses, but Kevin kept turning it down.
"I can't," he said. "I'm not… It's not allowed, I can't."
"Kevin," Abby pleaded quietly, "You need to eat something."
He shook his head, pushing the bowl of ramen back across the table with his unbroken hand. "I can't."
David sighed and dropped onto the bench beside Abby. "Day, if Abby says you need to eat, you need to eat," he said.
"At least a few bites," she said.
"I don't see why—"
"Humor us," David said.
Kevin stared between them for a long moment before his shoulders dropped. He took the fork with a shaking hand. After the first shaky bite, he dug in like a starving man.
"Slowly," Abby warned gently. Kevin listened, though not by much. She turned to David. "So?"
"I spoke to Moriyama," David started. He didn't like the way Kevin immediately went still, fork halfway between the cup and his mouth. "Day will be with us while he recovers. I plan to make sure it's longer than that."
"How?" Kevin asked, voice quiet. "Why would he… why would he agree to that?"
"Easier to keep things quiet this way," David answered grimly. He leaned forward, tilting his head so he could be sure that Kevin could see his face. "You'll stay with me until you're more on your feet. But that means you need to be honest with us. Who did this to you?"
"I can't tell you that," Kevin said, which was entirely unsurprising. David tried to shove down the frustration.
Abby put a hand on David's arm. "Was it someone on tour?" she asked "Someone we know?"
Kevin flinched, hard, and then nodded.
Abby frowned, but nodded like it confirmed something for her. David took a long breath and studied Kevin's face. He wondered, once again, about those parallel welts. Six long lines, across his face and arms, like he'd raised them to protect himself. They were accompanied by rounded bruises. Almost like… guitar strings.
There was a picture forming in his head. One that David didn't like the look of.
There were three people in Perfect Court, the pride and joy of both Moriyama Management and Evermore Records. Kevin, on guitar. Jean Moreau, the kid from France, on drums. And Riko Moriyama, on rhythm guitar and lead vocals.
Moreau was, by most accounts, a quiet kid who didn't speak a lot of English and got along well with Kevin. Riko was, by most accounts, charming but arrogant, in part because he had the skill to back it up. He'd been seen arguing with both of his bandmates backstage on a couple of occaisions, though the rumors were always shut down pretty quickly. The few session musicians who David had worked with who'd done work with Perfect Court didn't have many good things to say about the kid. And there were a couple of rumors… well, David listened to rumors for a living. There were a few that made his stomach turn, even though they were usually dismissed as false pretty quickly.
"Was it Riko?" he asked, as gently as he possibly could.
Kevin flinched again, this time so hard that Abby half rose in her seat, ready to steady him. Some of the ramen broth splashed out of the bowl as he dropped his fork entirely. It was more of an answer than any words would have been.
"And you're sure you don't want to talk to security?" Abby asked. She was staring at David, trying to communicate something with her eyes, but he refused to look away from Kevin's face. The kid had drawn further into himself once more, lowering his gaze to the tabletop.
He shook his head. "No. No one can know."
David resisted the urge to sigh. Logically, talking to security would put the tour in a very tricky situation, because kicking out Perfect Court would also mean alienating one of the biggest music labels in the country, let alone the scene. But it didn't feel right to let him just walk away.
"Okay," he said. "Can you tell us why?"
Kevin's frown deepened. He nodded slowly. His unbroken hand curled into a tight fist on the tabletop. "I can't… I'm only telling you this so that you can make an informed decision about letting me stay," he said, in a voice so quiet that David had to strain to hear him.
He sent a glance towards Abby. That didn't bode well. "Alright."
Kevin took a deep, shuddering breath. "The Moriyama family are one of the most powerful families in the world," he said. "Not just because of their business, not just because of Moriyama Music, but because… because Kengo Moriyama is the leader of the Mob."
Abby made a confused noise beside David. Kevin continued on like he hadn't heard her.
"They go back generations. They started in Japan but moved to the States a few decades ago, with the most recent one. There's two branches of the family. Kengo is the head of the main branch, which is why he runs the Moriyama corporation. Tetsuji is the head of the secondary branch, so he had the freedom to choose what he wanted to do — and he chose music. Riko's brother, Ichirou, will inherit the main branch when their father dies."
"Which makes Riko…?" David started to ask, though he didn't entirely know what answer he expected.
"The future heir of the secondary branch, yes," Kevin said. He bit down hard on his lower lip and returned to staring down at the table, seemingly done with explaining. David had a thousand more questions, but he assumed asking the the kid while he was still concussed and freshly traumatized wouldn't get him very far. He wondered, distantly, if Kayleigh knew about this. He prayed to God that she hadn't.
"Jesus Christ," David said, because that was really all there was to say to that. He'd known that Moriyama was bad news, but he hadn't thought he was mob boss bad. He thought back to their phone call and wondered if maybe he should have handled it a little differently.
"I understand if you don't want me to stay," Kevin said. He sounded so painfully young. "Just being here puts both of you at risk. I understand—"
"You're staying, kid," David said firmly. He wasn't going to throw a traumatized kid out on his ass. Especially not Kayleigh's son. "This is just… a lot to work through."
"I know," Kevin said. And then, quieter, "I'm sorry."
"Jesus, kid, nothing to be sorry about," David said.
"David," Abby cut in. "The boys will be back soon."
David followed her gaze to the clock on the wall, wincing at the time. She was right. They had maybe thirty minutes before the Monsters would be clambering back onto the bus for bed, probably off their asses in six different ways, and it woudn't be good for them to find Kevin Day sitting there when they did.
He ran a hand through his hair and thought mournfully of his aborted Twilight Zone marathon. David had a bad feeling it would be quite a while before he would have the chance to relax again. "Alright," he said. "Kevin, you'll take my bed in the back. I'll crash on the couch. I've done it before, so the Monsters shouldn't think that's strange. Abby, help him get settled in while I clean up out here."
Cleaning up the main area of the bus didn't take too long. He shoved Kevin's discarded hoodie deep into a black trash bag, along with any evidence of her first aid. He left her supplies a neat line next to her medical bag, because she'd kill him if he put things away wrong, but everything else had to go. The remaining ramen was buried in the depths of the tiny kitchen trash can, and the ice tossed out of the door to the bus. By the time he'd finished, Abby was reemerging from the back room with a tight look on her face.
"That poor kid," she said, shaking her head. "God, I can't imagine what he's been through."
"Too fucking much," David said. "You should get some rest. You did a lot of work tonight."
"Maybe you should raise my salary." It was a joke, but it fell flat in the heavy air that had fallen over them. She sighed. "We both know we won't be getting any rest anytime soon. We need to figure out what to do tomorrow."
"After the dumbasses are in bed," David said. They'd probably have to meet outside; with David in The Monsters' bus, and Abby staying with the Upperclassmen and Seth, there wouldn't be anywhere else that they could talk without the risk of being overheard. Hopefully they were far enough out in the bus lot that no one would notice them. "God, this is gonna be a long night."
"It already is," Abby said. She nodded towards the bedroom door. "You should say goodnight. It might make him feel better."
David grunted in something like agreement, waving her towards the door. "Maybe," he said. He caught her gently by the arm as she moved past him to repack her bag. "Thank you. For everything."
"Just doing my job," she said, but he could see the appreciation on her face.
"You and I both know this is all way outside of your payroll," David said with a low chuckle. "Hell, it's outside of mine."
Abby shook her head. "You're a good man, David Wymack," she said fondly, patting him on the shoulder. He watched her walk to the front of the bus for a moment before turning to the back room.
Kevin laying in middle of the large bed, propped up with every pillow David owned. He frowned at David as he came through the door. "I'm sorry for stealing your bed," he said. Everything the kid said was so quiet. It made David uncomfortable.
"It's not stealing if I offered it," David reminded him gently.
Surrounded by pillows and tucked carefully into the blankets, he looked like much younger than he was. David was reminded suddenly of the small boy he'd seen clinging to Kayleigh in the photographs. He'd been under the thumb of the Moriyamas for so long; longer than he'd ever gotten to know his mother. David could hope that Moriyama had treated him well, mob ties or not, but the proof that he hadn't was currently tucked into his bed.
"Your mother would be proud of you," David said, almost without thinking about it. Kevin's eyes widened and he jolted as if he'd been shocked.
"She would?"
"She always was," David promised. "Get some sleep, son. I'll come get you when it's all clear in the morning."
Kevin called a quiet goodnight as David stepped out of the back bedroom, flipping off the light as he went. He settled down in front of the television again. The DVD logo was still bouncing around the screen.
God, he needed a drink.