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suitably_heroicTheir first album had been considered uneven, but people had liked it well enough. Something felt different about this go-around, though Jack couldn’t put his finger on it. It was just in the air, that first day. An energy. Something alive, jumping up and down in the corner.
They rolled into the studio on a Monday with all their gear. The Fools were loose, in as much as they ever were; Trent had brought a few more stickers to slap onto his bass, which he was taking to with military precision. Jill got a few extra licks in on the kick under the guise of setting up, and Dane spent his time in soundcheck making breezy jokes about the dark hole they were hiding in on this pretty spring day.
Jack did none of those things. He drank a lot of water, and stared at his notebook and all his scribbles. Songs were supposed to be done when you went in to record, right? So why couldn’t he stop messing around in the margins? “‘This one thought that’s gone astray’? What the fuck was I thinking?” he muttered, chewing on the cap of his pen. “‘Won’t go away’ is easier–”
“Less pretentious,” Johanna, their producer, agreed. “You can keep messing around for a while. It’s not set until it’s set.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jack muttered. It still felt like a failing. Maybe if he–-
Trent’s bass hit the opening riff of ‘Broadway’ hard, with a downright unnecessary amount of punk attitude. The noise nearly sent Jack jumping out of his seat. “Space!” he snapped. “Asshole!”
“Did you just use ‘space’ as an expletive?”
“Shut up,” he said. “Shut up.”
It was on.
---
Something wasn’t working about ‘We just live’. Jack hadn’t been able to tell them exactly what, besides something something too cloying something, but he’d sent Jill and Trent out of the studio space anyway. And you know, that was fine.
Well, Jill thought it was, anyway. Their bassist was another story, stalking up and down the control room. Probably full of ideas. Yeah, Jill got that. But she grabbed him by the sleeve on the twentieth go-around, and shot him a look.
Out there in the studio, in the corner of her eye, she caught Dane was working the guitar slowly; Jack’s fingers kept lingering over the keys of his digital piano. They were getting somewhere, it was just chugging.
“Let the boys handle it,” she said, quiet.
“Why?” Trent asked, his attention whipping away from the studio to her. “I’m a boy, too.”
By which he meant the song needed more than just those two instruments, and if there wasn’t space for drums, there should at least be bass, and blah blah, big testosterone trip, whatever. Jill rolled her eyes. “No, Trent. You are a man. A very weird man,” she said, pointing at him with a drumstick. “They are the boys.”
It got her an owlish look. “Is that good or bad?”
“Neutral,” she said, and threw the drumstick at him. “Now sit down and wait for them to figure out they need their rhythm section naturally. There's a 7/8 in there that's calling my name but they haven't heard it yet." She shook her head, and looked back towards the studio. "This shit has a vibe that is prime 'Lateralus'-era Tool and I am aching.”
-
The last 'tick tick tick' went drifting out into the ether. It still sounded off. Flimsy. Jack gave his microphone a shove of frustration and settled back, kicking at the wall of the studio.
Over to his right, Dane looked at him, infuriatingly calm about this absolute ruin of a take. “Honey,” he said. “Sweetums. Baby–”
Eeeugugugh. Jack scowled, and contemplating throwing something. He settled for, “I swear I will scream and walk out of this building if you keep going.”
Dane grinned. “Look, I see your brain working, and I appreciate the obsession with detail you clearly have going on right now,” he said. “But I think you’re forgetting the most important thing on this track. And for the next one, actually.”
“What, huh?”
Dane's chair creaked as he got out of it, and set his guitar down on the floor. He took a few steps, and then sank down just far enough to look Jack in the eye. His expression was serious.
“You are an asshole,” he said. “Just keep singing like one and we'll be all right.” He patted Jack's knee. “Especially on the one you literally called 'Still an asshole'.”
“I hate you,” Jack sighed, but he felt a pressure lifting from his shoulders anyway.
Behind them, Trent ran through the bassline again, playing the notes looser, stranger.
---
“Holy shit, put your headphones on and listen to this!” Jill cackled. Her drum tunnel extended a couple of feet from her set, making her look like the conductor of a little tent-city orchestra. She hit the pedal on the kickdrum hard, and then her sticks hit the rim of the snare, and--
“I'm not sure 'Another body' was meant to be played that fast,” Dane murmured. “But I kinda like it?”
---
They were midway through 'Look Up' when the phone jingle cut through the air. A loud “Fuck!” echoed through the room from the direction of the drum kit. Jack's hand scrambled for his phone, but the screen was black, set to silent, and he looked up to meet Dane's questioning eyes--
“Hello?” Trent's voice sounded faintly frantic. Jack looked over his shoulder and watched him pace. “How's she doing? Okay. Okay. Yeah, of course you can try a new regimen. You think-- is she going to remember...”
Okay. That did feel maybe a touch personal.
A creak, and that was Dane getting up, quietly slipping out of the room. Trying to make space, give Trent some privacy. Probably a good idea. Jack looked over at the drum set and saw that Jill had already gone.
Great. Now he was the asshole.
He got up, and--
“Okay. Bye.”
Trent slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked up, but he didn't really seem to see Jack. Something in his eyes flickered, a vague fog that cleared only somewhat as he shook his head. “Don't worry,” he said absently. “It's fine. I just gotta say a quick prayer to Mike Dirnt.” He reached down, to take the amp plug out of his bass.
Was he dismissed? Didn't quite sound like it.
He opened his mouth to ask, but the question was interrupted by the metallic sound of an unplugged bass string. A familiar bass melody, climbing up and down. Their weirdo bassist had always had his own way of doing things, and sometimes he was hard to read. Was this a private moment, or an invitation?
Fuck it. Time to stop second-guessing. The melody compelled him.
"My friend drove off the other day, now he's gone and all they say is you got to live 'cause life goes on," Jack sang, moving just a few steps so he could park his shoulder against the wall and watch Trent work. They weren't thinking about the same ghosts, the same lost connections, he knew that. But...
"And now I see I'm mortal, too, I can't live my life like you. Got to live it up while life goes on..."
Was that a small smile tugging on Trent's mouth? "And I think it's all right..."
No, it was harmony.
Jack huffed a loud breath through his nose, nearly disrupting the melody. "That I do what I like..." He caught it by the tail, though. And so they stood there for a little while, blowing through the most half-assed version of 'J.A.R.' on the planet.
Trent was a little sharper, after that.
---
Jill shoved the bass drum forward. She hit the pedal and winced. She pulled the bass drum back a few inches. She hit the pedal and winced.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," she grumbled.
She moved the bass drum to the side. It bumped into her snare, and that made a racket that ran right through the studio, and-- "Why can't I get this fucking thing to sound right?" she snarled.
"You want me to get some blankets?" Jack asked. He walked towards her, all casual, hands in his pockets.
Jill looked up at him, squinting. "I'm not about to take a nap."
"For a drum tunnel," he specified. "You know, like Nirvana on 'Nevermind'."
"Huh," Jill exhaled, settling back. She blinked owlishly. "Well, if it was good enough for Dave Grohl..."
---
“I go down, I get up–,” Jack snapped into the microphone. “No. Wait. Spin that back. I go down, I get up, blood spray, skin spl– Fuck!”
Why wasn’t this working?! “Space,” he growled, softer.
He glared at the microphone. This wasn’t going to work. This wasn’t supposed to sound self-pitying or edgy, it was declarative, a little angry. Why couldn’t he–
There was a thunk against the glass of his recording booth. He shot up, eyes wide, and found himself meeting Trent’s steady, vaguely annoyed gaze. “What the fuck, man?” Jack asked.
Trent didn’t answer. He picked a string, pressing the bass guitar up against the door. “What the hell are you thinking?” Jack snarled. “You’re gonna hear it in the rec–- ugh, this is not the time!”
Okay, he only heard it a little bit in here. Still. But it didn’t seem to stop Trent. Trent just kept going. “Space,” Jack said, running his fingers through his hair. “This is the stupidest–-”
He took a deep breath. Focus. They only had an hour left in the booth, he could not let Trent’s fucking around get to him. He leaned back in. “I go down, I get up, blood spray, skin split, gore and grit. I go down, I get up, I’m a boxer–”
Wait. Holy shit. There it was.
Ten minutes later, he swung open the door. “Fuck you,” he said.
Trent flipped him the bird. “Got it,” he said.
---
The album was half done. Johanna, their producer, had gotten up to go for a smoke. And Jack and Dane, for their part, had landed on the tech side of the recording booth, watching Jill and Trent do what they’d been doing between takes: messing around with the existing tracks. Playing things faster, messier.
The bassline from ‘I’m not here to fix you’ was something else at 150 beats per minute. Raw. It was kind of cool, actually. Especially with Jill fucking around with the rhythms from ‘Another body’ at speed. They kind of clashed, except for when they didn’t. And somewhere in that five-minute window, the didn’t started to overpower the clash.
There was something about it. Jack looked over at Dane, and saw the same thing flashing in his eyes.
He gave Dane’s knee a nudge with his own. “You know you wanna get in there,” he said. “Go mess it up.”
Dane snorted, but the smile he flashed Jack was clearly not as wry as what he’d been shooting for. “Fine, but if J yells at us for fucking around, it’s on you.”
He watched Dane get up, and thought: I haven’t seen him this loose in a long time. Not outside, anyway. It was a good look. And somehow, somewhere, Jack felt like he got it. Maybe he felt looser too.
Out there, in the recording space, Dane grabbed his guitar and hit the riff from ‘Another body’. It went hard. He found the edges of it a second later, the places where it - and its fucking E minor progression, every single time on this fucking record, Jack swore to the Force - overlapped with some of the other tracks. Trying to make it blend along with whatever Trent and Jill were doing.
That stopped clashing after a while, too. It sounded… it was some kind of insane remix of a lot of what they’d been doing, but there were smiles on everyone’s faces. He watched Dane’s foot tap along with the rhythm, and something in Jack’s chest violently assaulted his ribcage.
It was noise. Joyous, angry noise, like mid-80s melodic punk bands and thrash metal, late 90s pop punkers screaming about the way of the world, complicated rhythms throwing you off. The memory of Sparkle bitching about preparing for the noise in a car on a road a long time ago hit Jack like a speeder shooting across the empty fields of Dantooine; he felt out of breath.
He’d come here to root around in the debris of himself, to find whatever pieces of actually-him were still left. And this was one of them. This was a part of it. The one thing even his parents hadn’t managed to squeeze out of him, the thing they couldn’t handle. Noise.
He leaned into the microphone by the console. “Dane, since when are you scared of distortion or something? Throw it up another step, I’m getting an idea.”
He grabbed his notepad and sank back down in his chair, chewing on the tip of his pen. The guitar revved up like a wall of force. The corners of his mouth turned up. He hit the record button. (Johanna would probably want to make them record it properly later. He didn’t care. He just wanted to preserve this.)
This one wasn’t for the ghosts. This one was for the little kid who listened to loud Trandoshan rock tunes in his room until his parents yelled and sent him out onto the street to cause trouble.
A couple moments later, he pushed open the door to a creak and slipped in. Held up a hand to let them know to just. Keep going.
“Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,” he snarled into the microphone. “You’re just another body, you’re just another body, you think it fucking matters? Get up off the floor. Tick tick tick, tick, is there anyone alive in there? Go on, get up, feel gore and grit.”
Oh, yeah. He felt this one. Down to his bones. No more introspection, no more dumpster diving into his stupid psyche. It was time to run. The noise burst to life around him and he was roaring bits and pieces into the microphone, shaping a whole new whole.
“Guilt’s got nothing on the architecture of shame, the scaffolding that held me contained. But if this body keeps walking out of the flames, then I’ve got to be worth something, no mistake.”
Jill’s kickdrum went nuts. Trent had ditched the syncopation of the verse for something low and fast and simple. And Jack, feral grin on his face, he yelled. “So look! Up!”
And silence.
He was panting. He looked at Dane and found a wild smile there, vivid and full of life, equal parts exhilaration and admiration and fuck if he didn’t know what to do with that. But also fuck like he didn’t care what to do with that, just for once.
“And that’s our burnt ends,” Jack panted, and looked up.
Where Johanna sure was staring at them.
Oh, yeah. This was going to work.
---
It was late at night on a Sunday, and the two of them had been the last to lock up. Jack was aching for a shower - the sweat of hours of performing clung to him in bad ways, and he suspected Dane wasn’t any different. But the cold air of the evening helped, chilling him back down.
They walked to the subway - if they were lucky, they’d catch the A train heading out. Jack had his hands stuck down his pockets; Dane took his hat off and put it back on at least five times on the way.
“So,” Dane said, finally, “That last one was something.” He looked at Jack, his brow lightly furrowed, and added, “How are you feeling about it?”
Heh. What a question. Almost caught him by surprise, and it wrenched a wry smile out of Jack. “Feels like I’m 41 and I’ve finally made it to my thirties,” he said. He thought about it. About the jittering anxiety beforehand, the real desire to get this right, the way the tension had slowly seeped out of him. “Overall? Alive, in my skin, and confident enough to enjoy my life.”
Dane laughed. “Yeah, I feel that,” he said. He grinned. “Hey, look. We made it. To thirty, but still, that’s a long way to go.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Jack said, but he didn’t have it in him to cut that down, not even with a toothless sarcastic retort. “How about you? Are you still feeling it?”
“Well, I texted Shelley.” Dane’s tongue clacked. “Told her I finally wanted to have that conversation. I think that ‘Burnt Ends’ thing knocked something loose.”
“How are you feeling about it?” Jack asked. “The, uh. Conversation with your sister, I mean.”
“Hopeful?” Dane tried. He looked up at the sky, the moon between the buildings. “Yeah. Hopeful, for once.”
“Shit,” Jack said.
Another soft laugh. “Yeah, I know,” Dane said. “I still have time to do a full 180 in the other direction if I wanna, though.”
“Wouldn’t take that from you,” Jack said, and reached for his hand, and gave it a squeeze. “But hey, let me know if you need to pressure valve it before you go in, okay?”
Dane looked back at him, and smiled. His voice was soft. “Okay.”
[[ establishy, nfb due to distance as always ]]
They rolled into the studio on a Monday with all their gear. The Fools were loose, in as much as they ever were; Trent had brought a few more stickers to slap onto his bass, which he was taking to with military precision. Jill got a few extra licks in on the kick under the guise of setting up, and Dane spent his time in soundcheck making breezy jokes about the dark hole they were hiding in on this pretty spring day.
Jack did none of those things. He drank a lot of water, and stared at his notebook and all his scribbles. Songs were supposed to be done when you went in to record, right? So why couldn’t he stop messing around in the margins? “‘This one thought that’s gone astray’? What the fuck was I thinking?” he muttered, chewing on the cap of his pen. “‘Won’t go away’ is easier–”
“Less pretentious,” Johanna, their producer, agreed. “You can keep messing around for a while. It’s not set until it’s set.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jack muttered. It still felt like a failing. Maybe if he–-
Trent’s bass hit the opening riff of ‘Broadway’ hard, with a downright unnecessary amount of punk attitude. The noise nearly sent Jack jumping out of his seat. “Space!” he snapped. “Asshole!”
“Did you just use ‘space’ as an expletive?”
“Shut up,” he said. “Shut up.”
It was on.
Something wasn’t working about ‘We just live’. Jack hadn’t been able to tell them exactly what, besides something something too cloying something, but he’d sent Jill and Trent out of the studio space anyway. And you know, that was fine.
Well, Jill thought it was, anyway. Their bassist was another story, stalking up and down the control room. Probably full of ideas. Yeah, Jill got that. But she grabbed him by the sleeve on the twentieth go-around, and shot him a look.
Out there in the studio, in the corner of her eye, she caught Dane was working the guitar slowly; Jack’s fingers kept lingering over the keys of his digital piano. They were getting somewhere, it was just chugging.
“Let the boys handle it,” she said, quiet.
“Why?” Trent asked, his attention whipping away from the studio to her. “I’m a boy, too.”
By which he meant the song needed more than just those two instruments, and if there wasn’t space for drums, there should at least be bass, and blah blah, big testosterone trip, whatever. Jill rolled her eyes. “No, Trent. You are a man. A very weird man,” she said, pointing at him with a drumstick. “They are the boys.”
It got her an owlish look. “Is that good or bad?”
“Neutral,” she said, and threw the drumstick at him. “Now sit down and wait for them to figure out they need their rhythm section naturally. There's a 7/8 in there that's calling my name but they haven't heard it yet." She shook her head, and looked back towards the studio. "This shit has a vibe that is prime 'Lateralus'-era Tool and I am aching.”
-
The last 'tick tick tick' went drifting out into the ether. It still sounded off. Flimsy. Jack gave his microphone a shove of frustration and settled back, kicking at the wall of the studio.
Over to his right, Dane looked at him, infuriatingly calm about this absolute ruin of a take. “Honey,” he said. “Sweetums. Baby–”
Eeeugugugh. Jack scowled, and contemplating throwing something. He settled for, “I swear I will scream and walk out of this building if you keep going.”
Dane grinned. “Look, I see your brain working, and I appreciate the obsession with detail you clearly have going on right now,” he said. “But I think you’re forgetting the most important thing on this track. And for the next one, actually.”
“What, huh?”
Dane's chair creaked as he got out of it, and set his guitar down on the floor. He took a few steps, and then sank down just far enough to look Jack in the eye. His expression was serious.
“You are an asshole,” he said. “Just keep singing like one and we'll be all right.” He patted Jack's knee. “Especially on the one you literally called 'Still an asshole'.”
“I hate you,” Jack sighed, but he felt a pressure lifting from his shoulders anyway.
Behind them, Trent ran through the bassline again, playing the notes looser, stranger.
“Holy shit, put your headphones on and listen to this!” Jill cackled. Her drum tunnel extended a couple of feet from her set, making her look like the conductor of a little tent-city orchestra. She hit the pedal on the kickdrum hard, and then her sticks hit the rim of the snare, and--
“I'm not sure 'Another body' was meant to be played that fast,” Dane murmured. “But I kinda like it?”
They were midway through 'Look Up' when the phone jingle cut through the air. A loud “Fuck!” echoed through the room from the direction of the drum kit. Jack's hand scrambled for his phone, but the screen was black, set to silent, and he looked up to meet Dane's questioning eyes--
“Hello?” Trent's voice sounded faintly frantic. Jack looked over his shoulder and watched him pace. “How's she doing? Okay. Okay. Yeah, of course you can try a new regimen. You think-- is she going to remember...”
Okay. That did feel maybe a touch personal.
A creak, and that was Dane getting up, quietly slipping out of the room. Trying to make space, give Trent some privacy. Probably a good idea. Jack looked over at the drum set and saw that Jill had already gone.
Great. Now he was the asshole.
He got up, and--
“Okay. Bye.”
Trent slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked up, but he didn't really seem to see Jack. Something in his eyes flickered, a vague fog that cleared only somewhat as he shook his head. “Don't worry,” he said absently. “It's fine. I just gotta say a quick prayer to Mike Dirnt.” He reached down, to take the amp plug out of his bass.
Was he dismissed? Didn't quite sound like it.
He opened his mouth to ask, but the question was interrupted by the metallic sound of an unplugged bass string. A familiar bass melody, climbing up and down. Their weirdo bassist had always had his own way of doing things, and sometimes he was hard to read. Was this a private moment, or an invitation?
Fuck it. Time to stop second-guessing. The melody compelled him.
"My friend drove off the other day, now he's gone and all they say is you got to live 'cause life goes on," Jack sang, moving just a few steps so he could park his shoulder against the wall and watch Trent work. They weren't thinking about the same ghosts, the same lost connections, he knew that. But...
"And now I see I'm mortal, too, I can't live my life like you. Got to live it up while life goes on..."
Was that a small smile tugging on Trent's mouth? "And I think it's all right..."
No, it was harmony.
Jack huffed a loud breath through his nose, nearly disrupting the melody. "That I do what I like..." He caught it by the tail, though. And so they stood there for a little while, blowing through the most half-assed version of 'J.A.R.' on the planet.
Trent was a little sharper, after that.
Jill shoved the bass drum forward. She hit the pedal and winced. She pulled the bass drum back a few inches. She hit the pedal and winced.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," she grumbled.
She moved the bass drum to the side. It bumped into her snare, and that made a racket that ran right through the studio, and-- "Why can't I get this fucking thing to sound right?" she snarled.
"You want me to get some blankets?" Jack asked. He walked towards her, all casual, hands in his pockets.
Jill looked up at him, squinting. "I'm not about to take a nap."
"For a drum tunnel," he specified. "You know, like Nirvana on 'Nevermind'."
"Huh," Jill exhaled, settling back. She blinked owlishly. "Well, if it was good enough for Dave Grohl..."
“I go down, I get up–,” Jack snapped into the microphone. “No. Wait. Spin that back. I go down, I get up, blood spray, skin spl– Fuck!”
Why wasn’t this working?! “Space,” he growled, softer.
He glared at the microphone. This wasn’t going to work. This wasn’t supposed to sound self-pitying or edgy, it was declarative, a little angry. Why couldn’t he–
There was a thunk against the glass of his recording booth. He shot up, eyes wide, and found himself meeting Trent’s steady, vaguely annoyed gaze. “What the fuck, man?” Jack asked.
Trent didn’t answer. He picked a string, pressing the bass guitar up against the door. “What the hell are you thinking?” Jack snarled. “You’re gonna hear it in the rec–- ugh, this is not the time!”
Okay, he only heard it a little bit in here. Still. But it didn’t seem to stop Trent. Trent just kept going. “Space,” Jack said, running his fingers through his hair. “This is the stupidest–-”
He took a deep breath. Focus. They only had an hour left in the booth, he could not let Trent’s fucking around get to him. He leaned back in. “I go down, I get up, blood spray, skin split, gore and grit. I go down, I get up, I’m a boxer–”
Wait. Holy shit. There it was.
Ten minutes later, he swung open the door. “Fuck you,” he said.
Trent flipped him the bird. “Got it,” he said.
The album was half done. Johanna, their producer, had gotten up to go for a smoke. And Jack and Dane, for their part, had landed on the tech side of the recording booth, watching Jill and Trent do what they’d been doing between takes: messing around with the existing tracks. Playing things faster, messier.
The bassline from ‘I’m not here to fix you’ was something else at 150 beats per minute. Raw. It was kind of cool, actually. Especially with Jill fucking around with the rhythms from ‘Another body’ at speed. They kind of clashed, except for when they didn’t. And somewhere in that five-minute window, the didn’t started to overpower the clash.
There was something about it. Jack looked over at Dane, and saw the same thing flashing in his eyes.
He gave Dane’s knee a nudge with his own. “You know you wanna get in there,” he said. “Go mess it up.”
Dane snorted, but the smile he flashed Jack was clearly not as wry as what he’d been shooting for. “Fine, but if J yells at us for fucking around, it’s on you.”
He watched Dane get up, and thought: I haven’t seen him this loose in a long time. Not outside, anyway. It was a good look. And somehow, somewhere, Jack felt like he got it. Maybe he felt looser too.
Out there, in the recording space, Dane grabbed his guitar and hit the riff from ‘Another body’. It went hard. He found the edges of it a second later, the places where it - and its fucking E minor progression, every single time on this fucking record, Jack swore to the Force - overlapped with some of the other tracks. Trying to make it blend along with whatever Trent and Jill were doing.
That stopped clashing after a while, too. It sounded… it was some kind of insane remix of a lot of what they’d been doing, but there were smiles on everyone’s faces. He watched Dane’s foot tap along with the rhythm, and something in Jack’s chest violently assaulted his ribcage.
It was noise. Joyous, angry noise, like mid-80s melodic punk bands and thrash metal, late 90s pop punkers screaming about the way of the world, complicated rhythms throwing you off. The memory of Sparkle bitching about preparing for the noise in a car on a road a long time ago hit Jack like a speeder shooting across the empty fields of Dantooine; he felt out of breath.
He’d come here to root around in the debris of himself, to find whatever pieces of actually-him were still left. And this was one of them. This was a part of it. The one thing even his parents hadn’t managed to squeeze out of him, the thing they couldn’t handle. Noise.
He leaned into the microphone by the console. “Dane, since when are you scared of distortion or something? Throw it up another step, I’m getting an idea.”
He grabbed his notepad and sank back down in his chair, chewing on the tip of his pen. The guitar revved up like a wall of force. The corners of his mouth turned up. He hit the record button. (Johanna would probably want to make them record it properly later. He didn’t care. He just wanted to preserve this.)
This one wasn’t for the ghosts. This one was for the little kid who listened to loud Trandoshan rock tunes in his room until his parents yelled and sent him out onto the street to cause trouble.
A couple moments later, he pushed open the door to a creak and slipped in. Held up a hand to let them know to just. Keep going.
“Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,” he snarled into the microphone. “You’re just another body, you’re just another body, you think it fucking matters? Get up off the floor. Tick tick tick, tick, is there anyone alive in there? Go on, get up, feel gore and grit.”
Oh, yeah. He felt this one. Down to his bones. No more introspection, no more dumpster diving into his stupid psyche. It was time to run. The noise burst to life around him and he was roaring bits and pieces into the microphone, shaping a whole new whole.
“Guilt’s got nothing on the architecture of shame, the scaffolding that held me contained. But if this body keeps walking out of the flames, then I’ve got to be worth something, no mistake.”
Jill’s kickdrum went nuts. Trent had ditched the syncopation of the verse for something low and fast and simple. And Jack, feral grin on his face, he yelled. “So look! Up!”
And silence.
He was panting. He looked at Dane and found a wild smile there, vivid and full of life, equal parts exhilaration and admiration and fuck if he didn’t know what to do with that. But also fuck like he didn’t care what to do with that, just for once.
“And that’s our burnt ends,” Jack panted, and looked up.
Where Johanna sure was staring at them.
Oh, yeah. This was going to work.
It was late at night on a Sunday, and the two of them had been the last to lock up. Jack was aching for a shower - the sweat of hours of performing clung to him in bad ways, and he suspected Dane wasn’t any different. But the cold air of the evening helped, chilling him back down.
They walked to the subway - if they were lucky, they’d catch the A train heading out. Jack had his hands stuck down his pockets; Dane took his hat off and put it back on at least five times on the way.
“So,” Dane said, finally, “That last one was something.” He looked at Jack, his brow lightly furrowed, and added, “How are you feeling about it?”
Heh. What a question. Almost caught him by surprise, and it wrenched a wry smile out of Jack. “Feels like I’m 41 and I’ve finally made it to my thirties,” he said. He thought about it. About the jittering anxiety beforehand, the real desire to get this right, the way the tension had slowly seeped out of him. “Overall? Alive, in my skin, and confident enough to enjoy my life.”
Dane laughed. “Yeah, I feel that,” he said. He grinned. “Hey, look. We made it. To thirty, but still, that’s a long way to go.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Jack said, but he didn’t have it in him to cut that down, not even with a toothless sarcastic retort. “How about you? Are you still feeling it?”
“Well, I texted Shelley.” Dane’s tongue clacked. “Told her I finally wanted to have that conversation. I think that ‘Burnt Ends’ thing knocked something loose.”
“How are you feeling about it?” Jack asked. “The, uh. Conversation with your sister, I mean.”
“Hopeful?” Dane tried. He looked up at the sky, the moon between the buildings. “Yeah. Hopeful, for once.”
“Shit,” Jack said.
Another soft laugh. “Yeah, I know,” Dane said. “I still have time to do a full 180 in the other direction if I wanna, though.”
“Wouldn’t take that from you,” Jack said, and reached for his hand, and gave it a squeeze. “But hey, let me know if you need to pressure valve it before you go in, okay?”
Dane looked back at him, and smiled. His voice was soft. “Okay.”
[[ establishy, nfb due to distance as always ]]
