“I’m not asking you to do anything.”
“But you will.”
“How do you know?”
Silence, but it wasn’t silent. Shay stepped impossibly closer to Ollie, and the thunder in his ears was too loud to be his heart beating alone. He gripped Ollie’s wrists, his fingers sliding under Ollie’s coat and then his ever-present hoodie. Ollie’s breath caught, but he didn’t wrench his arms free.
Emboldened, Shay stretched his fingers as far as they’d go, ghosting over smooth warmth until the landscape changed. His fingertips found raised flesh and ruined skin. Found heartache and pain. Ollie’s pain. A hot trickle carved its way down Shay’s face. A single tear dripped onto Ollie’s exposed wrist, but he still didn’t open his eyes.
Shay stilled his fingers and kissed Ollie’s jaw. He pressed his cheek against Ollie’s and then laid a palm over his heart, as if he could slow it down by wordlessly asking. “Life goes on, Ollie,” he whispered. “Even when you’ve given up living.”
Predictably, Ollie said nothing, and for once Shay was glad of it.
* * *
Shay heftedLarry’s bass drum up the steps to the stage. The band were throwing everything at tonight’s show, and despite Fred and Khalid’s best efforts, even with Ollie’s help, everyone had to pitch in.
It was hard work, and Shay was glad of the distraction. It had been two days since they’d left Sunderland, and two days since he’d shared anything more than benign conversation with Ollie. Were it not for the note Ollie had left tucked into Shay’s favourite lyric book, he’d have lost his damn mind.
Give me time.
From anyone else, it might not have meant much, but from Ollie, it meant everything, even if time was in short supply. They were in Cardiff now, with less than a fortnight left on the tour, and Ollie’s words echoed ominously in his head every time he found himself unoccupied.“What the fuck do you think is going to happen next?”
Something. Everything. Shay wished he’d had the balls to say so instead of shoving his hands up Ollie’s sleeves and trying to force the one thing Ollie had explicitly promised would never happen.
He’s never even shown his mum.
That bothered Shay almost more than anything else.
Almost because Shay was struggling to picture a reality that didn’t include building on the inferno Ollie lit inside him with every kiss, and he felt like shit for it.
And yet he couldn’t stop.
He dragged the bass drum into position. In his peripheral vision, he was aware of Ollie climbing the steps on the right-hand side of the stage, loaded down by a guitar and a case containing Shay’s collection of woodwind instruments. He was wearing his battered leather jacket, his aviator shades still in place from the long drive down from Sunderland. The huge Cardiff venue faded away. To Shay, Ollie seemed to be on the wrong side of the road, where they were destined to pass like ships in the night.
Ollie sensed Shay’s gaze on him and smiled. Shay smiled back, but with Ollie sleeping in his own bunk again, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Where do you want these?”
Shay jumped. Somehow Ollie had come up on him in three seconds flat. “What?”
“Your guitar and whatever’s in this.” Ollie held up the woodwind case.
Shay pointed at the loose stage position he usually began every show with. It wasn’t set in stone, but he knew Ollie well enough to guess he wouldn’t have the patience for vague answers right now. Not when he seemed to be coordinating the entire gig setup while Shay angsted himself into a hypo.Dammit.
Aware there was little time before soundcheck, Shay left the stage and found some privacy to get himself together. He ate enough to keep him going well into the evening, calculated his insulin dose, and shot it into his abdomen.
He packed his kit away and found a sink to wash his hands. The finger he’d drawn blood from throbbed. Somehow he’d lost the knack for testing himself without pain, and it wasn’t hard to trace it back to the few times Ollie had done it for him. His gentle touch had eclipsed anything Shay could do for himself, and now every jab in his fingertip felt like a fucking snakebite.
Drama queen.But still.
Shay returned to the stage. It was deserted—the rest of the band likely doing the same as him, without the minuscule bloodbath. He climbed the steps and drifted to the middle of the stage. The venue was the biggest they’d played so far—the biggest they’deverplayed—and Shay couldn’t deny he was nervous. Intimate gigs were his jam, or storming smaller venues with a riotous set, boots stomping, beer flying all over the place. With its rows and rows of stadium-style seats and contained standing area at the front, the Cardiff venue was a different league. A step up. What if they couldn’t find the magic that had propelled them this far? What if they weren’t ready?
Breathing deeply, Shay lay down on the stage. The weathered wood felt good against his back, and he closed his eyes. Some days he thought he could pinpoint the exact moment Ollie had taken over his every errant thought. Others, he wasn’t altogether sure how he’d come to be on the brink of the biggest gig of his life with so many other things on his mind.
Someone lay down beside him. Before the tour it would’ve been Jumbo. Now it was Ollie, the warmth of his body torturously close, but not close enough.
Shay didn’t open his eyes, and Ollie didn’t speak. For long minutes they lay in their own brand of typical silence, both soothing and frightening… and utterly consuming.
