“Okay, guys,” Val said, motioning them to come closer to him. “We already discussed the plan yesterday, so just take a deep breath, go in there, and do what you do best.”
“Let’s go!” Aksel walked over to the stool prepared for him and grabbed his guitar.
Xander put the strap of his bass over his shoulder and gave Kaj a warning look as he sat behind the drums. He didn’t care about those silent threats, though. Kaj had agreed to behave, and he intended to—everyone had been working too hard to make this happen. But even if he ended up snapping at Noah and earned himself a Bruce Lee flying kick in the face from the bassist, it was fine. His life since Noah had inserted himself in it felt like he was trying to stand on a hammock all the time, equally dangerous and stupid. One more hit wouldn’t make that much of a difference.
Stray notes flew as they did one last soundcheck that served as a quick warm-up. It sounded like a drunken fair orchestra until, without sharing a word, Kaj tapped his drumsticks three times, and the chords of “Perennial” filled the room.
Save for Noah, the other three had been doing this for years. They were perfectly synchronized. Knew how to read each other to the point it felt intrusive sometimes. One look could hold a conversation no one else would understand. When they played together, it was as if the stars aligned, and magic happened.
Two camera guys were moving around inside the circle the musicians had created, filming them. A close-up of the drumsticks while Kaj softly hit the snare and hi-hats. Xander’s fingers plucking the most fluid and steady groove. Aksel’s pick smoothly strumming through the strings of his guitar. Noah…Fucking Noah.
His voice was immaculate, keeping a perfect cadence and tone as it weaved through the notes. Kaj had to admit that the way he meshed with the melody was bewildering, beautifully so.
One, two, three. One, two, three, four. One, two, three. One, two, three, four.
Kaj hadn’t needed to keep track of his moves or the metronome in ages, but with this man standing across from him in the room under the warm, slightly dimmed light, it was hard to focus. As usual, he was dressed in full black—boots, jeans with a chain attached to the belt, and a plain basic tee—but his aura today seemed different.
Confident. Relaxed. Daunting. He grazed and grabbed the pole of his microphone stand, changing the amount of pressure in time with his voice as he added more strength into a syllable, sustained the end of a word, or let out a breathy note. The way emotions screamed through his non-verbal language made Kaj’s stomach churn and his pulse speed up. He didn’t know what it was or why it was happening, but everyone else in the room faded out.
As they reached the first interlude, Kaj’s hands slightly trembled, which made the ghost notes alternated with rim clicks on the snare trickier than they should have been.
Then Aksel stepped on his pedal and his guitar roared, announcing the shift in the song right before Noah’s clean vocals roiled into brutal growls.
Crash and bass, crash and bass, bass, crash, snare, and bass.
A thrill zigzagged down Kaj’s spine. The control Noah had to project those kinds of sounds was fucking unorthodox. It pulled Kaj’s strings like a puppeteer, dragging him through the mud and forcing him to acknowledge things he didn’t want to admit, like how beautifully destructive his gaze was when their eyes locked.
Oxygen.
Heat.
Noah briefly bit his bottom lip.
Something combusted inside Kaj’s chest, triggering a rippling effect throughout his body.
Kaj hit the snare too hard.Fuck!
Frowning, he looked down at his hands, deliberately leaving Noah out of sight. He was supposed to be the backbone, the one guiding and controlling the rest through the piece. He couldn’t let this man affect him so much, no matter how fast his heart galloped or how uneasy he felt right now.
One, two, three. Ride and bass, ride, bass, ride and tom, bass.
Kaj’s breaths were shallow and erratic by the time they finished the bridge, almost choking on his own saliva when the outro hit.
Even though this was a live session, there was no way they would upload anything online without a little post-production and video editing. So, Noah had suggested he could sing this part as it was intended originally, then repeat it in several styles in the studio for them to overlap the different layers. He’d said it would add more texture to what was already a tremendous end. But fuck it if this wasn’t the best this track had ever sounded.
Noah’s ability to toggle between the deepest gutturals and clean vocals was mind-blowing, no matter how many times you heard him sing. Yet his belting notes today made goosebumps rise all over Kaj's skin. Maybe it was the atmosphere in the room, the dampness starting to break on his back, or that his brain was floating in a lagoon of pure ecstasy, but he didn’t own himself anymore. Not when Noah growled before sliding into a harrowing closing snarl.
As they repeated the song a few more times to have different camera angles to choose the best, snaking through guitar riffs and bass licks, Kaj abandoned himself to the rhythm.
Why fight something that was pulling from him with such force?
Why fight something that made him feel so fucking good?
Five
OfcourseKajwasstupid enough to show up at the party.
He wasn’t doing it because he thought he could handle himself, or because Björn had been spamming him with stickers. And definitely not because he gave a shit about reconnecting with people he hadn’t seen in months. No. He’d accepted this invitation to watch Noah outside the neutral area that was the rehearsal room.
