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Wrapt	By : beautifulliar Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Nine Inch Nails Views: 1949 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Nine Inch Nails. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Wrapt - Part Two

Outside in the concrete block hallway, packed on both sides with rolling crates and cases, Jeordie experienced a surreal break from everyday reality. He could see it, touch it, hear it—

“Hey, where ya been, brah?” Aaron asked, a guitar neck in his fist. The guitar’s strap dragged the floor as he swaggered alongside Jeordie. Beer in a half-empty Dixie cup clutched in his other hand sloshed against the plastic sides, but not high enough to spill out.

Jeordie pointed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the restrooms.

“Okay, so you don’t want to tell me. I get it,” Aaron said, and by the time “get it” was out of his mouth, he was already stopping to talk to someone else.

Jeordie, feeling as though he was encased in an invisible bubble, kept walking. He rubbed his thumbs against the front of his jeans.

“Nearly ready?” he heard Alessandro calling to Josh, Alessandro bending forward as he spoke, putting his face less than a foot and a half from Josh’s.

Josh was fishing around in a black sack. He said something in response to Alessandro, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as Alessandro’s question had been. The sounds rolled formless down the sides of Jeordie’s invisible bubble.

The hallway T’d. Jeordie swung left, toward the sound of canned music playing and the whistles and calls of the audience. His shoulder banged the wall. He caromed slowly back to the middle of the corridor.

A little ways further down, before the corridor opened up to more of an open area than what could be called a room, before that, his other shoulder banged the opposite wall. It brought him to a stop. He leaned there, shoulder against painted concrete block, and stared ahead at nothing.

“You all right?” Alessando yelled, even louder than he’d yelled toward Josh; Jeordie guessed it was because they were now even closer to the noise. Alessandro put a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Jeordie said, pushing a hand through his hair. The hand felt like it was on a low vibrate setting. He dropped it and pushed his fingers into his front pocket. He grinned sheepishly—or what felt like ‘sheepishly’—and said, “I’m good. Just out of it, a little.”

“I told you to get to bed this morning!” Alessandro, shook a finger at him. “But no, ‘One more level. I’m just gonna beat this one more level.’” He pantomimed having a PS2 controller in his hand—he hunched his shoulders and worked the imaginary controller furiously. “‘I just have to kill the big boss!’”

The muscles in Jeordie’s face eased up a little; his smile felt more natural. “You’re right, man. I should have listened to you.”

“Just don’t fall asleep on the stage, okay? It would be up on YouTube tomorrow, and we’ll never let you live it down.” He gave Jeordie a light shove in the chest and walked back up the hall, calling out to Josh.

Jeordie cocked an elbow and reached back to scratch between his shoulder blades. A yawn crept over him. Maybe there was some credence to Alessandro’s video game theory. If he’d had more than three hours of sleep, how differently would it all have gone down? If he’d been less sluggish then maybe the “See, the thing is” speech would have made it past the bottom of his throat…. He yawned again. When it was out of his system, he turned and headed back up the hall.

“Where are you going?” Alessandro called out as he passed.

“Energy drink.”

“Yes, well, drink it fast! We’re about to go on!”

Jeordie flashed an “okay” sign without looking back at the same time that Aaron yelled—at Alessandro—“Brah! What’s up with the volume?”

“Sorry! Stuffy ears!”

A sound or a movement or a shadow brought Jeordie’s gaze up; a split second later, Trent emerged from a doorway ahead, pulling on a fresh t-shirt while their tour manager talked at him. Jeordie tried to look normal, which meant finding a place for his gaze somewhere between very far from Trent at all and staring fixedly at him.

He nodded as Trent approached.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Trent said, passing him, speaking without turning his head.

“Energy drink,” he said, miming tipping a can up to his mouth, but Trent was still walking away.

“Make it quick!”

Jeordie watched Trent’s fingers reach behind him to straighten out his t-shirt. Their tour manager kept up, half a step behind, tapping through his PDA while he talked.

What Jeordie wondered as he took a sharp right into the other dressing room, the one where alcohol was allowed, and went straight for a bucket of melting ice with beers and sodas and bottles of water jutting out of it, was how was a person supposed to act after…well…. What was the protocol? What would Miss Manners say? The can of RockStar was wet from melted ice. He grabbed a handful of napkins on his way out, drying the can, popping it open, drying his hand, drinking glug glug as he headed back toward the T at the end of the hall. At the T, he turned toward the noise just as he reached bottom on the can. He wiped his forearm across his mouth and set the empty can and the wad of napkins on a crate. Alessandro and Josh were in the open area already, but away from the door. Techs were there, too, a couple of security yellow-shirts, a gaggle of people who looked vaguely familiar—everyone, after you’ve been on tour a month or more, looked vaguely familiar.

Aaron would be at the door on the other side. Aaron and Trent both. And they were both probably closer to their door than he was to his, or he’d be able to see them from here. He wiped his palms on the front of his jeans as he approached his tech, then he took his bass and slipped the strap over his head.

He scratched between his shoulder blades again. It was becoming a tic. Jitters from the energy drink made his fingers tap against the bass’s body. He swiveled his torso a few times, bouncing his elbow lightly against the wall behind him. And….

And….

And….

Time to go on.

He was through his door before Aaron came through the other, as far as he tell from across the dark stage. Trent would still be hanging back, waiting. A flashlight guided him from the wings. He shifted his guitar strap, getting it comfortable. “Somewhat Damaged” had a fairly a lead-in of nearly a full minute before the vocals came in. As they started into the song, he glanced toward the other side of the stage, then resolved not to again. He thought he’d catch Trent’s presence out of the corner of his eye or just get a feeling that he was emerging from the shadows—that tended to happened, the gut feeling, and not just with Trent; it was a feeling you got playing on stage with the same people—but it was the screams from the audience that told him Trent was finally in view. Before his next breath, the vocals come in.

So impressed with…. DAHda dundun. Jeordie shook his hair out of his face. Blinked out at the darkness, where the audience was. DAHda dundun DAHda dundun, nodding along with it. Grooving. Not looking for Trent, nope, not looking. …lost my faith …. DAHda dundun DAHda dundun DAHda dundun.

He filled in lyrics of his own as Trent belted out the real ones—(is) that your stubble on my FACE DAHda dundun shell-shocked feeling won’t go away DAHda dundun what else am I s’posed to SAY? DAHda dundun so fucked up to feel this way DadadadaDadadadaDadadadaDa

Moving a step or two back, he glanced toward Trent, then put his head down, shoved his tongue into his cheek and focused, as much as he could with the caffeine megadose jangling through his nerves, on his fingers and the noise coming through his monitor.

It worked—he got lost in the zone, playing without thinking. Being without thinking. Some part of his brain was paying attention; it knew what song they were starting into next, and next after that, and it took care of everything without checking in with him; he wasn’t brain and fingers and neck and arms while he was in the zone; he was sound.

And just like how you come to with a start when you find yourself wheeling your car into your driveway with no memory of the drive from point A to home, Jeordie came back to himself—and to the stage and the lights and the sweat and an itch between his shoulder blades—with a jerk, finding himself in the middle of the chorus of a song he didn’t remember starting into.

kiss

skin

Trent passed in front of him, microphone in two fists, leaning toward the audience as he yelled.

sin

Don’t think about it don’t think don’t think. Don’t think about it. Jeordie ducked his head again, headed back into the music. Words threw themselves at his ears--defaced…taste…--and shivered down his spine, but he shook it off, (fist) walked it off. Waited for the zone to swallow him again, and it did. It dragged him under in the middle of “March of the Pigs”, submerging him. He bobbed to the surface for half a minute of “Burn” and he came up briefly again during “Wish”, when he backed into the keyboards. “Suck” rolled right off his back.

It was the Queen cover that yanked him to the surface, the recorded questioning voice. How old were you when you first…. His face flamed up from the inside. Fresh sweat sluiced down his jaw. It was a surprise, after playing on stage for forty minutes, an hour—it was a surprise that a fresh sweat could still break out.

He turned, paced a few steps, turned again. Trent wasn’t paying him any attention at all. Good.

Good.

Good. Focus. He was drowning in a whirlpool of images—Scott stalking off; Trent, watching?; he tried to see Trent at that party, imagining Trent, the way he looked then, hair to his shoulders, just a slight little think with a smirk; watching; narrowed dark eyes…—and he swallowed, then swallowed again, the air stuffed thick with humidity.

After another song, they head off stage for water, for dry white towels to wipe their faces and necks and arms with. More water. And a chance to scratch the itch between his shoulder blades. Aaron sagged against a wall, rolling a full water bottle across his forehead while drinking from a half-empty one. Josh, having been on his throne the whole time, more or less, paced a four-step length of hall, taking a quick swallow of his bottle, dropping it to his side, taking another quick swallow…. Alessandro and an engineer were bent over his earpiece. Jeordie, wiping the back of his neck with a towel, scanned across the open area backstage again. Security, techs, Josh, Aaron, Alessandro, various other people who may or may not be total strangers….

Fuck it. He exchanged the towel for a bass and two more swallows of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. His lips tasted like salt after that. Fuck it. Time to go on.

Hurt.

Hand That Feeds.

Head Like a Hole.

The house lights came up. He passed off his bass, tossed picks out to the pit where fans pushed and reached and called out, hoping to close their hands over one of the thin pieces of plastic and take it home and log onto a message board and tell everyone about it. Maybe sell it on ebay. Maybe not.

The trek back up the corridor afterward was swift, everyone eager to get out of clothes that cleaved to them with sweat, Aaron already out of his shirt before turning toward the dressing rooms. Trent…behind Jeordie. Jeordie…trying not to be so pointedly aware of it, the skin between his shoulder blades itching madly. He hung a sharp left into the dressing room, the not-dry dressing room, the one with the cold beer on ice, and he popped one of those open just as soon as he had his shirt off, cool air skating over his ribs, caressing down his back. Cold beer rolling down his throat. He popped the button on his jeans.

Josh had a shower going already. Jeordie plunked down on a chair in his underwear, his jeans down around his knees. Alessandro passed by with his shower kit. Jeordie held his beer in one hand and bent forward to tug one shoe off, then the other. He pulled his jeans the rest of the way off, one leg at a time, and left them on the floor. A few steps away from his jeans, he left a pair of dark boxer briefs and two socks so wet you could wring the sweat out of them.

Leaving the empty beer bottle in an open locker, he headed, in a pair of flip-flops that thwacked with each step, to the showers, where steam billowed and condensed on the ceramic tiles climbing the walls. Water and shampoo suds ran down the sloping floor to the grated drain in the middle of the room.

“What?!” Alessandro was yelling, holding a hand cupped behind his ear. “What did you say?!”

Aaron, his wet hair plastered to the sides of his face, waved an arm. “Forget it! It’s not worth fucking repeating.”

“What?!”

“Brah, you gotta get that shit checked out, and soon.”

“I’m sorry! Stuffed ears! Try to talk at this one!” He turned his head and cupped a hand behind his other ear, but Aaron had already turned away, shaking his head.

Jeordie cranked on the water, lukewarm-to-cool, and pushed his face into it. The spray washed sweat and salt away in rivulets, down his cheeks, his neck, into his ears, over his nose. He put a hand against the wall and tipped his head forward, letting the water run through his hair like cool fingers and down his back, over that itch between his shoulders. He straightened up, pushing his chest into the spray as he reached over his shoulder to scratch again. It was like a nerve that kept pinging.

Last one in, last one out. He turned off the water ten minutes later, and the only sound from inside the shower room was the dueling drips of two faucets. Aaron’s voice cut in from beyond: “…get that shit checked out, brah. Seriously.”

Jeordie grabbed a towel, pressed his face into it, then wrapped it around his waist. As he stepped out of the room, pushing the end of the towel under itself to secure it, Aaron was telling Alessandro about all the funky things that could be growing in his ear, things that thrived in “humidity and shit.”

“Does it smell?” Aaron was asking. “Let me see if it smells.” Grabbing Alessandro’s shoulder, he lifted up to stick his nose within an inch of his ear. He sniffed loudly, his front teeth exposed like a gopher’s.

“Shoo! Go away. It’s sinus, not funky mold growth!”

“Funky mold growths. One minute you think you’ve got sinusitis, the next thing you know a funky mold growth from outer space is eating its way through your brain. I’m telling you, brah. Anybody got that shit for athlete’s foot? We could squeeze some of that in your ear, and I bet it’d eat right through it.”

“His brain?” Josh said.

“I cannot hear you!” Alessandro sing-songed. He turned his back as he fastened his jeans. “I am not listening!”

“Naw, brah, the funky mold growths,” Aaron said, dropping a booted foot on a chair so he could tie the laces.

Jeordie combed his hair, dressed, combed his hair again. Before long it was time to head out to the bus. He looked behind him a few times as they were headed up the corridor, but either Trent was already on his bus or he was lagging behind. Either way, Jeordie ended up climbing onto the band’s bus without seeing him. Maybe at the hotel.

On the bus, Jeordie grabbed a sandwich from a tray on the table, a brewski from the mini fridge and a book he’d been reading and took it all to a seat where he could hunch down behind the book, and think. Or not think. It wasn’t like he was reading.

Aaron swung by and plopped down beside him. “So. Brah.”

“Yeah?” He took a pull off his beer without taking his eyes off the meaningless black lines of type running in front of him.

“What were you and T-bone doing all that time in the men’s room?”

God, he was a pest. “Taking a leak, I expect.”

“Brah, if it takes you that fucking long to get the pipeline flowing, at your age? You’ve got some serious fucking prostate problems. Seriously. You should get that shit checked out.”

“I’ll ask the doctor to take a look up my asshole as soon as he’s done with Cortini’s ear.”

“Whatever brah. If you want to use a faux prostate problem as a beard for your gay manlove sex orgy with T-bone—” He clamped a hand down on Jeordie’s shoulder and used it to push himself back up to his feet. “—that’s your own affair.”

Jeordie flipped him off without lifting his eyes from the book.

“It’s gonna take more than one finger to satisfy me!”

Jeordie heard the mini fridge open. He shifted, getting more comfortable, drank another swallow of beer, turned back a page in the book because he hadn’t taken any of the last few pages in. He wasn’t worried about Aaron, though, because Aaron wasn’t acting one bit differently than he usually did.

At the hotel, they debussed, headed through the lobby to the elevator banks, waited for way too long for the elevators, and finally found themselves walking down the carpeted hallway on their floor, splitting up into pairs. Jeordie had his keycard out. Aaron had lost his already. “Is it in your pocket?” Jeordie asked as the green light on the door lock flashed. He withdrew his card and opened the door.

“No.” Aaron pushed his hands into each pocket as he followed Jeordie into the room.

As soon as the door clicked into place, Jeordie had his shirt off. “You need the bathroom?”

“It’s all yours, brah. Wait. Let me brush my teeth.”

Two minutes later, he was alone in a small, well-lit room with his book and the muffled sound of the TV coming through the wall.

The book lay on the floor.

His forehead rested on the heels of his hands. He called up images of earlier in the day—and it didn’t feel fresh anymore, didn’t feel like something that had just happened that day.

The murmuring of the TV grew louder. Then came one sharp back-handed knock at the bathroom door. “Hey, I hope you don’t mind, but I turned the TV up ‘cause I don’t want to have to listen to you smacking yourself in there, a’ight?”

Jeordie’s jeans were around his ankles, and his cock drooped between his thighs. Without lifting his forehead from his hands, he called out, “Don’t worry—Trent took care of that earlier.”

In the half beat of silence, he thought, well there’s a lie.

“You never take me on any of your orgies!” Aaron’s voice was mock-whiney. And then Jeordie sensed he’d walked off. Give him another ten, fifteen minutes and his post-show adrenaline would run out—he’d turn cranky, and then he’d crash, askew, on one of the beds; his own bed if the other guy was lucky.

With the COPS song coming through the wall, Jeordie brought his mind back to the restroom stall. He tried to remember it as something that had happened to him. And today. A sudden, intense flash of Trent’s steady gaze meeting his made him draw in half a breath. And the brief banter between… Before… And Trent’s voice—murmurs and pants--sorry…understand…tried…fuck…fuck…didn’t…thought…wanted…tried…tried…

“Oh shit!” Aaron’s voice broke into his thoughts. “J, brah! Finishing taking a shit already, you’re missing this!”

Jeordie flushed. Kicked off his jeans. Pulled up his shorts. Walked out of the bathroom with his book clutched in his hand, the mark in it still between the same damned two pages.

“Aw, you missed it, Jeord. Why the fuck don’t hotel rooms have TiVo? Just think, you could pay the outrageous hotel porn price once, right, TiVo it, and watch the shit over and over all night till it was time to check out.”

Jeordie set his book on the nightstand and slipped between the sheets. He squinted at the controls on top of the hotel room’s digital clock. “Would you actually watch the same porno ten times in one night?” Clickaclickaclick, the red numbers for the alarm morphed from one to the next to the next as Jeordie’s finger jabbed the minute button. “Most guys don’t even watch more than the first ten minutes of a porno, most of the time.”

“Maybe, brah, if the hotel porn was any fucking good—but even it wasn’t—just think about it. I could re-rent the room, right? and the TiVo’d porn. I could rent it out by the hour. Ten different dudes could pay, like, fifty bucks for an hour. Brah, that’s like five hundred bucks! That shit would go off!”

“Yeah, except who’d pay fifty bucks for an hour for a hotel room with some porn? Or are you providing ‘special’ services, too?” He moved his face closer to the clock to make extra sure it was set for A.M., not P.M..

“Fuck that. I just collect the cash. Anything special they want, they’d have to bring it. Or maybe I could hire someone—a midget!” Aaron lifted his butt and broke wind. “Yeah, a midget. Midget sisters. Midget Siamese twin sisters. That shit would fully go off—wait! Hermaphrodite—”

“Oh man!” Jeordie said, getting his first whiff. “That’s fucking foul, dude!” He gathered the top sheet in his fists and pressed his nose into it. “Shit!”

“Sorry brah. Farts happen.” Frrrrrnt.

“Dude!” Jeordie waved an arm, trying to disperse the stench before it got to him. “It just hangs in the fucking air. It clings to the air molecules and just hangs there! You gotta get that shit checked out.”

“You wanna check it for me?”

“No!”

Aaron was already off his bed, backing toward Jeordie’s in just his shorts, holding his butt cheeks apart. “Just take a quick look!”

“Man, I’m serious. Get the fuck away! Don’t you fucking—”

Frrrrrnt.

“Oh! Ugh! Sick motherfucker! Go sleep in the fucking stairwell. Open a fucking window or something. God, my eyes are watering. What the hell did you eat?”

Aaron flopped down on his own bed again, head at the foot end, chin resting on folded hands. The television cast his face in blues and purples. “Bean burrito. I nuked two of them on the bus.”

“Bean burritos are officially banned on the tour bus.” Jeordie flopped onto his side and pulled the pillow half over his face.

“Whatever, brah.”

Aaron changed the channel, one after the other, till he found soft porn.

The last thing Jeordie was aware of was the bathroom door closing.

BREEP! BREEP! BREEP! BREEP! BREEP! BREEP! BREEP! BREEP!

Jeordie, face-down in a pillow, slapped his hand over the top of the clock. The breeps stopped. Aaron, lying face-up on the other bed, smacked his lips. Jeordie’s hand slipped off the clock, then off the nightstand. It landed knuckles-down against the carpet.

“Dibs,” Aaron said, his voice throaty and groggy. He didn’t move.

Neither did Jeordie.

What seemed like two seconds later, the BREEP!s came back; he jolted awake, his head coming up off his forearm. He blinked, his vision blurred with sleep, his eyes stinging.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Aaron said, rolling over so that half his complaint was muffled by a pillow.

Jeordie pushed himself back until his was sitting on his knees. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Ugh.”

“Brah, wake me when you’re done in the bathroom,” Aaron said, giving up his dibs on it. He pushed his face under the pillow.

Jeordie stretched and yawned and climbed out of bed. On his feet, he bent his back, putting a hand back there in the small of it, and stretched his other arm over his head—and then he stumbled toward the bathroom.

He drank straight out of the faucet, then swished the last mouthful of water from one cheek to the other. There was a smudge on the mirror in front of him, just a small one, at eye height. He moved the tip of his finger toward it, and then his eyes focused on the image in the mirror. This is the guy Trent fucked yesterday. He bent and spit the water out. And then he stayed there, one hand flat on each side of the sink, head hung, mouth open. Water running. There was an itch between his shoulder blades, but this morning he realized exactly what it was. It was where Trent had dug his chin against his back, right there, right between his shoulder blades, a little higher than center. Had he felt stubble even through his shirt? Without straightening, he reached back and rubbed his fingers over the spot.

sorry…intended…wanted…tried…tried…tried…fuck.

Aaron banged on the door. “Hurry up in there, will ya? My mouth tastes like someone farted in it.”

Jeordie pushed back from the sink, but still didn’t straighten. He cranked the faucet off, then called out, “I think that someone was you, and it serves you right.”

“Come on!” Aaron jiggled the handle. “I gotta piss like you wouldn’t believe, too.”

“Two minutes!” He turned away from the sink without looking into the mirror and faced the toilet. He pissed while rubbing at the itch on his back.

“Brah, come on! Why isn’t there a sink out here like in real hotels? I’d piss in it if it was here.”

There was a thump against the door. Jeordie pictured Aaron propping his back against it, arms crossed, foot tapping. Jeordie waited till he had a froth of toothpaste worked up in his mouth before opening the door.

“Finally! What’s so goddarned private going on in here that you’ve gotta—” Water smacked against water in the toilet. The smell was ripe. “—lock the fucking door anyway?”

Jeordie spit, rinsed his mouth, and headed back to the bedroom.

Twenty minutes later, he and Aaron met up by chance with Josh in the hall, waiting on the elevator. They rode down together and passed by the sun-bright lobby in silence. A more comfortably dim hallway took them to a side door and out to the back parking lot. The buses were parked along the far side of it, Trent’s bus nose to ass with theirs. Jeordie held back from making a smart-ass remark about that to himself.

For a split second, he imagined himself standing just past the driver’s area on Trent’s bus, his duffle bag hanging over his shoulder. He imagined the way the floor would vibrate beneath his feet as the bus rolled out the blacktop parking lot, the small adjustments the muscles in his feet would make as the bus turned into traffic. He imagined Trent glancing up from a laptop or the G4, then registering what he was glancing at and looking again, long, and not real welcomingly. The unspoken question hanging in the air: What are you doing here?

The door to Trent’s bus was closed anyway.

“Dibs on God of War!” Aaron called, jostling past him to launch himself up the bus’s steps.

“No—” Jeordie ran up behind him. “Shit. Come on, I’m still trying to beat that level.”

“Yeah? Well watch and learn, mofo. Maybe you’ll pick up a tip or two.”

“Aren’t you still on, like, level—”

“Hey, brah, I just like to be thorough.” He headed for the back lounge calling, “The Gods of Olympus have abandoned me!”

Jeordie elbowed Alessandro. “Hey, how’re the ears?”

“BETTER! I THINK!”

Jeordie winced.

“I STILL HEAR MYSELF BREATHING, LIKE DARTH VADER, YOU KNOW?” He launched into a moist imitation of Vader’s audible breathing.

Jeordie clapped him on the back. “You better see someone about that.”

“YES, I’M GLAD TO GET MY HEARING BACK, TOO!”

The bus ate mile after mile of pavement. Somehow Trent’s bus got ahead of theirs. Jeordie could crane his neck and look out the front of their bus at its ass. Aside from the occasional panted word in his memory, life on the road went along pretty much as normal—which is to say it crawled by like a crippled terrapin with nowhere to go.

So that was Day 1 Since The Incident. It wrapped up its usual way: they arrived at the next venue a little past 4:30, got their sound check out of the way around 5:45, ate dinner—them in their dressing room, Trent hunched over a plastic plate of food and a laptop in his. Hardly a word passed between Trent and any of the rest of the band all evening, but that wasn’t cause for alarm; Trent had his days when he was just…self contained. After sound check, dinner. After dinner, hanging around and shooting the shit, checking email, having Aaron thrust YouTube videos in everyone’s faces. Aaron went around saying, “Pickle surprise! Pickle surprise!” for the rest of the evening. (“But where is the pickle?” Alessandro would say—and no one was sure if he was encouraging him or honesty wanted to know about the pickle—and Aaron would make a face and go, “That’s the surprise!” Jeordie could live without sitting through that particular YouTube crapsterpiece again.)

When the time came, they warmed up, still without Trent. They took last pisses and shits and grabbed last handfuls of grapes or chips or carrot sticks. They went on stage. They did a full set and it went off well. They came off and showered, signed autographs on the way to the bus. Aaron, Josh and Alessandro—who actually was starting to hear better, finally—booked off to an aftershow party. Jeordie let himself into a brand new hotel room that looked just like a thousand other hotel rooms across the country, and walked, aimlessly, around the room, flipping open the room service menu, nudging the television remote so it was straight where it lay on top of the TV, lifting a gauzy curtain aside to look out onto a parking lot and a chain link fence, then drawing the heavier curtains closed, blocking out the outside world.

He and Trent were, quite possibly, in the same place at the same time—probably just down the hall from each other. Maybe just on the other side of the wall from each other.

Jeordie kicked off his shoes, climbed on the bed, and settled in with his book.

After a minute, he dropped it on it his chest and tipped his head back.

What his mind really wanted to think about.

Was Trent.

~tbc~
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Wrapt