Beneath the Stain - Part 5 (4 page)

I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Debra’s been reaming my ass all fucking day.

I asked you one goddamned thing. I asked you if we could bring the band to Oakland and do a simple light show. You said yeah, no problem. Crew was in place from last year.

It was.
Even in the text, Trav could hear the abject apology.
I just didn’t know how bad it had gotten. I’m sorry, Trav. I take the hit for this one. You’ve done wonders, and I dropped the ball.

Trav stopped right there in the middle of the airport and counted to ten. Then he closed his eyes and pictured Mackey, in those rare moments when he let his guard down, playing the guitar softly in the middle of the night, the lamplight passing through his blond eyelashes, illuminating his gray eyes. He counted to ten again and resumed walking.

Do you know how hard he’s worked?
he asked, because someone had to.

I know.

Really?
How hard THEY ALL worked? They kicked that CD out for you in record time.

They did.

He wrote songs in rehab, dumped half the first album and revamped the whole thing. He did it because he promised us—you, me, the fans. And we drop him in Oakland without a tech crew?

Man, Trav
—
I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you. I fucking dropped the ball.

Trav was going to do it. He was going to twist the knife in, pull it out, add some salt, and twist it again, but Mackey’s text got in first.

Don’t sweat it, Superman. Deb says you’re having kittens. We don’t need any fucking kittens—I can barely keep the plant alive.

Trav took a breath and then another.
Heath’s ready to blow us both in total apology. You sure you don’t want to milk that?

Straight guys give shitty head. Get your ass to the Coliseum—we’re on early.

EARLY?

My idea, hotshot. Now put the phone down and get your ass to the driver. Deb says she sent a guy to get your luggage and cab it back. She also says to stop yelling at her. You asshole. You made the poor woman cry.

Trav grabbed his laptop and carry-on tighter and trotted down the stairs. Sure enough, the driver was waiting by the doorway, and Trav walked straight past baggage claim, hoping the suits in his garment bag would find their way home.

He slid his ass into the town car and nodded urgently to the driver, then went back to his text.
Tell her that if you and the guys make it through this, I’ll send her flowers and brush her cat.

I’m not telling her jack. Get your ass over here and stop being a prick. At least when I rip people up, I back it up by firing their asses. Jesus, fucking amateur.

Trav laughed—he couldn’t help it.
Shut up and warm up. Aren’t you in the waiting room?

No. I’m in the dressing room, hiding from the massive fucking clouds of pot smoke. The whole band is with me. Sobriety sucks fucking ass in the social department, you know that?

I’ll totally rim you as a reward
, Trav texted, remembering that sweet, dirty fantasy he’d been having.

DID I MENTION I’M IN THE GREENROOM WITH THE GUYS? Jesus—Kell read that over my shoulder. He’s gagging in the bathroom. Way to kill the mood, Trav.

Trav stared at the text in absolute horror.

I’ll see you when I get there
, he texted lamely, then groaned and threw his head back against the seat.

“Everything all right, Mr. Ford?”

Trav looked at Walter, the driver, and grimaced. Walter was a white man in middle age, nondescript, very discreet, and as reliable a person as he’d ever met.

“Dating a rock star has its drawbacks,” he said after a minute. This guy had taken them to their first date, after all.

“Yeah, but I understand they fuck like gods,” Walter said pragmatically, and Trav stared at him, wondering when his own teeny brain was going to explode.

W
ALTER
TOOK
him to the VIP entrance and handed him his pass, which was great, because it meant he could charge through the myriad tunnels and back ways until he got up to the stage entrance. His guys were there, standing back to let the other band come through the loading bay, with lots of high-fives and “Great set!” praise as they went. It had never hit Trav before, but his guys, for all their flaws, were gentlemen that way. Even Blake and Kell, for all the girls they’d had, hadn’t ever disrespected them—just gone through a lot of them. These were good boys, he realized, an absurd lump in his throat.

He hated to let them down.

The Coliseum lights went down, indicating that the band had ten minutes to set up, and Mackey looked behind him and caught sight of Trav.

“You’re here!” he said, his eyes widening. He’d gone to town with the guyliner and mascara, and his customary lacy shirt was nipple-piercing pink and cut right under his pecs. He didn’t have a coat over it like he usually did, so his entire midriff was exposed, as well as the narrow line of his back.

But as he turned, Trav wasn’t looking at his back.

“Nice ink,” he said through a dry mouth. And oh
damn
, he wasn’t being sarcastic in the least. That screaming monkey tattoo, the guyliner, the layered white-blond hair—Mackey was there, the living embodiment of every trashy punk artist fantasy Trav had ever entertained. The added bonus was that Trav knew the real boy underneath, and he was three times as beautiful as the image—the image that was currently charging at him full tilt.

“
You’re here!
” Mackey crowed, leaping into Trav’s arms without hesitation or doubt. Mackey’s mouth descended hard, crushing, invasive, and proprietary. Trav cupped his hands under Mackey’s ass as Mackey wrapped his legs around Trav’s waist, and then just hung on for dear life.

Mackey was going to ravish him, unrepentantly pull all of Trav into his body, and leave him drained, a brittle husk, in the clutter of the backstage loading bay. Hot, Mackey’s mouth was hot, and his touch was hard and possessive, rubbing Trav’s neck and the shoulders he could reach with his hands. With a growl of impatience, he hopped down and glared. Trav’s brain was still shorted out from that kiss, and he rubbed the back of his hand over his wet, bruised mouth and stared back, totally without words.

“Take off your jacket,” Mackey demanded, and Trav let it slip from his shoulders. Without another word, Mackey reached up to his collar and undid the first button. Then he grabbed both sides of the shirt and yanked, ripping all the buttons off the front.

Trav was too shocked to do more than say his name. “Mackey?”

“Take that off,” Mackey ordered, moving his hands to the neck of that frothy, lacy thing he’d apparently cut off right under his pits. He wriggled out of that while the rest of the band started calling his name, and then held his hand out imperiously for Trav’s plain old white button-down. “Take off for a fucking week, leave us in the middle of the lurch.” Mackey yanked Trav’s shirt out of his hand and slid it over his shoulders. He gave a bare, sensual wiggle and smiled evilly into Trav’s eyes. “And then run in here like I wasn’t shitting my pants. The only thing I ever fucking wanted from you was to see me look good, and here we are,
in my house
, and you barely fucking get here in time to see me play. You’re lucky I don’t take your pants too.”

Trav was still breathing hard as Mackey stalked off to prep his equipment. He was tying the ends of Trav’s shirt together over his tattoo as he went.

Debra came up next to Trav, blowing out a breath in relief. “Man, if you’d seen the way he tore up the tech crew, you’d know you got off easy.”

Trav looked at her and shook his head. “There is no getting off easy with Mackey,” he said sincerely, and wondered what else the night had in store.

“We’d better get to the side if we want to watch,” Debra said
knowingly. “They’re not going to kill the house lights for the first
number.”

Trav was getting tired of staring at people and catching flies, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “They’re doing what?” he asked, wanting water, a shower, and a chance to beat off and get rid of his hard-on, not necessarily in that order.

Deb shrugged. “Hey, I think they can pull it off. Have you seen your guy in action?”

“In videos, yes,” Trav admitted.

Debra tucked a bit of silver-gray hair behind her ear. “I think he’s gonna shock the hell out of us both,” she admitted.

Trav shook his head, slid his jacket on over his cotton undershirt, and followed her to the back bay, where they could watch the band from the side of the stage without being seen.

The stage was set up, and even from there, Trav could see the equipment inadequacies Deb had talked about.
Heath, you got off easy
, he thought, but his phone was dead, so he kept the thought to himself.

It felt like seconds. In a heartbeat, every light in the fucking Coliseum was up, including the blinding ones in the ceiling that revealed every pore in the face of the person next to you. He heard some murmurs of confusion—SOP for most festivals was that the lights went low between performances, and then a few lights came up on the stage when the band was ready to go.

But not this time. The lights went high, the audience stopped and looked at the stage for a cue, and Mackey stepped forward.

“Yo!” he called without preliminaries. “You ready for Outbreak Monkey? Are you ready to
scream
?”

A heartbeat of stunned silence followed, and then a pulse of the crowd screaming as the band launched, full throttle, into “Tattoo”—and the audience lost their fucking minds.

“Oh my God,” Trav breathed, his whole body thrumming, high, sexed, with the music that came up from the soles of his shoes. Mackey was up there dancing, singing, flirting with his bandmates, flirting with the crowd, and the full, undivided, slavering attention of twenty thousand people quivered in the palm of his hand, and he song-fucked them for all they were worth.

He gave back what he got and brought them higher, higher, surging emotionally until they lost themselves in the electrically charged ecstatic surf of screaming metal climax.

Trav got hard again just looking at him.

The song thundered to its finale, leaving Trav reeling, trying to stay upright in the dark after seeing his lover bring off an audience of thousands. And Mackey wasn’t through with him yet.

The crowd roared and the band bowed, and the lights went dim just that fast, with a spotlight left on every band member, with only a few glowing spots on the floor so the tech crew could move.

Mackey took the microphone. “You guys sound pumped,” he said, that fuck-off-and-love-me smile sexing the crowd. When the roar faded, he pulled the mic from the stand and swaggered around the stage, skillfully dodging the techs winding the cables at his feet. “I’m pumped to be here tonight,” he said, and then he waggled his eyebrows and did suggestive things to the mic. “Not as pumped as I was to get out of rehab….”

The crowd’s approval reached some new decibel levels, and he grinned at them, got their attention, and moved on with his story.

“Yeah… seriously. At rehab, there wasn’t nothin’ to do, all day, and all night”—his voice rose and fell rhythmically—“but stroke”—he grinned—“my self-esteem.” A sprinkle of laughter followed. “But see—I was already good at stroking my, erm, self-esteem.” He squatted on the edge of the stage conspiratorially. “See, my mom… she had
four
boys. Four. And three of us were all teenagers at once. Man, poor woman.” He stood up and shook his head in sympathy. “She made us all wash our own sheets. I’m sure you can guess why.”

Kell spoke up, and Trav wasn’t sure if it was preplanned or not. “Aw, Mackey!”

Mackey looked at the crowd and nodded, eyebrows raised suggestively. “Oh yeah,” he said to the audience’s unspoken question. “And see, Mama wasn’t no fool. There we were, raising hell one day, our little brother running around in circles, and there, knocking at our door, was the sex police.”

The crowd caught its breath at the absurdity.

“Well, you know, church people.”

Titters and giggles—oh, naughty Mackey.

“And they had the
balls
to hand my mother—
my
mother—a pamphlet on, get this, ‘The Perils of Masturbation.’”

The crowd’s gasped cackle was like a gift.

“And my mother….” Mackey stood up and put one hand on his hip, thrusting his flat abdomen out a little and showing off his newly inked glossy tattoo. “My mother, she said, ‘Do you assholes
know
how many kids I’d have if I followed your rules?’”

The laughter began.

“And I’ve got teenaged boys—
three
of them! We don’t got no money! Jacking off’s the only thing they can do that’s free and legal! Jesus H. Christ, do
you
want to raise their babies if they’re out making the whole town pregnant? It’s probably better just to
brrrrrrreeeeakkkk
the sheets into the washing machine and get on with my life!”

The crowd was laughing hard by now, and Mackey grinned, pleased as Peter Pan to have the lost boys riding his wake.

“So there you go, folks. Sound life advice from my mom.”

Trav saw his glance at Stevie, who started the drum count, low and urgent. Jefferson nodded and picked up the low sex-throb of bass, and Blake and Kell started lacing the air with silver sound.

“It’s free, it’s legal, and it involves no controlled substances… are you with me?”

Low muttering replied.

Mackey started to arch his hips and grunt, not so much as suggesting as simulating. “Are you
with
me?”

The next reply was a gorgeous swell of sound.

“Oh, guys, my boyfriend done been gone a fuckin’ week
. Are you with me?
”

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh….

“’Cause it’s
free!
”