“Ready
to do this?” Robbie asked, fingertips dancing up the back of Jagger’s neck so
he could draw him into a kiss.
“How cliché would
it be if I said I was born ready?” Jagger asked once Robbie let him go.
“A thousand percent,”
Kayden said as his fingers tangled in Jagger’s hair and tugged his head back so
he could kiss him too.
“Showtime,” Mickey
announced, the five of them coming together in their circle, heads touching, as
they offered up their personal prayers for a good show, then headed out there.
All Robbie could
see as he approached the drum kit were people and a desert horizon so far away
that they might as well have been on their own fuckin’ planet. Adrenaline
surged through him, and he caught Kayden’s eye, his best friend giving a little
salute with his guitar before launching into their first song.
Sticks tattooing a
rhythm into those old skins, Robbie poured out every emotion he’d experienced
over the course of the past year, from crushing disappointment, fear, and rage,
to exhilaration, pride, and love.
From his spot he
got to watch the loves of his life strut and howl, bang their heads, flirt,
dance, and give in to the swirl of wild, manic energy they hadn’t been able to
give themselves over to since the night after their first show. They did
everything short of making out and fucking, the energy between them so
crackling thick that Robbie was hard in his boxers and grateful for a drumkit
to hide it behind.
Jagger hadn’t
forgotten any of their lessons, either. He got Mickey involved, whirling behind
him, and swaying like a serpent about to strike, and even climbed the stack of
amps behind Robbie, to sing from high above him. It was wild. It was frenzied.
And Robbie loved every minute of it.
During Robbie’s
long solo, Jagger hurled himself off the stage, the fans passing him around
while Robbie showed off why he’d come in third in the drum-off last year. He
hit that last beat and let the first stick fly, several people leaping to try
and catch it. He couldn’t tell who ended up with it though, a scuffle ensued
and in the hopes of keeping others from joining in, he threw the second stick.
It was only then that he noticed another disturbance, just to the left of where
the crowd was still passing Jagger around over their heads.
From his vantage
point, it looked like the crowd had parted and someone was on the ground. He
just hoped no one had wound up hurt over there.
Jagger’s leap had been timed perfectly. With the way they’d laid out the setlist, the next song’s intro was Kayden’s long solo. That would give Robbie time to hydrate and grab a new pair of sticks and the people the opportunity to pass a rumpled Jagger back onto the stage where he hesitated, for one long moment, before reaching for his mic.
Robbie
saw him blow out a breath when nothing went wrong, then launch right back into
his performance. By the time he finished Curses from the Edge, the sea of
people was lit up with lighters and glow sticks and anything else they could
wave over their heads or wear. They’d draped them around their necks, hung them
from their ears, twisted them into crowns and woven them around their wrists.
When he launched into Restless Fireflies,
the little surprise they’d set up for Jagger revealed itself when Johnny
stepped out onto the stage to sing it with him the same way he’d done back at
the house when they’d been rehearsing.
Flirt
with the light but dare not touch it
Skirt
the edges of broken dreams
These
crumbling illusions we fail to see through
Nothing is ever as real as we make it seem
Dare
you to dance closer to the fire
For
in the end we shall not burn
And
if we die it’s better than barely living
At least then we’ll know the true meaning of freedom.
Casting
shadows on the wall
These
fragile puppets will not fall
We
mime the past in blunted hails of twisted words
Knowing in the end we’ll all…be extinguished.
Their
voices mingled to give the song a chilling, haunting sense of fatalism and pain.
The way they interacted, though, touching, wrapping around one another,
abandoning one mic so they could share, all brought an additional vibe to the
song. One in which the dreams they were singing about giving up on would still
endure in some slightly warped and twisted way.
It was, in a word,
breathtaking.
They shared a hug
at the front of the stage when the song was over, then Johnny waved to the crowd,
gave a little peace sign salute, and walked off leaving them to kickstart the
final song.
Kayden hit that
opening riff like a maniac, all power chords and stunning rifts, with Mickey
right beside him, the two complementing each other beautifully, the way they
always did. They wound up back-to-back as Jagger crisscrossed the stage, growling
out the words to the gritty lyrics and whipping the crowd into a frenzy in the
process. It was the perfect way to end things, especially when Jagger nailed
that last snarled word, dropped the mic and leapt back in with the fans, waving
to the rest of the band as they carried him away.
Kayden and Mickey shared looks, passed their picks to the fans in the front, shrugged and leapt in after him. Alrighty then. Never one to be left out, Robbie whipped his sticks as far out into the ocean of people as he could manage and jumped in too, a rare occurrence for him. Damn was it fun to be surfed around, bounced, groped a little and ultimately passed all the way to the edge of the crowd. It was a long ass journey when one considered just how many people were out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment