Chapter Text
The backyard of the house had no RV, obviously. Instead there was a nice patio area with string lights and a small stage where the band would sometimes rehearse when it was nice out, or put on little intimate concerts for their friends and neighbors.
Matt was out there taking one last look at it, smoking one of the cigarettes he'd found in his bedside table. In this timeline, he was a pack-a-week kind of guy. It wasn't like he was the vocalist of the band or anything, so it was okay.
Yeah, it would be okay. Michael was already lining up some gigs on the tour's off nights in the cities they were going to. Turns out there were plenty of people who hadn't been able to get tickets, so the demand for a cover set was pretty high. The ticket situation for the four of them, well—Matt was still working on that plan.
He looked back at the house. Sometimes, here, he'd stared out the front window and wished for Jay to just—walk by, without seeing him. Just so Matt could catch a glimpse. He'd done that at the old place, too, the one on Shaw he'd lived in alone after Jay but before he'd picked up the band. Pathetic, like an old sick dog waiting for its owner to come back from war before it could finally curl up and die.
Those lonely memories were now overlaid with the sound of Jay's piano in the living room—the chirp of video game soundtracks—the clatter of takeout tupperware—warm summer mornings just like today, leaping down from the top bunk, shaking Jay, whispering "Bird, wake up, I've just had an insane idea!"—
He had started to cry again. Jesus Christ, it was going to be very difficult to get through the next very very important month if he was going to turn into such a fucking girl everytime he thought about literally anything. He took a deep breath in through his nose, or tried to, abruptly realizing that in this universe he'd never gotten sinus surgery—because of course here, he'd never gotten into a back-alley fight while blind, with a subsequent medical examination revealing that his sleep apnea could be fixed with a simple procedure—which explained the bone-deep exhaustion he'd woken up with. That was going to be a motherfucker to deal with on tour.
"Hey, you're like… okay to travel, right?" said Ethan suddenly from nearby. The guy was really good at appearing silently from nowhere.
"Oh sure, sure," Matt said, stifling a wince as the pressure in his head built, incompatible memories colliding painfully. "I've had worse. Well. Not here. Not I, per se. You know."
"Uh huh," Ethan said. "Sure. Ben wanted to know if you have any plans for tickets for tonight? VIP tickets, I mean, because you're gonna try and talk to Jay again?"
"Yeah, um…" Matt tried to force his tired brain into something vaguely plan-shaped and failed utterly. "Can't you like… hack it?"
Ethan rolled his eyes. "Look, I've told you. Just because I'm Asian doesn't mean I'm a hacker."
"But you are, though. Right?"
"I mean, a little bit. But this is American, diabolical Ticketmaster shit. Might be totally beyond me. I'll try, but like, no guarantees."
Michael appeared out of the back door. "Guys, we really gotta get going now if we're gonna be on time for the show."
Matt gave an ironic salute, stamped out his cigarette, and headed back inside. "You ever driven a full-sized RV before?"
Michael shook his head.
"Well," said Matt, clapping him on the shoulder, "there's no day like today to learn."
Jay liked it better when tours routed them northeast out of Toronto, hitting Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax first before crossing the border down to New England. Plunging right into America first thing was not his idea of a good time: they were smaller and harder to please and his ego had been bruised before by facing inadequate crowds in the Midwest too quickly after screaming sell-outs in Ontario.
But Reid and the agents had gotten this idea in their heads that America adored Jay and was simply dying for him, so it was over the river right away to Detroit on the first night of the tour, followed by Chicago, Nashville, and New Orleans. Then Florida and the East Coast; then Jay would fly out for 10 days off in Los Angeles, then two shows there, before San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, back over the border and down through the middle of fucking nowhere to Salt Lake City (Mormons loved him, for some reason), Las Vegas, Phoenix, and then finally a few Texas dates.
Then Australia, then Japan, then Europe. The whole thing stretched out in front of him, endless. His biggest tour yet—but sound check was always sound check no matter if it was the Drake Underground, where he'd played his first full-band solo shows in 2009, or the Michigan Lottery Amphitheater, where he was closing out the 2025 summer season.
Steve took ages, as always, dialing in his kick and snare, taking up all the time that Maddy never needed for her synths and tracks. Jay usually liked to check vox against guitar with "Never Come Down," seeing as it was his opening song as well as his encore, but today he asked Luke, "Can we check with 'So Long Sunshine?'"
"Um. You mean, you want it in the set?" He glanced at Maddy. "Do we have that track…?"
"We don't have the track," replied Maddy, looking annoyed.
"That's fine. I'm thinking, we do it stripped, no click. Right after the first NCD? That good, guys?" He said it in the way which meant nobody was allowed to disagree. He didn't really care how disruptive it would be to pull out an ancient song from his first album, back when he was still trying for kind of an orchestral rock thing, and stick it in the middle of a well-rehearsed, click-tracked pop set with synced lights and visuals. He wanted to do the song so they were going to do the fucking song.
They were all professionals, weren't they, and they'd done the song for a show with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra last year, so it wasn't like it hadn't been played since 2010 or anything. So they checked with it, a few times actually, until Jay was satisfied. It took Luke a few times to get the guitar solo down, and by the fifth go he was gritting his teeth and glaring at Jay, but Jay didn't care. This was important. With music, it was important to give into your impulses, to take care of your creative soul. If a song was calling out to be played, that was a message from the universe, and Jay was simply the vessel for it.
There will never be another nightmare
It’s time to wake up
The one who kept me in a cage is gone now
I see that it’s all done up
The hands that held me tight
Loosen their grip
The eyes that could see right
Through me know what they did
So long sunshine
I’m headed for the moon
To her I’ll sing a different tune
So long sunshine
I’m headed for the stars
They’ll welcome me with open arms
After they were finally done, instead of heading back to the green room with the band, Jay jogged up to the sound booth.
When Josh spotted him he looked shocked and a little wary, like he thought Jay was about to start laying into him, so Jay raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey. Sorry for the switchup with 'So Long Sunshine.'"
"Oh," Josh said, relaxing visibly. "Yeah, no problem. It's a good one. A little treat for the fans?"
"I guess. Just felt like trying something different. Um, sounding OK out here?"
"Yeah. This spot has got a pretty good setup..." He trailed off. There was an extremely awkward silence.
Jay thought of Josh as one of his oldest friends, but he was realizing he couldn't actually remember the last time they'd actually had a casual conversation. He felt like an alien. "Anyway.. how are ya?"
Josh just nodded. "Good. Back on the road. Yep."
Jay ran a finger along the silver casing the top of Josh's top-of-the-line soundboard, chewing on the inside of his mouth before finally blurting out, "You know who showed up in the VIP area after the show at Bud Stage? Matt Johnson."
Josh looked appropriately surprised. "Whoa. Matt Johnson? Ha, no way, dude. That's crazy. What are the chances?"
"Yeah. Totally."
"Haven't heard that name in a long-ass time. When's the last time you saw him?"
Seventeen years was on the tip of his tongue—that's what he'd said when Matt had cornered him—but it wasn't strictly true. He'd last spoken to Matt in 2008—maybe early 2009—but he'd seen him more recently than that. A few times from the tinted window of an Escalade driving down Queen Street. Once while doing a TV spot in one of those studios that faced the street, Matt walking by outside, chatting animatedly to a group of guys. (Jay didn't count all the times he thought he'd seen Matt in the crowd, from the stage. He'd always assumed he was imagining it, because why the fuck would Matt come to any of his shows?)
"A really long time ago. Probably 2008," Jay said. "When the band split up."
"Damn. You know, I don't mean to get up all in your business, but… I always did wonder, how did that go down? One minute you two are inseparable, freakin' Bert and Ernie, the next you're off like a shot on your own and he's just… gone."
When he put it like that, it did sound unusual—rather than, as Jay had come to think of it, totally inevitable and fated.
"Yeah. It did kinda come out of nowhere…"
They were halfway to Detroit when Michael asked, from behind the wheel, "So, Matt… like, what happened?"
"Huh?"
"You and Jay. I mean, there's this entire backstory you never filled us in on. Kind of crazy, you keeping that under your hat for so long. Ethan said you went to school with him?"
Matt had to laugh. What a trusting bunch these guys were. They'd hopped in the RV with him, no questions asked, fully prepared to be on the road for a month or more—and he hadn't even really told them why. Just two days ago they'd gotten a full dose of amnesiac psychosis from him, watching him rant about time travel and scream in Jay McCarrol's face, and they'd been totally unfazed… an incident, he supposed, more or less in line with his general pattern of behavior over the past eight years. Not any weirder than all those times when he'd freaked out the band with catatonic episodes, suicidal threats, paranoid ramblings, violent outbursts, and general utter instability. Why the fuck did they keep him around? A) He was an okay-to-decent drummer. B) He loved Jay's music as much as they did. And—vitally— C) his was the only name on the lease, and he gave them all a massive discount on rent.
He cleared his throat. "Well, we were best friends. For a long time."
Ben and Ethan leaned in; Michael kept his eyes on the road but tilted his head attentively.
As Matt thought back, his head began to hurt again. He took a deep breath. It might be easier if he imagined his mind like a streetcar, staying on the tracks, hooked to the powerline. He pushed the real timeline, the good timeline out of his mind, tried to focus on his body, this body, the one that had lived through it all, the body that still remembered.
We had been living together for a few years. Things had been going alright with the band.
We were trying to get this show at the Rivoli. Matt had some crazy ideas, blackmail, burglary.
I would try to talk him down, figure out a more realistic approach.
He kept sabotaging us with these schemes… it was really stressing me out.
I began having these nightmares that we'd get the show but it'd somehow go wrong, someone would get hurt or die…We were so, SO close to getting this Rivoli show that we had already started
planning the rest of our tour—all the way through America.
Jay was excited, I was excited, we were on top of the world.Then I had this dream about a song—and I knew it was a hit right away.
I was sure that if we could get this song out there, we'd be huge, we'd get our show no problem.
But when I tell Matt about it, and play it for him a bit, he freaks out on me.Then suddenly Jay goes crazy. He hallucinates this song, this super catchy pop song,
and it takes over his brain like a parasite. He's suddenly like I'M GOING SOLO,
I'm going to be famous without you, sayonara asshole, even writes
DON'T PLAY THE RIVOLI on my whiteboard just to twist the knife.
Acting like he never wanted to play the Rivoli at all, like it was all my idea.
But we were a band. Nirvana the Band.And suddenly it's like he never wanted to play the Rivoli at all,
like it was only ever something I wanted to do and he was helping me,
like a charity case, and now that I actually have a real way to get us there it's the worst idea ever.
He even writes it on that whiteboard he was obsessed with, DON'T PLAY THE RIVOLI,
and accuses me of doing it even though it's obviously his handwriting.For a while I tried to keep us going. Tried to do CPR on the band.
But he didn't care. He just kept playing that damn song, over and over.
Then one day he gets a call. He's got the show.I had recorded a demo and sent it out. I tell him, Matt, we've got the show. We've booked it.
And I say, good for you. Have fun playing your little song without me.
But he didn't want it anymore. He didn't want me anymore.
He didn't need me anymore. He didn't need anyone.
"So then he just… left?" Ben looked genuinely upset.
Matt let out a choked laugh. "No, I left, actually. Went back to live with my parents for a few years. Thought I might try to make a movie or something… but I couldn't find anyone to do it with."
A throat-clearing noise came from further back in the RV.
"Oh, well, yeah, other than you, Jared. But you know what I mean—" Matt stopped. "Jared," he said. "Do you… you haven't done the water thing, have you?"
"No…?"
"Shit. So you still don't remember anything from this timeline at all?"
"Nope."
Matt spun back to the guys. "Does he—wait, you guys know him, right?"
"Um, yeah," Ethan said.
Michael said, "Obviously we know Jared."
"Right. Obviously," said Matt, because of course he had memories of how Jared had stuck around, never wavering in his loyalty, taking some outside freelance work at Matt's most aimless and solitary but always willing to drop it at a second's notice if Matt called. When Matt had linked up with the band Jared had moved in too, recruited Nikolai, and they'd all been at it together ever since.
"Okay, well, Jared, don't worry about the water thing, cause I've got everything from here in this overflowing noggin of mine, so like, I guess if you need to know anything about what you've been up to for the past 17 years just ask. You'll be pleased to know I actually think you've been much happier here without Jay up your ass constantly. He's always so mean to you. I tell him to stop, but he doesn't listen."
Jared said, "OK." Then he put down his camera without Matt asking him to, which Matt was preparing to get angry about, until he pulled out his buzzing phone, frowned, and walked it over to show him. There was a text on his lock screen:
Luca Tarantini
big time america! you should've come with me! this is awesome lol
"Open it, open it—get your face in there, fucking unlock it—"
The image attached to the text was a selfie of Luca with a big dumb grin waving an arm out at a huge empty venue, but off to the right…
"ENHANCE! COMPUTER ENHANCE!!!!!" yelped Matt.
Jared pinched to zoom. There, at what looked like a sound booth, in a garish shirt and those ugly yellow sunglasses, was Jay, deep in conversation with—
"Boozy?!" Matt was taken aback. "Whaaaat? No way!" It was a surprise to both timelines' memories to see that greasy motherfucker. Especially because he'd kept in sporadic touch with him here—he'd vaguely known he worked as some kind of technician, but that was it. Matt wasn't really so great at asking people pertinent questions about their lives.
"You go back with Boles too?" said Ethan.
"Wait, how do you know him?" Matt asked.
"He's Jay's sound guy. Everyone on the forums knows that." Ethan rolled his eyes.
"If you know him, why don't you ask him for tickets?" Ben said.
"No, man, he'd tell Jay. Look at them, they're totally buddy-buddy. Jay can't know we're coming, we have to take him by surprise."
"We do?" Ben said. "Wait, okay, why?"
"Because—hang on," Matt said, and got up to pull the whiteboard down, but Michael complained that it was unsafe for him to be doing that while they were on the highway, which piqued Matt so severely he stomped back to the bunk bed and pulled the curtain. "You won't find out then! Have fun not—never—never ever finding out! It's a secret!" he called petulantly.
They didn't seem to care, really. They were just excited to be on the road. Little weirdos.
Matt had binoculars and Jared had his optical zoom, peering across the parking lot from a vantage point on top of the RV directly into the lit windows of Jay's tour bus.
The Detroit show had ended about an hour and a half ago. Without tickets, they'd parked near the amphitheater and listened to Jay's set from outside; Ben, Michael and Ethan sang and danced happily along while Matt leaned with his arms folded against the RV door, letting the songs kind of run through him, both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time…
Now it was time for some surveillance. Luca had texted Jared the frequency of the lavs he and Andy were using. (Andy, of course, didn't know that Luca was missing over a decade's worth of memories, but that was Luca's problem and Matt didn't really give a shit, he was sure he'd figure something out. "Tell him to stick his head in a sink," Matt had told Jared, and left it at that.)
"It's just really fucking inconvenient," Jay was saying. "Why did he have to turn back up now? This tour is so important. Reid said the rest of my career as a legacy act is riding on it."
"You really shouldn't be so on edge like this just because of one old friend," said the other guy, Luke. They were sitting on Jay's bed, close together. Too close together. "Nothing's going to happen to the tour. It's going great. We had a good show tonight, right? And he didn't show up; he won't show up again."
Jay shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Damage done. I can't stop thinking about…"
"About…?"
"I don't know. Stuff. Life."
"You have a lot of thoughts, Jay, that's normal. You're a thinky guy." Luke was sounding a little exasperated. A little patronizing, even, like he was talking to a child. Jay hadn't smiled once. He needed to smile. ("Crack a joke, for fuck's sake," Matt muttered under his breath.)
"Yeah, I guess I am," Jay said. "Contemplative. Remember, GQ said that was one of my star qualities once."
"Uh huh," Luke said. "Just relax, okay?" And he placed his hands—his hands—firmly on Jay's shoulders and began to massage him. Jay stayed tense for a moment, but just a moment; then he melted under Luke's touch, slumping sideways to rest his head on his chest. And after a little while, he slowly lifted his head, looking into Luke's eyes—Luke placed a hand on his cheek—and they leaned into each other—and their mouths touched—
Matt dropped his binoculars and ripped his headphones off. The blood rushing in his ears had been drowning them out anyway. He got up, walked to the edge of the RV roof and looked down. The black void of the parking lot called.
He took off his hat and rubbed at his face and head and hair, and pressed his fingers into his eyes until shapes danced there, and ground his teeth, and curled his toes—
A gentle touch on his shoulder. Jared's brand of subtle comfort. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the glare off the lens and the red recording dot. That was also a component of the subtle comfort. If the camera hadn't been on him, he wouldn't have been able to keep it together at all.
But he was okay. He was saying, "Fuck that. Fuck that—so fucking much. Are you serious. I want to kill him. I want to strangle and kill him."
"Jay?"
"No, Jared, you idiot, I want to kill that other asshole. Pervert—rapist—loser—molester. Disgusting, it's disgusting what he's doing—oh, my God. Did he drug him, or something? Some kind of—of, hypnosis? That's the guitarist, right, he's done something to Jay, he's messed him up, manipulated him—"
The red light glowed. Matt breathed in, or tried to, through his stupid fucked up unfixed nose; gave up and began huffing in and out through his mouth, like he used to when he was a kid.
"FUUUCK!!!" he yelled, out into the darkness, in the opposite direction of the tour bus where some stuff was happening right now that he couldn't look at, couldn't think about at all.
The RV door opened below him and Ben stuck his head out. "You okay up there?"
"No! I'm not! This is the worst time travel experience of my LIFE!!!!!!"