Chapter Text
A random bar. A random hotel. A random city. Random people around him. From all those statements only the last one was true and only partially. There was nothing random and nothing left to chance on a tour. Not for his band. Not for the last 25 years, at least. So it was not a random bar. It was the bar at the hotel he had given his approval for, in Dublin, a city that had won not only his OK for a show, but for two. The first one had ended a couple of hours ago and instead of being hauled to the airport to embark the plane for the next stop, he had been hauled back to the hotel, to this bar by his colleagues. David, especially, insisted and now he was nowhere to be seen. Typically! Jon thought and took a swig of whiskey from his glass. He roamed the room with a slow glance, before he turned to his now almost empty glass. People, crew, tourists, and locals alike, sitting at their tables or at the bar like him, talking and laughing a little too loud to cover the music that was anything but ambiental. A bunch of beautiful young women that were there because they were there. The era of groupies might have fallen, but temptation and opportunities were still at hand. He was surrounded by smiles and promises, yet all he could feel was void. An insidious void that had captured everything outside him, but hadn’t made the final step and engulfed him entirely already. A void that got him trapped. Like in a dream, a lucid dream. He was painfully aware of who he was, and where he was, and what he was doing, and what others were doing, he was far from being detached from reality, but at the same time, there was a shadow of surrealness coating everything. Maybe it was normal when you lived with a ghost to become one yourself. He had learned how to mimic everything - joy, excitement, worry, happiness, nervousness, interest - and how to hide the only thing that didn’t need to act. Pain. Most of the days he could pass for a normal human being. On some days he could fool even himself that things had gotten not necessarily back to what they were, but to a new kind of normal. And then there were days, clouded and gloomy like this one, when nothing made sense and every breath was a struggle. Only two weeks into this second leg of the tour and he already felt exhausted. Why in the world had he thought Europe would be better than America? It was not even the same. It was way, way worse. Because America was home, but Europe was the land of past dreams and hopes that had all ended up in ashes. Places he had known through stardust covered lenses had lost their magic. The deception filter was applied to everything around him now.
"Hey, life of the party!"
A hand landed on his back and Dave popped from nowhere on his left side, with his signature smirk in place.
"What party? He asked taking the last sip from the glass." He gestured the bartender for one more. He didn’t like it particularly, but he hoped it would numb him enough to catch a good sleep. He needed one.
"More like what life. What’s with the face?"
"Tired."
"We are all tired, but you’re the only one attending a funeral."
"Can’t you just bang some chick and leave me alone?" Jon barked and he realized a second too late that aggressiveness, even one masked by sarcasm, was not a proper reaction. Not when it came to David who didn’t actually need to be told what Jon’s problem was. Not if he didn’t want to start that discussion that had been postponed for far too long.
"Oh, wow! How times change…" he noticed amusedly.
David was clearly in a better mood than he was. Sometimes he envied his friend’s capacity of detaching from the blackness of reality.
"Indeed", he cut him off sharply, because it would have been weird to just say he’s sorry for his bitchy comment. That would have alerted Dave in a nanosecond. "A few years ago you would have said you’ve already done it. Twice!" He continued.
He looked at his friend with a deadpan face, not knowing if to wish for David to call his bluff or not. It seemed that the other man was not really into deep discussions and diving into murky waters at that moment, because he put his left hand on his right shoulder and forced him to turn his back completely to the bar and to face the crowded room.
"Pick one, or two, or three", Dave waved his free arm - a gesture that didn’t remain unnoticed by the beautiful ladies now scattered all over the room, Jon sensed - "and let’s go!"
"Tempting", he said, "but I had sex two weeks ago and I’m totally good for at least two more."
Nothing from that sentence was true, but it was the kind of thing he was saying more and more often lately, directly or indirectly suggesting he was fucking old. And tired. Absolutely tired of it all!
"Dude…" Dave whistled and rummaged through his back pocket. "Here!" He said and slipped the finding into Jon’s hand.
"What the hell?" He exclaimed when his eyes landed on the small bottle of pills."Please tell me it’s Viagra and not some untested off the market drug", Jon gave his friend an equally worried and admonitory look.
"They are breath mints, officer!" Dave said with a faked innocent face that made Jon laugh which led to Dave bursting into laughter too. Jon handed him back the tube and they both turned to the bar where two freshly filled glasses waited for them. Dave took a sip then started to nervously play with the glass.
"I lied", he murmured, not daring to face Jon.
"Hmm?!" Jon almost choked on his whiskey. He was not totally surprised, yet it was something he had hoped would never hear again.
"I lied", he said and finally turned to face a panicked Jon. "They are not breath mints. It’s worse…". He noticed Jon stopped breathing in wait for his big and dangerous confession, so he prolonged his agony. "They are…", he leaned a little towards his friend and Jon did the same. "...they are M&Ms", he whispered in a low, secretive voice.
Jon blinked a few times not sure if he heard him correctly. He stared at Dave whose face didn’t betray any emotion.
"You’re sick, my friend!" Jon concluded and straightened his back.
"I’ve got all the colors. Red, blue...", David winked at him. "Oh, you should try the green one. First is free", he went on with the faux illegality.
"And totally not funny."
"Not true", Dave grinned. "I can see you smiling underneath that poker face of yours."
"Hmm…Can you? Why the heck do you have M&Ms in a tube of…"
"It’s vitamin C, for fuck’s sake!" Dave laughed. "My throat was a little bit soar yesterday, that’s all. Why would I hide sweets in medicine bottles? I’m not at that age…yet. Viagra age on the other hand…".
Jon rolled his eyes, making David laugh even harder. He was about to say another acid comment in an attempt to arrest his friend’s fit of giggles when something caught his attention. He could not tell exactly what, but he was pretty aware the atmosphere in the bar had changed. It had become charged, almost electrical, like in those peculiar seconds when you knew exactly what others were about to say or do before they actually did it, or even thought about it. David seemed unaware of anything strange and started a very mundane discussion about what should be on their tomorrow’s playlist. He was all ears for the conversation but kept a vigilant eye for anything new or out of its place around him.
After fifteen minutes or so he started to believe it was the whiskey that was playing tricks on his mind. It was, after all, his third glass. Fourth, if he was going to ask for another, a thing he definitely shouldn’t do, not if he wanted to be functional in a few hours. As a matter of fact, it didn’t matter what he wanted, he needed to be functional. He needed it, his band needed it, his crew, his fans, everybody needed it. He sighed and emptied the glass. And that’s when he saw her. At the other end of the bar, a pair of extremely sparkling eyes were pinning him. Watching. Calling. Waiting. He looked away, he concentrated at what Dave was saying, he tried at least, he spun the glass once, twice, tenth times and when he looked again nothing had changed. The sparkling eyes were still cast on him with a subtle smile in tow. The electricity felt almost palpable now and a familiar feeling started to build inside him, low in his guts. It was not desire. It was something else, primal undeniably, but way different. It was fear. His instincts screamed “Danger!” and he was on the brink of laughing at the lack of sense of that reaction.
"What distracted you so bad?" David asked him and turned to where his attention had been drawn. "Hmmm…nice ass!" David nodded appreciatively.
"Huh?!"
Damn he be if he could tell if her ass was nice or not, although the woman had turned and was now heading to the terrace with sure steps. Her long wavy brown locks were swaying in the rhythm of her walk and, for a split second, Jon had the sensation the air was liquid and whatever forces were holding the world together were about to break down and reveal the reality as it truly was, not as it was perceived by common mortals.
"I might be drunk…", he thought and shook his head.
"Yeap, definitely nice ass!" David confirmed once again the outcome of his intensive research. "Alright, then!" He emptied his glass and put it back on the desk with a strong clonk. "Have fun!" He said and stood up.
"Have fun?! What do you think I’m gonna do?"
"Read her a bedtime story, grandpa, I don’t care. Just have fun!" David smirked, leaving him no chance to come up with a matching backtalk.
Jon watched his friend disappear into the crowd, making his way to the small group where Phil, Tico and a bunch of strangers were laughing God knew for what reason. Why the hell did he try to convince David he was outraged by his insinuations? He was no saint and his friend knew that. Oblivion hadn’t kicked in yet and the memories of their wild years were pretty much in place. Even the ones that maybe should have been forgotten. Back to the bar and he found his glass refilled again. He gave his watch a quick look. 1.30 am. It was a decent hour by some standards. By his own past standards. And now he could bitch about how the music was too loud. In a bar. At 1.30 am, for fuck’s sake! He looked at the spot from where a few minutes earlier a set of very bright eyes had drilled him. It was occupied by a man now, but he could still feel her invitation, no, her calling, lingering in the air. He noticed the atmosphere didn’t seem so electric anymore and the danger warning had vanished. It remained so even when he took the decision to accept that extra glass, chugging the whiskey in one big gulp, and even when he stood up and walked out of the bar, on the terrace.
This was no path to glory… he caught a line from the song that was currently playing and he smiled to himself. Who was to say if that was true or not? It was a matter of perspective. Was something glorious in what he was about to do, although to be fair, he didn’t even know what exactly his plans were? Definitely not. Could it be seen as such? Maybe. So who was to say what kind of path was he walking right now? Friends? Fans? Betrayed rockstars’ wives? Time?
You always walked before me
But you came back to warn me
The song continued, but the words remained suspended somewhere above and behind him. As he stepped into the cooler air of the night, the danger had been forgotten and other instincts surfaced.