Chapter Text
This autumn has definitely been harder than all the previous ones.
November was cold and joyless. Everything seemed to freeze, became quiet, plunged into an atmosphere of gloomy expectation of death. It was terribly depressing for all four YFM members.
The fact was that about a month ago Benatar lost his permanent job at a music store, and he had no extra money, but he was too exhausted to look for a new job — the autumn depression came on, and life became even harder. Benatar couldn't write songs, he had a writer's block and absolutely no inspiration.
Puff grumbled at him for this, but not much — he felt the same way, although he tried to "get inspired" with drugs, spending on them the little money that his job at the restaurant brought. However, quite recently, he also lost this job. He was fired from the waiters after a scandal with one of the customers who refused to control his loud and disobedient children. Puff could hardly get away with trying to whip someone else's child with his own apron.
The other three musicians were on his side when they heard this story, but their support didn't really help the hot-tempered rapper to calm down, and he was also in a depressed and irritated mood.
Axel and DeeJay still had a job, but not so long ago they had to chip in and replace the worn-out bus tires, so in total guys had little money left. This didn't bring any joy.
As for the relationship between Axel and Benatar, they also seemed to be on pause. Either because of Benatar's autumn depression, or because of the general oppressive atmosphere, or because of a simple use (after all, they have been in a relationship for a long time), there was no same tenderness between them in recent days, and no sex, too.
November was a surprisingly cold and dead month, but one cold November morning turned out to be quite restless.
The three musicians were drinking their morning coffee when Puff appeared next to them, sat down heavily at the table and briefly looked at his friends: Axel was looking at the bleak landscape outside the window, Benatar rested his unseeing gaze on the table, clasping a warm mug with his palms, and DeeJay was calmly reading some magazine and was looking as unperturbed as always. None of them said a word or even moved.
Puff sighed heavily. He looked bad and, apparently, still hasn't recovered from his yesterday trip. DeeJay looked him over briefly.
"There's still some coffee left, man."
"Thanks," Puff replied listlessly, "But I'm too lazy to go after it."
DeeJay didn't answer, just got up to pour coffee for his best friend. When another mug appeared on the table and the fat boy sat down, Puff smiled sincerely:
"Dude, I don't know how to thank you."
"You won't have to thank me if you don't do drugs so often."
"You can't blame me, it's for the band. I'm trying to find inspiration."
"Did you look down the back of the fridge? That's where I normally find things." Benatar gloomily joked, unexpectedly for everyone.
Puff was even taken aback, but soon found something to answer.
"Then tell me about your successes, smartass. You wrote anything?"
Benatar sighed and finally looked at him directly.
"I'm trying, but it's all bollocks. All sorts of depressing texts that don't fit into our... repertoire."
"Then shut up and think."
"And what did you write?" Axel intervened in the conversation.
"I had an idea for a Halloween-themed song." the rapper shrugged.
"Just in time, when Halloween passed. Start writing a song about the Easter bunny, and maybe you'll manage by spring." the metalhead grinned.
Puff just rolled his eyes and muttered "go to hell", and the bus plunged into silence again.
A couple of hours later, when guys went about their business to different ends of the bus, Axel decided to rummage through his boyfriend's notebooks to find at least something interesting. Maybe there was some interesting idea lying around that Benatar just forgot about? The drummer was sure that he wouldn't mind — after all, what secrets could he keep from his own boyfriend?
There were a lot of stuff in these notebooks: poems, music, various drawings, and all on different topics, but nothing suitable. Axel was so engrossed in flipping through other's notebooks that he didn't notice how Benatar himself came up from behind and looked over his shoulder.
"What are you doing?!" he asked in amazement, and Axel started in fright.
He turned around and looked at the indignant keytarist, who folded his arms and looked at him expectantly.
"I decided to review your notes, in case you have any interesting ideas here."
Benatar snorted loudly in annoyance and took the notebooks from him.
"How smart you are," he said sarcastically. "I wouldn't guess to do it myself. Besides, if you were writing songs, you would know that the lyrics don't appear in notebooks by themselves, you have to work on them! And anyway, what right did you have to get into my notes?!"
Since this morning, Benatar had been kinda shaky and nervous, and now he was just angry, and Axel hadn't seen him like this for a very long time. Yes, he probably really shouldn't have intrude without asking, but he didn't want to admit it.
"Why not? You have secrets from me?" he grinned.
This ridiculous question amazed Benatar. The last time a keytarist faced such a thing was back at school, when his mother was going through his stuff without asking.
"Are you familiar with a concept of "personal space"? What right did you have to go through my stuff anyway?"
"Are you hiding something from me?" Axel was getting annoyed too.
"Just don't ever get into my stuff again!" Benatar spat out angrily, leaving and taking his notebooks, but before that he still forced himself to say:
"Please."
Of course, it sounded no less angrily. Axel rolled his eyes irritably and mumbled:
"Hysteric."
Unfortunately for him, Benatar heard it. And for some reason, Axel's act made him so angry that he came up with a petty revenge.