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Chris is about 5 short minutes away from passing out.
For starters, they’re in Memphis, and it’s the dead middle of July. He hasn’t had the time to eat or drink anything other than a single vanilla Coke. (Coke Zero , to be specific. Ricky keeps stealing his normal vanilla Coke.) And then, of course, there’s Maria. Fucking Maria .
In This Moment is opening for them again, and to be entirely fair, it’s his own damn fault. He had begged them to. Begged her to. Partly because it draws in a nice crowd, because they both make a good profit, because their fanbase overlaps and they always go buck-wild for it. But behind all that, there’s just one more little layer, one close to his chest. He’s allowed to be a little selfish, sometimes. He’s a sucker for her. Watching her sing, the way she moves on stage, every perfect little motion sets him spinning as he watches from a hidden spot on the side of the stage. Nobody can see him from where he stands, but she’s truly eagle-eyed; he knows she sees him, because the moment their eyes meet, the air around him starts to heat, the way it only seems to when she’s looking. He was sweating already, because it’s 90 degrees in Memphis and he’s wearing tight ass latex pants and a thick leather jacket, but this just makes his body double down on its effort. Concealed between an amp and a curtain, tucked away in his own private watching booth, he turns it up. Makes a show of wiping his brow when she glances back at him, matches her look with an added intensity that threatens to set the stage on fucking fire. Then, in the break between her lines, she licks her lips and winks. So casual, so charged, so… his eyes flutter back, shutting of their own accord, and when he opens them again, he’s leaning against the amp, on his knees. A bruised ache rings out from his kneecaps down to his ankles, and she’s still just going about her set, her demeanor no different from what he last saw in her. His knees are a better place for him to be, he figures, pressing his head against the rough surface of the amplifier but not daring to let his eyes shut. It’ll be a long show.
A long, painful show that he will savor every second of.