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“Jesus fuck. Oh my fucking god. This thing fucking—what the hell.”
Noah isn’t sure he’s ever heard Clint scream out of pure frustration, but this was pretty close.
When he looks down to see what’s up, it’s all too evident—there’s a loading Apple Logo on a black screen and Clint, who has thrown his head back, pressing his hands against his face, is now muttering a selection of very, very terrible words under his breath.
Looks and sounds like a crisis, then. Noah clicks his phone shut. “Saved recently?”
“No goddamn idea.”
Noah studies him silently for a little. Notices how strangled his voice is, and shaky with barely contained fury. He’s breathing in deeply but it doesn’t help with the tremor running through his shoulders and spine. A time bomb. Noah saw this happen before, hated the results. They’re back in square one, though—Clint’s doing that again, and if he presses any harder against his face he might just shove his eyeballs right past their sockets.
That’d fucking suck. “Don’t do this,” Noah chides, reaching for his wrists, and slowly pries them away from his eyes.
Clint keeps his lids screwed shut for a second, teeth grinding—there’s a vein throbbing along his temple, dark spots under his eyes, and his bottom lip has been chewed bloody. To say he looks tired would be the understatement of the year, honestly. His face twists a bit, lips downturned, and he instinctively moves to hide again, but Noah holds a bit tighter so Clint gives up.
“I can’t believe this thing just blue screened me,” he mutters instead, and despite the rough tone of his voice and how pissed he sounds, Noah doesn’t miss the exhale of surrender, how his shoulders sag.
They’ve been here for hours now. The rest of the guys are still loading the gear out, or getting some things cleared with the venue (confetti fines are apparently evolutive around here which they hadn't been warned about before, and god forbid more than two pints get spilled—just exactly what was missing to make Matt and Alana’s day worse, really).
Somehow Noah had escaped a round of it all tonight while Clint didn’t have to come up with any bullshit excuse—he still had work, despite leaving the stage.
A new clip to deliver soon, some bullshit underpaying job that’d boost his reputation a lot only ‘cause it’s one of those long-running, stupid bands who still had their scene in their old clutches. Working on it during afterhours or early mornings, sometimes off-days too instead of sleeping like he ought to—it’s wearing him thin, chewing right through his bones. And tonight his MacBook’s uncooperative, which might just be enough to make Clint actually lose it.
If he hasn’t already, that is.
Noah leans all the way down until he can kiss the crease between his furrowed brows. Clint’s sitting between his legs and back to the couch, his MacBook barely holding on his lap. Noah lets go of his wrists, goes to massage his neck instead, finding it knotted with tense muscles.
“Technically not a blue screen,” he points out just to see if Clint would take the bait despite the exhaustion and—well, it just works .
He grins as Clint starts showering him with the best of his flowery vocabulary, ranting about how he doesn’t give a single fuck about what technically is and isn’t a blue screen but one thing he knows for a fact is that the difference between a shithead and a dickhead resides in Noah’s entire existence. Noah listens dutifully, bringing his head down to rest against his, while Clint tries rebooting his computer in vain. The thing’s dead for the night, apparently—or dead period, who knows with their god awful luck. Weirder stuff happened this tour, and they barely started.
“Fuck it.” Clint closes the MacBook shut, the sound making Noah wince and feel for the poor device. “Whatever. Fuck Adobe. Fuck me. Fuck everything. I quit this stupid job.”
“Which one? All your jobs kinda are.”
Clint doesn’t answer. He butts his head against Noah’s and certainly not gently. “Ow,” he groans, but doesn’t remove himself from more harm. He’s fine right where he is, despite the obvious threat that a pissed and tired Clint poses. “Was gonna kindly invite you back to my humble place to unwind and let me take care of you.”
Clint cranes his neck to look at him with narrowed eyes. “Define taking care.”
Noah straightens up, smiling. His thumbs dig into the taunt cervicals, slowly massaging the flesh. Clint makes a breathy sound, half-moan and half-groan, lids fluttering.
“Nevermind. Do that again,” he says, an impatient demand that makes Noah grin.
And could he ever say no? Noah complies, and the more he works on Clint’s neck and shoulders the more he feels every bit of tension bleed straight out from him.
It’s slow and attentive work. He could just spend the entire evening with his hands on him, hearing him breathe out softly, stealing quiet little sounds of either pain when he presses too hard on a knotted muscle or pleasure when he manages to smooth it out. And honestly? It’s a fucking wonder why he’s never done that before.
When he notices his hanging lower and his breathing slowing, Noah leans down to his ear, kissing the tip there. “Good?” he whispers, running a hand through the dyed hair.
The roots are showing, a lot lighter than the rest. He has yet to notice, but Noah knows from experience that soon enough, when Clint eventually takes a real look at himself in the mirror he’ll make rounds through the buses and ask everyone if they have some leftover black box dye—as if any of them ever dyed their hair—and there’ll be threats of suicide bombing a random venue on tour if not. But as of late he barely has time to sleep let alone take care of his looks, so it’s not quite time for local terrorism yet.
Clint exhales. “Shit, you’re great at this.”
“Yeah. I’d say I’m pretty great at a lot of things.”
“Dunno about that. You’ve gotta prove those too.”
Noah’s thumbs move along the curve of his ears, gently adding pressure there. “Told you. I’ll do you whole if you come with me instead of choosing digital torture.”
“Do me whole,” Clint echoes with a low hum, and gives him a quick look behind his shoulder, half-lidded. “Is that so?”
Well, fuck. He didn’t mean it like that . Not in the way it got said back at him, with such a low, dragging tone. Noah’s hands still on his neck as he blinks, feeling his belly flip when Clint’s eyes darken. “Shit, yeah, if you want. Anything you want.”
“Don’t say that unless you’re willing to UV map my models by hand one by one so I don’t have to.”
Noah’s heard him and Nick complain about these damned UV maps enough to know that he doesn’t ever want anything to do with them ever. “Anything else you want,” he corrects himself, and it makes Clint sigh deeply.
He’s about to say something when the door opens and Matt’s head pops in, clearly looking over it. “Gotta go,” he says, not giving much details, but that’s enough to let them know it’s the venue curfew. “We move in five. Roll out, boys,” he adds, and doesn’t wait for a reply before disappearing.
Clint groans out loud. Noah moves first so he can lend him a hand and pull him on his feet, which the other accepts without much fuss. After gathering his stuff and throwing it all haphazardly into his backpack, Clint follows him outside, dragging his feet and barely looking up to where they’re headed—he’s furiously typing away something on his phone, and with a single stolen look Noah sees that whoever’s on the receiving end of those texts is replying just as fast.
Well, there goes one stupid job.
They’re closing in towards where their buses are when Noah speaks up. “Back at mine?”
“You want me so bad,” Clint says in that annoying sugary tone, only glancing up at Noah to give him a shit-eating grin that Noah wants to kiss off his stupidly pretty face. He pockets his phone, stepping closer to only brush his lips against his and not much else. “I’ll grab some stuff from my bunk and I’ll be right back,” he says, and before Noah can grab him he swiftly moves away, trotting to his own bus without waiting for a reply.
Noah can only stare half-annoyed, half-fond, trying not to run after him cause that’d prove much more than the fact that he wants him ‘so bad’.
(And there's no fucking denying that he does. He’s down horrendous. He’s barely hiding it, but if he really listened to the voices they’d put him in some behavioral corrective facility like they would untrained dogs and Matt surely would find a way to kill him there.)
Back in his own bus, everything and everyone is quiet, and that comes with no surprise after the rough two nights they had. Non-stop downpour, the damn cold January rain that stuck to their very bones, and everything else in between when you gotta travel across the country for money.
They keep to their own bunks, Matt the only one still lingering around at the front, rummaging through the freezer for food. Doesn’t look as chirpy as he usually is, and Noah’s got half a mind to ask him about the whole Mike stuff but—touchy fucking subject, you see. Without much surprise, Matt ignores him and Noah’s fine by that.
He chills at the front, busy checking socials he keeps pretending he doesn’t have. Texts friends on the other side of the planet, and those close enough to drop by at a show. Doom scrolls Reddit until he feels dumber than he did before he started.
Dicks around until Clint’s back, and—he’s not alone. When he says grabbing stuff from my bunk he only ever means Jesse specifically. Which is fucking great, because Jesse tends to forget he exists in a world where some people (Noah) need him to function correctly on a daily basis.
They’re chatting (arguing) quietly, both of them whisper-yelling, the argument enough to have Jesse looking more alive than he did the entire evening. Noah watches them get inside and throw their jackets around like they belong in here and don’t care about anyone else having anything to say about it.
Jesse says something that definitely makes Clint want to scream as loud as possible, but he keeps it down which physically and visibly costs him a lot. Still, he’s nothing if not considerate, so he just throws his hands up in the air, surrendering. “Try telling that to him to see how it’d go. Go on. Come on! Oh, right. You can’t,” he hisses, and immediately whips around to run to the back of the bus.
Noah blinks. He’s got no clue what just happened, but Jesse sighs deeply and glances up to look at the ceiling for a long, silent while. Noah lets him have that moment, then leans down to grab his wrist, pulling him closer until he’s standing between his knees.
“What was that about?” he asks quietly, wrapping his arms around his middle.
Jesse’s hands come resting on his shoulders, then on the sides of his neck as he looks down at him with clouded eyes. Still probably thinking about whatever that argument was with Clint, but when Noah squeezes him a bit Jesse blinks and fully focuses on him, leaning down to kiss his brow.
“Something stupid, like everything always is on tour,” he replies gruffly, still sounding a bit rough from the cold he had a few days ago. “Nothing he won’t forget about tomorrow if I bring him whipped cream coffee.”
“He wanted to quit.”
“He always wants to quit. You always want to quit too.”
“This isn’t about me,” Noah complains, sighing. “And I do not. I’m a fucking adult who manages his workload just fine. Stop defaming.”
Jesse snorts. “Try telling that to him to see how it’d go,” he says with his best Clint impression, which isn’t supposed to be funny but ultimately is, despite the situation.
Noah giggles. “Clint okay?” he asks anyway, glancing to the right where he went—the far back of the Omens bus.
“Will be.”
“Are you?”
Jesse smiles. Noah believes him before he speaks, repeating the same words again. Will be—and he believes and trusts them. Doesn’t think he can do more than be there, doesn’t want to ask what Jesse was supposed to tell him. Things don’t make much sense around here and he’s learnt to let wounds heal instead of digging through them, as if answers hid in spilled blood.
“C’mon. Let’s fuck off to sleep.”
Noah wholly agrees. They pass the long corridor that leads to the back, that one space he turned into a make-shift studio because everyone else hated how it got either too hot or too cold—there’s a bed, too, somewhat bigger than the bunks, but nowhere near as comfortable. Which is saying a fucking lot, ‘cause nobody else but Noah’s sleepless and deranged self would put themselves through this.
And, well. Clint and Jesse whenever they’re around too, which happens to be almost every night of this tour so far.
“Oh, he’s sulking,” Jesse says in that annoying, airy voice without even looking at the unmoving shape—just being a nuisance, and he receives a middle finger in response from an otherwise silent Clint. “What are we, hormonal twelve year-olds?”
Noah’s smiling as he shuffles under the covers, crawling up Clint’s form until he’s hovering above his scowling and tired face.
“Offer’s still up,” Noah starts, trying to decipher that look on his face that could mean anything between I’m hungry cause I keep forgetting to eat and I’m about to commit something so irreparable the federal law might just have to get involved.
Clint’s a difficult person to read. Barely lets anyone in, and even once you are it’s a tough ride to stay on, navigating the unknown waters of his moods almost dreadfully impossible. Noah has learnt a thing or two about how difficult human beings could be living with Jesse, but getting to know Cling felt like being canon-shot straight back to square on—even further away. In the negatives and all of that, so lost that he had needed a manual for the stupid, a joint, and a fat ton of patience before getting where he is now.
And right now, well. It’s one of those nights where Noah is set to lose the game, but at least Jesse’s here to minimise damage.
That is, if he cooperates.
“Don’t waste your time,” Clint warns. “Or your breath, for the matter. Let me die.”
“It’s fine if you’d rather have Jesse do it,” he says, switching tactics, smiling wider when Clint’s eyes flash with sudden outrage. “He’s also offering. Isn’t he?”
Noah looks pointedly at Jesse, who just flops down on the bed, down to his sleeping shorts. He rubs his right eye with the same careless vigor Clint had earlier and Noah’s gotta refrain from mothering another grown man tonight about the dangers of cornea damage.
Clint tries to roll away to the very edge of the bed. Noah chooses, once again, to deny him mercy and keeps him pinned under his weight right where he is, despite the obvious efforts to not be included or even considered in any of their scenarios. Well, too bad for him—he’s in Noah’s bed under Noah’s roof, and he will get treated nicely.
Even if the nicely in question is quite often relative.
“How much water will I have to sweat out and will my poor back suffer consequences?” Jesse asks around a yawn, already kicking the duvet to slip underneath it.
Clint says ew, pervert at the same time as Noah says urgh, old man . They look at each other and try to keep a straight face as the situation demands while Jesse strategically ignores them both after a pointedly narrowed look that tells them clearly he’s not forgetting about that anytime soon.
“Here I was, trying to be nice, but I see how it is. Well, me, my tired back and the oh-so-benevolent water in my body are all crashing out. Good fucking night.”
And he does as proclaimed—turns his back to them and goes to sleep, or at least pretends to, breathing evenly and deeply. Noah catches the amused and quite besotted look on Clint’s face before Clint notices him staring and smiles to himself, bending down to bite his cheek, right where a dimple would crease his face.
“Lemme do it. C’mon.”
“No.”
“Think about your back, Clinton. Think about how much you’re gonna hate yourself in 10 years when your spine sounds like Matt Dierkes snare bombs everytime you slightly move and you remember that you refused yourself this.”
“I’ll offer my body to the earth and its maggots long before this happens. Also, Dierkes mentioned equals forfeiting the argument.”
“I don’t need arguments when I have these guns. I’ll flip you around. You know it.”
“Can’t force me to have a good time.”
“I would. I could. I will.”
He means it. He really does. He’d wrestle him. Clint knows it. He opens his mouth to contest just for the argument’s sake, but it’s like the being difficult and contrarian on purpose switch has suddenly been flipped off in his brain and all fight is now drained from him. Noah watches it happen in real time and grins triumphantly and proudly cause evil—Clint’s brain—has been fucking defeated.
Who said violence (and big arms) didn’t solve anything?
“Whatever,” Clint sighs, as Noah lifts himself up and moves away to let him roll on his front. “Knock yourself out. Or knock me out, I don’t care anymore. Urgh.”
Noah glances at Jesse’s still form and knows he’s faking sleep just by looking at how still his shoulders are. He leans down until he’s close to his ears, whispering, “See? 0-1 for me. You better up your fucking game or I’ll steal your little boyfriend forever.”
He plants one of those wet kisses Jesse absolutely hates on his cheek and moves away before retribution comes, but not before he hears him say I’ll murder you in your fucking sleep under his breath. Which, by all means, he’s so very welcome to.
To die by the hands of a bad bitch while peacefully asleep with another bad bitch in his bed? He’s so in.
In any case, Noah gets to actually do what he was supposed to. And it works wonders—Clint passes out barely ten minutes later, put to sleep by steady hands working his sore muscles thoroughly. Neck, back, arms, all knotted and tensed, the best storage for stress. Noah’s been to physical therapy enough to be too familiar about that stuff now, had his trainer chew him out one too many times about overexerting himself in times of stress. And it’s like nobody else around cares about that until something bad happens. If anything else, at least Jesse doesn’t contest this, tagging along with Noah to the gym.
Clint is another difficult story. But still. With time, Noah’s getting him in there with the two of them too.
Now though—he’s absolutely out. Brain fucking off at long last, resting, his breath slow, a little whistling sound. Noah drops down to kiss his hair and shuffles back to get rid of his own clothes and dim the lights before slipping back under the cover. He keeps close to Clint, resting his head on the side of his neck, and reaches for Jesse over the sleeping body.
“Hey, Jess. Turn around,” he calls out quietly, threading his fingers through the curls, gently digging fingernails on his scalp.
Jesse doesn’t at first, too busy enjoying the sensation. His shoulders drop down as he sighs from deep within his chest. “Hold on, I’m liking this.”
“I know you do. So, turn around. I could also do you.”
Jesse waits a beat longer before turning around as Noah’s hand drops to his cheek. He tilts his head slightly to kiss the inside of his palm. Noah’s heart flutters as he retrieves his hand to wrap an arm around Clint’s waist instead, pressing closer.
“Maybe another time,“ Jesse whispers, eyes landing on the sleeping form in front of him. His eyes soften noticeably and he reaches to get the hair falling on Clint’s eyes away, fingertips softly touching the sides of his face. “The things you have to do to get him unconscious.”
Noah breathes in deep, closing his eyes. It’s been like this forever. He doesn’t mind, and most times he is the guy Jesse and Clint gotta put down through either mental or physical or submission. Less often it’s Jesse, regulated more evenly than they are—smarter, too, has learnt to learn his lessons instead of burning pages and pages of notebooks—but god forbid anyone ever reminding him that he too needs rest.
Touring sucks, but touring together means they can at least take care of each other.
“Jesse?” He pauses, trying to think if this is worth bringing up, but it’s been on his damn mind all this time and he can’t shake it off. Something about curiosity and some cat, right? “What was it? The.. stuff. How you can’t tell me that or, huh, whatever.”
He doesn’t know how to paraphrase it exactly but it’s fine: Jesse rarely needs structured (or even finished) sentences from them to understand. “Oh,” he says, then smiles lightly, glancing at him with a fond look that most days Noah doesn’t think he deserves, but not right now. He accepts it as it is as warmth spreads through his chest. “Clint thinks you’re the one we should beat up with metal pipes for overworking yourself.”
“Clint’s an asshole,” Noah huffs. He gets it, but also come on, metal pipes? “Homeless man calling another homeless man broke type situation.”
“In this house all we know is deflection and pointed fingers,” Jesse replies with a little laugh, squeezing Noah’s shoulder. “Hush, now. Sleep. And don’t wake up, even if the roof peels off and the bus flips over.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it.”
“Of course you do.”
“Stop smiling, you little shit.”
“Love you.”
Jesse sighs. “And I love you. Now close your goddamn eyes, Noah.”
The bus doesn’t flip over, for one. The roof stays nicely very put too. Noah sleeps just fine throughout the night despite Jesse predicting terrible omens, the bad mattress and half-freezing situation. They all do, soundly, safely.
It’s fine when you have a bunch of limbs latched around you, and two warm bodies to stitch yourself to. And time to rest, truly rest.
Whatever it is, brewing outside? It can fucking wait.