Chapter Text
Gansey sometimes felt like he spent his entire life spinning plates. A constant whirl of porcelain above his head, each plate as delicate as the other. From his duty to his family, the expectation of getting a good education, parenting Ronan whether he wanted it or not… it all spun in its never stopping orbit.
Every time he looked up, there were more plates spinning than there had been before. And recently, one plate felt like it was taking up more of his concentration than he had planned for. Not that he was complaining.
It had been a joke at first.
They’d been on their way to Aglionby one morning, and whatever reason the sun had been shining in more ways than one. Ronan was seemingly having a week off brooding, possibly something to do with the fact that Declan now resided in DC, rather than in the school halls; Noah was plucking on his guitar in the backseat preparing for a music recital; and Gansey was just happy to be there.
A song had come on the radio, something timeless, something that Gansey had grown up hearing around lakes and clam-bake tables, and he found himself singing along – in that smooth golden voice he usually kept locked behind embarrassment and the pursuit of other hobbies.
Then Noah had picked it up, playing along, a grin on his face. Ronan, even without the piano, was using the dashboard. His mind imagining keys, his muscle memory reaching for each note.
When the song had finished, Noah said, “let’s start a band”. And just like that, another spinning plate.
–
It worked. Somehow, between school (for Gansey and Noah) and reckless pursuits of abandonment (for Ronan), they found the time to rehearse. Casually at first, then intensely. They were good. They were great.
And then they were even better when Blue appeared on one Saturday afternoon in Noah’s car, squeezed between her hi-hat and snare drum he had driven over from Fox Way.
“I’ve headhunted her. From the Mountain View band. She’s a beast.”
Gansey was thrilled. Ronan, who so often thought of himself as an unmovable pillar, was persuaded after seeing her play.
In fact, she fit in so well with the band that Ronan found himself able to forgive the effect she had on Gansey. At first, she had flustered him to point of distraction. Whether she was berating him for something, talking to him about the music, or, as time passed, complimenting the way he sang one song or another, Gansey always had the same wide-doe-eyed look.
Ronan loved Gansey. He had loved him through the summers of their early teenage years, he had loved the him when he sat between the two other Lynch brothers in the pew of St Agnes as Ronan played the organ every Sunday, he had loved him through worst days of grief after Ronan lost both his parents. He had loved him, in some way, and he’d thought that maybe… but he had never loved Gansey in the way that Gansey was growing to feel about Blue. It wasn’t the same, it didn’t burn.
When Ronan thought of burning… he thought of someone else. Just a retreating figure he’d caught only once. When he’d lifted his face to the sky and said please.
–
Gansey was halfway through putting his contact lenses in before school one morning when Blue burst through the unlocked front door waving a piece of paper.
“We’ve booked it! We’ve booked it.”
She had two dogs on long leads that were tied around her waist, they were wagging their tails, sharing in the good news.
Noah came out of his room, half-dressed, and bounced up and down in front of her, “Friday night?”
“Friday night. 7 o’clock. I’ve already got my shift covered.”
Gansey, with one eye squinted shut, held the piece up paper up. It was a printed-out email sent to Blue from Marino’s, a restaurant in the next town over that pushed all their tables to the side and held a live music night every month.
Gansey swallowed, “we’re doing this? We’re actually doing this?”
Blue nodded, eyes shining.
“Does Ronan know?” Noah asked.
“No but he was talking about getting us a gig. He just didn’t know how. And I only emailed these guys because Orla had a boyfriend who had a boyfriend whose cousin used to work at Marino’s.”
“First Marino’s… next stop THE WORLD,” Noah screamed.
–
The world was harder to conquer than they thought it would be.
Blue had put her foot down early on. No family money was to be involved. No calling in favours that weren’t solely based on their merit as a band. Organic growth only.
She made an exception for any help from Orla who, as she put it, was people rich rather than money rich. And that was a whole other thing all together.
Gansey had tried bargaining. Noah had whined. Ronan… well… Ronan had agreed with her.
“How are we meant to do this ourselves? We don’t know the first thing about the music industry,” Noah plead over pizza at Nino’s.
“Speak for yourself!” Ronan replied.
“He’s right Ronan, we don’t… not really. Not the business of it,” Gansey had his head in his hands.
Ronan scowled, but didn’t argue any further.
“Well, what do real bands do?” Noah piped up.
“Real bands?!?!” Blue said incredulously, who was passing by their table with her arms full of pizza trays.
“You know what I mean,” Noan said, sticking his tongue out as she went.
“Real bands have managers,” Ronan said, looking immediately to Gansey.
Gansey supposed that yes, to help them get anywhere, at some point they would need a manager. He couldn’t keep spinning this particular plate forever.
“Looks like I should make some calls then.”
–
Gansey made some calls. Made many calls. He cold called agencies, talent scouts, management companies, but no one was interested. No one would even listen to their music or give them a shot. He kept going down the list. Washed-up managers, washed-up musicians, school music teachers. Was there really no one on this planet who could help them?
Eventually he found JJ. A sound technician from West Virginia who was willing to make the winding trip through the mountains surrounding route 33. He saw them perform on a Tuesday night at The Jefferson Theatre’s annual Battle of the Bands in which they placed third.
The four of them left that night with a handwritten business card on the back of a napkin. Gansey supposed they had to start somewhere.
–
Gansey rang JJ the following evening from a car garage while the Pig was being worked on at the only place that he could find that would be open late. He clicked his phone onto speakerphone so he could write notes in his notebook as JJ spoke.
“Yeah so… as I was saying last night, a 30% cut of all your intake would be standard. That’s just what all band managers will do.”
Gansey hummed, “and you have a contract you’d want us to sign?”
“Not as such,” JJ mused, “I can knock something up. Though I’m not sure we’d need that formality.”
“I think we’d like that. I’d want my family lawyer to have a look at it.”
“Family lawyer?!?”
Gansey rubbed his temples, “thanks for your time today. If you do get a chance to draw something up, we’ll certainly look at it.”
Gansey hung up before the conversation could give him a headache. He sunk into an empty roller-chair at the side of the garage pit.
“You know you shouldn’t let anyone take more than a 20% cut,” a voice said from under the hood of the Pig.
The mechanic hadn’t even looked up, he continued with his work.
“What was that?” Gansey stood.
“Band managers. That’s who you were speaking to right? A 30% cut is absurd. You should be looking at 20% with a view to lower it to 15% after the first year if they’ve not met your expectations on a certain number of opportunities.”
He was young. Gansey reckoned he was probably the about the same age, maybe even younger. A wraith of a boy. Gansey hadn’t taken proper notice of him when he’d dropped the car off, he hadn’t been paying enough attention. But as he looked at him more now, Gansey almost thought he was seeing some sort of mirage.
He was gaunt, but almost in an angelic way. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and the curious expression he’d seen on so many small-town Virginian folk. His hair was a dark sandy colour that blended in with his sun-kissed complexion. The only point of colour were his striking blue eyes. Not made of ice like Ronan’s, but dark like the ocean at sunset.
As Gansey took him in, fully, the boy was also taking Gansey in – from his boat shoes, all the way to the school shirt he hadn’t changed out of yet.
Gansey rarely felt judged by strangers. His parents had taught him from a young age that he shouldn’t take criticism from people that he wouldn't go to for advice, and he tried to hold on to that confidence tight. But Gansey felt the boy’s gaze break through the golden forcefield Gansey tried to keep around himself at all times. He even thought he saw the boy look above his head, as if he could see the plates infinite spinning.
The boy paused before saying, “and insist on a contract… but I don’t need to tell you that.”
“You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Are you in a band?”
“Nope.”
“A manager then?”
The boy laughed and shook his head.
“Then what?”
“Music Management for Dummies.”
Gansey frowned, perplexed. A second passed.
The boy shrugged, “the Henrietta public library non-fiction section is severely underfunded. It was that or an unlicenced biography of Rob Lowe from before I was born.”
He went back to his work, which Gansey took as clear indicator that he was done talking. He returned to his roller-chair, scribbling down the book title in his notebook for good measure. Then he made a mental note to encourage his mother to make a charitable donation to the library.
When the Pig had been brought back to life, the mechanic passed Gansey a handwritten labour sheet. WORK COMPLETED BY ADAM.
Gansey stretched out his hand, “thank you… Adam?”
The boy, Adam, nodded, then took a second to wipe his right hand on his coveralls before shaking Gansey’s hand.
“Good luck. With the car… and the music,” he said before turning to go in the office.
Gansey watched him go. The crackle of a thought beginning to form in his mind.