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Harvard hated Los Angeles. Weirdly, it was the kind of place that made him feel even more othered, on an entirely fundamental level, and he’d been raised in fucking Connecticut.
He missed the trees. The quiet of the night, the smell of fresh air. Sure, he could see the water, but it wasn’t the Long Island Sound, it was an ocean. Not even his ocean. He missed the Metro North in a weird way. The pizza even managed to be bad, and it was pizza. For god’s sake, how does one manage to fuck up pizza?
It would never be Frank Pepe’s. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t try to do something.
“Harv, you’re doing the thing again,” Aiden told him, words thrown over his shoulder as if it was nothing more than a passing observation. “Are you gonna be good?”
He was chewing gum, typing in a frenzy on a Blackberry. Sunglasses still on top of his head, blond hair an absolute mess (apparently it was in style or something nowadays), and a shirt that had more holes than fabric. Something about it being fashionable. It matched, aesthetically, with Aiden’s bracelets and cuffs, but the cuff with spikes caught often on a hole closer to his waist and pulled.
“Um, hello? Earth to Harvard?”
“I’m good.” Harvard huffed out a breath and nodded once. “I’m good, I swear.”
“...uh huh. Yeah,” Aiden told him. His jaw didn’t move for the words, only for the chewing gum.
“What were you saying? Before, I mean.”
Aiden crossed his arms over his chest, a fluid motion that ended with the Blackberry against his ribs. He tapped it there against the bones, but the sound that came from it was his bracelets clinking together. When he sighed, it was on the same frequency as the air conditioning that only halfway worked and kept the heavy air in the room circulating. Weighing it down further.
“I was asking if you wanted to try that new riff again tonight,” Aiden said blandly, though his expression had softened. His eyebrows weren’t as arched, his eyes weren’t piercing, he wasn’t staring down at him from over the bridge of his nose. “I liked how it sounded in practice, think this is the place to play it live if we’re gonna debut it anywhere.”
“Yeah, sure.” Harvard’s words were tight in his throat, tighter than they had any right to be. They’d played so many shows before, this one was no different. “If you think tonight’s the night, then… yeah. Tonight.”
“Harvard, it’s the fucking Troubadour,” Eugene called from the other end of the green room. “Yeah, we’re doing the riff. If we’re trying to get signed to a major label and get a bunch of fans in the process in one night, now’s the time to let it fly.”
“Anybody who’s anybody has played here,” Aiden pointed out. He tossed the Blackberry onto a worn out sofa cushion that may have once been a forest green before it faded from use, and his hands went onto his hips. “You play here, you do a good job, and you’re hitting the major leagues. For real. We have to take risks here.”
Harvard looked up at Aiden, over to Eugene in the corner, to Nicholas sitting on the arm of a chair directly next to Gene, to Seiji quietly in the other corner plucking at an electric Fender Jazz bass.
“I got it. Yeah,” Harvard told them.
He got up abruptly. Slipping past Aiden and back towards his rack, he ran his fingers over the strings of a Les Paul and palmed the neck of it.
Some fucking punk band from a place that shouldn’t have had any right to produce punk bands in what may as well have been the center of the world. It was barely real to Harvard. They were barely a punk band to begin with anyway.
But hey, they’d made it across the country in a busted up van and lived a thousand lifetimes in the span of a month and a half. They’d live a thousand more in the span of another three weeks. Then, they’d be home, hopefully until they heard some damn good news. Otherwise, if it was the worst possible kind of news, it would be back to waiting tables with Nick for Harvard. And… that would be that. It would be winter, there would probably be snow on the ground, and the warm and sunny days out west would be nothing more than a faint and distant memory. Just out of reach like something on the top shelf.
“Hey.”
Harvard turned his attention upwards, gradually, watching Aiden’s bright green eyes flick back and forth between the guitar rack and Harvard. To his hands, to the floor, to the LEDs on the ceiling.
“What’s up?” Harvard asked as he tugged the Les Paul into his hands. The strap was slung over his shoulders, sitting right in the spot he was sure would be calloused if not for how soft and worn in it already was. “You nervous?”
“Me?” Aiden scoffed quietly. “No. Never.”
He wasn’t chewing his gum for a moment. He was holding it between his teeth, clenching his jaw.
“I don’t believe you,” Harvard told him plainly.
“You shouldn’t.” Aiden cracked a smile, one where only the left corners of his lips curled upwards and barely showed any teeth. Only a canine, really. “I’ll be fine. I was just gonna say that you don’t actually have to play the riff if you don’t want to, I just think it would be the right time to play it if we ever do.”
“Well, I kinda have to now. I’ll throw everyone off if I don’t.” Harvard smiled in return.
Aiden scoffed, kicking at the floor, something that produced a dull scuffing sound. “Not really.”
“My rhythm section has to extend the bridge and Nick has to adjust his chord progression differently. They already think they’re doing that, no point in altering it now.”
Harvard ghosted calloused fingers, rough from years of playing, over the strings in the patterns of chords he would be playing. The adjusted chords he’d be playing. He’d written the goddamn music to the song anyway, it shouldn’t have been hard.
That was how it always was. He wrote the music, Aiden wrote the lyrics. Others contributed, of course, here and there, but it always boiled down to the two of them. Maybe it always would. He hoped it always would, anyways.
By the time he got out onto the stage, he was vaguely sticky with a kind of nervous sweat he hadn’t been anticipating to linger and fester. Lights were out, he could barely see where he was supposed to be standing, but he found his position. Stage left had always been his favorite, for reasons unbeknownst to Harvard.
A hand touched his shoulder. With the quiet sounds of movement from the crowd, quiet echoing cheers, he could still make out the words from Aiden, breathed hot into his ear with such a melody that he could have been a siren preparing his song. Luring Harvard into that sense of security he needed, a strange kind of pre-show ritual they’d had since high school that had always worked despite the changes in scenery, weather, time, and heart.
He never brought up how he felt to Aiden. That was probably for the best if they were trying to launch a career, he figured.
“You’ve got this. Play your fucking heart out until your fingers bleed,” Aiden told him. His lips and hair brushed against Harvard’s cheek as he spoke, the air hot.
Aiden pulled away as fast as he’d arrived, only to brazenly rip the microphone from the stand. Drumsticks clicked together, a kickdrum suddenly beating like a heart deep within Harvard’s ribcage. He gave the strings a strum, fingers already positioned in such a way that he had to believe his body knew what it was doing even if he didn’t.
The lights went on.