Work Text:
The humid Chicago air hangs thick and heavy, smelling of damp asphalt and exhaust as the engine of the motorcycle throttles down a quiet side street. Mike grips the handlebars, his dark eyes squinting through the gloom toward the practice space. A split-second patch of slick, wet gravel catches the front tire. The bike wobbles, loses traction, and spills onto its side with a harsh metallic scrape.
Mike goes down, skidding across the pavement. He groans, pushing himself up onto his palms. Pain stings his left leg, but a quick glance confirms it’s nothing more than a ripped pant leg and a raw, bleeding scraped knee. He shakes his head, cursing under his breath as he stands to survey the fallen bike.
Then, a small, choked cry cuts through the hum of the city behind him. Mike freezes. The sound is sharp, wet, and full of agony. His pulse spikes instantly. He hadn't thought anyone was behind him—he was just focusing on the road, lost in his own head. Behind him.
The memory hits like a bucket of ice water. He hadn't driven alone. He had taken Davy with him today. Cautiously, as if moving too fast might make the reality true, Mike turns around. Davy lies curled on the asphalt a few yards back, looking impossibly small against the dark street. He looks so young—far younger than twenty-one, stripped of all his usual theatrical bravado and easy swagger. Both of Davy's small hands are pressed frantically against his gut, but thick, dark blood is already blooming across the fabric of his shirt, oozing right through his knuckles. His face is pale, drawn tight with sheer shock.
Davy looks like he’s on the absolute verge of either screaming or crying out for help, his mouth working silently, but he does neither. His head lolls back, his eyelids flutter shut, and his body goes completely limp as he passes out.
And then Mike gets scared.
The cynical, guarded front Mike wears like armor—the stoic Texan in the iconic green wool beanie, the guy who always has a smart answer or a sharp word—completely crumbles. Panic tears through his chest, hot and suffocating. He can’t lose this boy. He can't lose the person who walked up to him after that screen test back in sixty-five, looked him dead in the eye, said hold this for me, and slipped his tiny hand into Mike's. He can't lose the guy who chose to stand by him through the secret dates, the fear of the press, and the chaos of raising three-year-old Christian after Phyllis walked away.
Mike drops to his knees beside Davy, his voice cracking as he calls out to a god that feels light-years away. He stares up into the smoggy Chicago sky, looking up to an unforgiving universe with an desperate, silent plea for mercy. Please—just please.
With pure, desperate luck, the rumble of a heavy engine approaches. A delivery truck rounds the corner. Mike leaps up, waving his arms frantically, his voice a raw shout until the vehicle grinds to a halt. The driver pales at the sight, helping Mike lift Davy’s limp frame into the back. During the frantic ride, Mike kneels over Davy in the dark truck bed, pressing his jacket against the wound. He doesn't look at the blood. He doesn't look at the road. He is entirely focused on the shallow, uneven rhythm of Davy’s chest rising and falling. He just needs to hear him breathe. Davy *needs* to be okay.
Later, inside the sterile, fluorescent-lit waiting room of the hospital, the silence is deafening.
Mike sits alone. He has already found a payphone and rung their logistics manager, Ward Sylvester, telling him to notify Peter and Micky. He’s also called Dixie Haines, thanking whatever higher power exists that she’s safely at the hotel watching Christian. With nothing left to do, Mike sits in an uncomfortable vinyl chair, staring blankly at the floor. His hands are trembling. Slowly, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small pair of folding scissors he keeps for guitar strings.
He takes off his green beanie, holding the worn wool in his lap. With meticulous, mechanical precision, he pulls at the small yarn pom-pom on top and begins to snip away at the loose threads, giving his green hat poof a careful little haircut while he waits for the doctor to walk through the doors.
As Mike silently pleads to whatever invisible God is on duty today, snipping away at loose threads on his beanie with meticulous, shaky precision, a long shadow suddenly crosses over him. His heart jumps into his throat. He straightens up sharply, expecting the white coat of a doctor bearing news, only to slump right back down into the uncomfortable vinyl seat when he recognizes Peter. Peter stands there, looking entirely out of place in the sterile, fluorescent lighting, his posture hesitant and his wide eyes full of quiet worry.
He and Peter have never really gotten along well. They don't have much in common at all—Mike’s sharp, cynical Texan pragmatism has always clashed with Peter’s gentle, airy idealism. Yet one thing they certainly have in common, plain as day, is their love for Davy. Mike knows the score. He knows that if he had pulled away on that afternoon back in sixty-five, if he had flinched when Davy boldly offered up his palm, Davy would probably be holding hands with Peter instead.
So, Mike talks. The words spill out of him, raw and heavy, as he keeps his eyes glued down to his hat. He snips another stray piece of yarn, endlessly explaining the spill, the gravel, the sudden weight of the bike, and pinning every single second of the blame squarely on himself. He expects Peter to agree. He expects the scolding, the quiet judgment, the confirmation of his own crushing guilt.
Instead, Peter just steps closer, leaning against the wall, and softly points out that the Chicago fog picked a real rotten time to cross his motorcycle. It isn't exactly a joke, but the sheer, gentle absurdity of blaming the weather is enough to choke a sudden, watery laugh right out of Mike’s throat. Ward and Micky arrive next, their rushed footsteps echoing down the quiet hallway. Micky approaches with a face completely drained of color, asking about Christian with a quiet, grounded intensity. He's so serious for once—no bits, no exaggerated voices, no funny faces. Mike can't even remember the last time their group was ever this serious.
The silence in the waiting room feels heavy, fragile, and entirely unnatural. Mike keeps waiting for someone to break it, for someone to crack a stupid joke just to make the room feel normal again.
Desperate for a reality check, Mike looks up to Ward. He hopes their logistics manager will say something—anything—to snap them out of this suffocating gloom. Mike doesn't even know if the industry rumors are true, if Ward actually knows or suspects that Mike is dating Davy. In Mike's spiraling mind, Ward could easily make a crude joke to break the tension, or pull him aside, or even try to have him arrested right here in sixty-seven for loving another man.
Instead, Ward just looks down at him with genuine, tired concern and softly asks Mike if he’s eaten anything today.
That simple, mundane show of care shatters the last of Mike's defenses. The cynical front completely collapses, and Mike starts crying, silent tears finally breaking through as his shoulders shake. Before the green beanie can drop from his limp fingers to the dirty floor, Peter leans forward and catches his hat. Mike forces down a dry bite of the vending machine sandwich Ward shoves into his hand, every swallow feeling like chewing glass. The tears keep coming anyway, blurring his vision until the stale white bread tastes like nothing but salt and quiet horror.
Then, the heavy swing doors down the hall push open, and a doctor steps into the waiting room, wiping his hands on a paper towel.
Mike’s body reacts instantly—he pushes himself up, half-choking on his food, his eyes watering so badly the world melts into smudged fluorescent lights. He moves forward, but Ward steps up first, placing a firm, steadying hand on Mike's shoulder to keep him anchored while stepping up as Davy’s legal guardian and representative on the tour. Mike hangs back just half a pace, his chest heaving silently, his green beanie still clutched tight in Peter’s hands behind him. He listens through the haze of his own tears, clinging to every technical term, every grave nod from the doctor, completely at the mercy of whatever news comes next.
When the doctor turns back toward the hallway and calls for "family only," Mike’s heart instantly sinks right into his stomach. He takes a half-step back, the reality of sixty-seven hitting him like a cold slab of lead—he isn't a brother, he isn't a husband, he’s just a bandmate, and on paper, he’s nobody to Davy at all.
Before the door can swing shut, Ward steps smooth and steady right into the doctor’s line of sight. "I'm their guardian," Ward says, his voice flat, steady, and leaving absolutely zero room for argument.
The doctor blinks, eyeing the ragged group of young men taking up half his waiting room. "All of them?"
Ward doesn't even flinch. "Have you heard of this invention called adoption?"
The doctor sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, but he steps aside and waves a hand down the hall. Just like that, they're allowed back. The recovery room smells sharp of antiseptic and cold steel. When Mike steps through the door, his eyes lock straight onto the bed. Davy looks impossibly small under the white hospital sheets, pale and fragile, but he’s healing, and though his eyelids are heavy and sleepy, he’s awake.
Every instinct in Mike’s body screams at him to rush the side of the bed, to gather Davy up in his arms, pull him flush against his chest, and never let go. He fights it with everything he has, keeping his hands jammed deep into his pockets, his knuckles white, terrified of pushing too far in front of the room.
Then Davy’s head lolls sideways on the pillow. His dark eyes find Mike, unfocused and heavily glazed over, hopped up on a heavy dose of painkillers. A hazy, goofy smile spreads wide across his face. "You came!" Davy slurs softly, his voice raspy but light. "You really do love me!"
At those slurred, drug-hazy words, Mike completely breaks. Any lingering semblance of cynicism, any hard-bitten Texan armor he’s ever put up, vanishes into thin air. He forgets the rules, forgets Ward standing right by the door, forgets every risk of nineteen-sixty-seven, and rushes straight to his boyfriend's bedside. He drops down onto the edge of the mattress, reaching out to cup Davy’s cheek with a shaking hand, his thumb stroking over warm, pale skin.
"Davy..." Mike breathes, his voice thick with unspent tears. Suddenly, Davy’s silly grin fades. He squints up at Mike, his small forehead crumpling into a deep, heavy frown. Mike’s heart stutters, panic spiking in his chest all over again. "What's wrong? Davy, does something hurt?"
Davy reaches up a slow, clumsy hand, pointing a limp finger straight at the top of Mike's bare head. "Your head's broken," he murmurs, his tone deadly serious despite the heavy drugs in his system.
Mike blinks, totally thrown. "... What?"
"Supposed to be green," Davy mutters, leaning his head back into the pillow with a dissatisfied little huff.
Behind them, a soft, fond breath escapes Peter. He steps forward from the foot of the bed and gently hands Mike his wool beanie—freshly trimmed of its loose threads. Mike looks from the hat to Peter, a sudden, wet laugh spilling out of his chest. He shakes his head, pulling the green beanie down over his ears until it sits just right. The moment the wool covers his dark hair, the frown melts off Davy’s face entirely. The goofy, sleepy smile stretches across his lips again, his dark eyes shining lazily up at Mike.
"Better," Davy sighs, his hand drifting down to find Mike's, lacing their fingers tightly together.
Holding Davy’s small, warm hand in his own, Mike stares down at their laced fingers, and his mind slips back two years—to October nineteenth, nineteen-sixty-five.
He’s twenty-two, exhausted, and carrying the chip of a struggling musician on his shoulder. He’s just walked off the soundstage after his screen test, his dark wool beanie shoved low, his posture slouched in calculated indifference. He’d played the part of the dry, cynical Texan because it was easier than letting them see how desperately he needed the gig—for himself, and for little Christian back home.
As he steps out into the dim hallway behind the stage, a tiny figure pops out from a side door. It’s the British kid—the one who’d already been cast weeks ago, the broadway veteran everyone was building the show around. Davy had been sitting in the adjacent control room, watching Mike’s audition on a quiet black-and-white monitor.
Mike stops, raising an eyebrow, ready to spit out a witty, defensive line before the kid can make fun of his hat or his accent.
Instead, Davy walks right up to him, his dark eyes bright and completely unbothered by Mike’s cold glare. He doesn't say *great test*, or *nice hat*, or offer a polite Hollywood handshake. He just steps into Mike’s personal space, reaches out, and says, bold as daylight, "Hold this for me."
Mike blinks, instinctively holding out his hand, expecting a prop, a script, or a cigarette.
Davy slips his own small, warm hand directly into Mike’s palm, folding his fingers tight around Mike’s knuckles. He smiles—a brilliant, daring little grin that says he knows *exactly* the kind of fire he’s playing with—and winks before strolling past him down the hall.
Mike had stood there in the drafty corridor, frozen, looking down at his empty, tingling palm, realizing in a single second that his cynical armor didn't stand a chance. Back in the quiet hospital room, Mike squeezes the real, solid hand in his grip, bringing it up to brush a soft kiss against Davy’s knuckles.