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By the time Michael met David, he had been at the arena for six hours, eaten half a sandwich, and developed a personal grievance against a road case with a broken wheel. Every time he and the other stagehand got it pointed toward the double doors, it veered sideways again, threatening either the wall or Michael’s foot. His coworker insisted that it had been fine that morning, which Michael might have found more reassuring if that morning had been of any use to him.
“It’s not this morning anymore,” he said, hauling the case straight.
“No, it certainly isn’t.”
Michael glanced over his shoulder and found a blond man leaning against the doorway they needed, wearing a black tank and an expression that suggested he had been enjoying the struggle for at least a little while. He recognized David from the posters outside. In person, without the lighting and the coat and whatever they did to make a man look several stories tall on the side of an arena, he was still distracting enough that Michael nearly let the case drift again.
“You need that doorway?” David asked.
“Eventually. I was going to see whether we could get this going fast enough to make you move.”
His coworker made a small, strangled sound, but David only smiled and stepped aside, his attention lingering on Michael as they wrestled the case past him. Michael could feel it even when he bent his head to watch the threshold. He told himself that was probably part of the job for someone like David: looking at people as though they had become the most interesting thing in the room.
Someone down the corridor called Michael’s name and asked how the case was coming.
“Emotionally or physically?” he called back.
Behind him, David laughed. Michael pushed harder, got the bad wheel over the threshold with an unpleasant scrape, and was nearly clear when David told him to be careful with his shoulder. He looked back to find the singer nodding toward the side he had been hauling.
“You’re doing all the work over there.”
Michael’s coworker protested, David looked unconvinced, and Michael found himself smiling despite the sweat running between his shoulder blades. By the time they reached their destination, he was still trying to decide whether David had been helping or simply looking for an excuse to talk to him.
The following afternoon, Michael discovered that knowing vampires could fly did very little to prepare him for watching one fall.
He had been checking labels on a stack of cases when David rose above the stage, his long coat stirring behind him as he climbed. There was nothing attached to him, nothing supporting him but whatever it was that let his kind disregard gravity. Michael had seen footage, of course. Everyone had. Watching it happen a short distance away was different enough that he forgot the label beneath his hand.
Paul played through a sequence at the drums while Marko watched from one side of the stage, guitar resting against his hip. Dwayne was adjusting something on his bass. None of them seemed particularly concerned that their singer was approaching the lighting grid.
“Does he always go that high?” Michael asked the touring crew member beside him.
“Depends on the venue,” she said, consulting her clipboard.
Michael tipped his head farther back. David turned slowly in the air, the light catching his hair, and then his body went slack.
Michael moved before he understood what he was seeing. His hand caught the edge of the nearest case as he tried to get around it, his stomach turning with the immediate knowledge that he was nowhere near close enough to help. David was dropping without any attempt to stop himself, his coat streaming above his shoulders, and Michael had barely drawn breath when Paul left the drums.
He caught David ten feet above the stage. Their movement stopped at once, Paul holding him upright against his chest while David’s boots hung over the floor. For one awful moment, Michael could only stare. Then David lifted his head from Paul’s shoulder and smiled.
“Oh, fuck you,” Michael whispered, letting go of the case.
The crew member looked from him to the stage with belated understanding. “Sorry. First time seeing that?”
“You could have mentioned it.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Probably should have.”
Above the stage, David said something Michael couldn’t hear. Paul answered with one arm still secure around his waist, holding him for a moment after David had clearly begun supporting himself. Michael watched them separate, then watched Paul return to the kit and roll his shoulders before picking up his sticks. Around him, rehearsal resumed with the easy efficiency of people who had seen this plenty of times before.
Michael went back to the labels, although he had to read the first one twice.
Half an hour later, he was crouched beside a cable run when a pair of black boots stopped in front of him. He looked up to find David without the coat, his expression already telling Michael that somebody had reported his reaction.
“I hear you were worried about me.”
“I thought you were falling.”
“I was.” David smiled at the look Michael gave him. “Paul caught me.”
“Yeah, I saw that part.”
David bent slightly, bringing himself closer to Michael’s level. “Were you going to?”
Michael glanced toward the stage, then back at him. “From over here? I’d probably have broken every bone in my body trying. Would’ve appreciated somebody telling me it was part of the show.”
Something in David’s expression shifted before the amusement returned. He promised to make sure Michael received adequate warning in future, which Michael suggested should be written in bold and preferably delivered before anyone left the ground. David seemed to enjoy that answer enough to stay while Michael returned to the cable.
After a moment, Michael looked pointedly at his boot.
“You’re standing on it.”
David glanced down and moved his foot. “You could ask nicely.”
“Thank you,” Michael said, pulling the cable free. “For moving off the thing I’m trying to work on.”
David’s laughter followed him for the rest of the afternoon.
By the first show, Michael understood that David could find an extraordinary number of reasons to be in the way.
He appeared when Michael was carrying something, occupied doorways at inconvenient moments, and asked questions while Michael was trying to count. It would have been easier to resent if he hadn’t invariably moved when asked, or if Michael hadn’t begun enjoying the interruptions. On one occasion, David found him struggling with the same defective road case and simply lifted it off the ground, carrying it down the corridor while Michael followed with both hands empty.
“We have equipment for that,” Michael pointed out.
“You were taking a while.”
“One of the wheels is broken. You watched me fight with it yesterday.”
David set the case down and turned toward him. “I enjoyed meeting you.”
Michael had nothing ready for that. He stood there a moment too long, looking at the pleased curve of David’s mouth, before remembering he was supposed to be working. David let him go with a smile that suggested he had noticed the delay.
The others noticed too. Marko learned Michael’s name and immediately began asking whether supervising local crew had become David’s full-time occupation. Dwayne offered Michael a bottle of water and quietly advised him that David was easier to manage if nobody rewarded him, a recommendation Paul declared useless before Michael had even opened the bottle.
“Bit late for that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Michael asked.
Paul glanced at David, who was watching Michael unscrew the cap, and gave a mild shrug that explained absolutely nothing. Michael drank his water and tried not to think too hard about it.
What surprised him was how easy they were to talk to when David wasn’t making a project of embarrassing him. Dwayne remembered which tasks Michael had been assigned and warned him when something was about to change. Marko made a point of telling him which snacks were available to everyone and which Paul was only pretending to share. Paul asked whether he had managed to eat before the show, then directed him toward catering when the answer wasn’t satisfactory.
By the following afternoon, Michael felt comfortable enough to approach Paul at the drum kit with a question that had been bothering him since rehearsal.
“That bit before the fourth song,” he said. “Does it change?”
Paul spun a stick between his fingers. “Which bit?”
Michael tried to describe it and realized, halfway through, that he should have found a recording instead. Paul’s mouth began twitching as Michael attempted to communicate a rhythm using a combination of words, gestures, and a few sounds he regretted immediately.
“No, keep going,” Paul said when he stopped. “I want to see where you take this.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Hang on.” Paul played a short sequence, ending with the flourish Michael recognized, and grinned at his immediate nod. “Changes a little. Yesterday afternoon, Marko was late.”
“I was standing right here,” Marko objected from behind a speaker.
“Musically late.”
“You were rushing.”
Paul turned back to Michael with great patience. “Yesterday afternoon, Marko was late.”
Michael laughed, and Paul played the sequence again more slowly, showing him where there was room to change it and where he needed to meet the others. One question became another. When a technician asked for a few minutes to adjust something, Paul handed Michael a spare stick and showed him a motion he could practice against his leg.
Michael was bad at it. Paul was kind enough to explain why, although not kind enough to refrain from laughing when Michael tried harder and somehow made it worse.
David found them like that, Paul leaning forward from the kit, smiling as he demonstrated again, and Michael concentrating with his brow drawn together. He had come looking for Michael, but stopped in the wing instead of interrupting. Paul was talking with his hands now, the way he did when he forgot to keep an explanation brief, and Michael was listening closely enough to ask questions that sent him happily into more detail.
Eventually Michael checked the time and swore.
“I have to go. Thanks, though.” He handed back the stick, then hesitated before asking, “Does catching him hurt?”
Paul’s expression changed slightly. Michael gestured upward, toward the space David had fallen through.
“Your shoulders, or anything. That’s a lot of weight coming down fast.”
For a moment, Paul didn’t answer. Then he shook his head and told him he could take it.
“Okay,” Michael said. “Just looked like it might.”
He accepted the answer without fuss, thanked Paul again, and hurried away before anyone could come looking for him. David waited until his footsteps had faded before approaching the riser.
Paul looked at him and smiled slowly.
“Don’t,” David said.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
Paul rested his forearms on his knees, still looking far too pleased. David asked whether Michael had any talent for drums, which Paul dismissed immediately, but there was warmth in his voice when he added that Michael listened.
David glanced toward the corridor.
“Yes,” he said. “He does.”
After the second show, David found Michael peeling tape off the floor.
He had changed out of his stage clothes, although there was still makeup around his eyes and his hair was damp. Michael looked up, expecting the usual remark, but David only lowered himself onto a nearby case and asked whether it had been a long night.
“Getting longer. You?”
David tipped his head back against the wall. “Something like that.”
Michael nodded and returned to the stubborn strip beneath his fingers. He didn’t ask David to elaborate, and for a while they sat with the sounds of the crew moving through the building around them. David watched Michael wind the discarded tape into a ball, his hands sure despite the fatigue beginning to show in his shoulders.
When he asked whether Michael always worked at the arena, Michael told him he came in when they needed extra people. Other jobs filled the gaps. David called that mysterious, and Michael admitted it sounded better than listing them, which earned him a quiet laugh.
“You want mysterious, my brother thinks you sleep upside down in a room full of candles.”
“Your brother has excellent taste.”
“He also thinks I should’ve asked you to sign something on the first day.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Michael sat back on his heels and looked at him. “You were blocking a doorway.”
David laughed properly at that, the tiredness easing out of his face. He asked Michael’s brother’s name and told him to bring something the following day. Michael began the expected protest, but David interrupted it gently enough that he stopped.
“I know I don’t have to. Bring it.”
A radio called Michael’s name before he could answer. He gathered the tape and got to his feet, wincing after too long on his knees, while David stood beside him.
“Duty calls?”
“Somebody has to keep you looking good.”
Michael smiled as he left, and David remained beside the case for a moment, listening to him answer another call farther down the corridor. Only when he reached for his phone did he realize how long it had been since he had thought to check it.
On the last night, Paul changed the transition.
Michael heard it from the wing and smiled to himself, pleased that he could recognize the difference now. When he saw Paul afterward with a towel around his neck, he pointed at him and said he had heard the variation.
Paul stopped in the middle of the corridor.
“The thing you showed me,” Michael clarified. “You did it the other way. Sounded good.”
The grin that spread across Paul’s face made Michael glad he had said something. Paul immediately instructed him to tell Marko, who arrived just in time to demand what was being said about him. Michael declined to take a position on an argument he suspected had begun before he was born, and Dwayne approved of his judgment as he passed.
David came out of his dressing room to find Paul laughing with a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael waved at him before returning to work, already answering someone calling from the loading dock, and David watched him go.
Across the corridor, Paul raised his eyebrows.
This time, David didn’t pretend he had been looking for anyone else.
Load-out took longer than Michael wanted it to. By the time David found him, he had begun resigning himself to a gas-station dinner and whatever his brother had left in the refrigerator. He was guiding another case toward the dock when David asked what time they were letting him go.
“Why? Need something?”
“Company.”
Michael looked up. David waited until he had his attention before explaining that the four of them were going to a diner outside town and Michael should come along.
“With you?”
“That was the idea.”
“The four of you?”
David’s smile widened. “Would you prefer a smaller selection?”
Michael felt his face warm and returned his attention to the case. He explained that he still had work to finish and wasn’t sure how long it would take. David listened, then said they could wait, as though there were nothing complicated about it.
Someone called from the dock before Michael could answer properly. By the time he clocked out, changed his shirt, and washed his hands, nearly forty minutes had passed. He walked toward the staff exit half expecting to find a message relayed through somebody else, an apology about an early start or a change of plans.
Instead, all four of them were still there.
Marko sat on a case with a packet of chips while Paul told Dwayne a story that apparently required both hands. David stood a little apart, looking toward the corridor, and straightened when Michael appeared.
“You waited.”
“He was unbearable,” Marko informed him.
David took the chips out of his hand and asked Michael whether he was ready. Michael smiled before he could help himself.
“Yeah.”
The city thinned around them on the drive, buildings giving way to stretches of dark desert beyond the road.
Michael sat between Paul and Marko in the back of the rented SUV, listening to an argument about music that seemed to have begun years before he joined them. Dwayne drove with the patience of someone who had heard every version of it. David kept turning around in the passenger seat to appeal to Michael, then accused him of disloyalty when he sided with someone else.
“You’ve known me three days,” Michael reminded him.
“And look how quickly you’ve disappointed me.”
By the time they reached the diner, Michael had stopped worrying quite so much about why he had been invited.
The building stood beneath a faded sign, its windows bright against the desert. Only a handful of cars occupied the parking lot, and the waitress seemed more concerned with whether they wanted coffee than with who they were. David slid into a booth and moved along the seat to make room beside him. Michael sat down, felt their thighs touch, and decided against making an unnecessary adjustment.
Across from them, Paul opened a menu while Marko reached straight for the desserts.
“Get whatever you want,” David told Michael.
“I can pay for my dinner.”
“I invited you.”
“You invited everyone else too.”
“They’re much more expensive.”
Michael was hungry enough to let the argument go. He ordered a burger, fries, and a side that made David glance at him with open amusement.
“I’ve been working,” Michael said.
“I know. I watched.”
“You mostly stood in the way.”
Paul nodded solemnly over his coffee. “That’s his contribution.”
The food helped. Once Michael had eaten enough to stop noticing how empty his stomach was, conversation became easier, and he found himself telling them about a previous job where an entire shipment had arrived mislabeled. Dwayne had a worse story. Marko had one that Paul insisted he was telling incorrectly. David stole a fry from Michael’s plate while they argued, and Michael caught his wrist when he reached for another.
“You have your own.”
“Yours look better.”
“They came out of the same kitchen.”
David looked down at the hand around his wrist, then back at Michael. The interest in his face made Michael loosen his grip before he meant to, and David took another fry with a smile.
They talked about Sam, who believed a backstage pass ought to grant access to every room in the building and had told Michael he wasn’t being ambitious enough when he tried to explain otherwise. Marko approved of him immediately. Paul asked what music he liked. David remembered to ask whether the signed program was somewhere safe in Michael’s bag, which caught Michael off guard more than it should have.
It was easy to believe David enjoyed flirting. Remembering his brother was something else.
As the plates emptied, David settled back with an arm stretched along the booth behind Michael. He asked what Michael had learned after spending several days around them, apparently expecting something flattering.
“Mostly that Paul does all the work.”
Paul put his cup down and declared Michael his favorite.
“I sing,” David protested.
“I’ve heard. Very distracting. Sometimes I can barely hear the drums.”
David had just taken a drink. He turned away, coughing into his hand as laughter escaped anyway, and Michael reached for a napkin while the other side of the table dissolved into delight.
“You okay?” he asked, failing to look as apologetic as he intended.
David accepted the napkin, his eyes bright. “You waited until I was drinking.”
“I couldn’t have timed it that well.”
David looked at the pleased expression Michael was trying to suppress and found himself smiling back. He was used to people enjoying his attention. Michael seemed just as pleased to have made him laugh, and when their conversation resumed, David kept turning toward him to see what he would say next.
They stayed long after the plates were cleared.
Michael had meant to leave at a sensible time. He knew the tour was moving on, knew that a few days of temporary work and one dinner didn’t necessarily mean anything beyond themselves. But David kept asking questions, and they were increasingly difficult to answer with something brief.
He wanted to know what Michael did when he wasn’t working, whether he liked Arizona, where he had learned to ride a motorcycle. Michael asked questions of his own, and David sometimes considered them before answering in a way that made Michael listen more closely. Across the table, the others slipped in and out of the conversation, arguing, teasing, remembering things together. Michael liked the way David watched them when someone else was speaking. He liked how easily they touched each other, how Paul could reach across to take something from David’s plate without either of them interrupting a sentence.
Eventually he checked the time on his phone and realized how late it had become.
David held out his hand.
Michael looked at it, then at him. “Why?”
“Terrible thing, suspicion.”
“You’ve spent three days establishing that I need it.”
Nevertheless, Michael handed over the unlocked phone. David opened the contacts, typed something, then switched to the messages. A moment later his own phone lit up on the table. He tapped Michael’s screen again, and the phone began vibrating.
“Subtle,” Michael said.
“I thought so.”
David ended the call and returned it. Michael read the new contact name, considered Your Favorite Singer for a moment, then looked across the table.
“Paul, do you sing?”
Paul understood immediately. “Beautifully.”
David reached for the phone, but Michael pulled it away, laughing as David leaned into his space.
“Give that back. I made an error.”
“It’s my phone. Besides, it seems accurate to me.”
David’s hand closed lightly around his wrist. Michael knew he could have taken it without effort, which made his decision to remain there, smiling and holding him instead, considerably more distracting. They were close enough that Michael could see the faint traces of makeup David had missed when he washed his face.
David’s gaze dipped to his mouth.
Michael’s laughter faded, although the smile stayed.
Across the table, Marko announced that someone should probably find the check. David lingered for another moment before easing back, leaving his knee against Michael’s beneath the table.
They drove Michael back to the arena for his car. The parking lot had emptied while they were gone, and the trucks waiting near the loading dock made it impossible to forget that everyone would soon be leaving.
David got out with him, although Michael pointed out that he could probably manage the distance on his own.
“I’m impressed already.”
The air had cooled enough that Michael folded his arms loosely as they stopped beside his car. He thanked David for dinner, then for the signatures, explaining that Sam was likely to be insufferable for at least a week.
“Tell him I expect a full report.”
“He’ll write you one.”
“Will you?”
Michael looked at him. “Write you a report?”
“Let me know you got home.”
There was less teasing in it than Michael expected. He met David’s eyes and nodded, suddenly glad that the phone number gave him something to do after this, a reason for the evening to continue beyond watching the others drive away.
“Yeah. I can do that.”
Someone knocked on the SUV window behind David. Neither of them looked over immediately. David smiled at Michael, said goodnight, and finally stepped back far enough to let him open the car door.
As Michael pulled out of the space, he glanced toward the SUV. David was still beside it, watching until Michael turned toward the exit.
David’s phone lit up before they reached the hotel.
Made it home. Thanks again for dinner. Tell Paul I’m waiting on that solo album.
He picked it up immediately, smiling before he had finished reading. Beside him, Dwayne kept his eyes on the road, while Paul leaned forward far enough to ask whether Michael had got home.
David glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
Paul only smiled and settled back again.
David turned toward the windshield and typed a reply, informing Michael that he had wounded him deeply. The answer arrived almost at once.
Will you recover?
Unclear. You may have to keep me company.
He watched the screen while the car carried them toward the hotel, aware of Marko talking behind him and the early flight waiting at the other end of the night. Three days ago, Arizona had been another stop on the schedule. Now he was wondering how long it would take them to come back.
Michael’s reply appeared.
You asking nicely?
David laughed quietly to himself, then settled more comfortably into the seat and typed.
Please.