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A fun bit of theatrical knowledge is this: If an item is coming down from the rafters, whether it’s being lowered by the counterweight system or, heaven forbid, falling, the safety word is ‘Heads.’ Yelling ‘Heads!’ in a theater full of seasoned backstage crew or actors or, perhaps, roadies is an excellent way to quickly let everyone know to get out of the way and protect their skulls.
That’s just some information to have. In case anyone wanted to know.
In case, maybe, the new guy on the set crew (who shouldn’t have even been using the counterweight system because he hasn’t been trained on it, thank you) would like to know that. It would have been very useful before he sent someone to the ER.
“Yes, I’ll let you know as soon as I have news, hun,” Romance promises as he walks in through the automatic doors, the icy blast of the AC chasing the steamy summer night back over the threshold.
Jinu is still making anxious noises on the other end of the line. “I really think I should be the one who—“
“I just got here, need to hang up so I can talk with the front desk. Talk soon!” He hangs up quickly and stows his phone in his pocket. That was the height of rudeness, of course, but really, they’ve gone round and round on this and there’s nothing more to say. Romance won the rock-paper-scissors throw fair and square. (And if he happens to know that Jinu defaults to Paper with alarming frequency, that’s hardly his fault for noting a pattern.)
The long and short of it is that if only one person can be in the room, then he is not sending Jinu into a hospital alone.
The very busy nurse at the front desk scribbles his name down on a clipboard, tells him it’ll be a few minutes, and then sends him on his way. The night has clearly had its share of issues in this town, many of the plastic chairs filled already. There are definitely a few people here who were at the concert earlier in the night, fairly conspicuous in their black band t-shirts with piercings and tattoos and mosh pit injuries. None of them see to be in bad spirits about it, and some have even drifted into the same orbit to share war stories.
In the half hour he waits, Romance browses every inch of the ER’s gift shop, fields nine texts from Jinu, and finally gives in and asks Baby to distract him however he sees fit. This will most likely involve an argument that he will need to mediate later. But it does seem to work, and by the time a nurse calls him back to the patient rooms, his phone has been silent for a full seven minutes.
“Ro!” Abby grins widely at him. There’s an alarming amount of bandaging on his head, covering it from forehead to crown.
“Oh, hun…” Romance grimaces a little as he comes inside and sets a hand under Abby’s chin. He knows plenty well that head wounds will bleed like a motherfucker, and even ones that aren’t severe will have to be bandaged like there’s a hole in the skull. It doesn’t make it easier to see one of their own trussed up like this. Especially while he’s perched on a cot that looks much too small for his bulk, one bed in a line of others separated only by cloth curtains on mobile racks. “That set piece really clocked you good.”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Abby holds up a hand. “The cursed sarcophagus, Ro. That makes it sound so much cooler.”
“Oh, of course. That cursed sarcophagus really clocked you.” To be fair, Abby isn’t wrong. He did get hit by a sarcophagus. It’s made of plywood, paper mache, and styrofoam textured until it looks ancient and decently spooky, but it probably also is cursed considering it managed to nail Abby with one of the only actual bits of metal on the thing when it came down right as he was walking under it.
“I hope I get a scar.” Abby prods at his bandages over his right temple. “Can’t wait to see my cousins’ eyes go all huge when I tell them how I got it.”
“Hm, let’s maybe hope it just heals nicely and goes away and we don’t have a constant reminder of this tragic lapse of safety protocols.” Romance seats himself on the side of the bed for lack of any sort of a chair. “They think you’ll be released pretty soon since there hasn’t been any dizziness for a few hours.”
Abby sighs in relief. “Thank fuck for that. Did they give you my phone? The tv in here has been on telenovelas this whole time.”
“Hm, they said you can have it when you leave, but you’re supposed to use it sparingly and keep the brightness down.” Romance brings the paper bag out from under his arm with a flourish. “I came prepared to entertain you for the end of your stay.”
Abby eyes the bag warily, probably calculating correctly that it’s the size of a book. “Uh… what is it?”
Romance pulls the paperback free and shows him the cover. It’s a creepy black castle with stained glass windows that glow pink, a sickle-shaped moon rising over it, and if he does say so himself, it has an excellent vibe. He raises his eyebrows enticingly. “A vampire novel.”
“Uh huh. Is that one of those ones you usually read?”
There’s no judgement, per se, but there is most certainly a tone. Romance huffs and opens the book. “I don’t think so. So it might not be as fun as mine, but it seems like there’s going to be a lot of action. Lie back and close your eyes.”
Abby, who is the lone good patient among their crew and more the pity there because it takes actual wounding to put him under the crew’s mom’s care, sighs and does as he’s told. The paper covering on the bed crunches and crinkles as he settles his weight back against the incline of it.
“Alright. Impress me with the vampires.”
Romance flips through to the first page and clears his throat.
WANTED - Crimes Against This Village
It was one of hundreds of posters that could be found across the realm. Every kingdom, hamlet, and village had something they wanted to see dead. Most of them were other people with something to answer for on the other side once someone finally put them in the ground. These were monsters in their own right.
Sometimes, though, there was something a little less human and a little more unholy. And the thing staring back from the poster, eyes blank of a soul and a chasm of teeth on display, was one of them.
Abby opens one eye. “That sounds kinda cool. Are there pictures?”
“No pictures, hun,” Ro chuckles. “Just use your imagination.”
“Hm. Fine,” he sighs. “Go on.”
Abel examined the drawing on the poster. He had seen its like before, and dealt with them as one of his kind dealt with creatures of the night. If the promise of a reward was any indication, this one was a troublemaker. The Hunter ripped the paper from its mounting, leaving only tattered corners to flutter in the wind, the face of the monster crushed in his fist.
“Mr… Abby?” The nurse asks, looking between clipboard and patient as she comes to the foot of the bed and offers him a paper bag with his beanie sticking out the top, an unattractive red-brown spot dried into it. “You’ve been cleared to go.”
Abby sits up immediately and takes the bag. “Oh, thank fu—uh… thank you, ma’am.”
She holds up a finger in that magic way only nurses and teachers can manage. “But first, a few things…”
There are none of the nasty side effects that were possible. Aside from a slight headache the next day that was easily vanquished with a handful of aspirin, there’s nothing left of the incident other than the more manageable gauze dressing on Abby’s temple. This is wonderful news. Head wound side effects are usually quite nasty, ranging from dizziness to nausea to head fog. Romance is very grateful for as well as the healing is going.
It does, however, make it a little harder to keep Abby on track with his marching orders from the nurse.
“But it’s been a week,” Abby protests, using that wounded look that would work much better if Romance didn’t regularly get subjected to Mystery’s hauntingly large doe eyes.
“It’s been five days,” he corrects him. “And you’re not supposed to drink for a month. All I’m asking for is a couple of weeks, that’s all.”
Romance will not get a full two weeks of Abby skipping the bar. There’s a string of three entire days between concert stops in a week and he has no chance of keeping their bass tech sitting sober in a motel room for those. But one of the most vital rules of engagement in the crew mom handbook is to always be seen giving ground. Don’t ask for the month, ask for two weeks. And be prepared not to actually get those two weeks. The victory condition here is tonight. Just tonight. Just day five.
Abby makes a sound like he’s actively being gutted, flopping onto his back on the bed.
Romance leans over and kisses his forehead, knowing a win when he hears one. “Thank you, hun.” He leaves the television remote on Abby’s stomach and gets comfortable sitting against the headboard.
R: We won’t be meeting you guys at the bar.
J: You actually got him to stay put??
R: For tonight, yes. Keep an eye on the other two. Don’t let Baby play Magic if he’s had more than 2 drinks. His deck can’t back up his mouth.
J: You’re a nerd for even knowing that.
Setting his phone aside, Romance picks up the vampire book he picked up at the ER. He liked how it was shaping up, and it would be a shame to leave it unread just because it might lack some of his preferred levels of spice.
The creature only barely shifted his neck, too quick and too subtle for the human eye, but enough that the crossbow bolt skimmed right past. It punched uselessly into the wall with a—
Abby makes his patented ‘I’m Bored’ groan and pauses in flicking through the TV channels. He looks over his shoulder, making no secret that his eyes are going up and down Romance and gauging how easy it would be to get a hand into his sweatpants.
“Hey Rooooo…” He reaches out and catches the ankle of his sweatpants, tugging it. “Since it’s just you and me, wanna—”
“No sustained intense physical activity for two weeks either,” Romance says firmly. Which Abby already knows because he’s very put out by having to lift almost everything as part of a pair during load in and load out.
“…Define ‘sustained.’”
Romance looks at him over the rim of his glasses. “Anything worth the mess would be considered sustained activity.”
Abby takes a deep breath and sighs out his frustration. “This sucks.”
“I know, hun.” Romance scoots closer and gives his hair a few conciliatory strokes. “I promise, as soon as you’re past the scary part, I’ll keep Jinu distracted for a solid half hour while you and Mystery disappear.”
That seems to cheer him up decently. “You know the way to a guy’s heart, Ro,” Abby sighs, shifting just enough to lay his head on Romance's lap. “What’s happening in the book? Anything good?”
“Vampire fight. Want me to read to you?”
Abby snaps off the TV. “Sounds more interesting than anything on there.”
The creature’s hand closed around his arm. For all that the fingers were as long and as delicate as an aristocrat’s, he had a grip like iron and the chill of the dead in his skin. When he leaned in, lips parted to show long fangs,
“Never liked crossbows.” He breathed the words directly into Abel’s ear, breath cold as a crypt. “I find them terribly impersonal.”
“Wait, does the Hunter find the vampire hot or not?” Abby cranes his neck to look at the page. “I’m getting mixed signals here.”
“Uh…” Romance flips a few pages ahead, skimming the words. “No, this is a proper fight, it seems.”
“…Huh. Okay, keep going.”
“Are you guys almost done in there?” Jinu calls from the interior of the motel room.
“Teeth,” Romance calls, which is intended to be a full and complete sentence. The bathroom is steamy and damp from a chain of showers that killed the hot water by the second one. The sink is littered with toothbrushes, deodorants, and aftershaves, and to the outside eye, it looks like a mess. To one of their own, everything is in its correct place and in some way adjacent to everything else used by that person.
Teeth cleaning is sort of happening. It’s not precisely a lie.
“Done,” Abby says over his shoulder, mumbling around his toothbrush. Romance leaves his own brush hanging out of his mouth and flips the page of their book, leaving it slightly sticky and slightly pink from the tropical fruit toothpaste (Abby is no longer allowed to pick the communal toothpaste after this).
Their eyes flick as one up to the top of the page.
Her presence at Abel’s back was that of a shadow, as cold and dark as the lowest corners of the earth. Still, her mate gazed at her with the adoration of a sun burning in his yellow eyes, as happy as any lovesick fop to lay eyes on his beloved. All Abel could know of her, for he did not dare to turn around to see her, was the creak of leather as she came to crouch down behind him.
“What, no quips for me?” she asked, her voice full and throaty against his ear. The tip of one claw, so long that a fool might call it delicate, slid through the open wound on his shoulder with no more pain than a breeze upon a child’s scraped knee. “Where’s that Hunter bravado?”
Abby leans over and spits into the sink before squinting at the book. “Okay, what if the vampires are actually the horny ones? They’ve had so many chances to kill this dude.”
“We don’t even know how vampires operate,” Romance says, making a face as half his words are lost trying to talk around his toothbrush. He yanks it free and jabs in the direction of the book with the foamy bristles. “All we know is what Abel says about them and he’s not exactly a reliable narrator. Maybe it’s normal for them not to instantly kill someone.”
“Having an opinion doesn’t make him unreliable,” Abby huffs, turning on the tap and leaning down to slurp water from it directly. Romance wrinkles his nose at the sound.
“His job is killing vampires. I can’t imagine he would have a career like that if he didn’t have a fairly colored opinion about them.”
“What about—”
Jinu yanks the door open and the two of them look up from their huddled position like children caught out of bed. Their crew leader crosses his arms, giving both of them a Look.
“It is 2:30 in the morning.” He holds out his hand. “Give that here.”
“But the lady vampire just found them,” Abby protests.
“Romance.” Jinu is, of course, entirely without sympathy for their plight. Sympathy is for people who have more than five hours to sleep before they have to get up and pile onto a coach bus.
Romance sighs and dog-ears their page before surrendering it. Jinu tucks it under his arm and leaves the bathroom door.
“Hurry up,” he calls. “Lights are going out in two minutes.”
The firelight lit the sculpted bones of the creatures and made them look as if life still breathed through them. Their eyes gleamed, delighted, and Abel knew he yet had a chance.
“Well now,” the vampiress purred. “That does seem worth discussing.”
“You don’t have to do voices for them, hun,” Romance finishes gently peeling off the gauze and checking the back of it for any discoloration that’s been soaked up. The dressing not only came away clean, but the cut on their bass tech’s temple is also closed up quite nicely. Which tends to happen when someone submits to normal cleaning and caring for their wound (not that some of their crew members would know anything about that).
“I think the voices really add something to it,” Abby insists, shifting his weight to keep his balance sitting on the edge of the bathtub.
“Hm… are we sure about that?”
“Oh yeah, my cousins love when I do that shit.” He clears his throat and drops his voice several octaves for what is, apparently, Abel’s baritone.
“3 nights ago, my home was attacked. They struck while the village slept.” Abel, not easily given to sentiment, found himself stuck for a moment. It came out so plainly, but the wound was fresh. He pushed himself to continue, lest he show weakness in an audience that was not prone to pity. “I saw smoke on the horizon… ran until my lungs gave out. Didn’t matter. I was too late.”
Romance grasps Abby’s shoulders and leans over to follow along on the page. “No… his whole village? Oh, hun, do you think he had a family there?”
“I mean, he had to have someone there, right? Why else would he live there?”
“Poor thing.” Romance picks up his scissors, gently clipping away any hairs growing in too close at the temple that might obscure his ability to keep an eye on the healed wound. “Do you want me to trim everything while I’m here?”
Abby checks his phone. “Yeah, we’ve got time before we’re hitting the bar. Go for it, babe.”
Romance flicks on the tap and runs a comb under the water. “Keep going.”
“No survivors. I buried what remained of them. Nothing left but blood-soaked ground.”
“Fuck,” Abby breathes. “That is so metal.”
“Abby,” Romance groans (and it might be verging on a whine). “We’re not even going to get through the chapter at this rate. Read faster!”
For some reason (and they never actually know the reason when this happens), Baby announces very clearly that he is going to get cigarettes and he expects it’ll take him a couple of hours and change the fucking sheets before I get back. The get-frisky gods have smiled upon them for their last day off before the final stretch of the tour.
Romance was going to grab something out of his bag. His arm is actually still hanging off the bed, fingertips brushing against the zipper. What was he looking for? Lube? Condoms? Chapstick? As soon as he pulled their book out, really only intending to move it somewhere, honest… well…
“You couldn’t be more wrong, Hunter,” she whispered, her mouth only inches from his ear. There was an edge like diamonds to her voice, like she had steeled herself against being hurt by the memory. “That’s what I was made to do.”
“Dude… she was a thrall…” Abby is pressed down on Romance’s back to scan the page with him, his weight almost crushing when he forgets that he’s leaning over someone smaller than him.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, Mystery’s mewls are rising to a fever pitch. The old springs of the bed squeak and the frame creaks under the strain of the two bodies on it.
Romance runs his finger under the words, rapidly scanning them. “She was. But… look, it wasn’t her mate. It was… something else.”
“I was compelled by another, turned into a merciless marionette, comp—”
“JINU!!”
Romance startles slightly, jolted back to reality. “Shit. Abby, hurry up and take your clothes off. Put the book away.”
“Yeah, definitely.” Abby lowers the book down to drop it on the floor where it can’t distract them. “…dude, she’s refusing his deal!”
“No reading ahead!” Romance sticks his head over the side of the bed and peers down at the open page. “Oh fuck, she is.”
The bed dips right before warm fingers brush the hair off Romance’s neck. Jinu is chuckling breathlessly as he leans down and presses a kiss to his nape. “Why are you two all the way over— are you serious?”
“We were… just putting this away, actually.” Romance slaps at Abby’s hand. “Putting it away and not reading ahead without me, Abby.”
“Right, yeah!” Abby does not drop the book and he is definitely still reading it over the side of the bed.
Jinu gives them what is possibly the most unimpressed look that has ever been given.
“Why are we all crammed on one side of one bed?” Mystery, well-fucked and still naked as a jaybird, slinks onto the bed to join them. Finger-shaped bruises are already forming in all his favorite places and he props his chin on Jinu’s thigh in search of head scritches. “…Why do you guys still have so many clothes on?”
“What the fuck are you two doing?” Baby asks, looking down at where Abby and Romance are sitting in the hallway outside their shared motel room. They’re fully dressed, minus all the hickies they should have been giving each other over the last couple of hours, and huddled together over that book they’ve been reading.
“Oh, we uh…” Romance clears his throat twice in an attempt to stall for time. “We were… well, what happened…”
“You got kicked out of the orgy because of that book, didn’t you?”
Romance hangs his head, having the decency to look ashamed. “…Yes.”
Abby, who knows almost as little shame as Mystery, looks up with a wide grin. “Dude, this book is awesome. You should get in on this with us.”
A book that got half his crew evicted from group sex is… well, that’s honestly a recommendation that’s kind of hard to beat. If he put that in a Goodreads review, it would probably skyrocket the sales numbers on that thing.
“…Yeah, sure,” he says, shrugging and plopping himself down on the filthy motel carpet beside them. “Fill me in on this thing.”
Abby eagerly shoves their copy of the book at him. It’s bent, crinkled, a little mauled, and, as he flips through the pages, quite marred by signs of life on the road. “Okay, so first, it’s about vampires…”