skin. I mean, some people can. Maybe. I don’t know. D and I are tight. No breaking us, but if Rafe and Forest were going to get into it with us, they had to go in deep. That means being on the road, setting up, then breaking down your own shit and getting stuck in a van with someone for miles and miles until you want to kill them for breathing.”
“Again, remind me why that’s something you want to do?” Kane teased. “Because I’ve known Rafe since we were little kids, and I’ve wanted to kill him just for breathing without spending twelve hours with him in a van.”
The road rolled by them, a stretch of ocean on their right catching the sun’s light, silver coins tumbling over cresting waves. A bit of salt lingered in the air, ghosting through the GTO’s open windows, the wind catching at Miki’s dark hair and pushing it away from his face. His eyes were unfocused, blurred beneath long black lashes. Kane knew that look well. His husband was sifting through things, picking out memories and framing them into words with softened edges, nothing sharp to slice into Kane’s heart. Diplomacy wasn’t something Miki was good at. His tongue couldn’t seem to wrap itself around a white lie to save his life, but the truths he told were often hard-hitting, tiny explosive blasts of shrapnel and aching pain festered under years of neglect. Miki’s world was a fleeting bit of happiness amid rusted-through razors and glass shards, and no matter how much Kane longed to blunt those bloodied fragments Miki walked through every day, he knew he would never be able to find them all.
And it hurt to know Miki fought to keep those edges from him, cautiously harvesting his words to blunt their cutting edges.
“Being on the road forces you to compromise. Like, you can’t just blow up and walk off.” Miki cocked his head, contemplating the canyons or the horizon, Kane couldn’t tell which. “Well, you can, but you’d be out of the fucking band as soon as your foot hit the sidewalk. You’ve got to work through the shitty parts. Like remembering to say something nice instead of being an asshole during a sound check or not screaming at the front desk guy because you don’t have hot water. He doesn’t know you haven’t had hot water in the last five places you slept at, and he’s not going to give a shit either. You’ve got to keep your head down and focus. Because you’re on the road for the band. Not to kick someone’s drum kit in or slag the opening act. You’re there to get up on stage and do your shit. Then pack it all up and do your thing all over again somewhere else.
“It’s fucking hard and shitty. You lose money on some gigs because the club rips you off or someone steals some of your gear, so you’re at each other’s throats because there’s no one else to blame. Then you keep saying, ‘We’ve just got to get to the next gig. We’ll have a big crowd. We can stop paying for food with quarters and whatever we find in the spare change cups next to the register when the counter guy isn’t looking.’” Miki’s grin grew, more wistful than happy, but there was something delectable in how it reached his eyes, lifting the shadows out of their depths. “Then you do get to the next gig and the shit’s flying. Everyone hits their notes and the crowd is fucking loving you, so it feels like you’re drinking lightning and getting drunk off of the thunder they throw at you. That’s when it’s all worth it. When someone in the crowd sings my words back at me or screams when they hear a drum roll and bass pickup or the humming noises they make during a guitar solo. It’s all there. That’s why you’re on the road. Because you and the guys hit something in someone else and made them sing, made them groove. That’s worth every fucking cold toilet seat and fart hot-boxed van ride through a tunnel.”
“Makes me almost want to go on a road trip,” Kane mused. “Almost. I’ve got brothers. I can imagine what that van smelled like.”
“Usually they reek. Someone’s always throwing up bean burritos or nuking gas bombs that stick to the carpet.” Miki snorted. “If you can survive a road tour without killing each other and keep your head