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发表于 2021-4-4 17:01:41
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Chapter 7
本帖最后由 sedentiment 于 2021-4-6 15:06 编辑
Stacee had a habit of throwing out a lot of bizarre aphorisms, and Antonio in turn had developed the habit of letting them bounce around in his brain far longer than he probably should have. Silly things like “alcohol's not a damn vegetable, no need for it to taste bad” or “best way to get over someone is a rebound hookup.” Meaningless phrases that only made sense in the context of Stacee.
Weeks after Stacee had sent his last three texts, those words still rattled around in Antonio’s head, even in this moment as he was currently on his hands and knees getting pounded into a creaky hotel mattress by a man whose name he had made it a point not to learn. But they turned out to be yet another gentle lie from Stacee – this “rebound hookup” didn’t seem to be doing anything for the jagged wound in his heart. Nor had the one before this, or the one before that. If anything, they only tore at its edges, an empty reminder of what he had once had with Stacee before he complicated things, as he seemed to do with everything that mattered.
Nothing against his bedmates – they were considerate for the most part, as considerate as one could be to a nameless hookup picked up from a bar. The man currently buried in his ass was surely a decent guy, asking him if it was good, making an effort to check that Antonio was getting as much pleasure out of it as he was. But Antonio didn’t want to answer, not when all he could think of was how Stacee used to hum filthy praises into his ear that at some point Antonio’s stupid heart had started misinterpreting as love songs. So he gritted his teeth and kept silent aside from a few noncommittal responses until the man gave up talking altogether and just focused on fucking him, which was all he had wanted from this interaction.
He did let himself moan out loud as the man brought him to climax. The physical pleasure slithered low and oily through his gut, the rush thankfully silencing the words echoing in his head, but only for the briefest instant. When the wave subsided, all that was left in its wake was a numbing feeling of emptiness, draining Antonio of the willpower to do anything but slump facedown into the bed. His hookup partner kept thrusting into him, but it was almost an afterthought to Antonio at that point. He couldn’t be bothered to even turn his head as the man kept fucking him until he also came.
Antonio was already reaching for his clothes by the time the man leaned back to catch his breath and throw away the used condom. This encounter had run its course, and he was ready to escape from what was supposed to have been an escape to begin with.
“You’re very cute,” the man said, sprawled leisurely on the bed. “Any chance I could get your number? I wouldn’t mind doing this again sometime.”
“Thanks, but I should get going.” Antonio smiled, politely but coolly, already at the door.
The man shrugged at him as he left but thankfully said nothing further, and Antonio departed for home alone.
Antonio knew that people tended to find him good-looking, though he had been so wrapped up in grand, hopelessly unrequited love for so long that he had never really come to terms with it, let alone utilized it. But it was surprisingly easy to find men willing to take him to a hotel room for an evening, despite how he still had to work at breaking down his own reluctance to respond to their attentions with a heated look rather than a cool glance, as he had done for most of his life.
He barely even knew himself why he was doing this. The few moments of merciful oblivion he managed to eke out were hardly enough to drown out the chorus of his self-hatred, and the numbness that inevitably followed only further darkened the cloud that hung over him. Maybe he was just trying to practice, as Stacee had once suggested, practice having these brief, meaningless encounters so that he could fully decouple sex from love in his mind, teach himself that what he thought he had with Stacee was no different than this.
But it wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t working because he preferred it when he didn’t have to look at the other man’s face, when he could close his eyes and pretend it was still Stacee fucking him.
It really didn’t help with the self-hatred.
As Antonio entered his condo, he stubbed his toe yet again on the box of Stacee’s things by the door that he kept telling Bassanio he was going to return. Bassanio had suggested that he should simply donate all its contents or better yet, trash the whole box altogether.
“All I’m saying is, I already deleted all the Arsenal songs from my playlists, and it felt awesome! And I’m not even the directly injured party here. Tonio, throw that entire garbage man away and I guarantee you’ll feel better!” Bassanio had insisted.
Antonio had laughed but had still gently corrected him. “Stacee’s not garbage, and I don’t blame him for ending things. This is on me. You were right, Bas – I really didn’t know what I was doing, and I got overinvested. Again. You know how it is with me.”
Bassanio didn’t look convinced, but he hadn’t pushed the point further after seeing the expression on Antonio’s face.
He was trying, and Antonio did appreciate that, even if he still didn’t understand that Antonio was the one at fault, who had violated the bounds of his relationship with Stacee.
Antonio stood in his shower under the running water, staring at the stream flowing down the drain. He knew he couldn’t go on like this. He knew he had to pick up the fractured pieces of his heart and move on eventually, even if it felt as futile as trying to will the water that flowed away to come back up again, even if just standing in his own goddamn shower had him aching with want thinking of all the times Stacee had pressed him against the walls but also grief at the thought he would never have that again.
He collapsed into bed, welcoming the heavy wave of exhaustion that enfolded him, exhaustion that he made a goal of achieving these days. Antonio really was good at settling into new routines, and this was the one he had set for himself ever since Stacee broke things off: he worked until he could barely string two thoughts together, then if he was somehow still conscious by the time he got home, he would hit up a bar and find someone to fuck him. Never for the night, though – he always made sure to leave right after the act.
Still, his thoughts crept back in, emerging from the fog of his exhausted mind as they always did to make a final assault before he fell asleep. He really should text Stacee at some point and give him the chance to pick up his things. He had actually left quite the collection at Stacee’s house as well. But he couldn’t bring himself to reach out, to break this final silence between them, not when Stacee clearly wanted nothing more to do with him. It was fine – they both didn’t want for money, and things could be replaced.
He turned over in bed, staring at the side that Stacee had always taken. As was almost his nightly ritual by this point, he wondered where Stacee was, how he was doing. Stacee hadn’t been in the best state when they parted. Was he still convinced that his album had been a creative failure? Was he still fighting with the band? Was he still haunted by those fragile moments of loneliness that Antonio saw sometimes when his eyes went faraway and sad?
Did he have anyone now to kiss those shadows away, as Antonio had always tried to do, even if he could never say anything out loud?
While the thought of Stacee with someone else burned him from the inside out (selfishly, irrationally, he knew, he knew he never had any claim on Stacee, but when had his feelings listened to reason), the thought of Stacee alone and despairing over his self-perceived failure utterly shattered Antonio. He wished he could be there for Stacee now even as he sneered at his own self-imagined importance at the same time. How could he still harbor delusions about being able to offer Stacee any kind of support? He was the one who had used Stacee as an emotional crutch and tangled everything by falling in love.
-
Antonio had avoided the Bourbon Room at first, when the wound was fresh. There were plenty of other bars in LA, after all. But lately he found himself drawn back, though what he was searching for here, he couldn’t say. Maybe he was trying to dispel the magic the place still held in his mind by rewriting it from “the place where he watched Stacee perform every week, where Stacee could always find his face in the crowd however packed the bar was” to “the place where he went to get much too drunk and pick up strangers.”
Then again, it was nice to see Dennis and Lonny. At least that much hadn’t changed. That is, it hadn’t changed until tonight, when Dennis cut him off for the first time.
“Did you run out of whiskey or something?” Antonio didn’t even think he was that drunk yet, but he already felt on the verge of tears. It had been another self-imposed long day in the office, and all he wanted now was to get drunk enough not to care who would take him to bed tonight.
“I didn’t, but you’ve had enough for the night.” Dennis crossed his arms on the bar counter in front of him. “You should go home, Antonio.”
“This isn’t good business, to send paying customers away. I really haven’t even had that much yet tonight.”
“We can take the loss, in no small part thanks to your advice. But this isn’t just about tonight – you’ve been in here more nights than not the past few weeks. I can’t lose my favorite customer to liver failure. Now that would be bad business.”
“So you don’t like seeing me anymore either?” Antonio meant it in jest, but the alcohol jumbled his brain, crossed some of the frayed wires of his emotions so that his words pierced himself on the way out.
“Not if it means seeing you in this state. Respectfully, Antonio, you look like shit. Also, I’m not here to judge, but are you sure about pursuing all these hookups right here in your favorite bar? You’re not worried about not being able to come back here if you end up needing to avoid someone?”
“I steer clear of the regulars – I recognize most of them by now after hanging around here this long.”
Dennis sighed. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Antonio? You don’t look like you’re enjoying it. Sorry to bring him up, but not even Stacee really enjoys doing this kind of thing. Not when it’s clearly just a bad coping mechanism.”
At the mention of Stacee’s name, the tears that had been threatening to spill all night finally broke free from Antonio’s eyes. He hastily wiped his face, but not before Dennis gave him a pitying look that had him feeling even worse.
“I guess I did drink a lot already,” Antonio said in a last-ditch attempt to preserve some semblance of composure. No one was convinced.
“So you fell in love with a scumbag. It happens to the best of us. I know it’s gotta hurt now, but you should consider yourself lucky that Stacee took himself out of the picture before you got in even deeper, and this is coming from someone who does consider himself one of Stacee’s friends, or the closest thing he has to friends, anyway. Stacee is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not relationship material. Stop punishing yourself. And get some actual sleep.”
Thankfully, Dennis was kind enough to retreat at that point, leaving Antonio some last shreds of dignity as he pressed his hands over his face, willing his eyes to stop leaking.
He left the bar alone that night.
While he still couldn’t agree with Dennis’s assessment of Stacee’s character, he knew he was right about the rest of it. He had thought that stretching himself out thin like this would dilute his feelings, but he only felt brittle to the point of breaking instead.
There was no amount of alcohol or hookups that could make him forget that he loved Stacee. There was no point in even trying.
Oddly enough, he found some kind of peace in that fact. He didn’t have to keep struggling with himself, pretending to derive pleasure and distraction from these encounters that left him indifferent at best and filled with self-loathing at worst. He could simply accept the burden of his love like a heavy stone into his heart. There might come a day when it would stop rattling against his ribcage, bruising him with every step he took, but he would never stop feeling its weight.
Yet if there was one thing Antonio knew how to do, it was how to stoically soldier on, dutifully dragging along the weight that had befallen him.
He moved Stacee’s things into a corner of the garage, out of view but safe.
Life went on, as it had to, no matter how heavy his heart was. He found, if not peace, then at least a welcome stillness in the quiet buzz of routine, burying himself under work though it all felt increasingly pointless. The wheel turned, and somehow the monotonous repetition of each day did end up moving him forward, even if he felt like the wheel of his life had picked up a nail that was driven in deeper with each rotation while the outside was worn down smoother and smoother. At least Bassanio finally stopped looking at him with frantic worry once he was functional by society’s standards again.
Eventually, he even made it back to the Bourbon Room for some Saturday live shows. Stacee was right: Dennis and Lonny did have good taste when it came to booking, and there were plenty of decent bands that Antonio did enjoy, even if just closing his eyes in this place still conjured to his tongue the phantom taste of the flamboyant cocktails Stacee had always insisted he try.
He stuck to whiskey.
But despite looking for all outward purposes (and to both Bassanio and Dennis’ satisfaction) like he had finally moved on, those flickers of loneliness in Stacee’s eyes still haunted him at night.
-
As a child, Stacee had briefly had a cat. She was a confounding, contrary thing, with beautiful, soft fur the color of fresh butter that no one could resist reaching out to stroke. She enjoyed being touched, up until a point. But there was always a moment, sometimes even mid-purr, that the cat would lash out. It wasn’t until Stacee was much older that he learned about how cats could get overstimulated from too much concentrated touch. At the time, though, he hadn’t understood at all why the cat couldn’t seem to accept his love and affection, yet still sought him out later even after scratching him to the point of drawing blood. His parents had quickly run out of patience for her after a particularly bad incident that had Stacee needing stitches, and he had never found out where they sent her away to. He always hoped she was adopted by an owner that understood cats better than a clingy nine-year-old child – she was certainly beautiful enough.
He wondered if Antonio had ever had a cat.
Maybe he had – Stacee wouldn’t be surprised, judging by how easily Antonio had let go. A cat couldn’t be forced to do anything it didn’t want to, after all, and if a cat decided it didn’t want to be held any more, holding on any longer would only result in a bloody mess.
Antonio hadn’t even responded to those last texts.
Stacee had no idea what he would have done if Antonio had replied to him, if Antonio had dared to say out loud the truth that surely both of them had realized by that point, if he had put up a fight and not let Stacee slip away so easily from this thing between them that had built up to become so much more than Stacee was willing to admit. Would he have struggled, or would he have let himself be held?
But Antonio hadn’t given him the chance, and this was how things were now.
Now Stacee was, as a frustrated Andrea had put it, back on his bullshit.
Arsenal was doing more of a local tour this time, just up and down the state, as they still had one more record to put out within the year and didn’t have the time for anything larger scale. Still, even that was enough of a tour for Stacee to bring out his worst self. Steve might as well have saved on hotel fare and not booked Stacee’s rooms, because Stacee’s nights were spent in seedy dive bars or in clubs picking up whatever strangers recognized him and wanted to sleep with him.
And there was no shortage of those strangers, in no small part thanks to the newest album, which had managed to climb to the top of some charts after all. He was popular again. What perfect timing for being completely free and unattached, to have his pick of the beautiful people who vied for his attention, especially when he was seducing them against the soundtrack of his own songs playing in the bars. Few could resist having the real thing slink up to them while his recorded voice sang lyrics that promised them all the hedonistic joy that Stacee Jaxx represented.
Actually, every note from the album that fell on Stacee’s ears now was like a hammer driving deeper and deeper the painful nail of his ...whatever it was that lodged itself heavy in his chest and made him want to run away from his own skin whenever Antonio entered his thoughts. He tried his best to wipe Antonio from his memory, to dismiss the past few months as further evidence why he chose to live the life he did, but it was beyond futile when he was on tour performing the very album that he had written at least half of while lying in bed with Antonio.
The lyrics weren’t about Antonio – they were just about sex and pleasure and escape, the usual themes of Arsenal – but Antonio was in every word. Stacee had once vowed never to write anything for any of his bedmates, and that was a wise decision too, if this was how things turned out just from having the universally directed sex of his songs shaped into specificity by the memories of Antonio’s touch.
The strangers in his bed were beautiful. But no one else had Antonio’s waist that his arms fit so naturally around, his perfect ass and long legs, his surprisingly soft hands, the dimples that formed below his high cheekbones and the fine creases that folded the corners of his eyes when he smiled.
It was laughable. How could he still want what he had thrown away so carelessly?
He kept telling himself he had done the right thing in breaking things off. If Stacee had learned anything from his time as a rock star, it was the cruel lesson that even the sweetest dreams could turn stale. The banality of routine and the weight of expectations could wear the shine off anything, make a former source of joy into a burden. It had happened with the band, as what had once been genuine friendships decayed into reluctant obligations, contractually bound. It was even happening to his art, however Stacee wanted to deny it – he still loved music, but the fear of failure and stagnation was twisting that love into something painful and thorny.
He couldn’t bear it if there ever came a day when he thought that way about Antonio.
Those months with Antonio had given him happiness like none other he had known in a long time, possibly ever. He had let himself dream again, imagining that they could carry on like that indefinitely, bound only by mutual pleasure and their continued interest. But what he had seen in Antonio’s eyes pierced those idle dreams. Even though Antonio never asked anything of him, Stacee knew he couldn’t give him what he needed.
Antonio deserved more than a washed-up rock star who couldn’t hold onto anything without ruining it, crumbling it with his own hands.
So yes, Stacee had made the right choice in clipping the rose off at its most beautiful bloom before it could wither. He wanted to preserve his memories of Antonio, encase them in amber, unchanged in their original, purest forms, protect them from being tainted by the same drudgeries that faded the color from the other former blossoms of his life. He would never have to experience the awful day when Antonio’s touch might fail to spark any delight in him, when the excitement that pulsed through him at the thought of getting to see Antonio again would dry into boredom, when there would be nothing else left to find in the depths of Antonio’s eyes. Better to leave wanting more than to stay until he didn’t even want anymore, right?
Fuck, how he still wanted more.
Surely in some city on this tour, he would find a hookup hot enough to push Antonio out of his mind and bring the old Stacee back, the Stacee that was brash and unafraid and could trample heedlessly through the chains of life’s many obligations. He kept searching, but the blur of unfamiliar bodies only served to throw his terrible lingering want for Antonio into sharper focus. All that he accomplished was losing himself further, drinking and fucking until night turned into day and there was no pleasure left in any of it.
It was a wonder that he managed to stagger to their tour bus at all in the mornings (or more often than not, afternoons), hours after their scheduled departure time, and a bigger wonder still that the band didn’t simply leave him in whatever city they were in and drive off without him. The lawsuit they would face for not fulfilling the record deal by abandoning their lead singer and songwriter to die was probably the only thing that kept the bus waiting most days.
His bandmates’ already-stretched patience for him was wearing thin to the point of being transparent.
“You really just can’t keep a good thing going, can you?” Steve snapped at Stacee as he dragged himself up the steps of the bus, head on the verge of splitting open from an awful hangover and the afternoon sunlight burning his eyes despite the battered sunglasses that teetered on the bridge of his nose. “You finally pull some good songs for us out of your ass, but you seem determined to screw up the album tour for some reason! Can’t you stick a landing for once in your life?”
Stacee’s throat and mind both felt too parched to come up with a response beyond lifting a middle finger at him as he trudged to his usual seat.
“Maybe if you could actually pull off the whole flawed genius schtick, I could live with it.” Joey spat at him from across the aisle. “But you’re making us look like a laughingstock. Did you even sing half the words at yesterday’s show? Next time, tell me if a song is gonna be instrumental-only in concert.”
“If you actually showed up for our rehearsals, you might remember the lyrics.” Even Zach’s usually steady voice of reason was dripping with resentment.
The truth was that Stacee hadn’t forgotten the lyrics. How could he forget a single word, when he couldn’t stop mentally circling around the circumstances under which he had crafted them? Last night, he could only think about how those words had first been whispered into Antonio’s skin, and the lyrics had stuck in Stacee’s throat. He had opted to skip the verse entirely rather than cry onstage in front of thousands.
He pretended to be asleep, because explaining any of that to his bandmates was impossible.
The Northern California leg of the tour was wrapping up, and they were headed back down to LA next. NorCal had been a timely change of scenery, perfect for a man running from what he had abandoned in LA, but the increasingly familiar landscape rolling by their windows was an unwelcome reminder that he hadn’t managed to run very far at all.
“Stacee, we really thought things were picking up with you.” Even Andrea was serious for once, ignoring his attempts at feigned sleep. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this, but does all this have something to do with Antonio?”
Stacee had casually mentioned that he wasn’t seeing Antonio anymore when Andrea had teased about it being a shame that he couldn’t take him along on tour. He was surprised she still remembered, much less connected the dots.
“That Antonio guy was either fucking crazy or dumb as a rock to hang around Stacee for as long as he did,” Joey sneered. “Do you think he thought he was in love or something? We all saw how he looked at Stacee. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking sad.”
Stacee sprang to his feet against the gentle swaying of the bus, feigned sleep completely forgotten. “Joey. Shut the fuck up.”
“Ooh, did I hit a nerve there? Poor, sweet Antonio, didn’t even know Stacee is a heartless badass incapable of love-”
Before he even registered what he was doing, Stacee’s fist slammed into Joey’s jaw. It was a lucky thing for Joey that Stacee wasn’t wearing any of his usual rings because the hit was strong enough to knock him back against the bus window.
“Fuck you!” Joey lunged across the bus aisle at Stacee, landing a punch of his own on Stacee’s nose, which promptly started bleeding.
“What the fuck are you assholes doing?” screamed Andrea as Zach and Steve scrambled to separate them. “We’re on the fucking road! Do you want us all to die in a bus accident?”
Stacee was no fighter, and he had no steam left after that initial impulsive punch. He let Zach push him back down into his seat as blood from his nose trickled onto his shirt, his head spinning from sudden nausea. He never stooped to violence like this – it was completely unlike him. Besides the unsavory aspects in general, he had never cared enough about anything to fight over it.
His head still ached to hell and now his fucking nose hurt too. Everything was out of place and wrong. What on Earth had compelled him to lash out like that? He felt like a stranger in his own skin.
“Don’t start anything you can’t finish, you piece of shit!” Joey snarled at him from where Steve was holding him back. “You had better start writing some songs for that last album, because once that shit drops, we are through! I’m fucking sick of your bullshit!”
Stacee had expected Andrea at least to say something, even if not to defend Arsenal’s continued existence, at least to mock Joey for his dramatics. But her only response was to silently press her lips together and frown at Stacee.
“Calm down, all of you,” Steve said. “Let’s just get through the rest of the tour without killing each other, ok? Then we’ll talk after about what’s to come.”
Stacee hadn’t thought it was possible to feel even worse than he already did waking up that afternoon, but life had a way of surprising him. Looking at the bruise blooming on Joey’s jaw seared him more painfully than the blood still dripping out of his own nose. He had always butted heads with Joey over the years, but he knew he had gone too far this time.
They had been friends once, back when things had been simpler, before the excesses of success and fame turned things sour between them.
“Joey,” he started, wanting desperately to apologize even though every habit, every grudge formed over the last few years resisted it. “I-”
“Just shut up,” Joey growled, turning his back to Stacee.
Stacee choked, and not only on the blood that had made its way into his mouth.
The rest of the bus ride down to LA was silent.
Stacee wrapped his coat high around his neck and pulled his hat down low so that no one could see his face as he stared out the window. Not that anyone wanted to chance meeting his eye now anyway. He sat motionless, but his mind was racing faster than the scenery zipping by the highway.
Was Arsenal really over, just like that?
Sure, he had groused about the band, clashed with his bandmates and especially his manager for years. He had even flung around the idea of breaking up when things were really bad. But he had never been serious – at the end of the day, Arsenal was still the bedrock of his life, however strong the tremors that rocked it might be. Yet there was a finality in Joey’s rage that made Stacee believe this time might really be different.
He didn’t want it to be over.
Acknowledging it to himself was excruciating, but it was a long bus ride yet to LA, and he had nothing to do but stew in the turbulence of his own thoughts, staring at his pitiful, bruised, hungover reflection in the window, transparent over the increasingly barren landscape.
The truth was that he loved this band, what they had achieved together, what they could still make. He still loved these people, even though they had hurt each other so much over the years that they could barely hold a civil conversation without breaking into barbs. He loved them, and he was the one responsible for driving them away, destroying everything that bound him to them.
Just as he loved Antonio.
Yes, he loved Antonio. In this rare moment of self-reflection, the pain throbbing through his nose and head stripping him of the capacity to continue deluding himself, he had no choice but to admit it. He loved Antonio so much more than he had ever thought himself capable of feeling, so much that he was dizzy from the sheer depths of his longing, which at some point without his notice had expanded to worlds beyond just simple desire, so much that just thinking of Antonio’s face the last time they had fucked – no, made love – made him want to die from knowing how devastated Antonio must have been by his cold rejection afterwards.
Stacee loved Antonio, and he had been so unspeakably cruel to him because Stacee was a pathetic coward who was incapable of emotional honesty even to – especially to – himself. He almost had himself convinced that he was simply a free spirit, afraid of trivial things like boredom and being tied down, but what he was really afraid of was himself, that he was incapable of taking care of the things that mattered to him, that everything good he touched would eventually wither away, that he ultimately would only disappoint everyone who made the mistake of caring because in the end, he had nothing worthy to offer.
He needed a drink, damn it.
It was nightfall by the time they reached LA. Stacee staggered through the darkness of his empty house, tripping on the empty beer bottles he had left before going on tour and nearly causing himself another nosebleed.
He opened his fridge only to find that he had left some food in there before leaving, which was now completely rotted through. Pinching his nose against the smell (and immediately regretting the action – Joey had a damn strong punch), he fished out some tequila that had been pushed to the back of the fridge. All of his mixers had surely gone bad by now, but he wasn’t in a state to care about what taste was going in his mouth at this point.
He took a few long shots straight from the bottle. It still wasn’t enough to insulate him from the thoughts that sliced at him.
He wanted to see Antonio.
What a stupid want, on so many levels. Yes, he still had his number – had come this close to calling him in his lowest moments on this ill-fated tour – but the last vestiges of his conscience kept him from doing so. What if Antonio had managed to move on, like how he must have managed to move on from Bassanio if he had gone and fallen in love with Stacee? Stacee really wasn’t a good person, but he couldn’t let himself disturb any peace Antonio might have found. Yet still, he wanted.
The alcohol's influence won out over his sense, and a few more swigs of tequila later, he was in the backseat of a car headed to the Bourbon Room.
He told himself he wasn’t going to bother Antonio, just take a peek at where he was now, just to put his mind at ease on that front in the face of all the other shit going on, never mind that the Bourbon Room was probably the last place Antonio would be at this point. The driver kept giving him worried glances, and Stacee belatedly realized he had been rambling out loud.
“Shut up!” Stacee slurred at him. The tequila was actually hitting pretty hard on his empty stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. “I’ll pay you extra. That’s what he would do.”
Luckily for Stacee, Dennis was on bar duty tonight. Surely he would know something about Antonio’s current situation. Although judging from his cold glare at Stacee as he approached, maybe it wasn’t so lucky after all.
“Dennis, it’s me. Stacee Jaxx.” Stacee broke the silence when it became clear Dennis wasn’t going to deign to greet him. “Is this how you welcome back a VIP? The tour’s back in town, baby!” Oops, he hadn’t meant to slap the counter so hard. Well, he could add a stinging palm to the collection of aches plaguing his body at the moment.
“What do you want here? Seems you’re plenty drunk already.”
“Whiskey. I want fancy whiskey. The fanciest you have.” Stacee had to lean on his elbows to keep from falling over. “What does Antonio drink when he comes here? Give me that.”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business now,” Dennis crossed his arms, making no move to get Stacee’s drink.
“But I need to know. I need to have it. The fancy whiskey. Antonio.” When did Stacee’s eyes get so wet? “Does Antonio still come here? Have you seen him?”
“I’m not telling you shit, Stacee. Last thing he needs is for you to cause him any more grief.”
“Dennis, you have to tell me!” Stacee frantically reached into his pocket for his wallet. He dug out a fistful of bills and threw them onto the table, adding his credit card as an afterthought to the top of the wrinkled pile. “Look, I’ll give you all of this – whatever you want! Just tell me what Antonio’s been doing! Has he been here?” Dimly, he realized that he was shouting, though he could barely hear it over his own pulse thundering in his ears.
Dennis shot him a look that mixed pity and disgust in equal measure. “Shit, is that blood on your shirt? Go home, Stacee. You’re drunk. And you’re bothering my customers,” he added, eyeing the crowd that was curiously forming. “Consider it a token of our long association that I’m letting you leave on your own now instead of being escorted out.”
“Just tell me,” Stacee pleaded, pushing the pile of money across the bar. He didn’t know if the wetness on his face was from his nose starting to bleed again or from starting to cry or both. “I just want to know. Antonio...”
He slid down the barstool, crying in earnest now. There were people gathering in a circle around him with their phones out, probably taking pictures that would be all over the internet tomorrow, but he couldn’t even be bothered to lift a middle finger for them. What did it matter if pictures of him in this state got out? Arsenal was over. The dream had run its course. Antonio was gone. There was nothing left for him, and he had no one to blame but himself.
At least Dennis told the bouncer to be gentle depositing him on the street. Friendship counted for something after all.
He sat in a miserable pile on the ground, not noticing the bouncer’s attempts at subtly getting his attention until he was being bodily shaken.
“Hey, Stacee Jaxx.” The bouncer moved him so they were out of view of the door. “I think I know which guy you were talking about. Tall Asian guy, real handsome. He used to always come to your shows, right?”
Stacee scrabbled to get up and take out the bills that Dennis had stuffed back into his pockets. “Yes, that’s Antonio. Please, all this is yours – just tell me.”
The bouncer pocketed the bills smoothly. “He came here almost every night for a few weeks. Guess he was going through some shit. Picked up a lot of guys too, had the boss stressing. I can do better than just telling you – I can get you the security tapes from the nights he was here. The boss was so worried about him getting kidnapped or whatever that he had us mark the footage at the time in case we ever needed to identify someone. Anyways, it’s all the material you’d need for whatever pervy purposes you have. I won’t ask, heh, but of course, I’ll need some extra for putting my neck on the line.”
Stacee’s brain couldn’t even begin to comprehend the words coming out of the bouncer’s mouth. All he could do was flash the remaining bills he had. “It’s yours once you get it for me.”
“Wait here for a bit – I’ll come back on my next break.”
Stacee sank back onto the ground, head still spinning too much to stay upright for long. Even as dead drunk as he was, he knew this was shitty, twisted, wrong. But everything was crumbling around him, and he was scrabbling for any purchase to slow his fall, even if he knew his inevitable fate at the bottom of the abyss.
At some point he must have passed out, because the next thing he knew the bouncer was shaking him awake, passing him a USB stick and relieving him of his remaining cash.
By some miracle, Stacee managed to get home in one piece, the USB stick clutched tightly in his hand. He plugged it into his laptop after several fumbling tries and loaded the video clips.
There was Antonio, dressed in what must have been his work clothes, heartbreakingly beautiful even in the distorted black and white of the security camera. Stacee’s eyes teared up all over again at the sight of him. It occurred to him that he didn’t have any other photos of Antonio. At the time, he hadn’t realized there was anything worth preserving.
Antonio was perched at the end of the bar counter, in the sights of a man who kept throwing him sidelong glances. There was no audio in the recording, but Stacee could just imagine what he said when he finally gave in to his obvious interest and slinked over to Antonio’s side. Probably some lame pickup line, not too far off from what Stacee would have said if he was a stranger seeing Antonio drinking alone in a bar.
There were a lot of empty glasses in front of Antonio, and even the video’s low resolution couldn’t obscure the dark circles under his eyes and hollow shadows under his cheekbones. Stacee’s chest lurched with grief and guilt, only to ignite with a burst of unfamiliar fury when the man reached out to wrap an arm around Antonio’s waist.
When the initial flash of incandescent rage faded, Stacee realized that he was consumed with jealousy, so strong that he was nearly sick with it. It wasn’t an emotion he had felt in a very long time – for so long, he had just passed through a sea of temporary pleasures that were as easy to let go as they were to receive. Now he felt driven insane by it, wishing he could punch the man through his laptop screen as he leaned in to kiss Antonio.
Jealousy wasn’t a pretty feeling, and on top of that, he knew he didn't even have the right to it. He had had no shortage of hookups of his own since leaving Antonio, and more importantly, he had never had any claim on him in the first place. That was his own doing. Still, he clenched the sides of his laptop so tight his knuckles were white as he watched Antonio leave the bar with the man’s arm still around his waist.
Did Antonio know what he was doing? What if he was taken advantage of? How could he trust this man not to murder him in an alley? Even slowed by the fog of alcohol, Stacee’s mind raced through a hundred terrible scenarios of Antonio getting hurt. But in the end, hadn’t Stacee been the one to hurt him the most?
He clicked through to the other videos, an ugly storm of jealousy, anxiety, and fury building under his skin with each one he watched. They were all pretty similar – Antonio drinking alone before leaving the bar with a different man in each clip.
He should have been happy that Antonio found some way to move on, despite the shadows that seemed to grow darker under his eyes and cheekbones as the dates progressed on the video timestamps. The final video was dated to about a month ago, and Stacee watched it over and over, wondering what had happened in the time since. Did this man currently placing a hand on Antonio’s thigh in the video convince him to stop looking for hookups? Did he do what Stacee couldn’t and manage to build something that lasted?
Maybe Antonio was in his arms now, in a normal relationship where he would be as treasured as he deserved to be, by a stable man who wasn’t afraid to hold onto things, who wouldn’t sabotage the things he loved just so he wouldn’t have to worry about them changing. Even though Stacee hated that man from the bottom of his heaving gut for daring to inch his hand higher and higher up Antonio’s thigh, he had to admit that he looked like a respectable type – clean cut, tastefully dressed, classically handsome. A good match for Antonio.
Stacee fetched the bottle of tequila from where he had left it on the counter before leaving for the Bourbon Room.
He lay back onto the floor where his laptop was still looping the last video. The alcohol did nothing to ease his thoughts – it only wiped away everything else until nothing was left but Antonio. Being back in LA, in the Bourbon Room, and in his own house without Antonio by his side made Stacee even more painfully conscious of the longing that had crept into every inch of his skin, like the roots of a tree that had grown unnoticed deep beneath the road until the concrete above burst open, its foundations long since cracked, the surface unable to contain it any longer.
He finished off the bottle.
When he came to, the first thing he saw was that man tipping Antonio’s head back as he kissed him. Stacee jerked back violently, flinging across the floor the laptop his face had been pressed into, the video still looping on the last two percent of battery. The sun streamed in through the gaps in his curtains, alerting him to the hangover jackhammering the inside of his skull.
He stumbled to his bathroom, eyes half-closed with pain and from how puffy they had swollen. Crying was never a good look on Stacee the next day. Despite knowing that, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror was still a nasty shock. There were bits of dried blood crusted under his nose, and the bags under his bloodshot eyes were so dark they could have been drawn on with eyeshadow. Unbidden, the image of the video that he had woken up to flashed in his mind’s eye. What a comparison.
He needed another drink to dispel his hangover and his thoughts. The bottle of tequila was completely emptied, and there wasn’t so much as a beer left in his house. He hadn’t bought a lot of extra alcohol when Antonio was around.
To a bar it was then. Never mind that it was two in the afternoon. Stacee considered taking his phone, but just seeing the number of unread notifications made him think better of it. There was no one he wanted to hear from right now, and anyone who might have been an exception to that was not going to call him anyway. He just wanted to get well and truly lost, be completely unreachable and unknown. There were still enough taxis in this town that even without his phone, soon enough he found himself in a bar he had never been to. Gross-looking place, but it was open and serving alcohol, so it would do.
Stacee almost never got blackout drunk. He did know his limits and the levels of intoxication he could let himself reach while still deriving some kind of pleasure from it. But today, he didn’t want pleasure. He only wanted oblivion. And with almost calculated precision, Stacee drank until he blacked out.
Someone was shaking him violently.
“You can’t actually be dead, you stupid asshole, wake up!” Andrea’s voice, furious but tinged with worry. “Maybe we should call the hospital.”
Against his will, Stacee opened eyes that felt like they had been glued shut. The faces of Andrea, Joey, Zach, and Steve hovered before him against the backdrop of his own ceiling. He blinked again, trying to unblur his vision, and realized he was on his living room floor.
“Not dead after all,” Joey grunted. “What a shame.”
Stacee couldn’t articulate beyond some incoherent noises of confusion. Even breathing felt difficult through the awful dryness and lingering sourness in his throat.
“Do you even know what day it is?” Steve responded. “Did you know that we had a concert tonight?”
Stacee stared up at him. He knew he should have felt a wave of panic at his words, but he just felt empty.
“We really thought you might have died. You weren't answering your phone and… shit, Stacee, it's been bad before, but you've never missed a fucking show! I thought that still mattered to you even if nothing else did!” There was no trace of Andrea's usual humor on her face.
“What happened?” Stacee managed to croak out. Judging from the faint acidic taste in his mouth and how his throat burned, he must have been sick. Probably multiple times.
“We drove all over LA trying to find you when you didn't show up for the mic check. By the time we finally found your sorry ass passed out in some shitty dive bar, Steve had to cancel the show. All the tickets have to be refunded now.” Zach's voice was flat and his eyes were cold as he looked down at Stacee. “We're going to owe the venue a lot of money after this. Maybe enough to put us in the red for the entire tour.”
“Stacee, we've put up with a lot over the years. But this is too much,” Steve sighed heavily, sounding more exhausted than angry. “You can't go on like this.”
“You're right.” Stacee replied simply. “I quit.”
That was enough to shut everyone up for a while. Stacee took the time to shakily push himself upright. No one offered him a helping hand.
“This isn’t the time for your usual dramatics,” Zach said, his voice low and dangerous. “We have a lot of damage control we need to be doing now.”
“Sorry, but that's gonna be Steve’s job. I’m done.” Stacee could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth. They were a relief. The relief of cutting off a broken limb, of giving up his struggling and letting himself sink beneath the water's surface.
“The record deal,” said Joey stupidly. “Did you forget that too?”
“Sue me.” Stacee shrugged.
“Stacee, I know you must not be in your right mind right now. Don't do anything you'll regret,” Steve warned, reaching out for Stacee’s shoulder, but Stacee batted his hand away.
“It's too late for that. Now get out of my house.”
-
Though he had been sorely tempted, Antonio had intentionally avoided looking up any news of Arsenal or Stacee. While he had accepted that he was still in love with Stacee, for the sake of his sanity and continued functionality, he resisted the impulse to see how the band’s tour was going.
But once he saw the trending topic of Arsenal canceling an entire concert at the last minute due to Stacee’s erratic behavior, the floodgates were opened. There was a sea of angry comments from fans who had to return tickets as well as those who complained about the lackluster performances earlier in the tour. With trembling hands, he clicked unblinking through shots of Stacee apparently on a bender in some local dive bar when he should have been at the concert venue, of Stacee clearly intoxicated or terribly hungover onstage in Northern California, of Stacee in suggestive poses with groupies, his mouth smiling wide but his eyes devastatingly lonely.
Antonio felt like he was dying. Day after day he wrestled with whether to call Stacee, all while following the news of Stacee’s surprise decision to quit Arsenal and the progress of the lawsuit from his former manager Steve for breaking the record deal contract. But surely Stacee wouldn’t want to hear from him – what comfort could he possibly bring him? He had just been another burden to Stacee.
Every day Antonio helplessly pored through the news to follow Stacee’s life falling apart in real time, furious at himself for how powerless he was. Was this all his love came to in the end?
Then one morning, after being eaten alive by anxiety for weeks, Antonio awoke to a terse text from Bassanio linking a news article.
“Stacee Jaxx Arrested on Charges of Murder of Former Manager Steve Vincent”
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