Work Text:
it's the kind of bitter cold that seeps in slowly, infecting bare fingertips and permeating steel toed boots to slip undetected into your bloodstream, veinstohearttoarteries and over the whole mile again until your whole body trembles with ice slick cool. see blue lips bitten violet, red knuckles turned out to the wind with the exhale of menthol fresh air between hands joined in prayer, knobby fawn knees locked up and stuck frozen like the doors of your car after a morning's frost.
it's familiar, but lacking. where i expect it to gather in my lungs thick like smoke, the kind of cold that unravels you even through your scarf and gloves, it's a less filling buzz than that. there's something pregnant about the chill, like there's more bite coiled up like a cobra just waiting to strike, but it never does. an unsatisfied hunger pools in my stomach as i shudder, feeling more like it comes from a place of pity than actual necessity. not preferable. i like my winters hopped up on adderall, not drunk and staggering.
that's philly for you.
me and frankie stand behind the trocadero while the second opener soundchecks, all jersey swagger radiated into air just-below freezing. he shivers as he zips up his jeans, having just pissed majority of his preshow beer into the nearest mound of dirty snow. ever the artist and full of tact, he leaves his mark on the city in the shape of a chode. ray, otter, and my brother have fucked off elsewhere, either to warm up or burn off steam or catch a few extra Zs in preparation for tonight. we're on the i brought you my bullets tour, playing support for piebald tonight alongside koufax and elliott. it's about the point in the day where i start to really freak myself out, so i've already had enough for the world to be a little unsteady on its axis, my frantic fingers pumping out basslines on invisible frets inside the pockets of my coat.
we idle a while in silence, me and him. i focus on the constant fog and thaw of my glasses with my exhales, liquor laced breath hot enough to ignite. my nerves have been somewhat numbed by both the cold of being outside too long and what i've currently tasked my liver with processing, but that doesn't keep my mind from racing back to the gig anyway. i think frank must have caught on, or read my mind, or something superhuman like that, because he shakes me out of my funk with the shake of a cigarette from his crumpled pack. "i'm trying to quit," he says, dryly, with the filter clamped between his teeth. "got a light?"
a quick look at his thigh confirms my suspicion that he has a bic of his own, but this exchange has become somewhat of a ritual for us, so i fumble for mine and flick it alight while he cups his hands to shield the flame. "thanks," the mumble comes as he takes a hearty drag, then blows it out in the brisk. i nod in affirmation, inhaling the secondhand through my nose. without prompt or even so much as a glance in my direction, he offers me the cigarette and i make a noncommittal noise, but ultimately oblige – i'll later claim virgin purity if anyone asks me my vices.
"nervous," i say, my mild voice hardly carrying over the sound of the wind whipping through the alley. it doesn't matter; we've had this conversation countless times since the first show we ever played.
"gonna be fine, mikes. always is," he insists, stealing the cigarette back from my bony digits. it looks more natural when he flicks the ash from the end, clean white paper contrasted by the black fabric of his fingerless gloves. i find that this affirmation is unjustly easy for him to say considering he gets to spend time with jamia post-show while the rest of us crash in with our various philly connections, most of which stem from ray.
rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, i'm restless with youth and uncertainty. i'm twenty-two years old and the weight of the world seems enough to crush me. "what if this all doesn't work out for us? i mean," i stumble on my words, stammering stale worry, "this is awesome. right? but what if it was just a fluke? what if we can never make something like this again?"
"i hope we don't ever make something like bullets again," he rolls his shoulders, a complicated and calculated motion. "what's the point?"
i pull my bottom lip between my teeth, hesitant. we're covering jack the ripper tonight, it's bass-heavy; i tap my part out on my hip. "well, yes. yeah. but, y'know, like... what if the next one... what if it's not as good, y'know?"
frank takes a long drag from the cigarette and for a moment i think he must be just as terrified about the matter as i am, but then he releases a series of smoke rings and pulls back his hood where it settles at his collar to show me the scorpion on his neck, and i understand. he's not the slightest bit bothered; he ashes the cigarette on my shoe.
"roger," i say under my breath after i kick the ash off, staring off into the distance to approximate how much daylight we have left. an hour, tops. kids will start to show up soon, and in the quiet i realize the noise from koufax inside the building ceased sometime during my mini-crisis. i gesture at the backdoor quizzically, indicating we should hightail it in to conduct our own soundcheck and he nods, drawing in a last lungful of smoke through the browning filter. i turn to start toward the door, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me back.
"mikey," he says, looking me dead in the eyes. the fag dances in the corner of his mouth as he talks. i'm trying to meet his gaze, but i keep drifting back to watch it slide back and forth against his lip piercing. "do you trust me?"
for a moment all i can do is stare, slightly taken aback, but mostly feeling as though this should be the most obvious question in the world. "that's a no-brainer, of course i do."
he holds my eyes a couple seconds longer, as if confirming what i said was genuine, then drops my wrist and walks past me toward the door. nonchalant, he drops the butt to the blacktop, squashing it underfoot like a roach. "then trust me."
"okay," i murmur, mostly to myself. frank, of all people, already knows me well enough to know my response. this is the stuff blood pacts are made of.
i follow him in.