[In 1984, Deep Purple's second lineup had reformed with the album 'Perfect Strangers'. As promotion, they did a world tour. During a particular show in Australia, one of our reporters ran into Ian Gillan in a nearby pub and Ian instantly agreed to being interviewed.]
G: Has the show ended early, that you're out here at this time?
I: Oh, no. On the contrary. Ritchie's on playing one of his solos, can take up to half an hour.
G: So you've sneaked out of your own concert to drink?
I: Mhm. It's his time in the spotlight, so to speak. He's giving the audience everything he has to give. And, you know, the fans are all in there at the moment, so I wont get crowded here. If I go for a drink after the show, the entire audience will be here as well.
G: That's a good point.
I: Yeah. One of my roadies will be telling me when Ritchie looks like he's going to finish.
G: Clever.
I: Mhm. Now, I'm rather curious about that magazine you've mentioned. Back in the tourbus, we've got this huge collection of magazines. I'd say I'm rather well-read on the subject, but I've never heard of this one.
G: It's not very mainstream. If you'd like, I have some examples in my bag.
I: I'd love to see it.
[I reached into my bag and took out an old magazine, handing it to Ian.]
I: Bob Dylan. 's an oldie. '74.
G: That's right.
I: Ten years ago.
[Ian flipped through the magazine for a moment.]
I: Interesting. Very interesting.
G: You see the appeal?
I: I certainly do. I've never thought about the... act of sneezing and catching illnesses in that way, but I do understand it.
G: Yeah. Now that you know the context, have you got any good stories for us?
I: From the top of my head... I can say it's absolute hell to catch a nasty cold on the road. Any illness, for that matter. You know, with the type of songs we have, and, well... the band insists we do Child in Time every night. I'll be telling them, 'Lads, I've got a cold. I can't sing Child in Time, or I'll ruin my voice'. And they'll agree with me. But on stage, someone... well, a person who's in the band, he still plays the intro to the song, like...
[Ian imitated the instrumental of Child in Time.]
I: And the crowd goes wild. You don't want to displease an inebriated crowd of what, thousands of people.
G: That's true.
I: So I'll have to sing it anyways.
G: You do sound less hoarse on your records in the 70s.
I: Right. Perhaps it's an age thing as well. But, you know. I'm a singer. I'll be singing 'til I drop.
G: You power through everything.
I: I've got little choice. It might suprise you, but when we did that show in Japan a decade back, I was in fact recovering from an illness.
G: Really? You would've never guessed.
I: Right. Started out like a cold during the first few recording sessions of Who Do We Think We Are. I was out for a bit, but I was recovered plenty to fly to Japan and do that record. You know, I shant dispute that live albums can sound crappy, but you know, most people who criticize live albums haven't even been there. I dislike putting out live albums for that exact reason. There's always going to be people...
G: ... that are unhappy about it? Yeah. So you weren't out of order for long?
I: No. A week, perhaps more, y'know. At that time, in '72, '73 we were severely overworked.
[Ian cleared his throat.]
I: I've once contracted hepatitis while on the road. Didn't get to rest when it started, didn't get any time off, just had to push through it. I passed out on some American airport.
G: What a nightmare.
I: It was. It came from an infected cola bottle. We all drank from it, we all got sick. I believe it was an actual epidemic at the time. I was the only one to pass out, though.
G: You suffered the worst.
I: Depends on how you look at it, really. I got some time off in the hospital and such, the other lads had to continue working.
G: Oh. In a sense, you were lucky then.
I: I was. I've got another story for you. Last year, I briefly was the vocalist of Black Sabbath. For the opening night of the tour for Born Again, Maple Hall... I just, I just couldn't remember the words! It was like...
[Ian stumbled over his words for a moment.]
I: And so I had a book by my feet where I'd written down cues. Practiced it at home, I could turn the pages with my foot. However, at the actual opening night, what they hadn't told me or included in any rehearsal or sound check was the dry ice. I stood there, trying to see my cue book with a solid cloud of dry ice in the way, all the way up to... well, about six feet tall. So I kneeled down with the microphone stand, in front of thousands of people, frantically trying to wave the smoke away and to find my words. It almost hurt to inhale that stuff, I was tearing up. I came up out of the cloud to sing some nonsense, then ducked down again in a desperate search for my lines. I looked ridiculous. Then, the floor lights came on, blinding me. All of my senses were completely overwhelmed, and I do think I recall coughing and sneezing my head off, like...
[He imitated the coughing for a short moment, fanning at his face as though to demonstrate how he looked in that moment.]
I: It's a blur, that's how bad it was, and I know for a fact that anything set me off the following days. I have no allergies that I know of. The dry ice came close, though.
G: Wow. You really were putting on a show.
I: At the time, I, of course, didn't know of this fetish. I suppose I did make a spectacle of myself though.
[He laughed, then cleared his throat and took a sip from his beer.]
I: I'm very open-minded in that sense. I can definitely imagine people getting off on this.
G: Not many people think like you. A good portion of people who experience this feel shame.
I: For having a fetish for sneezing? We can't exactly help what turns us on and it's not even that far-fetched.
G: You think so? If someone, for instance, would ask you to indulge them, you wouldn't decline?
I: Certainly not. As long as no one gets hurt, really. You meet all sorts of people on the road. Everyone has their own things. Perhaps it would be the most enjoyable sex I'd ever have. Perhaps I'd hate it. I can't exactly envision it, but if the opportunity finds me, I'll grasp it.
G: That's an interesting mindset.
[Ian's attention was caught by a figure in the doorway of the pub.]
I: Ah, I've got to get back to the venue.
G: One last question. What do you say after someone sneezes?
I: Gesundheit!
-------
Here's the actual re-telling of Black Sabbath's dry ice incident. There's no sneezing actually mentioned, but hey. It's fun to think about.
Art of a story of the Monkees by @adreadfulcantata! I have no consistent artstyle when it comes to phone art and I refuse to make snz art on my laptop in fear of people seeing it (addition, I might in the future). I hope it's good
not sfw tickling fic (with a tasteful foot focus); m/m; 70s rock band scene. if you recognize the names no you don't!
As Rick's fingers slipped up Jon's side, teasing with intermittent pressure, Jon let out a desperate, fearful cry. "No! No, not again!"
"And why… not…?" Rick said slowly, dragging his fingers lightly to and fro.
"I—" Jon paused, lips parted slightly. His breathing was shaky as he thought, the muscles of his side twitching with anticipation. "I don't know. I get too excited."
"What, laughing? It's good to get some excitement."
"I mean the wrong way," Jon insisted, voice conveying a sense of shame.
"I am freezing to death," Jon proclaimed. "I shall freeze and die on the streets of Paris like all the little urchin boys before me." His arms were curled tightly around his middle as he turned into an alcove and pressed himself against the cold brick wall, anything to get out of the wind.
"Really now," Rick chastised. "It's not quite as bad as all that." His own fists were deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched up around his ears.
"You said it was just a few blocks. We could've called a car."
"It is a few blocks. From here, anyway." Rick gave a nervous laugh, the sort that came from being a few drinks deep, wind-whipped and overtired, capable of navigation only by instinct. "Here, would you like my coat?"
Jon shivered and pushed himself off the wall, stumbling back into the sidewalk where he brushed past Rick and started off again towards what was possibly the direction of the hotel. "I should make you regret that," he grouched.
"Take it." Rick wriggled out of his coat and slung it around Jon's shoulders. It wasn't as thick, but larger by nature of its owner, a welcome shield against the buffeting wind. Rick skipped ahead and tucked his hands under his arms, exhaling giddily. His teeth chattered, the wind blowing his hair off his face. It was invigorating, sobering—and certainly redoubled his belief in the hotel being just around the next corner. Any further than that, and he'd be the one frozen and dead.
Jon's voice came a few paces behind. "You're mad."
Rick felt a lump of fabric hit his back. He swung his arms around to catch the thrown coat just in time, and didn't argue as he quickly slipped back into it.
~*~*~
They'd gone to Rick's room, so Jon had no qualms about leaping onto the bed before taking his shoes off, only kicking them off and sending them tumbling off the edge after he'd pulled the quilt up and around his shoulders. He slotted his feet together, one on top of the other in a bid for warmth.
Rick finished hanging their coats in the closet, then stepped into the main room. "See, we made it in one piece."
"One solid block of ice," Jon countered. "My feet are frozen."
"Are not." Rick sat on the edge of the bed and patted his thigh. "Give them here."
Jon stretched out flat on the bed, resting his feet in Rick's lap. He sighed as Rick's hands rested atop the bridges, then again as the tops of his toes were enclosed within the heat of Rick's palms, the cold beginning to melt away.
"Not quite frozen." Rick moved his hands to cradle just one heel. Jon wedged his other foot between Rick's ass and the bed, like a small creature diving into a burrow. "Can you feel this?"
Rick pressed his thumb along the arch, into the soft concavity at the center. When he brushed across it a second time, Jon twitched and shied away.
"Easy, girl." Rick grinned. "A bit ticklish?"
"No," Jon said, letting his foot be captured again and led back to pasture. "You've got a light touch."
Rick hummed, resuming his stroking with slightly more pressure. "My mum always said I was touched."
Jon flexed his foot a little with the effort of staying put, but kept from flinching. Instead he shut his eyes, deflating with a lugubrious sigh.
"What's the worst of it tonight?" Rick asked as he massaged, chipper as a bar hand; they had frequently lamented to each other these past few weeks and the sources of despondency hardly changed, but merely put on a different hat depending on the day's events. The present day had been rather productive, with all hands on deck in the studio—though of course, many hands could make an ordeal of light work.
"Sometimes I just want to run away… I want to—ohh!"
In that moment Rick, expecting rather a long speech, had begun to amuse himself in other ways. One such way was to further raise Jon's foot and kiss the underside of his toes. It wasn't a kiss, really, merely placing his lips against the soft skin, but the brush of his stubble as he hummed in acknowledgment sent a tremor through Jon's body, and he made as if to tug his foot away.
Rick held him fast, half-concealed but smiling as he spoke. "Go on then. Tell me all about it."
Every syllable buzzed against Jon's toes. He whined in protest, which only spurred Rick on. He'd pressed his lips against the arch, rubbing back and forth and peppering tiny, maddening kisses, groping all the while with his other hand to find Jon's other foot in order to strengthen the assault by means of his fingers. So much of Jon's focus was devoted to not kicking Rick square in the face that he maintained little control on his voice, dissolving into frantic giggles, a choked gasp as Rick really worked his fingers across the sole.
"St— hh— op!" Jon shook himself free at last and swung himself out of reach, huffing as he caught his breath. Now it was Rick's turn to laugh. He cackled until Jon was set off again, and then they made a fine pair of giddy idiots, collapsing next to each other on the bed, grappling until they were both in stitches and Rick had managed to come out on top.
"Ugh," Jon sighed, wriggling comfortably between Rick's arms. "You're so warm. I win."
"Ah, but see—" Rick's fingers crept under the hem of Jon's shirt. "Right where I want you."
As Rick's fingers slipped up Jon's side, teasing with intermittent pressure, Jon let out a desperate, fearful cry. "No! No, not again!"
"And why… not…?" Rick said slowly, dragging his fingers lightly to and fro.
"I—" Jon paused, lips parted slightly. His breathing was shaky as he thought, the muscles of his side twitching with anticipation. "I don't know. I get too excited."
"What, laughing? It's good to get some excitement."
"I mean the wrong way," Jon insisted, voice conveying a sense of shame.
"What's the wrong way?"
Rick knew—he could feel Jon pressed hotly against his leg, but took a certain smug satisfaction in seeing the blush creep across Jon's face.
"Stop," Jon begged as Rick's fingers fluttered again. "You're enjoying this."
"Of course I am. What else did you think I was doing it for?"
"Just to see me suffer?"
"Mm, well, that too." Rick dug his fingers into Jon's armpit and practiced his best set of flourishes. Jon squealed, but pinned thusly he could only jerk about in place, squirming and clawing at Rick's shirt.
"N— nnmf!" Jon sobbed and giggled, frenzied gasps of air catching and turning to hiccups in his throat.
"What's that?" Rick asked, not lessening his attack. "Can't hear you at all."
At last, teary-eyed and quite flushed, Jon managed to wheeze out a desperate "Stop!" and Rick's fingers ceased their torment. Jon stared up at him, wide-eyed and helpless as he panted, almost terrified, hips rocking upwards needily.
Rick pulled Jon into his arms, cooing softly with hardly an ounce of amusement. "Oh, there, there, Jonny-boy." He kissed Jon's neck, pulse rapid under his lips. Jon clung to him, letting their legs intertwine, teasing with his foot at the hem of Rick's trousers, across the line of one calf. Slowly, Jon's breathing evened out, and the sharp, wanton thrust of his hips mellowed into a smooth roll.
"Have you caught your breath?" Rick murmured. Jon nodded into Rick's shoulder, burying his face there.
Rick's hand caressed down Jon's side towards his hip, but halted at the waist. Jon was fairly well restrained now, with every slight twitch or squirm pressing him against Rick, cock trapped against his belly, but there was nothing else that could be done. Rick began to dig his fingers into Jon's side again, creeping below his waistband to brush over the sensitive curve of his hipbone.
Jon bucked and writhed, hysterical with breathless laughter. When Rick halted again, Jon continued to rub himself against him, hot and shameful, whimpering softly. Rick hummed against his neck. Everything about him was tender and warm, easy to hold, easy to fall into indefinitely.
"We've got to stop," Rick warned halfheartedly, letting his own hard-on slide against the top of Jon's thigh, impeded by too many layers of fabric but nonetheless impossible to stop.
"No," Jon sighed, pulling Rick close, wrapped up in a cocoon of warmth and sensation. "No, we never do."
"We do—" Rick said more sternly now, lifting his head. Jon watched him, crestfallen with the anticipation of denial. "Because I'm a grown man, well-deserving and capable of a bit more than rubbing one out in my trousers."
Jon pulled Rick back into place, nuzzling against his scruffy cheek. "Y'going to fuck me?"
"Oh, god," Rick groaned as desire shot through him. "I was just going to ask you to touch me."
"Of course I'll touch you," Jon promised, caressing the back of Rick's neck, his upper arm.
"Rather… specifically," Rick amended. Still, Jon only smiled and doted, fascinated now with running his fingers through Rick's hair, fine and soft as corn silk.
Rick extricated himself from Jon's grasp and slipped off the bed, stripping nude with some urgency and stumbling to his knees, on the carpet just off to Jon's side. When Jon sat up and slung his legs over the edge, his feet could just rest atop Rick's thighs, bare and warm. Jon wriggled out of his trousers with some assistance, then stroked the tips of his toes across the sensitive inner thigh, just testing the waters.
Even such a light touch had Rick stiff and aching. He dipped forward to kiss the inside of Jon's knee. Jon sighed and spread his legs further, leaning back with one hand on the mattress, the other beginning to palm at his lenth, fingers curling around it. Rick nuzzled further up Jon's thigh, nipping, breathing in hungrily. Jon's sole glided up to the line where thigh met belly, toes nudging teasingly at Rick's hip, then continuing to circle around their final target. As the circle crested at Rick's stomach, Jon's heel brushed over Rick's cockhead, driving an airy sound from his lips.
Rick shuffled closer, his lips now close to Jon's cock, so close that Jon's knuckles brushed against them with every stroke. All it took was the angling of his hips, a small press downwards, and Jon slid against them, velvety soft. His breath caught at the touch, at the wet prod of Rick's tongue against the tip. Jon's hand continued to work up and down the shaft, rubbing just the slickened head over Rick's lips, letting Rick lap and suckle at it with equal measures of lust and restraint.
Meanwhile, Jon's foot dipped a little lower. He glided across the length of Rick's cock, the tip catching in the little hollow at the base of his first two toes. Rick twitched and grasped Jon's foot by the bridge, rutting against the sole. The cool slide; the tenderness with which Jon offered such a small part of himself, as a lady extending her hand for a kiss; the insistent press of his cock between Rick's lips, fingers threading through his hair —through all of it Rick could only thrust hips and grasp at Jon's calf, devoid of shame, little more than an animal seeking a base need.
As he came treacherously close to the precipice, just managing to come back from the brink, a sense of clarity passed over him—he felt a wave of the same uncanny reality that settled in thick over their working hours, the same out-of-body vertigo that drove him towards distraction. He paused to pull back for a moment, sporting a wry grin as if to make some little quip that would clear the air, but when his gaze had lifted to Jon's face, he saw pursed lips, wet cheeks, glistening eyes, and—"You're crying," Rick observed.
Jon shrugged lopsidedly, a few dark locks falling behind his shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was unusually rough. "You don't have to stop."
"Don't be silly," Rick insisted, grabbing the side of the bed for leverage. He wavered a bit as he stood, but dizzy from the stark transition, but willing.
"I don't want to stop," Jon said, even as Rick laid down and took him into his arms again, pressing their bare and semi-bare bodies together. "It feels good. And you…" He trailed off.
"Why are you crying, then?" Rick knew instantly that it had come out perhaps too harsh. Jon merely shook his head and shuddered with a quiet sob, trying to wrench himself away as Rick held him fast by the waist, unsure of what must be done but feeling that to let him leave would have earthshaking consequences. He held him for several moments, failing to come up with any combination of words that could possibly improve the state of things.
"I'm sorry," Jon finally said, sniffling. "I've ruined it."
"Look here," Rick said, then paused. His body had suddenly remembered that it was pressed against another warm body, and his cock throbbed where it lay neglected against Jon's ass.
"What?"
Rick swallowed. He'd clear forgotten what. In lieu of words, he dug his fingers into Jon's side—caught off guard, he yelped, clapping a hand over his mouth, and kicked and squirmed and snorted laughter until Rick decided to relent and release his prey.
"Listen to yourself," Rick said with a few pinches for good measure, "You can't be sad."
Still catching his breath, Jon twisted around to lay on his back and pull Rick into a kiss, soft and only a little damp. He let a hand wander down to pet at Rick's cock, eliciting a surprised sigh. Breaking apart, Jon began to ask— "Would you…" — but the word could not pass his lips, and he just gazed at Rick sheepishly, letting his eyes flick downward.
Rick's amusement was plain, much as he fought against showing it. "What? Tickle your pretty feet? Some people would beg for that opportunity."
"Shh." Jon shoved him. He paused and cocked his head. "Do you hear that?"
"No." Rick frowned. "Hear what?"
"It's so faint…" Jon waited a few seconds longer. "But I think it's the sound of you not begging."
Rick scrambled into place, kneeling on the bed. Jon sat up briefly to sling off his shirt, then lay back as his legs were lifted, held against Rick's chest and one shoulder. Rick curled one hand around Jon's ankles and spat into his other hand—Jon's breath quickened for a moment, settling only after he realized that Rick was just slicking his thighs.
"Keep both my hands free," Rick explained, twisting his cock in his fist a few times before slotting it between Jon's thighs, wet, and wetter as precome dribbled from his slit as Jon enveloped him, supple and warm.
Jon nodded, shyly pointing his toes by Rick's ear; he wriggled at the first teasing ghost of breath across his soles, squeezing his thighs together, and when Rick gripped his ankles and turned to kiss the tops of his feet it was in tearful worship. Then, rotten to the core, he began to flit his fingers across Jon's arches, the drag of his nails maddening, making Jon squirm and squeal and choke. Rick laid kisses on him, flicked out his tongue, groaning, fucking his plush thighs. Jon's legs shook, his toes pointing and curling in turn, trying to escape, but there was to be none—just the slow, torturous intermittent glide of Rick's fingers as Jon writhed in blissful agony.
Rick dropped forward onto one arm, bending Jon near in half, mouthing at the underside of his jaw. Jon held one arm tight around Rick's back, the other tugging at his own cock, panting hard and trembling. When Rick came, it was in stripes over Jon's fist, slicking his cock as he stroked himself, gasping in broken moans and desperate whines as Rick nuzzled against his neck, drew fingers across the curve of his throat with a touch as soft as air. Jon came with a cry, lips parted so enticingly that Rick was obligated to meet them with his own.
Having freed himself from Rick's grasp, Jon pulled him close, unconcerned at the way their combined mess smeared between them, holding and squeezing whatever his hands could find. Rick lavished him with deep, indulgent kisses. When they parted for a breath, Rick slid off to lay on his back, and Jon turned and reached out to cup his cheek, thumb smoothing against the stubble.
Jon smiled sweetly. "I think it's your turn."
Rick gazed fondly and folded his arms behind his head. "My turn?"
"Yes." Jon hovered a hand over Rick's side, and Rick couldn't bring his arms down fast enough.
"Oh, no," he said.
"Yes," Jon affirmed, as his fingers began to creep—through the air, without so much as touching—up and down, like some sort of beast that crawls.
"No, no, no. Oh, god." Rick began to shake with weak laughter. "Jon, please—stop."
"It's all in your head," Jon all but sang, utterly gleeful. "I haven't touched you."
"You've done much worse and you know it!"
Jon scrunched his fingers towards the crook of Rick's armpit and Rick began to laugh wildly, contorting and batting at Jon's hand, pleading for mercy. In this way, the Duke of Wellington had fallen, and history's course was forever changed.
[Our reporter was fortunate to interview the legendary musician Robert Fripp, best known for his work with King Crimson, although he has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians. Most recently, he put out an album with Andy Summers, called Bewitched, which has just been released. We join him now in the bustling lobby of A&M Records, as the company executives did not recognize us as an official magazine, and our interviewee evidently considered himself above the act of asking for a private room in which to conduct business. As such, please excuse any transcription errors which occurred due to the reduced quality of our interview recording.]
G: You're an artist with a penchant for the avant-garde. Is there anything that your creative partners have declined for being too strange?
RF: It's funny that you should ask that, really, because there was a point during the recording of Bewitched where that nearly happened.
G: Bewitched of course being your newest collaboration with Andy Summers, guitarist for The Police.
RF: I like to think of him as a guitarist for me who has worked with The Police on occasion, but yes.
G: That's right, I misspoke. Go on.
RF: Oh, would you like me to tell you exactly what he nearly walked out on me for?
G: Well, we are in the business of publishing news. Think of it as free advertising.
RF: It's a lot better than doing the videos, of which I've had to consent to a few. (He waves his hands about and makes a face.) See, I can do any silly old thing and no one would know I've just made a fool of myself.
G: That's another benefit of our, shall we say, intimate reader base.
RF: So would you like to hear the story?
G: Please.
RF: I'll tell it then. We were in the studio, working on Bewitched. We had a limited period of time to complete it, with me about to go off on a Crim tour. I would be there for about two and a half weeks, and then Andrew would have to manage all of the mixing and filling in the gaps, all those little housekeeping things.
G: While you went off to war.
RF: A war I'm still waging—oh, don't remind me. The holidays have been so short. This must have been about the beginning of April, last year. I arrived first to the studio, which isn't unusual for me. I like to get the lay of the land. Andy comes in, finally, looking rather worse for wear. But then he'd just come off a tour of his own, with The Police, and they do all sorts of nonsense up on stage, jumping about and such, that I wasn't surprised if he looked a bit tired.
G: There's some benefit to being a bit underground.
RF: It has its perks. Andy and I get right into it, showing each other the little compositions that we'd brought. We're quite collaborative when we work, and most of what we bring to the table individually ends up getting thrown out along the way, but it's a good place to start. Now I begin to notice that he's not well at all. You know, sniffing a little bit, and his voice wasn't right.
G: So he'd shown up with a cold?
RF: You have to understand that the politics for sickness and health are very different between the singer and the instrumentalist. When your frontman is ill, the whole tour goes on pause.
G: Yes, I believe The Police have had to postpone or even cancel a few shows when Sting was having trouble with his throat and such.
RF: For a guitarist, or anyone in a non-singing role, for that matter, there are no such courtesies. Your guitar is your instrument, and your body is— is merely the servant who tends the fire at the instrument's temple. You could be utterly wracked by your illness, but as long as you can stay upright and move your hands, then you're considered fit to play.
G: Though you might be asked to quarantine yourself while off stage, I would imagine?
RF: Oh, absolutely. I'm glad Andy showed up, to be sure—I mentioned how tight the time frame was. But I very politely— (he laughs slightly) or, at least, I tried to be polite, asking that he kindly stay across the studio from me at all times, and keep his germs to himself.
G: How did Andy take it?
RF: I think he was happy to do so. We're friends, good friends, but he's a professional first and foremost. But, you know, to a certain point you can't help it.
G: Can't help what? Please, every gruesome detail.
RF: (He smiles.) I would tell you, but I'm afraid they're not my details to tell.
G: We'll have to get Andy for an interview.
RF: But really, it was gruesome. He was behind the glass and I was at the mixing board, testing out sounds, positioning—these are the sort of details that tend to titillate me. Andy was in the studio with his wall of speakers. I mean, stacks and stacks of them. That's how he gets that big, isolated sound that just echoes into itself over and over. He's just started to play and gets a few bars in. I'm looking at the board, but I hear him stop, and out of the corner of my eye, see his hands fly up to his face and he bends nearly in half.
G: Bless his heart!
RF: I did tell him specifically not to use his hands for such a thing, because it just spreads germs all over the instrument, all the dials and knobs he touches. And then I touch them, and it's just—
G: Right.
RF: But through the headphones, I hear this incredible sound. It's not like anything I've heard before, the notes sort of… ricochet off of one another, pushed around by this huge rush of air. So I get on the microphone and say, "Andy, I need you to do that again."
G: To sneeze again?
RF: Yes. I had to capture it, if I could, so that we could use it on the record. But of course on a personal level I found it fascinating and wanted to see how much more it could achieve.
G: What in particular made it so alluring?
RF: That seems like a question I should be asking you, doesn't it?
G: I'd like to hear it in your own words.
RF: I'm not sure I have the language for it. I'll speak in the language I do have, which is to describe it sonically. We tend to think of it as a loud thing, but when there is so much noise in one small space already, you must instead think of it as compact. There's a tinny quality to it, and quite a lot of fuzz. Of course there's a lot of variation, but as a general way of thinking about it, it's like the clash of a cymbal, or a sort of snare-like rattle. But more than that—and I began to hear it more as the experiment went on, the after-effect of the sound was that it pushed the airwaves around it into new positions. Distorting them. It wasn't the sound itself that I wanted, but the vibration it gave to the sounds that were already hanging around in the air.
G: So none of Andy's actual sneezing made it onto the record?
RF: Not in the standard pressing, no.
G: What I'm hearing is that Gesundheit readers should save their money.
RF: Save it, spend it, I don't care either way. It's more Andy's record than mine.
G: You called this an experiment. About how many takes before you got the sound you wanted?
RF: I think we managed to get it in one afternoon. By the time I'd finished with him, let's just say that he no longer had the voice with which to protest.
G: Do you know how he felt about it?
RF: It took some coaxing. A lot of stripping away the regulations I'd laid down earlier in the session. But I got the sound I wanted. Paid for it dearly, though. I was sick for nearly the whole first leg of the tour.
G: Have you always been a martyr for your art?
RF: I think that's enough of that. Did you have any other questions?
G: Yes, if you'll permit it. It's a bit of a sore spot, I'm afraid, about your first King Crimson album.
RF: Well you're correct, I don't usually like to answer those. It's rather played out as a subject, but I'll make an exception for you since you seem like such a nice young lady.
G: I won't read too far into that comment. The cover of In the Court of the Crimson King, which is so striking, is probably the most iconic piece of album art which also happens to showcase a straight shot into a man's nose. Could you tell us a little bit about what you feel this imagery represents?
RF: I've fielded questions before about the cover art, which was done by Barry Godber, who was a friend of our lyricist at the time, but I have to say they were never phrased quite like that. Let me think. (He pauses for a moment, taking off his glasses to clean the lenses.)
G: Take your time.
RF: I think the point is that it is so striking. It's unusual, and even a bit uncomfortable. The same could be said of unusual time signatures, or guitar tunings, or harmonics. We make art that a large portion of today's consumer base might consider to be uncomfortable and unpleasant to listen to. And so they don't buy our records. Fine. But I think it does strike a chord within many people, or the fact that it's unexpected may draw them in and give them a broader concept of the world. Whether that be in music, or art, or—
G: Or niche magazines?
RF: Exactly.
G: I just have one last question for you, one that we ask all our featured interviewees. What do you say after someone sneezes?
RF: As a rule I prefer to say nothing at all. Although if has the right sound, I might just say, "Wait a minute; do that again."
Going insane over the thought of a wet cat of a man with a miserable head cold and his domme girlfriend who he’s absolutely infatuated with … he’s huddled with his head in her lap, muffling ragged sneezing fits into a handful of soggy tissues and blushing like crazy as she coos blessings at him and runs her fingers through his hair.
said i'd never do this but the heart wants what it wants.
March 1980
Sydney, Australia
"What's with the blue?" I asked one of the farmers. Nothing against blue. Top 10 favorite colors, any day. But I didn't see why the sheep should be wearing it; some on their back, some on their chest, some on their ass. It seemed like an astronomically inefficient way to dye a sweater.
"See who's bred." The farmer who answered was British, not Aussie. Unexpected, but I guess they had to come from somewhere.
"How do they know which ones—"
"The rams have the paint on their chest," Andy explained to me. "So when they…" Sinking his teeth into his lower lip, he rocked his little hips in a horrible bump and grind. I could almost hear the accompanying soundtrack: bow wow, chicka wow wow. "Blue."
The farmer nodded. "'Bout the size of it."
I raised my chin at Sting. "Hey, help me put a red bag on this one. If we see one purple sheep, Stingo's out of here. Got that, big daddy? No mutton chops for you."
Sting treated me to a smile designed to melt butter and a hand gesture designed to churn it. Did I mention I loved it when he came down with laryngitis? There was nothing like a little bacterial infection to take the edge off a guy.
Obviously it wasn't all roses. Sting was on antibiotics, so there was no danger of passing it to either of us. But eight cancelled shows was a tall order. Then again, if we hadn't canceled, we would never have wound up at a farm in Sydney, counting enough sheep to knock us out for the rest of our lives.
But most importantly, Sting wasn't supposed to talk.
Andy and I—mostly I—took that as an invitation to see where the threshold was. It wasn't sheep-shagging jokes. Once or twice Andy yelled, "Look out, you've stepped in shit," when he hadn't, just to make him jump. Pure smiles. The search went on.
After a few more shots of video, I was starting to get antsy behind the drums. I picked up a fistful of hay from one of them and flung it at him. Bingo, right in the moneymaker.
"Wanker," he rasped, pawing the husks off his face. It slipped out so fast, I could tell he'd forgotten he was supposed to be on vocal rest. Right away, he pulled a sour face and touched his throat. It was so evocative that I swallowed in sympathy. Not sympathy—maybe empathy. I didn't care what he was feeling, but against my will, he was making me feel it.
Andy pointed and gave a weak scoff of a laugh. Off to our side, one blue-chested ram was trying to mount another one. I wondered if they couldn't tell the difference between other rams and ewes, or could and just didn't care.
Sting pulled a balled-up tissue out of his pocket, and I prepared to sling muck. Breaking out the waterworks over a little ram-on-ram? Or getting a little too into it, and wanted a cum rag at the ready? He stuffed the wad under his nose and screwed his eyes shut, but didn't appear to cry. As far as I could tell, he was just concentrating—hard enough to blow up objects with his mind.
I started to turn back to the sheep show, but Sting suddenly bent at the waist so hard he stumbled half a step forward. I'd say he sneezed, except for the fact that no sound came out of him. He'd kept it in, killed it in utero somehow, like the sneeze version of a pop fly. Privately, I was impressed; I'd never been able to do that. I thought back to the money shot I'd served up a minute ago. Sting didn't have hayfever, as far as I knew, but this alfalfa was so fragrant and dusty, even Andy was twitching from standing too close.
I dragged my wrist under my nose. The farmer was yelling at us to try and get those rams off each other—they'd mess up the marking system. Andy and I refused to get involved. Sting hung back and blew his nose.
The last thing I'd want to do is give the impression that I was picking on a poor, defenseless guy with no provocation. Provocation would have been Sting's stage name if he'd worn a little less black and yellow. The fact that he was currently on mute simply meant that his oeuvre went from verbal to physical. After the video, I actually did step in shit, and he tried to make me sit in it. Later he tied me to a sheep. He must have been going after Andy, too, when I wasn't looking, because the minute I conspired to shove Sting into a haystack, Andy was right there with a perfectly-timed trip.
He only disappeared into the stack for a second. When he came out, you would think we drowned his cat or something. The guy was steaming.
"Got to be joking," he croaked. He reached down the back of his collar, where the hay was no doubt starting to itch like a motherfucker. After a few attempts to get it out, he huffed in frustration and shucked his entire Micky Mouse long-sleeve. I've never watched Sting lose his shirt and thought, Boy, that really was a great reason to strip. This time was no different.
"Thanks," Sting snapped at me, with little regard for the strain to his voice.
"Gosh, sorry," I said, with all the sincerity I felt he deserved. "Wouldn't want you to sneeze or anything. God forbid."
By the looks of it, he didn't want that either. He was back to holding the tissue in place, like the Dutch kid with his finger in the dike. I didn't think he was going to make it. He was practically fighting for breath.
Andy frowned. "Don't hurt yourself."
Sting shook his head, waving an arm to ward us both off. He scrunched, then straightened, then finally snapped forward into his tissue again. This time, a sound did escape him, and it was wicked. Strangled, but not quiet. He stole a quick gasp and doubled over even further as another sneeze wrenched out of him, pretty violently. Ouch.
"The cold's not good for your delicate constitution," I supplied. "Put your fuckin' shirt back on."
As he slowly regained his height, Sting glared at me, his eyes deadly weapons. He wiped his nose and managed, "Tears up my throat."
His eyes fluttered prettily shut. He started to raise his tissue, but Andy got there first.
"'Ere y'are," he said, trying to fit his index finger between Sting's nose and upper lip. In the ensuing scuffle, I excused myself to see how much hay I could carry in both hands.
my foray into The Police fic that nobody asked for. takes place post-breakup when Andy was spending much of his time in hotel rooms taking photos of naked women (on the subject: introducing OC Marty!) 800 words challenge
When Andy said she had the best rack he'd ever seen, Marty just smiled and kept posing. All the girls got this treatment; he knew it, she knew it. For God's sake, there were panties between the sheets when she arrived in his hotel room. She thought, Let him have it. Obviously this wasn't his first rodeo, but hell, it wasn't hers either. Why ask if she were the only woman in the world? She wasn't about to announce that Jimmy Page had whispered the same thing in her ear last week.
"Taj Mahal of tits," he said, and snapped another.
That did it. Laughing, Marty broke her pose. "Let me take one of you."
She reached for the camera, which he relinquished surprisingly easily.
"Aim through here." He indicated the functions of the camera, pointing to one after the next. "Go like that to focus. Press, press the-"
He'd been behind her, threading his slender arms above hers like a golf pro showing her how to improve her drive. Now his hands abruptly withdrew. If Marty hadn't been holding the camera steady, it would have fallen onto the bed. She turned to see where he'd disappeared to.
Andy sat angled away, his hands folded together before his face as if to warm them on a cold day. Before she could investigate, his head bobbed forward several times, choking off a string of sneezes behind the clasp of his hands. The spell was brief, but Andy looked dizzy when he blinked his eyes open.
"Ahem. 'Scuse me." Andy snuffled. His smile remained slightly lopsided. "How do you want me?"
Marty bit her lip. "That was pretty cute. Can I get one of you sneezing?" She was crazy for a guy who was man enough to be called cute, and this one probably wrote the book. Also—she didn't feel the need to mention this part to him—his dick jumped ever so slightly when he sneezed, and she was dying to see if that would happen again. For her own benefit, not the camera's.
"Oh, yeah." He started to fake it, huffing and puffing, open-book hands.
"I'm serious," she said.
Andy closed his mouth and opened his eyes. When she didn't back off, he settled into a frown of deep thought. "Okay. Yeah, all right. Um…" He wriggled his nose. Half his face crinkled in a deep sniff—probably trying to blow on the embers, but it seemed they had already cooled. He shrugged.
Marty ordered him to stay put. After a moment of rifling through her makeup bag, she was perched over him, brandishing a pair of tweezers.
Andy regarded them warily. They were so close to his face, his eyes nearly crossed. "I'm scared," he confessed. Immediately he pretended to sob and blubber.
"It won't hurt," Marty lied.
Squinching his eyes shut, Andy grimaced and braced himself. "Do it."
His pinched expression caused his nostrils to arch slightly. Marty's next step would be easy. She closed the tweezers around one of his nose hairs and pulled.
"Fuck!"
Marty made a short noise of apology. "I didn't get it. Hold still."
She tweezed him again. This time, the tiny hair pulled free from the root, making Andy recoil like he'd been stung. "There!" she exclaimed, holding it aloft. "That wasn't so bad."
"Pissing Christ." Andy's face twitched with a fresh, spidering irritation that had tears springing to his eyes. But it wasn't all pain. First his lips parted. His eyes lidded into a fuzzy, cloudy look.
Marty suddenly remembered the camera. She dropped the tweezers among the folds of the duvet and squinted through the viewfinder, her finger coming to rest on the—
Andy sneezed sharply, misting his lap. The sound had a strange half-baked quality, as if his nose had been so itchy that the sneeze slipped out before it was ready.
Marty, at least, hadn't been ready. "Andyyy," she whined. She'd missed it.
Andy gave a tiny shake of his head. "Get ready," he said softly. "Take…take the—"
He had to curl an index finger under his nose to keep from starting before the gun. Marty hurried to take aim, and only just made it. Right at the close of the shutter, Andy's tether snapped and he let out a proper, full-course sneeze.
Marty smiled to herself. She'd only captured him from the waist up, but her hypothesis had proved correct.
"Bless me." Andy rubbed his face all over, muffling a few colorful English oaths. "Did you get it that time?"
"Actually…" Marty let her voice trail off teasingly. "You wouldn't mind doing it one more—"
The next thing she knew, she was squealing with laughter and pretend fear as he chased her around the room, reaching out the tweezers before him and pinching them menacingly.
bound to happen eventually. intentionally left unfinished, to let the imagination breathe.
Montserrat, 1981
The chlorine in this place was no joke. If I hadn't arrived blonde, I would be anyway by now, with the amount of time I spent in the pool. Today, my number in the pool lottery hadn't come up yet—I had to do time in the studio first. My warden was Sting. The look Andy gave me coming out—on his way to the pool, the traitor—told me I'd better get ready to kiss my ass goodbye. He didn't even know about the war Sting and I were currently locked in. My hand was the last to leave the chessboard; yesterday, I guess I said something about his good lady wife that really put his knickers in a twist. Luckily, he was the most forgiving, thick-skinned guy I knew, never took anything personally. So I didn't have to worry about the other shoe dropping today. If I was sweating, well, excuse me, but it was fucking Montserrat. And I hadn't seen the pool.
I shut the studio door behind me, and already the session was off to a bad start. A spicy, medicinal smell hung in the air—not unpleasant, but somehow hostile, indifferent either to my enjoyment or offense. Like walking through the kitchen of someone who's just cooked your last meal, or into the weird sisters' house while they rhyme about how to destroy Macbeth. Maybe Sting had taken to using the local flora as a substitute for deodorant. I picked up my sticks, trying to breathe without smelling.
Right away, my Spider-senses went haywire. Something was wrong. Specifically, someone had touched my fucking drums. My eyes darted over the kit. If they were at a wrong angle, tuned down, rearranged, that would have been one thing. They were in exactly the position I had left them. I didn't understand it. Something was setting my alarm bells off like crazy. What the fuck had he done to my drums?!
"Stewart," came the voice of Himself over the P.A.
"Hey. Hey, what the fuck is this?" I demanded, part of me genuinely hoping for an answer.
"Mate, relax. Can I not just give you a bit of advice? You're verging on paranoia."
I tried bluffing. "I know what you did."
"Look. Friendly advice? Just go a bit gentle on the toms. They don't need all that…" He made a series of percussive sounds into the microphone. It sounded like a war movie. It was a spot-on impression of me.
"Asshole." I touched the hi-hat, preparing to sit down. I was going to start this thing off with the cannon section from the 1812 Overture, then we could both go back to being adults.
Wait a second. What the hell was that?
"Did you hear me?" Sting said, louder. "I said don't whale on it. Have you got that?"
I held my hand up to my face. Where my fingertips had touched the cymbals, they came away with a strange off-white coating. It looked like flour. My first instinct was to stick my tongue out and take a quick geological sample, an impulse quickly overriden by my self-preservation. Instead I sniffed it.
A flame of spice shot up my nose and crackled into my lungs. I coughed immediately, harsh, irrepressible. "Jesus Christ," I sputtered, "are you fucking…"
It all made perverse sense now. It had smelled spicy because that's what it was. Pepper. White, so I wouldn't see it at first. But I did now, finely coating every drum head like some kind of dry rub.
"Everything all right?" asked the voice from on high.
Boy, was I mad. "You peppered my fucking drums. You piece-of-shit pig. Think just 'cause we're the Police, you gotta go around fuckin'—" I coughed, "chemical warfare…Geordie fascist motherf-fucker…"
My words came out in a rush. Rent was due for the little bit of pepper I'd sucked up my nose, and it looked like eviction day was right around the corner. I had to get out of here. If I started sneezing now, I'd blow the rest of it sky high. Already my eyes were burning, filling with tears faster than I could blink them away. I could sneeze myself to death in there. Sting would have a field day.
In fact, I realized, that'd been his plan all along. Goad me into beating the shit out of the toms, knowing full well I'd be Macing myself. The rat bastard. I was going to kick his ass up one side of the island and down the—
"HHYiEHSSHEW! HE'SSCHHEW!!"
The rollercoaster reached the steep part way before I was ready. I could barely summon the wherewithal to cover my mouth at first, let alone turn away from the kit. By the second sneeze, I managed to twist away, but if the capsaicin searing my eyes was any indication, the damage was already done. I'd Maced myself.
"Gesundheit." Sting's pronunciation fell on my ringing ears like the whine of a bumblebee. "Right, when you're ready."
sickfic. early days of a touring english rock band. m, coming down with a bad cold. 3.7k words
Hour 0
“Come on, get up.”
Andy woke with a start, their tour manager's elbow poking into his side. Andy shook his head and sniffed, the cold, dry air ripping its way down his sinuses.
“Move, before they take off again.” Kim nearly pushed Andy out of his seat and into the aisle.
Andy grabbed his duffel from under the seat and clutched it to his chest. The plane was dimly lit, coaxing passengers awake. Someone thrust another piece of luggage into Andy’s arms and he just managed to get his fingers around the handle before it slipped away. The four of them were at the very back of the plane, crammed into the cheapest seats. Before them stood a long line of passengers—voyaging Londoners like themselves, or home-coming New Yorkers— taking their time to stretch, yawn, scratch their arses, and finally perhaps even disembark.
Andy ducked down to peer out one of the porthole windows. They had left at midnight, and after a day’s worth of flying, saying “pardon me” at least twice just to shuffle down to the toilet and back, two more “pardon me”’s before slipping back into your little sardine can, it was still only just dawn in the Big Apple. Seen it before, he thought drowsily, Still not impressed. Give me L.A. anyday. He curled his lip and stood back up, stumbling forward in the tight quarters. He bumped into the person in front of him and mumbled yet another “pardon” under his breath. The line crept along another half-step.
He sniffed once again, and swallowed, wishing for one of the paper cups of water the hostesses had handed out periodically. He was parched near to the point of pain, and what little saliva his mouth could muster felt thin and acrid, burning the back of his throat. A wet trickle threatened his right nostril. Not having a tissue handy–or a free hand, for that matter, he lifted one arm until he could lean forward to wipe his nose on his sleeve. The movement lifted his bag as well, and knocked it right into the back of the passenger ahead in the queue who made a show of grumbling and complaining to his wife about the sort of people you’d find this far back in economy.
All the same, Andy echoed himself once again. “Pardon.”
Hour 4
If Andy had recalled customs as being a royal pain when he was traveling with his last group, a proper band with more than one roadie–one who wasn’t doubling as the tour manager and constantly disappearing to make another phone call, it now seemed like the picture of a relaxing vacation abroad. Between their disorganized mess of paperwork and the uphill battle of getting their baggage and equipment approved, by the time they finally stepped foot into New York City as free men, it was well into the morning and the weary October sun had roused everyone’s appetites.
While the others stood in the taxi queue, arguing about where one could get a good dinner at ten in the morning, Andy sat on the pile of luggage, head buried in his hands. To an onlooker, he would just have been blowing on his fingers, warming them with his breath. It was not terribly cold, at least not in the car line where the air was filled with hot exhaust fumes, but as the band’s lead guitarist, Andy felt he was entitled to a little prissiness about the state of his fingers.
In truth, the barrier of his hands provided a small pocket of humid air for him to breathe in, a relief to his itchy throat and stripped nasal membranes, irritated by the dryness of oxygenated plane air. And maybe–he had to consider–something else: something transmittable. He could only pray that he hadn’t been contagious while kissing Kate farewell the previous night, that he hadn’t left his pregnant wife with the seeds of an awful head cold to remember him by. A groan escaped his throat– a low, guttural sound, mercifully bypassing his vocal cords. It was still too soon to tell.
“Over here, Andy!” Stuart, the drummer, called to him from a short distance. “Breakfast in the big city!”
Ace’s voice followed, a little quieter—as bass and vocals, he was saving his voice for the show. “Throw him in the boot with the luggage.” A car door slammed shut–taxi number one primed for takeoff. It would take two to haul everything to their first motel, where their very own touring van would be waiting demurely in the parking lot. Andy looked up and rubbed his eyes. On top of everything else, he definitely shouldn’t have worn his contacts on such a long flight. His glasses had to be somewhere beneath him, in this small mountain of electrical cords and spare drawers.
A hand clapped his back–good old Kim.
“Hey, mate.” Kim grinned, squeezing Andy’s shoulder reassuringly. “Precious cargo first. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Let them go first,” Andy said, “I just need a minute.”
Kim shrugged, grabbing a few Andy-sized bags to stuff in the taxi instead. Andy let his head fall back into his hands. If he really was a ticking time bomb, best to not risk interfering with their singer’s moneymaker.
Hour 5
Breakfast by definition, dinner by internal clock, perhaps even arguably lunch– whatever meal they’d just eaten had been a far cry better than the slop they called food on Laker Airways, and Andy found himself beginning to enjoy the adventure, at least for a while. Ace was enthralled with the endless coffee refills, but Andy, longing for the comforts of home, had charmed the apathetic waitress into a proper cup of tea.
The steam was heavenly, even if the brew itself was a bit weak, so between bouts of shoveling down bites of food, Andy kept his nose hovering just above the cup’s rim, drinking in hot, tea-scented air. It had a moistening quality, that besides being soothing, seemed to give him a terrible nasal drip that streamed down the back of his throat at the best of times, and straight out the front at the worst. He’d amassed more than a few crumpled napkins on his now empty plate, too polite to attempt the full-on blow he felt he needed in public. Each rough brown square swiped under his nose hurt more than the last, until he was sure it must be a bright shade of pink. Thinking about it only made it itch more, of course; much of the table conversation was lost on him, so preoccupied was he with when the last time had been that he’d snuck a finger up to scratch at the side of his nose, if it was too soon to attempt it again, wishing all the while that they could hurry up and ask for the check already.
Hour 10
Andy had not intended to sleep away the afternoon before their first show, but the best plans of mice and men are bound to go awry when they’re laid to rest on a nice, clean bed after a night of fitful slouching half-sleep while flying over the Atlantic. Ace and Stuart–two spring chickens–had raced out to see as many sights as possible before sound check, so Andy had a room all to himself for the moment. After a quick shower, a shave, and swapping out his contacts for a pair of glasses that made him look his age, he’d placed a call request with the front desk and sprawled out under the covers.
It seemed like only seconds had passed before a shrill ringing shook him awake. He turned onto his side and reached out blindly, finally managing to knock the receiver off its stand.
“Yea?” Andy shoved the receiver between his ear and shoulder, then set to rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
“Um, good morning, Mr. S—. This is the call you requested.”
He checked his watch. Nearly 4pm–Kim would be rounding them up for sound check any minute now. “Good morning,” he agreed, “And, er– goodbye.” He set the phone back into its cradle.
Andy sat up on the edge of the bed, massaging his forehead with his fingertips. Sleep had not been kind to him; he felt more tired than he had when he’d laid down, and now there was the steady throb of a headache behind his eyes. The wet itch in the back of his throat had grown more sinister as well, creeping steadily up into his head.
No worse than a hangover, he tried to reassure himself, standing up and taking deep breaths. Played through plenty of those.
The motel room door slammed against its frame, then jostled back and forth as a key turned the bolt with a flimsy rattle. The door swung open and the band’s rhythm section tumbled in, loud and excited, full of nervous energy. Stuart tossed something on the sideboard, a paper bag that reeked deliciously of spice and grease.
“We saw it all, Andy,” Ace panted, flinging his coat to the floor. “Ellis Island, the towers, the Statue of Liberty. God, I’m a changed man, having seen her lovely visage.”
“Really?” Andy frowned, trying to conjure up a map of the city in his mind, reconciling hours and blocks fruitlessly.
“Fuck, no.” Stuart threw himself onto the bed Andy had naively taken to considering his own. “We’re shacked up in the middle of nowhere. We walked to one shitty museum and a chop suey joint. That’s yours, by the way, if you want it.”
Andy’s stomach growled as he considered the bag on the sideboard. He did want it, whatever it was. Just as he had begun to unfold the crumpled paper, Kim bounded in through the open door, laden with the last bags of equipment.
“Eat in the car,” he ordered. “If you’re sure you’re not gonna throw up or anything. The traffic here, Jesus Christ. It’s life or death.” Kim noticed Ace’s coat strewn across the floor and nudged it with his foot until it gained some air. “You, put this back on. We’re leaving.”
Andy shot Stuart a look, as if to ask, are you sure this is your old college mate, and not a bloody drill sergeant? “Throw up?” he said out loud, screwing up his face in disgust–and fear. “It’s not my first show in America.” Andy clapped Ace on the back. “Alright, let’s go.”
After throwing the few things he’d need for the night into a bag and slinging it over his shoulder, Andy stood still and compliant as Kim piled him up with his guitar case and a sack of wires.
“...and there’s one-fourth of a drum set in the van that’s your responsibility too,” Kim finished giving the others the same treatment. “You will look after them like you would your own child.”
Andy should have been thinking about his baby to be, thousands of miles away. Instead, he was staring at the box of tissues on the nightstand, wondering if he could get away with stuffing a few of them into his pockets for the road.
Hour 22
They had just finished the second set, and Andy was exhausted. They’d done plenty of shows together in England, of course, but the New York crowd was like no other, whipped into a frenzy by the band’s scrappy little setlist. Lack of material forced them to experiment, dragging out middle eights to twenty bars, a hundred bars if they could get away with it; they often did, halfway through their hit single, slipping into an interlude that was taking on a life of its own as a new song before cutting back to the chorus. This tour would fundamentally change the band, and CBGB’s was far and away the right club to start it with. These first two shows had been invigorating–but staggering off the stage on the other side, Andy felt utterly drained.
For one thing, whatever had been ordered for him at the Chinese restaurant, despite being thoughtfully vegetarian, had been unbearably spicy, a fact he only discovered several hasty mouthfuls in, stuffed into the van on the way to the gig. With his tongue already burning, he’d gone ahead and eaten his fill, picking away at the less-sauced pockets of rice and avoiding as best he could the devilish vegetables and their thick capsaicin coating. At the end, after trying and failing to gulp down enough water to stop his body’s reaction, Andy sat back in resignation as his nose began dutifully streaming, regardless of how many times he swiped his sleeve under it. What had once been a nice black button-up was now smeared with dried crust inside the cuffs; more appropriate for a punk show, perhaps, but it still made Andy cringe with disgust.
As they progressed through the sound check, the dripping had finally stopped, replaced with a harsh alternative, where instead of everything flowing forth, nothing did. Andy tried blowing his nose once in the bathroom before the first set started and felt as if his eyeballs might pop out. On stage, he was almost entirely able to forget his worries, hyperfocused on his guitar, his cues, the thrum of energy from the audience. Even his backup vocals had caused him no pain, so strong was the euphoria of performance. In the first run of the sole song he sang lead on, his throat had caught around a few stickier syllables, but otherwise, the show went off without a hitch– and the second, early in the morning, after a quick cup of coffee at the diner around the corner, was even better.
Upon leaving the stage for the last time, however, after hours of shouting and breathing in smoky air, hitting the stage hard for every synchronized jump at the end of a song, Andy’s head pounded, his throat felt raw, and he had to curl against the wall and sneeze twice on their way out to the van. He glanced around, flushed and miserable, wondering if anyone could tell yet. Kim peered at him for a moment, but that was all, quickly turning away to focus on more pressing matters. Andy felt relieved, but it was short lived, knowing that before long it would be impossible to hide: he was not well.
Hour 28
I can’t breathe! The feeling of suffocation ripped Andy from unconsciousness. He bolted upright, sucking in air with a horrid sound. The room glowed with the golden light of day around the edges of the curtain, but Andy’s head was thick with exhaustion and what felt like a heavy cotton padding. Sitting back against the headboard, lips parted, air once again moved freely to his lungs. His nose was as good as useless–an iron wall of gunk clogged both passages, a dry stickiness that wanted neither to be pushed out via blowing nor sucked back and swallowed.
The pressure in his head slowly eased as he sat slumped in bed, still bleary-eyed and half asleep. It might have been possible to fall asleep again, propped up on a few pillows, but in all likelihood his snoring would eventually wake up Ace, still curled up in the second bed, and a tiff would be started before they even got on the road for the day.
Andy squeezed his eyes shut, coaxing out a wet film of tears. His eyes felt dry and itchy, a bad omen for the hours and hours of driving they had scheduled before their show that night. He felt hot, too, and not just because the window had to be kept closed all night to maintain the humidity. Under the thin sheets he’d been sweating profusely, as if his body was paying for some awful hangover he hadn’t even been able to enjoy bringing about.
He threw off the covers, taking a few moments to bask in the glow of evaporative cooling. Inhaling tentatively, he tried to test out the capabilities of his upper respiratory system. Somewhere in those pipes, something shifted. —! —! –!
A trio of sneezes keeled him forward before he realized what was happening. Andy clapped a hand over his nose and mouth, touching slime–too little, too late. He glanced to his left, where Ace had stirred, but not woken. Close call, Andy thought. We have to be on the road at noon, and he’s likely to sleep till the last minute, if I don’t blow it.
Another thought entered his mind, one more bitter– that despite being the most junior member of the band, he was certainly one of the three most important players; if he was ill, why shouldn’t everyone know? Didn’t he deserve a little pity?
Andy plucked a tissue out of the box on the nightstand and raised it to his nose, shoulders back, chest puffed out, fingers proudly steepled against each flat plane. He took in a deep breath through his mouth and blew, pressing down with one middle finger, then the other. Wave after wave of god-knows-what poured into the Kleenex. He folded it in half gingerly–quickly peeked–then blew again, avoiding the wettest spot in the middle. Finished, he crumpled the tissue into a soggy wad and set it aside on the nightstand. At long last, Andy felt bliss, the sweet relief of free airflow. His nostrils felt damp, hollowed out, sensitive to the tepid, musty air, with each fine nose hair transmitting a coded message up to his brain. Somewhere in between he intercepted it, saw what was coming from a distance, yet remained helpless to stop it. His diaphragm twitched, two quick gulps of air hitched in his throat. Not again, he thought desperately— !
The sneeze was loud, unobstructed, and the spray peppered across his half-raised hand. Off to his side, Ace grunted, raised his head, and muttered an expletive. Worst of all, and true to the pitfalls of hubris, Andy once again could not breathe through his nose, and he parted his lips to let out a shaky sigh of defeat.
Hour 32
Fuzzy from the half-sleep of dozing off in the back of a moving van, Andy swallowed, winced, and lifted his head, finding that he was the last to disembark in Philadelphia. With his sleeve, he rubbed at the fogged up window and peered out of the peephole and saw the gas station parking lot, damp and dreary, cold enough outside that his cheek had gone numb from resting against the window.
The door opposite him slid open with a rattle and a whine of protest, and Kim stuck his head in. "Not going in with the rest of 'em?"
"No," Andy shrugged and patted the layers of coats and towels he'd tucked around himself. "Nice and warm."
He nearly jumped when Kim climbed into the van, stretched across the back row of seats and pressed his hand against Andy's forehead—would have jumped, if the hand, ungloved and cold from pumping gas hadn't felt so good against his skin.
"Have you got a cold?" Kim felt again with the back of his hand. "You have."
"Back off," Andy snapped. "I have not."
"You have, you've got a cold," Kim accused. He hopped down from the van, pacing back and forth quickly. "You've got a cold. Day three of tour and we've got the bloody plague. How could you not tell me?"
"It's nobody's business whether I've got a cold."
"It's my business, it's my business!" Kim shouted back, jabbing a finger in Andy's direction. "I'm the tour manager, Andy. You've got to let me…" Kim gestured wildly with his hands and let out a cry of frustration. "Let me manage you."
"Alright," Andy croaked, the fight having gone out of him. I'm five thousand kilometers from home, sick as a dog on the first leg of the lowest budget tour in the history of music. There were minstrels in the dark ages who made more money than I do. My next day off is an all night drive from Boston to Pitstain and to top it all off I'm going to miss the birth of my daughter. I don't care anymore. I'm zen—I'm ready to be managed. "Manage me."
Kim nodded intensely, brow furrowing. "You're on a fluids drip for the next twenty four hours, basically. But I can't stick you, obviously, so you're going to have to guzzle it. I'm gonna get you tea in one of those Thermoses, and orange juice, and enough water to drown a fish."
Andy grimaced. "We'll be pulling over every five minutes so I can take a piss."
Kim waved him off. "You've got to be well before The Rat or the label guys will have my head. Tell you what, we'll find a pharmacy and I'll get you a gallon of cough syrup."
"Do they sell them like that?"
"In America?" Kim scoffed. "Yeah, you better believe it."
Hour 48
By now, Andy was fully in the thick of it. Some combination of cold medicine, tea, and uninterrupted periods of sleep in between shows kept him on his feet the rest of the time, but it was miserable work. He came down from every set smouldering with fever, coughing into his fist and scowling at anyone foolish enough to ask how he was. There was much teasing from the others, as Andy had said there would be, although he took some perverse satisfaction knowing that in all likelihood, one of them would be next. Stuart, the serial slob, made a fuss about the germs at first; he then suggested that habitual sickness could be their thing, that there was nothing more punk than a band who put their middle fingers up at the institution of illness.
"If the crowd gets too rowdy, we could spit on them," Stuart said. "Full on chemical warfare. The ladies would love it too."
Worse than the teasing were the egregious displays of pity. Kim was bad enough, but Andy could at least forgive him for doing his job. When after one particularly nasty sneeze Andy had found himself with Ace's hand on his chin and a handkerchief deftly swiping under his nose, that had been the final straw.
"Sorry," Ace said with no dearth of insincerity, "Habit. You'll understand when you're a father."
Andy twitched with all sorts of irritation, and in a fit of impudence let another one fly right in Ace's smug face.
Midnight Mass fic (M, Hassan). When it rains on Crockett Island, it pours.
soz to anyone who was expecting sexy priest fic :p i can't choose my muse
CW: canon-typical racism/Islamophobia.
The job of the NYPD is not to pick up the pieces. It’s to find who made the mess and stop them doing it again.
This had been explained to Hassan ad nauseam when he first started out. It hadn’t made any sense then, and it made even less sense now. Even if he managed to identify and round up the vandal responsible for today’s display, he would still have two dozen arrested bicycles to worry about.
That afternoon, he’d found what looked to be every two-wheeler on Crockett Island bolted to the bike rack in front of the general store. Probably two dozen bikes, and each one had two locks. If they had been standard bike locks, this would have been another matter. Give him five minutes and a pair of bolt cutters and Hassan could have everyone back on their bikes before school let out. But this vandal was clever. Each lock was U-shaped and made of carbon steel. A key lock, not a combination. Hassan would’ve needed a diamond saw to cut through one of these. He remembered some of the lock busters they had in the NYPD. You were lucky if your bike was still in one piece afterward—not that Hassan had ever gotten to use one.
He’d called the closest thing Crockett Island had to a locksmith: Sturge. No reply. This time around, he was going to have to make do with a lock-picking kit he’d improvised from scrap metal when Ed Flynn accidentally locked himself out of the house. After some cursory Googling to learn more about the brand of lock, he was starting to think it might be possible.
“You know who did it, right?” Ali had stopped by on his way home from school, only to find Hassan with ten tabs open for bike U-locks.
“No,” said Hassan, “and neither do you.” He knew what Ali was going to say. It was his suspicion too, but that didn’t make it right.
“It was Bev.”
“Stop.” Hassan shook his head. He knew the boy was trying to be helpful. In his own day, Hassan would have done anything to make his own father proud, and he remembered what it felt like. But playing at Encyclopedia Brown was asking for trouble. They didn’t have the luxury to start throwing out accusations, never mind implicating the most respected woman on the island in petty vandalism. If they started a witch hunt, the mob would find its way to their own doorstep. It always did.
Ali didn’t seem to understand. “Everybody knows it! She was talking about how these kids rode their bikes through her flower garden.”
In a way, Hassan was grateful that his son had somehow held onto his innocence, but this would not be the day he allowed him to forfeit it. “I’ll see you at home,” he said, making it clear in his voice that he would hear no more about it.
With about two dozen bikes at two locks apiece, Hassan was going to have to pick about fifty locks before the weather turned foul. It was forecasted to rain in the afternoon. Buckets of it. If the bikes were left out in it for more than a few hours, they’d be a pile of rust come morning. He did think it was odd that they were all children’s bikes. Not odd—pointed. But a hunch wasn’t proof, so he got to work.
The first lock sprang open with such ease that Hassan almost laughed. Nothing was ever that easy. But then he sprang the second lock, and the third, until he began to wonder whether he’d been worried over nothing.
When he felt the first raindrop hit his neck, he vaguely remembered something Erin had said at the start of the Language Arts unit; something about the best-laid plans of mice and men.
His hands had already started shaking when the weather was dry. The precise movements needed to maneuver the tool just so were putting a strain on his fingers. If he didn’t pause every few minutes to shake the stiffness out, he might as well have been wearing catcher’s mitts. Now that it was pouring, he couldn’t catch even a minute’s respite from the shakes. There were so many more to unlock, and his fingers were freezing. At first he warmed them up by tucking them inside his jacket, into the small pockets of heat under his arms. When the rain soaked his clothes to the skin, he popped his fingers in his mouth, like a child with a paper cut.
Man plans, God laughs. It was something like that, the mice and men thing. If anyone was laughing at him right now, it was Bev Keane, which was the furthest from the original expression that Hassan cared to imagine.
A tremor shook his hand that made his lock-picking tool slip from his fingers. He snatched at it, but with his trembling hands and waterlogged reflexes, it disappeared into the muck. Hassan grit his teeth and started feeling around for it, numb skin probing icy mud. He was going to be out here for the rest of his miserable life; what was a few more minutes in the grand scheme?
When at last the final lock gave way, Hassan felt no relief. His jeans clung to his skin; his hair dripped into his eyes. He was breathing hard, but his work was far from over. To save these bikes from a rusty grave, he’d have to get them inside and dried, now. He pushed himself to a standing position, his knees and back screaming from being hunched over so long. It was time for the hard part. He picked up one bicycle in each hand.
“Hey, Sheriff!” A voice made it through the torrential rain. “Need a hand?”
It was Sturge. Whatever had left him unreachable when Hassan had tried to call earlier, he was here now. His clothes were rapidly darkening as the rain fell. Up until a minute ago, he’d been totally dry.
Hassan gestured with his head. “Need to get these inside.” He hadn’t spoken in what felt like hours, and he wasn’t prepared for how painful the use of his voice would be. It was like catching a noseful of chlorinated water at the pool, the burn that spread through his sinuses and throat. All this rain. He probably did have water up his nose. He cleared his thoat and swallowed.
“I got a maintenance shed we can put ‘em in until the rain lets up,” said Sturge. “They’d never fit in there. Wouldn’t want to trouble you, anyway.”
“No trouble,” Hassan said, and had to swallow again. He could hardly believe that his throat felt dry in all this water, but he was burning for a drink. It seemed he was in no position to argue. Sturge could carry more bikes under one arm than he could. They made short work of it, and soon every bicycle was safely cached in the dry shed.
“Do you have anything dry?” Hassan tried not to swallow. He didn’t like the way it felt when his throat closed together. Itchy, swollen, sore. He wanted a big drink and a hot bath, but he’d settle for getting out of this rain before dusk.
Sturge indicated a pile of rags among the debris of the shed. “I can dry ‘em off.”
“Don’t be silly.” Hassan took one in hand and started to mop the condensation from the nearest bike.
“Maybe it’s better if you get on home.” Sturge sounded oddly guilty. “You’ve been out here all day, and you’re not soundin’ so hot.”
At first, Hassan hadn’t understood the shame in his voice. It wasn’t as if the bikes or the rain were Sturge’s fault. When Sturge tacked on you’re not soundin’ so hot, he got it. He sounded like he was coming down with something, and Sturge didn’t want him to stick around long enough to pass it on. The stubborn greenhorn with big New York dreams would have dug in his heels and finished the job, just to prove he wasn’t under the weather. By now, though, he knew that the comfort of others superseded his own dignity. He nodded and finished drying the bicycle before him.
Night had fallen when Hassan returned to his beat. He’d washed and dried, put on fresh clothes, had a few swigs of water that hadn’t fallen from a cloud. The storm had moved on, leaving a clear sky full of stars and an enormous moon. Instead of enjoying the view, Hassan began his night by picking up Joe Collie amidst one of his usual episodes. That was enough to confine him to his desk for the rest of the night. It wasn’t as if Joe could possibly escape; this wasn’t the Andy Griffith show. But if he abandoned his post with Joe in his charge, it’d get around. The good people of Crockett would bestow another moniker on him: Soft On Crime. It wasn’t the ugliest in their arsenal where he was concerned, but it was one more he didn’t want.
At some point, he picked his head up off his desk and realized he’d been asleep. He checked Joe’s cell—still occupied, of course. When had he dozed off? It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. What scant sleep he’d managed to catch had not been kind to him. His throat ached, feeling drier than before, and there was a terrible pounding behind his face. He massaged his eyes, hoping to shift some of the pressure.
As he struggled from sleeping to waking, it began to shift on its own. Where his sinuses had been dry, they were now suddenly wet and threatening to drip. His head drained down the back of his throat, and down through his nose, tickling furiously.
“hdtj–!”
Hassan’s fist gripped his nose, crushing it shut. It’d felt like someone had dunked his head in a trough of water, but he didn’t want to make a loud sound. He might wake Joe. Distantly, he was aware that this level of consideration for another man’s sleep schedule was more than Joe had ever shown him. But when he felt another sneeze coming, he found himself unable to give in.
“hp’ndt! hd’knxt!”
Two for the price of one; his reward for holding them in. As his chest tried to expand again, no doubt to gather enough air for a third volley, he realized that he wasn’t letting himself breathe. It was enough to stoke a panic in his chest. He couldn’t get a breath, and he wouldn’t be able to until he really...
“kt-CHZschtt!”
It slipped from his grasp like water through a sieve. Hassan’s other hand flew to his mouth, knee-jerk, like he could take it back. Like no one would notice.
Joe snored loudly, still fast asleep.
Hassan dropped his hands in disgust. Disgust at Joe for sleeping when he couldn’t, disgust at himself for losing control. The danger had passed. Instead of needing to sneeze, all he felt was a stuffy, fuzzy sensation, from the back of his skull to the tip of his nose. He needed a tissue, badly.
As he reached for the box on his desk, he paused. This was the Rubicon stretched out before him. To take one tissue would mean crossing the point of no return. Admitting he was sick. If he could manage without one, well, maybe it was just a little turn brought about by the weather. Slowly, haltingly, he sat back empty-handed. Sniffed hard. Swallowed a few times. It wasn’t a picnic, but it had worked. For now. Even the burn in his throat had gone away.
He sighed tiredly, and just like that, it was back. Hassan cursed himself for thinking he could get himself off the hook so easily. It was going to be one long, uncomfortable night.
***
Hours into the night, the pain had almost receded. But the sneezing was getting worse.
“hd’jsh-!”
Hassan didn’t know why he kept holding them in. For one thing, it felt like shit. Each time he did it, he felt more bogged up, more unsatisfied, on top of a raging headache. Besides that, he wasn’t sure it would do Joe any good. It wasn’t as if he was going to wake up on the right side of bed even if Hassan let him sleep the whole night through. If their roles had been reversed, Joe probably would have kept him awake on purpose.
Most importantly, though, he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. His constant sniffling kept the drip at bay, but the shifting tide brought on such a fearsome tickle, Hassan felt like a tinder box waiting for a spark. He couldn’t endure it another minute. He ripped a tissue from the box, then three more, and pressed them to his nose.
He barely had to exhale before the first one was ruined, and still the tide threatened. It was ridiculous. He used one, then the next, then finished off the next two just cleaning himself up. At first, it wasn’t clear whether blowing his nose had done him any good. As he pumped hand sanitizer onto his palms and rubbed them vigorously, he couldn’t even smell the ethyl alcohol. But there was a clearness to his breathing now. Not free from obstruction, but freer than before, and his nose wasn’t about to drip on his desk.
None of that mattered, though. He’d given in. The white flag, as it were—four of them. And what was his reward? He could barely breathe through his—
“ktSCHff! hiihH-hyYYSSChhyw!”
It was a small, determined cough of a sneeze. He hadn’t even known it was coming. The next thing he knew, he was gasping for breath, filling his lungs to fuel the next sneeze until it was too big to stifle. He could no more stop it than he could hold back a runaway train. Pins of light danced in front of Hassan’s eyes.
Behind him, Joe groaned. “You kiddin’ me? What fuckin’ time is it...”
Hassan’s spine straightened. He must have sucked in a breath of surprise, because he felt the most terrible snag in his throat. He coughed helplessly, sounding like he’d choked on a drink of water. One hand hovered protectively over his mouth, as if that did anything.
“Will you keep it down?” Joe clearly didn’t know what he was saying. More than likely, he couldn’t even identify the noise.
“Good- good morning,” Hassan coughed. It was half true: the clock on the wall said two minutes past four.
****
Hassan had attended every town meeting since he’d begun his post on Crockett Island. Usually they asked him to bailiff, but he made certain to contribute even when he hadn’t been asked. Tonight would be no different. As the school prepared to deliver its Health unit, it had gotten out that the sex education curriculum had been stripped to abstinence-only. The town’s resident liberal bleeding-heart, Sarah Gunning, and a few of her allies had assembled to push back against the decision. Hassan was part of that coterie tonight, and he wasn’t going to let a cold stop him. Even if it was his lousiest, wettest, itchiest cold in waking memory.
Since the bicycle rescue, he’d slept maybe two hours, his desk naps notwithstanding. He felt that he’d been up for days. They kept these classrooms so damn hot in the autumn, there was a chance he’d fall asleep right at this child’s desk. All that kept him awake was pure spite—and an anger only Bev Keane could bring out in him.
“The school is not here to teach your children how to have sex.” In the whole room, she was the only adult standing. Erin Greene sat beside her on a three-legged stool, and the rest of the community were crammed into combination chair-desks. “That’s not its purpose. If it were, it wouldn’t be called a school; it would be called a brothel.”
“No one thinks the full curriculum would be instructing kids to have sex.” Sarah looked close to leveling the playing field by getting out of her seat. “It’s informing them what sex is, the risks associated with it and how to mitigate them–”
“Condoms.” Bev addressed the woman in the front row, who looked appropriately horrified. “They would be handing out condoms. With instructions. To your children.”
“...So they understand it. So they can’t get taken advantage of.” Sarah hadn’t taken the bait.
Erin looked at her lap. “Bev, we don’t actually...”
Hassan could barely hear her. His head was so full it was swimming. Since the Pledge of Allegiance, he’d been holding back coughs and sneezes. He was sure every sniffle, every smothered sneeze brought him one step closer to a full-blown sinus infection, but this was neither the time nor the place to let loose. For the hundredth time, he mopped away the thin drip gathering at his nostrils and sniffed. That would have to be enough for now. Even getting out of his seat to blow his nose or throw away his bundle of tissues would take time he couldn’t spare. He had prepared a presentation on evidence-based sex education, and Erin had promised him she’d deliver it when they opened the floor to questions from the audience. Sarah seemed to have jumped the gun on that one; this was just supposed to be reading of the agenda.
“Here are the facts.”
Any time Bev spoke, the whole room seemed to wait with bated breath. Hassan could almost see why. Hers wasn’t the loudest voice in the room, but it was the most authoritative, and that was all that seemed to matter. It made whatever she was saying sound important and correct, like you’d better listen or she couldn’t be held responsible for what was going to happen to you.
She went on: “Abstinence is the only method that is 100% effective at preventing pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and general moral—something funny, Sheriff?”
Hassan had been overcome by a sneeze he couldn’t hold back. He’d tried to muffle it into the softest sound he could, but to Bev, the result sounded like a suppressed snicker.
“Well, it wasn’t always 100% effective, was it?” This time it was Wade who couldn’t quite keep the laughter out of his voice.
Bev waited a heavy few seconds before responding. “I beg your pardon?”
“Well, I mean.” Wade shifted in his seat. “In the Bible, it says Mary was a virgin when—”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “Are you trying to educate me on what the Bible says?”
Hassan doubled forward, shrinking as tightly as he could with the effort to sneeze in silence. It almost killed him, but in the heat of Bev’s blistering exchange with the mayor, no one seemed to notice.
Or so he thought, until a hand came to rest on his shoulder. He jumped in surprise. It was Sarah, an expression of concern on her face. Are you okay? she mouthed.
Hassan nodded, dabbing at his watering eyes with his sleeve. He couldn’t hold her gaze while he lied to her, but he let his hand rest over hers for a moment.
“I think we’re ready to open up to questions from the audience,” Erin supplied.
“I think we’ve heard enough from the audience.” Bev’s voice was firm. “Motion dismissed.”
The classroom fell into an uproar. Hassan cleared his throat to add to the discussion, but the dry indoor air had already taken its toll. He coughed bitterly, choking on his own throat, gasping and pulling air. It was too much. He couldn’t control his breathing. When the need to sneeze returned with a vengeance, there was nothing he could do.
“hh’yYESCHHOO!”
“God bless you...Sheriff.” Against all reason, Bev’s voice brought the din to a complete stop again. Fuck. “I hope that’s not offensive,” she added, a small viper’s smile twisting the corners of her mouth. Her eyebrows lifted, daring him to challenge her.
Hassan was shaking, and not with rage. “Excuse mbe.”
With a deafening scrape of chair legs on linoleum, he rose from his chair and ducked out of the now-silent room.
Pressing one arm to his face, Hassan stumbled down the hall in another coughing fit. He needed to lock himself in a bathroom stall and blow all this junk out of his head. It didn’t matter where, as long as no one could see, hear, or bother him.
He was in such a rush to open the door to the bathroom, he almost ran headlong into it when the handle didn’t yield. Great—more locks. Hassan didn’t have time for this shit. He shot Erin an urgent text, then followed up with Please hurry. At this rate, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. His last tissue had passed worthless some time ago. He chucked the whole wad into the nearest trash can and pursed his lips. Where was she? He could feel a tickle rising in his nose, and it would be just his and Erin’s luck if it came to fruition before she let him in.
Finally, she came flying down the hall with a ring of keys. “Sorry,” she offered. “Wouldn’t let me leave.”
“‘S fine.” Hassan knew he was borderline unintelligible. Even if he weren’t so stuffed up, he kept the crook of his arm tight against his face, dampening his words. He wasn’t taking any chances.
As she fit the right key into the lock, he noticed something that made him drop his arm. “These your keys?”
She shook her head. “They’re Bev’s. I left mine in my car. I’m so sorry—here.”
The door swung open, and Hassan practically dove inside. When he had ensured it was fully shut behind him, he took the deepest breath he could manage and coughed like he was trying to expel his very lungs.
***
Hassan finished drying his hands. He’d washed them three times over the course of his little bathroom session. The brown paper towels chapped his nose, and his throat was raw from repeated harsh sneezing, but that was as good as it was going to get. He pushed the door open.
There was Sarah. He glared. “Were you listening?”
“No. You sound awful, by the way.”
Hassan closed his eyes in exhaustion. “Erin...”
“She’s giving the presentation now. I think she’s changing some minds.”
Hassan wanted to celebrate. He wanted to check for himself, but there were other pressing matters that held his attention. “I have to ask her ab- ah...KyESSHOO!” He didn’t have the will to lift his head out of his sleeve until he felt a familiar hand on his shoulder.
“Go home.”
“Sarah...”
“That’s Doctor to you.” Sarah lay her hand across his forehead and winced. “Hassan.”
It didn’t take an MD to know what she was thinking. Her cool touch against his skin had made him start to shiver, yet he was sweating through his unlined denim jacket. This wasn’t calming down anytime soon.
It was as if she could see on his face the moment he decided to take her advice. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.”
Hassan nodded as he made his inglorious retreat. He had no doubt she and Erin would hold the line against Bev’s majority. In fact, he envied them. They should all be so lucky to count abstinence-only sex ed as their biggest problem. Right now, Hassan had another issue on his plate.
During his research the previous, he’d become more familiar with the world of bike locks than he ever wanted to be. An unintended side effect was that he could now identify, by sight alone, the key that unlocked the vandal’s particular brand of U-lock.
He’d seen that very key hanging on Erin’s ring, which—he now knew—belonged to Bev Keane.
