there should be a button for when i get stressed that is called The Pit and when i press it im in the mosh pit of a ska festival where the music is great and i can feel everything and be aggressive and get hurt around people that will still help me back up when i fall
Day #26 - Prompt: Tour Date | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: M | CW: racism, violence, use of the C word| POV: Gareth | Pairing: None | Tags: mosh pits, rough gigs, fighting, band vs the world, run on sentences
These shitty little bar gigs are a curse and a blessing, honestly; like some set up for a shitty joke - what happens when you throw four hundred people into an underground bunker with no air conditioning? They take their clothes off and drink too much. Badoomtish!
It’s hot as satan’s balls backstage, and his shirt didn’t even make it to the stage with him. The thing about gigs in small venues that you don’t get in big venues (he imagines, he’s never played anything with more than six hundred people and they were the openers, it wasn’t even full), is that you can see them. Like, they’re practically on stage with you, you can see their eyes, see them moshing, watch how they get progressively sweatier, their hair plastered to their heads and faces. It’s visceral. It’s what The Hideout could never give them. Gareth has never felt more alive.
They’re the last on tonight which is just fucking, like what? How is this happening? How are they getting anywhere? It’s insane and he loves it, and fuck you Taco Bell, he’s never going back. But that means with no air conditioning these lunatics have all been drinking for hours, and you can see it. They’re getting rougher, people aren’t just pushing and shoving because it’s fun now, they’re doing it because some of them are drunk and angry.
It shouldn’t be exciting. It feels wrong, like he’s watching an arsonist flicking the spark wheel too close to a gas pump, over and over, and it’s probably okay, maybe, but one spark. It just needs one spark.
Jeff ends up throwing his shirt into the crowd within five minutes, he knows Matty and Eddie will just tough it out; they’ve both got their reasons not to but it boils down to the same thing. And Eddie suffers more than most; his temperature regulation is fucked since all that shit happened a few years back, he’s brittle and pained in the cold, boils if the thermometer rises above seventy. He’s got his hair tied back, same as Gareth, and they keep more water coming for him. It’s not much, but it helps.
The gig is good, Gareth can feel the rivulets of sweat running down his back, his face, the crack of his ass when he stands up. And he can see Jeff’s back right in front of him, glistening under the lights, defined muscles that weren’t there back in high school when he was carrying a few extra pounds. Touring and living cheap has made him lean, loading and unloading amps has built strength. He’s growing his hair out, sides shaved, locs a work in progress on top. He looks fucking awesome.
The problem with some of these little bum fuck towns is that they like metal just fine, satanism who now? Fuck it, thrash the fuck out of us. But black people? Not so much. Mostly it’s not overt, it’s the vibe, the looks, a thing they have to be careful of, and, bar some nasty words being spat at them, so far they’ve walked away. Angry, disgusted, but with all their own teeth.
It’s how it affects Jeff, though, that’s what’s upsetting. He gets introverted, ruminates on it, which like, he gets (but he doesn’t, he knows they’ll never really understand). Where Eddie would usually have to tell you everything about everything, taking you on the journey of where his brain started to where it ends up, Jeff sits on things, he’ll come up for air when he’s good and ready. And even when he does come up for air he’s not sharing with the class, not all in one go. It’s Matty that’s there first doing the unpicking, soothing the verbal cuts and bruises. Gareth’s never been able to figure that one out, Matty being kind of cold sometimes, but he caught a snippet of conversation one day —
“— cunts, every last one of them. One day you’ll be breezing through here in our tour bus, we’re not even gonna stop for a piss in this sewer, and you’re going see that racist cock sucker at the side of the road with one tooth in his head and his dog. And then you’re gonna notice he’s married to the dog—“
— and Jeff had laughed, like belly laughed at that, and Matty strikes again.
So this show is fucking something else, and that spark is getting closer and closer to the gas and then whoosh, up it goes, there’s an actual fight in the crowd. They keep playing, there’s blood in peoples teeth, he’s that close, but fuck it and then he notices it really kick off and then he can’t hear Jeff anymore and when he looks up he’s gone, what the fuck, locs flying into the audience. Gareth’s gone, over the fucking kit, can hear the cymbal stands clatter to the ground, but now he’s in the crowd and like, what the fuck is he actually doing here? And he gets a punch to the head and he punches back and then he’s being yanked back on the stage by Eddie and a security guy, and Matt has Jeff, but then a guy from security punches Jeff, like he dragged himself into the crowd, and Matt is like in this fucking dudes face, and Gareth watched Matty break someone’s nose a couple of years ago, he’s got it in him, but Matty shoves the guy away. And like… what do you do now?
There’s this vicious sound, a scream of anger from the amps and it’s Jeff. They all get the memo, Gareth picking up his cymbals before climbing back behind the kit and he doesn’t even count them in, they’re already in, already off. And like fuck the crowd at this point, they’re playing with fury and everyone’s going to listen. And maybe it was excitement, maybe it was some racist fuck, but whatever, their ears are going to bleed for it.
Okay so... A/N if you're interested.
Title from Bodies by Drowning Pool (a song all about mosh pits!)
Inspiration for this came from two places.
1. There was a game going round yesterday - your first gig / last gig. My first was Anthrax at the Camden Underworld in 1993. Small basement gig, getting kicked in the head by stage divers, all that good stuff. It just reminded me there was a time I went to places like that to see metal gigs and it just sent me down a 'oh fuck I am so old and i used to be so cool' spiral.
2. Related, my husband showed me a video of a Nirvana gig where Kurt threw himself into the crowd, and once he got back out he was punched in the face by a security guard, and oh boy, how fast Dave got over those drums. And Matty getting into it with the security guard is a straight rip of Krist doing the same in the video.
Also - Gareth POV and mostly about Jeff because I didn't write for their prompt days and I felt bad. :(
"What do you miss most?" TikvaWolf.com
text reads:
Nora: "I'm going to kiss so many people when this is over! What kinds of gatherings do you miss most? Potlucks? Dancing? Cuddle piles?"
Kim: "Consensual violence."
Nora: "What??"
Kim: "I have a LOT of pent up aggression from the past year, so when all this is over, my first plans will involve boxing, wrestling, and mosh pits."
