Sympathy for the Devils, part 11
Disclaimer: No, sick people, no it never happened. Previous part here.
Summary: Ruud goes to a party, rock n' roll style. Rated R. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. NC-17ish if you want to get picky.
Special thanks: To lovely aka_centimetre2... the part of the club was not written by me. It's one of her wonders. Enjoy!
Ruud didn't quite know what he was doing in this club.
It was just a club. Just a normal club. He'd been to clubs before, for fuck's sake. He'd been to dance halls and pleasure palaces and underground bars and shitty holes in the wall with graffiti scrawled even up on the ceiling, so this shouldn't have been any different - but it was. Because Edwin had invited him, and just that tiny fact made it all feel like he was on Mars.
As befitting one of the hottest new bands, it was stuffed to the gills with girls who must have been either models or whores, and almost an equal number of pretty boys. The strobe lights made them all look pale, ghostly apparitions only existent when touched by the flashes, and with his eardrums being scooped out by the far-too-loud house mix Ruud stood near the bar with his hands in his baggy pockets, wondering what on earth he had done.
The VIP lounge was no better. With his skin crawling, he could watch - if he felt like it, which he didn't - that bass player, Rio, getting a lapdance, his bony hands smacking the girl's gyrating arse as grinning golden-haired Becks watched, laughing his head off. There was a hand in his jeans, god-only-knew whose, but Becks seemed to be enjoying it at any rate. Of course, they were all so drunk that it didn’t seem to matter who or what they'd got in their laps. Ruud could see flashes of pills on the black-lit table next to them in between the sweating, heaving bodies, and behind that - Edwin, in jeans and a black wifebeater, sprawled out on a low couch next to Rio with his head tilted over the back of it, tonguing deep into the mouth of some girl with tits so big Ruud was amazed she could even stand up under their weight.
Ruud's stomach twisted, deep beneath his navel, and he turned back to the bar to get his third vodka in half an hour. With his sinewy arms stretched out, a Christ-like pose, Edwin looked like a retinued king, but the thought of him wanting it - of him being like that, of him deserving shit like this as his reward for his fame - made Ruud want to be sick, made him want to punch himself for wanting a man like that, to run away and never come back and pretend he'd never been in a place like this where every second person he looked at had eyes so dilated they looked dead, black and soulless.
"Fucking ridiculous, isn't it?" a morose, despairing voice said in his ear, and he turned to one side to commiserate with Gigi, who was slumped on a skinny barstool. When Ruud raised a questioning eyebrow, he just jerked his head out into the crowd.
"There's mine."
Ruud looked, and saw a skinny - well, skeletal - blonde man, just in flashes of dark blue and purple lights, sliding up and down a sweaty pole in the middle of the dancing crowd, eyes half closed and skin dotted with pockmarks. He winced, and looked away.
"Yours?" Gigi said, and even though Ruud didn't answer he couldn't help his eyes from flicking back towards the VIP area, and Gigi followed his glance. "Ah," he said slowly, and then shrugged. "Don't worry. He'll come out of it."
"He's high," Ruud said quietly, his voice shaking. "He's getting high again. I don't even know what the fuck he's taken. He'll - " He stopped, and swallowed, trying to calm himself. "He'll end up back in some shithole again and craving, and I can't stop him."
"Nah," Gigi said carelessly, shaking his head. "They're too stupid to get hooked. One thing one day, something else the next."
"Says you," Ruud muttered meanly, wanting his words to hurt in the context of Pavel's obvious addiction, but Gigi just sighed and tossed back the rest of his drink.
"Sure," he replied tiredly. "But we'll still be waiting, won't we."
It was a statement, not a question, and Ruud gripped his empty shot glass between his hands to give himself something to do, to try and forget that he felt like a piece of discarded trash, a guitar pick left around in a case amongst hundreds of others, luckiness or tradition be damned.
He peered through the crowd again and gulped when he saw that Edwin was gone - but then a tight hand grabbed his, pulled him away from the bar and left his glass spinning on the polished countertop, dragged him through a sea of hot, perspiring bodies until he emerged reeling on the other side and Ed tugged him into a tiny unfurnished back hallway, the dim light of an uncovered bulb sputtering above them. Ed was drenched in sweaty musk, his grin wide and droopy, his eyes wide and fixed on a point somewhere not-quite between Ruud's eyes.
"Glad you came," he whispered breathily, and shoved him back against the wall, grinding hard into Ruud's hips. "Kiss me."
"Alright, but - " Ruud was cut off by Ed's mouth, warm and sucking, his hands roaming all over Ruud's body even as they twitched and shook. Ruud tried to grab his wrists, tried to stop his head from spinning - and succeeded, briefly, stiffening in shock, because there was a pill on Ed's tongue, and before he could stop himself it had slipped into his mouth and he had swallowed.
He pulled away with a gasp. Ed giggled. "What the hell - !"
"Don't worry," Ed said, smiling again, licking and biting with total unconcern at Ruud's neck. "You'll feel good..."
Ruud had never really been high. Well, no, that was a lie - Edgar had had pot around all the time, and had cooked it into various things. The one time Ruud partook he ended up stumbling around in a frantic fit of giggles, sticking his head under the kitchen tap so he could guzzle water to quench his thirst before he collapsed on the sofa and watched the ceiling transform into colorful patterns of abstract, squiggly modern art. He hadn't liked it. And now the man he worshipped - and who was rubbing up against him in time to the music with black eyes and panting, wheezy breaths, oh god - had probably just fed him uncut ecstasy, and -
Edwin knelt, pulled off his shirt, and when Ruud saw the bruises blooming like spilled paint across his previously hidden torso he wanted to scream, wanted to cry and beg -
But then the drug hit his brain, and Ed's mouth closed around his cock, and he forgot about everything.
When Ruud finally managed to open his eyes-or perhaps they’d been open all the time, who knows, only he hadn’t seen anything except for patterns of lights as if the world had been a giant strobe with ghastly shadows dancing to the beat-the first thing he saw was what looked as a strange, dark thing in front of him. He couldn’t guess what it was until a hand pulled him backwards-and when he was slumped on Ed’s shoulder he saw that it was the back part of a seat-he was on a bus, on what looked like a very spacious bus, and Ed was holding him tightly as if trying to prevent him from falling. On the seat in front of him he could see both Rio and Becks, looking very excited about something-the drummer was yelling to the driver to hurry up, just like a schoolboy would do, and the bassist was laughing, roaring actually and looking at his right. Ruud looked too, and saw, on the seat next to him, Gigi, trying to hold down that skinny figure, who was bopping on the seat like a hyperactive toddler, his blonde hair flying around.
The Italian was yelling something in his language, as if scolding his moving partner-however, it didn’t seem to be working, and that made both Englishmen laugh even louder, if it was possible-and Ruud felt their laughter would make his throbbing head explode.
It seemed sensation was flooding his body. Even slumped against Ed’s arm and feeling his clothes (his hand had found its way to the guitarist’s black wifebeater) Ruud felt the events of the night once again over him.
He didn’t have a visual memory of what had happened-but he remembered Ed’s warm mouth around his cock, and his tongue voraciously going around the shaft’s head. Then his shirt must have gone up, for he remembered Ed kissing, licking, nibbling at his chest-and then he must have sat down, for he certainly couldn’t have held Edwin very tightly while standing up, less in his drugged-up condition, but yes, the weight of the riding blonde, the heat around his cock and the pressure of that slender body against his-and the orgasm. Yes, he had come, he could remember the pleasure and then he thought maybe Ed had come too and stained his jeans (which, he now saw, were rather loose around his waist) but he couldn’t be sure because there were no lights on the bus, except for the street lamps, whose glow sometimes found its way through the vehicle’s windows.
Becks’ hysterical laugh was even squeakier than his voice, and that distracted the dark-haired Dutchman from his thoughts.
“Ya’re me man, Gigi, ya’re me man!!!” the drummer howled, and he walked over to what Ruud had thought at first was a huge speaker right at the middle of the bus-when the Englishman opened the door and took out what looked as a bottle of expensive whiskey, he realized it was a minibar-not that mini…
“Celebrate with some o’these, mate! What ya did was bloody priceless!” David insisted, almost throwing the bottle at Gigi, who was now trying to push Pavel off his legs-the Czech was trying to sit astride them, messily kissing the Italian.
“Stop it, Becks,” Gianluigi protested, his words half-cut off by his man’s anxious kisses.
“Aw, Gigi,” Rio chimed in. “Ya deserve it, what ya did was priceless, mate! Priceless!”
“Stop it-“
Ruud put a hand to his head. Memories, faded and in what looked like fast forward, were starting to dawn on him. He had this vision of Ed getting dressed after the sex-his winged back had stains on it, but then again, everything had multicolored stains, according to him. He had pulled his jeans up as well as he could, and then they had gone out and mingled with the sweaty, ghastly bodies in the club-then he had caught a glimpse of the pole Pavel had been dancing against, but he wasn’t there, and then there were exclamations which, now Ruud guessed, must have been David and Rio’s, and yes, there had been something about the junkie blonde and Gigi peeling him off some guy who was pulling up the Czech’s wifebeater and licking his nipples-Gigi had punched him unconscious, and then there had appeared the club owner and said something about that kid being his son, oh Lord, and Gigi had actually punched the club owner too and then there had been lots of movement and what looked like bodyguards and “I don’t care if you’re fucking rockstars because this is my club” and Ed had pulled him out of there, told him to run for it and oh my head hurts--
“You should’ve showed’im who’s the man ‘ere,” Becks continued. He didn’t seem too offended about Gigi rejecting the booze: he was taking hearty drinks from the bottle. “Beaten the ol’fart til’ he couldn’t stan’ up. KO!”
The rhythm guitarist didn’t answer-Pavel’s lips were grinding on his, and the Czech took his shirt off and revealed his sickly thin body, skin and bones all right.
“Fuck me,” was what he said when he left the Italian’s lips. “I like you when you start beating the shit out of people. C’mon, Gigi…”
Ruud stared as Pavel pulled his leather pants down his bony hips and stroked his cock out-his limp cock, because it looked as if he wasn’t going to get an erection any time soon: no matter how horny he was, the drugs weren’t helping. However, both Rio and David whistled when they saw the Czech’s shaft.
Gigi let out a defeated groan and tried to pull his man’s pants back up-which was hard, because he was actually trying not to hurt Pavel with the fly and actually fighting back against him as well: Italian hands pulling leather pants up, Czech hands pulling them down. The Englishmen seemed to be getting a kick out of the show (“Oi, mate, ya don’t wann’it, gimme some!” Becks, of course) but Ruud thought he saw another bruise on the Czech’s hip and that made him feel sick, his stomach lurching, but he didn’t want to throw up on Ed, no that would be too embarrassing, and then he remembered his bruises and wanted to make sure if they were there and he had not imagined them but how was he going to pull Ed’s wifebeater up right here in the bus and do that to his idol who was staring out the window and looking back-
“Well” Ed’s voice was cheerful. “If the club owner called someone to follow us, whoever it was is lost by now-and the hotel’s there!”
David titled back the last of the bottle and got on his feet. “Just in time. Our ride leaves in a couple’ hours…Old Sport mus’ be bloody fumin’!”
The rest of the band got up too-even Gianluigi, who had finally succeeded in keeping Pavel’s dick underneath the leather pants, though he was still shirtless when they got off the bus. The last ones to leave were Ed and Ruud, the younger man holding tightly to the guitarist’s arm. He felt really sick now.
“Ed…” he managed to utter.
“Wait till we get to the room. You can sleep there,” Edwin answered, helping him to the lobby, and added: “Hey, thanks for going. I really liked it… Had a great time.”
Ruud couldn’t answer-he felt he was going to explode sooner or later, and just nodded like a bobbling head doll till they reached the lobby-there, the guys seemed to be confused.
“Roo?”
“Really Rio, I swear he wasn’t with us even before we left for the club-right, Gigi?”
“I really don’t remember.”
Right. The vocalist. Ruud hoped they hadn’t left him back at the club to deal with the angry owner-god, he really wanted to rest, to sit down. What kind of drug was ecstasy? Memories of him dancing crazily for a while came back-now he wasn’t sure he could dance.
“’Tis ok. Ya’ll see,” Becks, the million-dollar smile still on his face, was saying, as he pressed the button to their floor.
They got on the elevator-they were all in a hurry, it seemed, talking about Fergie and stuff and Rio was still wondering where Wayne was, when, all of a sudden, Pavel said:
“I’m hungry.”
It was like a cue for the Czech to start howling out Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Striker”-when they left the elevator, the entire band was thinking it was good the entire floor was theirs, or he could have woken up all the guests…
Ruud held to Ed more tightly, closing his eyes.
“I don’t feel well.”
“All you need is rest,” Edwin reassured him. “I’ll leave you my room, paid-“
It all was interrupted when David Beckham kicked a door open, revealing the four people inside.
“Wayne,” the drummer chuckled. “Ya dog. There y’are.”
“Yeah,” the vocalist answered back, a wide smile on his lips. “Had fun at yer club? ‘Cause the party’s still goin’ on ‘ere!”
Ruud opened his eyes-Wayne was sprawled on the floor, looking at David, while a girl rubbed his tits against his face and torso-and, kneeling down, there were two girls sucking his dick. One of them had her big ass turned towards the boys, but the other one, whose tongue was traveling up Wayne’s shaft, looked up, and the dark-haired Dutchman could see her face now.
She didn’t look older than fifteen.
He couldn’t hold it back anymore-and, right outside Roo’s room, Ruud vomited his guts out.
Marco got up, holding a pillow to his face. Who the fuck was howling that idiotic song? What the fucking hell was going on? The only reason he had allowed Edwin to go to that shithole of a club was because he didn’t want to be there and listen to that nauseous music and see all kinds of sluts whoring themselves to his man and not have the chance of kicking their silicone out their fake butts. Yes, he knew he couldn’t stop the guitarist from going-the bloody bitch was taking his “freedom” thing too seriously-so he had given him permission in exchange for a thorough blowjob, but that was supposed to happen later, not at fucking six o’ clock in the morning…
He opened his door, pushing it open wide harshly, and saw that, at the other end of the hallway, that manager, Ferguson, had done just the same and looked as angry as him. And, just when those two doors were open, he saw the Squeaky-Voiced-Prick-David closed a door quickly, as if he was trying to hide whatever was inside that room.
Fergie was the one who walked on to the giggling, moving group on the hallway first. Becks was leaning against the door he had just closed, blocking it; Rio was looking alternately down at the floor and then up at the drummer-and whenever he looked at his blonde fellow countryman, he couldn’t suppress a giggle; Pavel had now seemed to remember he was half-naked and had his arms pressed against his chest (surely drugs wore off, the manager thought)-Gigi noticed and handed him his leather jacket. Ed was kneeling on the floor, lifting the head of a dark-haired man so he could throw up on the carpet and not choke.
The man looked familiar-after a moment, Alex Ferguson remembered. It was the man he had given the backstage pass to at the show. And, it looked as if the band and him had certainly been up to no good. Starting by the fact they had gotten to the hotel three hours later than what they were supposed to.
“Ok, what’s going on?” the manager asked, loudly and firmly.
“Nothin’, ol’ sport.” Jesus. Beckham was nearly choking with laughter.
“Nothing. Nothing. Of course nothing’s going on, except there’s this guy dying on the hall, and the bus that will take us to the Eurostar to France-where you have a gig, in case you didn’t remember-is leaving in a little less than an hour! Nothing! Now, who’s inside there?”
“Wayne.”
Fergie tried to walk to the door, but Rio took his arm.
“An’ three laydeez, mate.”
The manager gave up trying to open the door.
“Ok. Now, what about you, Edwin? What the hell?”
“I don’t know,” the Dutchman answered, his voice sounding actually a little nervous-Ruud had already emptied his bowels, but was still shaking, and looked rather weak.
“What did you give him?”
“A… a pill, but-“
“Well, you gotta do something about him,” Ferguson concluded. “You can’t leave the guy like that. If something happens to him, we’d be starting this tour with a huge scandal.” His eyes narrowed behind his small glasses. “And you know that could be very, very bad for the band.”
“Perhaps the hotel’s doctor-“
Fergie sighed and returned to his room, surely to call reception. Meanwhile, Ruud had stopped puking, but was lying on the floor, shaking, absolutely unable to stand up.
“Edwin…” the guitarist heard him mutter. Right then, he felt Marco’s eyes glued on his back, but he ignored them.
“It’s ok,” he said, running his fingers slightly through his fan’s black hair. “The doctor will come soon. I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry.”
However, when Fergie came back from the room, he didn’t look that convinced.
“The doctor’s unavailable,” he announced. “Some little kid got the flu or something, and he’s tending the child. He could be here after an hour or so, but we’d have left by then.”
“I could take him to his house,” Marco offered himself. He’d already guessed who this strange man was, and was definitely hoping he could get him out of the way.
“Would you stay with him?” Fergie asked.
And leave Edwin alone during the tour? Fucking hell no.
“I could just take him,” Marco cleared. “After all, I’m Edwin’s bodyguard and advisor. I can’t leave my guitarist alone, can’t I?”
Edwin rolled his eyes imperceptibly.
“We can’t leave the boy alone,” Fergie insisted. “If he gets worse, pretty soon the tabloids will be on us.” And then, he looked straight at Ed, his voice threatening. “It’s your mess, tall boy. You fix it.”
Edwin looked at the man on the floor. Now he was muttering something unintelligible-he was singing. One of his songs, actually. Huh, damn… However, then Ruud retched again, and the guitarist bit his lip. No, he certainly didn’t want his fan to die from a drug reaction, but-
“Dr. Capello,” he heard Gianluigi whisper.
“What?” he whispered back.
“They said Fabio was going to travel with us, right? He could tend your friend. C’mon. We can’t leave him here alone and we can’t stay. So, let’s take him with us.”
Edwin’s eyes flickered for a second. They looked at Ruud, who was closing his eyes and opening them as if trying to focus, but seemed not to achieve it so he closed them again-and then he turned back at Marco, who was standing up, looking at the scene in an almost murderous way. When the guitarist’s blue eyes found his advisor’s dark ones, he could almost feel the menace flashing in them. Go ahead and dare, Edwin.
…Why not?
“I’ll take him along, Fergie.”
“What?”
“What I said, Alex,” the blonde insisted, lifting Ruud up the floor as well as he could. “Let’s take him along. Dr. Fabio can check him, right? If you don’t want to have him along, I can always buy him a ticket back home.”
Alex Ferguson looked at the guitarist, and then at Gigi and Pavel. Sure enough, if he’d allowed the Italian to have his boyfriend along, why not allow his lead guitar to do something similar?
“Ok then,” the elderly man sighed. “But hurry up. Take him down. And clean him up a little.”
When the manager said that, David opened the door just a crack and asked the people inside for a towel.
“Tell that cunt Wayne to get out of there as well,” Fergie groaned when he saw what the drummer did. “To leave his friends there or to take them along-whatever. But we’re gonna be late, so he’d better stop that shit.” His gaze traveled to Pavel once again. “And please, find that lad a shirt. Dr. Capello’s gonna have enough to deal with already. We can’t add pneumonia to the list.”
The towel flew out the room as David told the singer what their manager had just said-Rio picked it up and handed it to Ed, who wiped some of the vomit off Ruud’s mouth, and then turned around to face Marco.
Of course. The man was looking at him as if deciding whose neck he was going to twist first: his or Ruud’s.
However, Ed didn’t flinch. Instead, his blue eyes held Marco’s stare coldly.
That’s right, Marco. I’m going to take him with me, whether you like it or not. You wanna beat me? Do it. But you know what would happen. You hurt me badly, no tour, no money, no nothing. What you gonna do about this, Marco? Beat him as well? He’s not me. He could put up a fight. Better start getting used to the idea, baby. Pretty soon I won’t be yours anymore…
It was the closest thing to suicide. But, as Ed dragged Ruud to the elevator and down to the lobby, he was convinced it was the right thing to do.
Summary: Ruud goes to a party, rock n' roll style. Rated R. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. NC-17ish if you want to get picky.
Special thanks: To lovely aka_centimetre2... the part of the club was not written by me. It's one of her wonders. Enjoy!
Ruud didn't quite know what he was doing in this club.
It was just a club. Just a normal club. He'd been to clubs before, for fuck's sake. He'd been to dance halls and pleasure palaces and underground bars and shitty holes in the wall with graffiti scrawled even up on the ceiling, so this shouldn't have been any different - but it was. Because Edwin had invited him, and just that tiny fact made it all feel like he was on Mars.
As befitting one of the hottest new bands, it was stuffed to the gills with girls who must have been either models or whores, and almost an equal number of pretty boys. The strobe lights made them all look pale, ghostly apparitions only existent when touched by the flashes, and with his eardrums being scooped out by the far-too-loud house mix Ruud stood near the bar with his hands in his baggy pockets, wondering what on earth he had done.
The VIP lounge was no better. With his skin crawling, he could watch - if he felt like it, which he didn't - that bass player, Rio, getting a lapdance, his bony hands smacking the girl's gyrating arse as grinning golden-haired Becks watched, laughing his head off. There was a hand in his jeans, god-only-knew whose, but Becks seemed to be enjoying it at any rate. Of course, they were all so drunk that it didn’t seem to matter who or what they'd got in their laps. Ruud could see flashes of pills on the black-lit table next to them in between the sweating, heaving bodies, and behind that - Edwin, in jeans and a black wifebeater, sprawled out on a low couch next to Rio with his head tilted over the back of it, tonguing deep into the mouth of some girl with tits so big Ruud was amazed she could even stand up under their weight.
Ruud's stomach twisted, deep beneath his navel, and he turned back to the bar to get his third vodka in half an hour. With his sinewy arms stretched out, a Christ-like pose, Edwin looked like a retinued king, but the thought of him wanting it - of him being like that, of him deserving shit like this as his reward for his fame - made Ruud want to be sick, made him want to punch himself for wanting a man like that, to run away and never come back and pretend he'd never been in a place like this where every second person he looked at had eyes so dilated they looked dead, black and soulless.
"Fucking ridiculous, isn't it?" a morose, despairing voice said in his ear, and he turned to one side to commiserate with Gigi, who was slumped on a skinny barstool. When Ruud raised a questioning eyebrow, he just jerked his head out into the crowd.
"There's mine."
Ruud looked, and saw a skinny - well, skeletal - blonde man, just in flashes of dark blue and purple lights, sliding up and down a sweaty pole in the middle of the dancing crowd, eyes half closed and skin dotted with pockmarks. He winced, and looked away.
"Yours?" Gigi said, and even though Ruud didn't answer he couldn't help his eyes from flicking back towards the VIP area, and Gigi followed his glance. "Ah," he said slowly, and then shrugged. "Don't worry. He'll come out of it."
"He's high," Ruud said quietly, his voice shaking. "He's getting high again. I don't even know what the fuck he's taken. He'll - " He stopped, and swallowed, trying to calm himself. "He'll end up back in some shithole again and craving, and I can't stop him."
"Nah," Gigi said carelessly, shaking his head. "They're too stupid to get hooked. One thing one day, something else the next."
"Says you," Ruud muttered meanly, wanting his words to hurt in the context of Pavel's obvious addiction, but Gigi just sighed and tossed back the rest of his drink.
"Sure," he replied tiredly. "But we'll still be waiting, won't we."
It was a statement, not a question, and Ruud gripped his empty shot glass between his hands to give himself something to do, to try and forget that he felt like a piece of discarded trash, a guitar pick left around in a case amongst hundreds of others, luckiness or tradition be damned.
He peered through the crowd again and gulped when he saw that Edwin was gone - but then a tight hand grabbed his, pulled him away from the bar and left his glass spinning on the polished countertop, dragged him through a sea of hot, perspiring bodies until he emerged reeling on the other side and Ed tugged him into a tiny unfurnished back hallway, the dim light of an uncovered bulb sputtering above them. Ed was drenched in sweaty musk, his grin wide and droopy, his eyes wide and fixed on a point somewhere not-quite between Ruud's eyes.
"Glad you came," he whispered breathily, and shoved him back against the wall, grinding hard into Ruud's hips. "Kiss me."
"Alright, but - " Ruud was cut off by Ed's mouth, warm and sucking, his hands roaming all over Ruud's body even as they twitched and shook. Ruud tried to grab his wrists, tried to stop his head from spinning - and succeeded, briefly, stiffening in shock, because there was a pill on Ed's tongue, and before he could stop himself it had slipped into his mouth and he had swallowed.
He pulled away with a gasp. Ed giggled. "What the hell - !"
"Don't worry," Ed said, smiling again, licking and biting with total unconcern at Ruud's neck. "You'll feel good..."
Ruud had never really been high. Well, no, that was a lie - Edgar had had pot around all the time, and had cooked it into various things. The one time Ruud partook he ended up stumbling around in a frantic fit of giggles, sticking his head under the kitchen tap so he could guzzle water to quench his thirst before he collapsed on the sofa and watched the ceiling transform into colorful patterns of abstract, squiggly modern art. He hadn't liked it. And now the man he worshipped - and who was rubbing up against him in time to the music with black eyes and panting, wheezy breaths, oh god - had probably just fed him uncut ecstasy, and -
Edwin knelt, pulled off his shirt, and when Ruud saw the bruises blooming like spilled paint across his previously hidden torso he wanted to scream, wanted to cry and beg -
But then the drug hit his brain, and Ed's mouth closed around his cock, and he forgot about everything.
When Ruud finally managed to open his eyes-or perhaps they’d been open all the time, who knows, only he hadn’t seen anything except for patterns of lights as if the world had been a giant strobe with ghastly shadows dancing to the beat-the first thing he saw was what looked as a strange, dark thing in front of him. He couldn’t guess what it was until a hand pulled him backwards-and when he was slumped on Ed’s shoulder he saw that it was the back part of a seat-he was on a bus, on what looked like a very spacious bus, and Ed was holding him tightly as if trying to prevent him from falling. On the seat in front of him he could see both Rio and Becks, looking very excited about something-the drummer was yelling to the driver to hurry up, just like a schoolboy would do, and the bassist was laughing, roaring actually and looking at his right. Ruud looked too, and saw, on the seat next to him, Gigi, trying to hold down that skinny figure, who was bopping on the seat like a hyperactive toddler, his blonde hair flying around.
The Italian was yelling something in his language, as if scolding his moving partner-however, it didn’t seem to be working, and that made both Englishmen laugh even louder, if it was possible-and Ruud felt their laughter would make his throbbing head explode.
It seemed sensation was flooding his body. Even slumped against Ed’s arm and feeling his clothes (his hand had found its way to the guitarist’s black wifebeater) Ruud felt the events of the night once again over him.
He didn’t have a visual memory of what had happened-but he remembered Ed’s warm mouth around his cock, and his tongue voraciously going around the shaft’s head. Then his shirt must have gone up, for he remembered Ed kissing, licking, nibbling at his chest-and then he must have sat down, for he certainly couldn’t have held Edwin very tightly while standing up, less in his drugged-up condition, but yes, the weight of the riding blonde, the heat around his cock and the pressure of that slender body against his-and the orgasm. Yes, he had come, he could remember the pleasure and then he thought maybe Ed had come too and stained his jeans (which, he now saw, were rather loose around his waist) but he couldn’t be sure because there were no lights on the bus, except for the street lamps, whose glow sometimes found its way through the vehicle’s windows.
Becks’ hysterical laugh was even squeakier than his voice, and that distracted the dark-haired Dutchman from his thoughts.
“Ya’re me man, Gigi, ya’re me man!!!” the drummer howled, and he walked over to what Ruud had thought at first was a huge speaker right at the middle of the bus-when the Englishman opened the door and took out what looked as a bottle of expensive whiskey, he realized it was a minibar-not that mini…
“Celebrate with some o’these, mate! What ya did was bloody priceless!” David insisted, almost throwing the bottle at Gigi, who was now trying to push Pavel off his legs-the Czech was trying to sit astride them, messily kissing the Italian.
“Stop it, Becks,” Gianluigi protested, his words half-cut off by his man’s anxious kisses.
“Aw, Gigi,” Rio chimed in. “Ya deserve it, what ya did was priceless, mate! Priceless!”
“Stop it-“
Ruud put a hand to his head. Memories, faded and in what looked like fast forward, were starting to dawn on him. He had this vision of Ed getting dressed after the sex-his winged back had stains on it, but then again, everything had multicolored stains, according to him. He had pulled his jeans up as well as he could, and then they had gone out and mingled with the sweaty, ghastly bodies in the club-then he had caught a glimpse of the pole Pavel had been dancing against, but he wasn’t there, and then there were exclamations which, now Ruud guessed, must have been David and Rio’s, and yes, there had been something about the junkie blonde and Gigi peeling him off some guy who was pulling up the Czech’s wifebeater and licking his nipples-Gigi had punched him unconscious, and then there had appeared the club owner and said something about that kid being his son, oh Lord, and Gigi had actually punched the club owner too and then there had been lots of movement and what looked like bodyguards and “I don’t care if you’re fucking rockstars because this is my club” and Ed had pulled him out of there, told him to run for it and oh my head hurts--
“You should’ve showed’im who’s the man ‘ere,” Becks continued. He didn’t seem too offended about Gigi rejecting the booze: he was taking hearty drinks from the bottle. “Beaten the ol’fart til’ he couldn’t stan’ up. KO!”
The rhythm guitarist didn’t answer-Pavel’s lips were grinding on his, and the Czech took his shirt off and revealed his sickly thin body, skin and bones all right.
“Fuck me,” was what he said when he left the Italian’s lips. “I like you when you start beating the shit out of people. C’mon, Gigi…”
Ruud stared as Pavel pulled his leather pants down his bony hips and stroked his cock out-his limp cock, because it looked as if he wasn’t going to get an erection any time soon: no matter how horny he was, the drugs weren’t helping. However, both Rio and David whistled when they saw the Czech’s shaft.
Gigi let out a defeated groan and tried to pull his man’s pants back up-which was hard, because he was actually trying not to hurt Pavel with the fly and actually fighting back against him as well: Italian hands pulling leather pants up, Czech hands pulling them down. The Englishmen seemed to be getting a kick out of the show (“Oi, mate, ya don’t wann’it, gimme some!” Becks, of course) but Ruud thought he saw another bruise on the Czech’s hip and that made him feel sick, his stomach lurching, but he didn’t want to throw up on Ed, no that would be too embarrassing, and then he remembered his bruises and wanted to make sure if they were there and he had not imagined them but how was he going to pull Ed’s wifebeater up right here in the bus and do that to his idol who was staring out the window and looking back-
“Well” Ed’s voice was cheerful. “If the club owner called someone to follow us, whoever it was is lost by now-and the hotel’s there!”
David titled back the last of the bottle and got on his feet. “Just in time. Our ride leaves in a couple’ hours…Old Sport mus’ be bloody fumin’!”
The rest of the band got up too-even Gianluigi, who had finally succeeded in keeping Pavel’s dick underneath the leather pants, though he was still shirtless when they got off the bus. The last ones to leave were Ed and Ruud, the younger man holding tightly to the guitarist’s arm. He felt really sick now.
“Ed…” he managed to utter.
“Wait till we get to the room. You can sleep there,” Edwin answered, helping him to the lobby, and added: “Hey, thanks for going. I really liked it… Had a great time.”
Ruud couldn’t answer-he felt he was going to explode sooner or later, and just nodded like a bobbling head doll till they reached the lobby-there, the guys seemed to be confused.
“Roo?”
“Really Rio, I swear he wasn’t with us even before we left for the club-right, Gigi?”
“I really don’t remember.”
Right. The vocalist. Ruud hoped they hadn’t left him back at the club to deal with the angry owner-god, he really wanted to rest, to sit down. What kind of drug was ecstasy? Memories of him dancing crazily for a while came back-now he wasn’t sure he could dance.
“’Tis ok. Ya’ll see,” Becks, the million-dollar smile still on his face, was saying, as he pressed the button to their floor.
They got on the elevator-they were all in a hurry, it seemed, talking about Fergie and stuff and Rio was still wondering where Wayne was, when, all of a sudden, Pavel said:
“I’m hungry.”
It was like a cue for the Czech to start howling out Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Striker”-when they left the elevator, the entire band was thinking it was good the entire floor was theirs, or he could have woken up all the guests…
Ruud held to Ed more tightly, closing his eyes.
“I don’t feel well.”
“All you need is rest,” Edwin reassured him. “I’ll leave you my room, paid-“
It all was interrupted when David Beckham kicked a door open, revealing the four people inside.
“Wayne,” the drummer chuckled. “Ya dog. There y’are.”
“Yeah,” the vocalist answered back, a wide smile on his lips. “Had fun at yer club? ‘Cause the party’s still goin’ on ‘ere!”
Ruud opened his eyes-Wayne was sprawled on the floor, looking at David, while a girl rubbed his tits against his face and torso-and, kneeling down, there were two girls sucking his dick. One of them had her big ass turned towards the boys, but the other one, whose tongue was traveling up Wayne’s shaft, looked up, and the dark-haired Dutchman could see her face now.
She didn’t look older than fifteen.
He couldn’t hold it back anymore-and, right outside Roo’s room, Ruud vomited his guts out.
Marco got up, holding a pillow to his face. Who the fuck was howling that idiotic song? What the fucking hell was going on? The only reason he had allowed Edwin to go to that shithole of a club was because he didn’t want to be there and listen to that nauseous music and see all kinds of sluts whoring themselves to his man and not have the chance of kicking their silicone out their fake butts. Yes, he knew he couldn’t stop the guitarist from going-the bloody bitch was taking his “freedom” thing too seriously-so he had given him permission in exchange for a thorough blowjob, but that was supposed to happen later, not at fucking six o’ clock in the morning…
He opened his door, pushing it open wide harshly, and saw that, at the other end of the hallway, that manager, Ferguson, had done just the same and looked as angry as him. And, just when those two doors were open, he saw the Squeaky-Voiced-Prick-David closed a door quickly, as if he was trying to hide whatever was inside that room.
Fergie was the one who walked on to the giggling, moving group on the hallway first. Becks was leaning against the door he had just closed, blocking it; Rio was looking alternately down at the floor and then up at the drummer-and whenever he looked at his blonde fellow countryman, he couldn’t suppress a giggle; Pavel had now seemed to remember he was half-naked and had his arms pressed against his chest (surely drugs wore off, the manager thought)-Gigi noticed and handed him his leather jacket. Ed was kneeling on the floor, lifting the head of a dark-haired man so he could throw up on the carpet and not choke.
The man looked familiar-after a moment, Alex Ferguson remembered. It was the man he had given the backstage pass to at the show. And, it looked as if the band and him had certainly been up to no good. Starting by the fact they had gotten to the hotel three hours later than what they were supposed to.
“Ok, what’s going on?” the manager asked, loudly and firmly.
“Nothin’, ol’ sport.” Jesus. Beckham was nearly choking with laughter.
“Nothing. Nothing. Of course nothing’s going on, except there’s this guy dying on the hall, and the bus that will take us to the Eurostar to France-where you have a gig, in case you didn’t remember-is leaving in a little less than an hour! Nothing! Now, who’s inside there?”
“Wayne.”
Fergie tried to walk to the door, but Rio took his arm.
“An’ three laydeez, mate.”
The manager gave up trying to open the door.
“Ok. Now, what about you, Edwin? What the hell?”
“I don’t know,” the Dutchman answered, his voice sounding actually a little nervous-Ruud had already emptied his bowels, but was still shaking, and looked rather weak.
“What did you give him?”
“A… a pill, but-“
“Well, you gotta do something about him,” Ferguson concluded. “You can’t leave the guy like that. If something happens to him, we’d be starting this tour with a huge scandal.” His eyes narrowed behind his small glasses. “And you know that could be very, very bad for the band.”
“Perhaps the hotel’s doctor-“
Fergie sighed and returned to his room, surely to call reception. Meanwhile, Ruud had stopped puking, but was lying on the floor, shaking, absolutely unable to stand up.
“Edwin…” the guitarist heard him mutter. Right then, he felt Marco’s eyes glued on his back, but he ignored them.
“It’s ok,” he said, running his fingers slightly through his fan’s black hair. “The doctor will come soon. I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry.”
However, when Fergie came back from the room, he didn’t look that convinced.
“The doctor’s unavailable,” he announced. “Some little kid got the flu or something, and he’s tending the child. He could be here after an hour or so, but we’d have left by then.”
“I could take him to his house,” Marco offered himself. He’d already guessed who this strange man was, and was definitely hoping he could get him out of the way.
“Would you stay with him?” Fergie asked.
And leave Edwin alone during the tour? Fucking hell no.
“I could just take him,” Marco cleared. “After all, I’m Edwin’s bodyguard and advisor. I can’t leave my guitarist alone, can’t I?”
Edwin rolled his eyes imperceptibly.
“We can’t leave the boy alone,” Fergie insisted. “If he gets worse, pretty soon the tabloids will be on us.” And then, he looked straight at Ed, his voice threatening. “It’s your mess, tall boy. You fix it.”
Edwin looked at the man on the floor. Now he was muttering something unintelligible-he was singing. One of his songs, actually. Huh, damn… However, then Ruud retched again, and the guitarist bit his lip. No, he certainly didn’t want his fan to die from a drug reaction, but-
“Dr. Capello,” he heard Gianluigi whisper.
“What?” he whispered back.
“They said Fabio was going to travel with us, right? He could tend your friend. C’mon. We can’t leave him here alone and we can’t stay. So, let’s take him with us.”
Edwin’s eyes flickered for a second. They looked at Ruud, who was closing his eyes and opening them as if trying to focus, but seemed not to achieve it so he closed them again-and then he turned back at Marco, who was standing up, looking at the scene in an almost murderous way. When the guitarist’s blue eyes found his advisor’s dark ones, he could almost feel the menace flashing in them. Go ahead and dare, Edwin.
…Why not?
“I’ll take him along, Fergie.”
“What?”
“What I said, Alex,” the blonde insisted, lifting Ruud up the floor as well as he could. “Let’s take him along. Dr. Fabio can check him, right? If you don’t want to have him along, I can always buy him a ticket back home.”
Alex Ferguson looked at the guitarist, and then at Gigi and Pavel. Sure enough, if he’d allowed the Italian to have his boyfriend along, why not allow his lead guitar to do something similar?
“Ok then,” the elderly man sighed. “But hurry up. Take him down. And clean him up a little.”
When the manager said that, David opened the door just a crack and asked the people inside for a towel.
“Tell that cunt Wayne to get out of there as well,” Fergie groaned when he saw what the drummer did. “To leave his friends there or to take them along-whatever. But we’re gonna be late, so he’d better stop that shit.” His gaze traveled to Pavel once again. “And please, find that lad a shirt. Dr. Capello’s gonna have enough to deal with already. We can’t add pneumonia to the list.”
The towel flew out the room as David told the singer what their manager had just said-Rio picked it up and handed it to Ed, who wiped some of the vomit off Ruud’s mouth, and then turned around to face Marco.
Of course. The man was looking at him as if deciding whose neck he was going to twist first: his or Ruud’s.
However, Ed didn’t flinch. Instead, his blue eyes held Marco’s stare coldly.
That’s right, Marco. I’m going to take him with me, whether you like it or not. You wanna beat me? Do it. But you know what would happen. You hurt me badly, no tour, no money, no nothing. What you gonna do about this, Marco? Beat him as well? He’s not me. He could put up a fight. Better start getting used to the idea, baby. Pretty soon I won’t be yours anymore…
It was the closest thing to suicide. But, as Ed dragged Ruud to the elevator and down to the lobby, he was convinced it was the right thing to do.