Chapter 18
(Draven)
“This is just gonna become a thing with you, isn’t it?” Johnny grumbled as I led him through the parking garage, his hoodie pulled low on his head as we headed for the entrance to the building. “A little game where you try and see how many rewards you can earn by taking me to interesting places you know I’ll love?”
Shrugging, I flashed him a little grin as his eyes lit up and he went up on tiptoe to kiss me.
“Game on,” Johnny whispered before pressing his lips to mine.
When I stroked my hand down the small of his back, he melted against me, and when I cupped his behind in my hands and rocked him against me he whined and deepened the kiss, until Christine coughed and reminded me that we weren’t alone here.
“Behave,” I mouthed to Johnny, who got the most indignant look on his face before he pulled the door open.
All was clearly forgiven when he saw the sign revealing the building to be the Museum of Animation and Comic Art, because he whirled around and threw himself in my arms again. Before things could drift into intimate territory, he let go, grabbed my hand and dragged me up the next five steps and into the first gallery.
“Whoa.”
I’d say.
My eyes followed the solar system painted up the wall, each planet a character displaying a different emotion. One comet was streaked to the left, looking freaked out and terrified of the speed it was traveling, while the one to the right had a big grin painted on his face. Light and images shimmered and swirled along the wall from the projector at the room’s center and when I turned, I saw that each of the corners looked like it was in motion, all flowing up to the galaxy-covered dome overhead. Stars almost seemed to sparkle when I tipped my head back, then I saw the look of wonder on Johnny’s face and knew that I’d hit it out of the park when I’d chosen this place.
“We’ve gotta see everything,” Johnny gushed. “Please tell me that there is no other place we’re supposed to be today.”
Since he still had my hand, I just shook my head and laughed when Johnny squealed, clapped and did a little dance before tugging me around the room.
“The stars were my first inspiration,” Johnny said, “for everything, really. Poetry, song lyrics, even what I wanted for dinner. I loved chicken and stars way more than I ever liked chicken noodle, and star-shaped nuggets more than dino-shaped or the oddly-shaped lumps they passed out at other fast-food places. I just liked everything about the way the night sky glittered like the sparkles in my aunt’s favorite dress.”
Nodding, I draped my arms over his shoulders and gave him a little squeeze, wanting him to know that I enjoyed hearing him talk about himself and his childhood.
“My favorite movies were about the stars, too,” Johnny said. “When I was a kid, I thought the best thing about growing up was going to be getting to leave the planet. Talk about disappointing to learn that very few people ever got to go out into space, not that there’s anywhere to go when you get there.”
“Were you expecting 7-11s?” I rasped, nuzzling his ear when I said it.
I loved the way he shivered, then narrowed his eyes at me and stuck out his tongue. “Now who’s misbehaving?”
“No one ever said anything about me behaving,” I reminded him.
“Guess that’s ‘cause you think you make all the rules, huh?” Johnny said, shooting me a wicked grin. “Well, you might, one day, but only once you put your name on it.”
I knew what he was talking about, we’d discussed it a couple times now. Johnny wanted to wear my collar, with a tag that told the world that he belonged to me. I wanted to wait awhile before we publicly declared anything. Staying out of the public eye was the best thing for him until this case got resolved. His lack of interest in the news meant he didn’t see shit unless people tagged him on it, which I wished they wouldn’t do.
In the weeks since the second crash victim had succumbed to her injuries, the internet had been ablaze with articles that were mostly filled with opinion and speculations, alternating between condemning the justice system for continuing to allow Johnny to walk free until the trial, and praising him for continuing to be up on the stage every night, giving the fans his all despite the charges hanging over him. What sucked was that there were people who trashed him for that, too, and said that he should have been lying low somewhere out of respect for the victim’s family. I knew from experience that some of those same people would have been filling the internet with comments about how he was in hiding because he knew he’d done wrong if Johnny had locked himself away somewhere. There were just people out there in the world who had nothing better to do than look for ways to make someone else’s life miserable, whether they knew the person or not. Celebrity of any kind had its drawbacks, particularly when it came to the court of public opinion, but that was the problem with opinions, at least as far as I was concerned. People rarely formed them without taking the time to evaluate all the information available or look at things from every angle. It was more like they had hair triggers and sat around just itching to jump on the latest bandwagon and give themselves the false sense that their lives had purpose when in fact, they were just sad, silly creatures wasting all their energy being jealous of other people.
No matter what anyone ever tried to claim, I knew in my gut that was the real reason they were so shitty when anything happened that involved someone with a little bit of fame. They loved seeing them fall, so they could feel superior about not even trying.
Sad, really.
Johnny led me into a room with almost a dozen screens, each playing a clip from a different movie. It was like watching a kid explore a toy store, the way he stopped in front of each one to watch them from beginning to end.
Most of these I’d never even heard of before.
Several were dark, too, and not just in their tones and hues, but the subject matter they tackled. Somber and poignant, there was one about a crow who wanted to be a peacock, so he collected all of their discarded feathers in an effort to make a new tail for himself, only to discover sewing their castoffs together didn’t change what he was, or where he belonged, it just allowed him to make believe for a little while, before his hastily stitched together threads came undone.
“I wonder what inspired that,” Johnny said, cocking his head as he leaned against me to watch it again.
Turning him, I showed him the engraved placard and ruffled his hair while he read it before we continued on to the next screen.
I loved seeing him this way, so in awe and enthralled by everything. With our guards at our backs, we slowly made our way through the museum.
“What the?” Johnny murmured as we stepped into a box with a curtain that blocked out the light behind us as the screen on the wall roared to life the moment we sat down.
Wavy lines, like the inside of a lava lamp, drift up from the bottom of the screen, orange and that odd, medium purple that reminded me of an eggplant that had lost its sheen. Muted. Yeah, I got what Johnny meant now when he talked about how it wasn’t just sounds that could be understated. Colors got muffled, too, and lights, fading before finally going out.
Like my voice.
It would never be strong the way it once was, but in the mornings and when I rested it, I could talk to him and watch his eyes light up when I growled in his ear.
Those were the moments that mattered.
And if I should get it in my head to try and sing something to him, Johnny had proven time and time again that he didn’t care if the song was a little soft and lacked my old growling intensity, he just wanted to lie there and listen to me sing.
“This makes me want to draw more,” Johnny said as we entered the next to last room.
Thank the goddess for the map, because there were so many twists, turns and murals that it might as well have been a funhouse, which only enhanced the whole experience.
“You should,” I murmured. “They’re funny as hell and I love the way you tuck them away as hidden surprises for your victims to find after you’ve enshrined their chicanery.”
“That mean you found the one in your Maple Leaf’s jersey yet?”
I stopped moving, at least until his forward momentum forced me to take a step.
Glance left, glance right, good, we were alone in this part of the museum. There was no one to see me crack him on the behind with my palm, or hear him yelp before he rubbed it and waddle-walked away, protecting it all the way down the hallway. It was only after he reached the other end that he turned, stuck his tongue out at me and blew raspberries like Daffy Duck. I wagged a finger at him, and soon caught up, draping my arm back over his shoulder because there was one last thing he needed to experience, and I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he learned what it was.
I steered him left at the end of the hall, to a restaurant that looked more like private cubes with an opening on one side and passageways between them, which must be how they delivered the food. The setup was amazing, with bench seating on one side and a movie screen on the other, a menu as well as media options waiting for us at the table.
The best part was seeing the note about there not being anyone to come around and take our orders. We just needed to key them into the kiosk at the table, and food and beverages would be brought while the movie played.
“This is so badass,” Johnny whisper-squealed as our guards took up positions nearby while we indulged ourselves. “How the hell did you find this place?”
“After seeing you in the comedy club doodling away, I thought you’d get a kick out of seeing all of the different kinds of animation and comic strips they described on the website,” I conveyed through my device.
“You thought right,” Johnny said, snuggling against my side and hugging me. “Thank you.”
I cupped the back of his neck, kissed the top of his head, then tugged him up so I could kiss him properly .
“You already did,” I murmured. “With the look on your face when you walked through the door.”
With a squee and a squirm, he picked up one of the menus and I snagged the other.
Holy shit.
Every dish was character themed. Now I understood why the website suggested touring the museum before checking out the food. There were so many inside jokes and subtle references that came from the clips on display, that it made reading through it hilarious.
“I’ve gotta do it,” Johnny declared.
“Do what?”
“I’ve gotta dish the duck.”
Groaning, I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head.
“With some devilish dumplings and pickled daikon.”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I resisted the urge to bang my head on the table, but only by the barest margin.
“Gonna have to get the bacon and bill sauce, too, with a feathered mocktini to top it all off.”
Chuckling at his thoughtful ensemble, I felt compelled to pay just as much attention to my meal selection as he had.
With vivid images of the room that had allowed us to experience what it was like to live beneath the waves still fresh and flashing through my head, I chose the bucket of blue crabs with mini lobster rolls, reminded of the short film about competing food trucks and the chaos they’d brought to their seaside town.
“This has been an awesome day,” Johnny said, dancing a hand up my arm as I put my final selection in, of an ocean lite-breeze. “Thank you for bringing me. I’m gonna have to up my game when it’s my turn to plan a day out.”
“I’ll let you set up the next one, as long as you remember to check in with me about dates and times,” I reminded him. “The list of radio engagements is growing and I don’t expect that to slow down anytime soon.”
“Good, those are fun. I’d rather interact with the fans over the airwaves than have them swarming all over me.”
“Same. And now I don’t ever have to worry about doing another one again,” I said. “Can’t have dead air while I fuck around typing.”
“Well, I don’t mind, and I know Rebel loves them. We’re happy to do them, even when the other guys don’t feel like going.”
“Good to know,” I typed.
Many of the smaller stations wouldn’t have enough room in their booth for the whole band and the host so it was good to know which guys didn’t mind putting in an appearance as a duo. Their band was close, but it had always felt like there was a special bond between Rebel and Johnny. They really fed off of one another, especially when they were up on stage, rolling on a wave of cocky exuberance that allowed them to enthrall crowds of all sizes.
“Did you ever think about pursuing art instead of music?” I typed, worried as I hit play, because the machine only had one tone, and I didn’t want the question to come off like I thought he’d made a poor career choice.
“Not really,” Johnny said and propped his chin on his hand. “I just liked to doodle my thoughts. Some people journal and write out a bunch of stuff about how their day went, I drew the things that stood out. Now I have these visual diaries of my life dating back to when I was a kid.”
“Where do you keep them all?” I typed.
“My apartment, except the current ones, those are always on the road with me,” Johnny explained. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about using them on merchandise and on the website with more frequency. You’re right, we should, that’s something the fans have never stopped asking for. We decided to go ahead with the cookbook idea we’d been tossing around, too, and include some stories from the road and whatever prompted or inspired a particular recipe, if we remember. I can already see three different stories for every one meal we introduce.”
“Nothing wrong with that. It will just give your fans some greater insight into who you guys are and what living a mostly nomadic lifestyle has been like for you.”
“It still blows my mind that people would even want to read about that shit. It’s not like it was glamorous, like we literally learned how to make chipped beef only to realize that we’d forgotten to pick up the god damned bread to spread it on. It was ridiculous. We ended up treating the chipped beef like dip and scooping it up with ritz crackers because we were out of chips, too. We were so bad at adulting that for our first three years on the road, Dash’s mother sent us weekly reminders of when to pick up groceries and when to wash our funky clothes. We sucked at being responsible, like, every last one of us, including Dash, who’s mom is the most organized woman I know.”
I chuckled at that, enjoyed the images on the screen while I listened to his story.
“This one time, we decided to do this loaded hotdog night, and Ozzy wrote out a list of what we needed and these little flags we could tear off, with ingredients lists on them so we weren’t all running around grabbing the same things,” Johnny explained. “But do you think any of us remembered to grab one?”
I shook my head and typed, tell me Ozzy did at least.
Johnny hung his head and giggled. “Nope, so he did what we all did and picked up what he remembered, or thought he remembered. We wound up with an interesting array of things that took a long time to use up.”
“You can’t just leave things at that and not tell me some of what people bought,” I pointed out.
“Let’s just say that we didn’t run out of hotdogs, ketchup, mustard, buns, chili, or melty cheese for a very long time,” Johnny said, grimacing. “Of course that also meant gaseous warfare the likes of which has never been waged on the tour bus before or since. It was foul, it was atrocious, it was a grievous assault on the senses, and I swear it looked like we were hot boxing the place when he opened up the door, only we were completely out of weed at the time.”
Now I grimaced and hoped I never had the misfortune of stepping on their bus after a run of meals like that. The aftermath of the chili dogs alone would probably be fatal, yet I knew I’d still smile and linger there with Johnny, because he loved them the way I loved the guys in Damaged Saints. We were so damned lucky that the people we loved the most also loved spending time with one another, because I had every intention of stealing Johnny away for as many days like this as we could manage. It was almost funny, how dearly we cherished the moments of solitude now, when we’d spent years chasing a place in the spotlight.
Guess you could say we’d grown or at least come to appreciate how rare it was to find someone to love us exactly the way we were without trying to pin us down with time and places. The way our schedules flexed and shifted as the tour evolved, we’d have wound up disappointing someone who didn’t understand the business. I’d seen more budding relationships fade that way when my bandmates and I had first attempted dating with the crazy schedule we had.
Now I just hoped the fates were kind enough to let me keep the man I’d found, because now that I knew what it was like to be with someone who truly got it, I never wanted to go back to the way things had been. I wanted each day to be me and Johnny Amaral, no matter what his brand of chaos, or mine, played out to be. Head over heels didn’t even begin to describe what I felt about him.
And to think, I’d almost lost out on it by trying to keep him at arm’s length.
Wasted time.
So much wasted time.
But one thing I knew for certain, was that I’d never push him away again.