37. Phoenix St. Pierre
PHOENIX ST. PIERRE
The last four days of March, we completely lose ourselves to the music. Tom calls it post-sex bliss. Like we’re riding a euphoric high from finally fucking.
I can’t completely deny it.
The lyrics come easier. The music flows better. We’re in a deep groove as we barrel toward our deadline, and we don’t just finish the final song. After “Killer Ultraviolet,” we write and record two more. (Tom was correct about being an overachiever.)
The album is complete with fourteen total tracks, and it’s almost incomprehensible that we’re done.
There is no after-club celebration because Tom and I did not want a repeat of the half-baked celebration at The Trench. Instead, we grab a Sicilian pizza with black olives and eat it on the grass in Central Park while listening to the mastered tracks together.
Black headphones cover my ears while Tom has on slim AirPods, and the first song on the album plays.
“Fire You Feel.” I am instantly transported to the moment I met Tom, and I won’t tell him—I’ll likely never tell him, so his head doesn’t grow five fucking sizes bigger—that this song is the whole album for me.
It would be nothing without it.
Tom pops an earbud out. “You think it needs mor—?”
“No,” I snap, cutting him off. “Every time you ask that, you’re getting an olive to the face. Listen to your voice, man, and just hear how good you sound.”
“Maybe you should loan me your ears.”
“Come on, you know you sound amazing.” I look him over, up-down. “Don’t fucking doubt yourself now.” I kick his shin, wondering if I do need to tell him how much I love “Fire You Feel,” but then he nods robustly.
“You’re right,” he says into a smirk. “I’m a vocal marvel.”
“Even the lightest stroke of the ego does it for you, huh?”
“You could go harder,” he grins. “I won’t complain.”
“I know you won’t.”
Tom diverts his gaze as his face reddens. He stares around the park, but the weather isn’t bone-chilling anymore. Too many people meander around to pay any attention to us.
“No one cares that I fucked you, Tom,” I whisper.
His jaw tenses. I’m not sure why until his blue eyes hit mine, and he says, “I care.”
I draw my headphones to my neck and pause the second track. I’ve been inside Tom, and he’s not brushing that fact aside like it’s an ordinary occurrence.
Sex for me typically isn’t so emotional. It’s a physical act of release, and that’s it. I’ve known that what I feel with him is different. Everything is more heightened and intense. Buzzing. All my senses.
“You think I don’t care?” I ask with furrowed brows and a mountain of confusion because I thought I did a pretty decent job of showing I did.
His voice drops to a trained whisper. “Maybe I just care more than you, dude, because you were in me. You don’t know what it’s like.”
I cock my head. “I don’t know what it’s like?”
“Yeah…?” He makes a face at me.
I make one back. “I do, actually. I’ve bottomed before. Many fucking times.”
Tom blinks. “Excuse me, why am I just learning this?”
I laugh hard. “You never fucking asked. That’s why.”
He groans. “Uh, I need to stop assuming shit.” He must be recalling the French misconnection. “And no—you could’ve offered this pertinent info in your apartment.”
I cough on another laugh. “I can barely take you seriously when you’re waving your pizza around.”
He tears a rough bite with his teeth and flips me off.
“It honestly didn’t cross my mind,” I tell him. “I prefer to top, and I’ve gotten the sense you prefer to bottom, so what’s there to talk about?”
“Then why bottom at all?” Tom questions. “Let alone many fucking times, Phoenix.”
I chew pizza and swallow. “Because, Tom, there are strict tops and also verse guys out there who prefer a flip-fuck, and as you’ve so adorably highlighted, I am impatient and so I don’t ask a one-night stand twenty questions.
It pretty much goes, ‘You want to fuck,’ and then I find out the rest later. ”
He’s slow-blinking. “Wait, why not just ditch the one-night stand if they’re not compatible?”
“I wanted to have sex. Even incompatible sex, man.”
He sucks air through his teeth. “That could never be me.”
I lift my brows. “I know.” Now I’m curious. “You ever try to top?”
“Yeah. Did not enjoy.”
“Figured.” I bring my headphones up, but before I slip them back over my ears, I say, “And Tom?”
“Hmm?” He’s tapping the playlist on his phone. I wait for his eyes to hoist to mine.
And very strongly, I tell him, “I care.”
Tom inhales, his chest rising in one deep, powerful breath.
Two weeks pass by in meetings, rehearsals for the tour, more meetings, and working out with Tom. I’m at his apartment when the art director at Riot Records sends us options for the album cover.
It still hasn’t fully sunk in that there’s no more writing. No more arranging. No more recording.
I’m waiting for the gotcha moment when they send us back to the studio. Being done doesn’t feel real. I’m hoping staring at these covers tonight will let it sink in a little more.
“Ugly. Ugly. Uglier.” Tom lies longways on his faux-leather couch. His head is in my lap while a sticker-decaled computer balances on his chest. He scrolls through the different versions of the album art. The label has final approval, but they’re letting us make suggestions.
I stare down at him. “You know someone actually spent their time mocking these up. You don’t need to dismiss them so—”
He angles the laptop to me. An artsy cubism lion cub stares back at me with bared teeth dripping blue blood. “Okay, yeah. That’s ugly. What’s up with the lion cub?”
“Someone wants to capitalize on the Cobalt Empire, dude.”
“Lions?” I frown.
Tom slips me a look like seriously. “Practically a Cobalt mascot at this point. Might as well be the center of our family crest.”
“Surprised you don’t already have a family crest hanging in your dining room for your fancy ass tea parties.”
His nose flares. “Dude. You can’t call them that. It’s beyond disrespectful.”
“Sorry,” I say flatly. “Wednesday Night Dinners.” Still not invited. Do not care to be. I don’t even mind that Tom ghosts me every Wednesday night like he’s a part of some secret society. It’s nice that his family has something they do together. I wouldn’t want to take him away from that.
“Thank you.” He swipes to the next option, then the next.
“Wait, go back,” I tell him. He returns to the previous version.
Blue fire engulfs the marble torso of a man, all sinewy lines of muscle like Michelangelo’s David. The fire hooks me for a solid moment. Because the blue flames roar into violet purple.
The album title looks stamped with old-school ink in the bottom right corner.
Several weeks ago, Tom approached me with the name of the album.
We’d been lying on his bed together after a long five-hour session writing “Dead Poets”—a haunting song about measuring up to the great artists who’ve inspired us.
Knowing we can’t reach them. Knowing we still want to try.
Knowing it’s okay if we never come close.
His fingers trailed down the script tattoo on my bicep. The words play on. “We both love Shakespeare,” he said. “So we should name the album after my favorite quote.”
“Your favorite quote.” My brows rose. “The band is already your middle name, nepo baby.”
“Yeah, but hear me out before you dismiss it. I actually think you’ll like it.”
I doubted, but I told him, “Let’s hear it.
” I anticipated him making a show of it.
Standing on the mattress. Towering over me.
Instead, he crawled on top of me. Straddled my waist. His elbows rested on either side of my head, and his lips hovered over mine.
His gaze flittered around the edges of my face, and his words were feather-light as he spoke.
“‘It is my soul that calls upon my name,’” he recited. “‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears.’”
My heart hammered in my chest.
My breath stolen.
My love his.
“Silver Sweet,” he told me. “That’s the name of the album.”
There was no question. As soon as I heard it, I knew he was right.
I stare at the mock cover of the marble statue on fire. It’s lustful, destructive, intense, and the contrast of Silver Sweet in the corner fastens my eyes to the imagery and doesn’t let go.
“I love the dichotomy,” Tom says before I even speak. “The discord between the sweet and the fire. It reminds me of you.”
I’m too caught off guard and stunned to respond.
He starts drafting an email reply. He does this thing where he moves his head back-and-forth while he types, and the guy currently has his head on. My. Lap. He is unconsciously rubbing my cock.
I breathe deeply through my nose.
I can’t take it anymore. I reach over and undo the button of his jeans. Tom’s fingers go still on the keyboard, and I slide my hand below his waistband, underneath the cotton of his black boxer-briefs. I caress him from base to tip.
“Fuck.” He catches a groan in his throat, and his eyes flit up to me. “Phoenix.”
Yeah, we’re in his living room. But it’s 1 a.m., and all of his brothers are in their bedrooms. And it’s not like we’re fucking. I have my hand down Tom’s pants. It would take half a second to remove it.
But Tom is looking at me like I just stripped him bare in the middle of the room.
“You want me to stop?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. The motion, a pleasure to my dick. Fuck.
“Finish the email then,” I tell him.
He draws a sharp breath between his teeth while returning to the laptop. I work him with more force.
“Fuck, dude…” He squirms and tries to concentrate as he types. His eyes veer over to a bedroom hallway, then back to the screen.
His fingers start to move faster over the keys. When he hits send, he slams the laptop shut and slides it onto the coffee table.
His hand reaches up to the back of my neck, trying to pull my head down to meet him. But I draw back in resistance.
“Phoenix,” he says into a low groan.
“Say what you want,” I whisper.
He’s glaring. But there’s something so fucking hot about watching Tom, arrogant fucking Tom, get aroused by being obedient to me.