Six
Knowing they’d be dead after getting in bed when bakeries opened, they should have canceled Saturday’s practice. But nope. Not happening with the tour around the corner.
Thank fuck Kaj’s sponsor had been awake last night and picked up when he called. Her voice was like a meditation chant that helped him calm once he was at home. He was irritable from the lack of sleep, but not hungover or dead. Had to look at the bright side.
“Hey,” Noah said as he entered the rehearsal room.
“Hey,” Kaj replied in the most neutral tone he could manage.
A part of him didn’t want to acknowledge Noah’s existence. Hated the idea of spending so much time together. Another was still pissed at him for leaving last night with some rando. A third one, however, had made peace with the fact that he was here to stay. His presence was still annoying, but it was as if Kaj’s brain was starting to understand that they didn’t need to be friends. They didn’t even need to talk. As long as they tolerated each other, the label would be happy and all the Emil drama would soon be forgotten. It was business.
Fake it ’till you believe it . Or some shit like that.
“You feeling better?” Noah asked as he sat on the opposite side of the couch where the drummer was sprawled.
“Hm?”
“Last night you looked kinda sick.”
“I’m fine.”
Noah nodded and averted his eyes. “You didn’t look like it yesterday.”
“Not your problem.”
Kaj had behaved during the last week, like Xander had asked. Hadn’t been rude to Noah, just a little snarky. But did he really think that Kaj would vent his problems to him?
Noah slumped down on the sectional, hands disappearing into the pocket of his hoodie. “I know I’m not your favorite person, but if you need to talk...”
“As if.”
“I'm just trying to… I don’t know.” Noah sighed. “Never mind.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“What—” Noah turned his face to Kaj. “It’s not pity. I’m worried. You’ve been a pain in the ass from day one, but you looked so—”
“Mind your own fucking business.”
Kaj stood up and walked away from Noah. After a few seconds of staring at the wall with his jaw clenched, he ran his fingers through the short mop of hair on top of his head, dragging his palm down the shaved back. If he wasn’t in the mood to deal with Noah on a daily basis, he definitely wasn’t today.
Kaj knew he had to work on it. He couldn’t let those flashbacks affect him so much, but they did. He became so cranky afterward he didn’t want to be in the same room with himself. Noah’s offer to talk about it only made it worse.
“Chill, dude. I was trying—”
“Stop it.” Kaj’s voice ricocheted among the four walls as he turned around. With the nightmares, Noah coming into his life, and the weight of having wanted to use last night kicking his ass, Kaj was a ticking bomb. He needed Noah to shut up, or he wouldn’t take responsibility for his actions. “Stop trying to be nice. Stop trying to help and to fucking blend into my world. You don’t belong here, no matter how well you get along with Aksel, Xander, and the rest of the crew, or how many bar strangers you fuck.”
Noah arched an eyebrow. “That right there sounds a little like jealousy.”
“Of what?”
“Of someone else fucking me.”
“I don’t give a fuck about who you fuck.”
“Why bring it up then?”
“Because you act like you’re part of this when you’re not.” Kaj gestured wildly with his hands. He wasn’t sure why he'd said that or if it made any sense to anyone but himself.
Looking bored, Noah spoke again, “What does that have to do with—”
“This is all your fault. Fuck!” Kaj ruffled his hair, averting his eyes momentarily before he attacked again. “I tried everything in my power during the meeting to decide who’d be our new vocalist to keep you away and not have to see your fucking face every day, yet here you are. So just fucking stop.”
“You did what ?” Noah’s voice vibrated with rage as he jumped to his feet.
“What you heard.” Kaj flashed him a crooked, triumphant smirk. Something like relief settled in his chest.
That visceral response sent a delicious shiver down his spine. This was what he was missing during their previous interactions—the unfiltered emotions. Kaj wanted Noah to fight back, to lose control and get mad. That way he wouldn’t feel so stupid for being alone, stuck in frozen memories that made him feel so conflicted. This way, they were on the same page.
“You’re a fucking asshole.” Noah strode toward the drummer and shoved his shoulders. His jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. “I don’t care if you don’t like me, or even if you hate me, but you don’t have the right to play with my career.”
“Are you going to hit me?” Kaj dared. Do it.
“I should. Maybe that way you’d stop treating me like a punching bag.”
“Try. Me.”
“Stop testing my fucking patience.” Noah pushed Kaj, pinning him with a forearm pressed to his throat while he propped the other hand on the wall beside his head.
“Or what? Are you going to throw a tantrum?”
“I could actually beat the shit out of you, you know?”
“More empty threats.” Kaj rolled his eyes and chuckled, letting out a lazy sigh. “Why don’t you stop talking so much and show me?”
Their bodies were so close, Kaj could feel Noah’s heat. The hardness of his muscles. His strength. His anger. Noah wasn’t the scaredy-cat he used to be. Something told Kaj that if they got tangled in an actual fight like they had years ago, he wouldn’t have the upper hand so easily anymore. But instead of fear or some sort of irritation, all he could feel was arousal. Violent. Searing. Greedy. It coursed through his body like a tidal wave of debris.
Kaj lost himself in a trance-induced state as Noah’s scent embraced him. His features, delicate in the past, were now angular, with high, prominent cheekbones and a perfectly straight nose, like a sculptor had spent a lifetime carving his face. Noah was astonishing. Silky black hair. Beautiful onyx eyes. But what had always driven Kaj mad was his lips. Soft, plump, and so delectable.
His moral compass had to be broken. Kaj despised Noah. Yet he couldn’t ignore how the embers of an old desire ignited inside the void of his heart.
“You’re rude and so fucking arrogant, you’d deserve it,” Noah gritted, their mouths barely an inch apart. Kaj could almost savor him. “But I’m not going to risk my position in the band because you’re a fucking kamikaze.”
“Like I thought, still a coward.” Kaj’s eyes fell to his mouth.
“You better start acting like an adult or—”
Kaj’s body disconnected from his brain. He stuck his tongue out and lapped Noah’s lips.
“What the—You’re fucked up.” Noah pressed his arm slightly harder against Kaj’s throat before putting some distance between them, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Been called worse.”
Noah scoffed. Before either of them could say anything else, the rehearsal room door opened.
“Morning,” Aksel said without taking his sunglasses off.
“Hungover much?” Kaj teased, readjusting his erection as he walked toward his stool.
“What gave me away?” The guitarist let himself fall on the couch and massaged his temples. “I hope Xander is throwing his guts up and calls saying he won’t make it.”
“Unlike some of us,” the bassist said as he entered, “I know how to drink.”
Aksel groaned. “Can’t we just postpone it for one day? My head is killing me.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you drank your weight in tequila last night,” Xander mocked him as he took off his coat and left it with the rest of their stuff beside Aksel. “Let’s get this started.”
Kaj cleared his throat, trying to shake off the lingering tension from his one-on-one with Noah.
He never thought they would meet again or that his body would still react to him this way, yet he couldn’t deny this man stirred things in him he hadn’t felt in a long while. It was devious and dark, but it was better than the vacuity that had ruled his life for years. Even Aksel and Xander had noticed the shift in his behavior.
They knew him well enough to see past the mask of indifference, and still, sometimes, they said it was hard to tell when he was being frank or joking. That was just how emotionally anesthetized he’d been. Until now.
As the notes of the first song filled the room, electricity crackled in the air. He wasn’t looking at Noah, but he could feel his eyes on him as he double-kicked. And fuck if that didn’t shake the animal within him awake.
Kaj played on autopilot, his body going through the motions while his thoughts raced. He couldn’t shake the image of Noah’s dark eyes plunging into his, pupils blown with a mix of perplexity and lust. He wanted more of that. Needed more.
With both palms pressed on the tiled wall, Kaj panted and left his head hanging between his arms. He tried to focus on the scalding water cascading down his back, hoping it would stop his temples from thumping and his dick from asking for more.
He’d done everything in his hand to stop this sensation of a thousand flames from spreading inside of him, but nothing had worked so far, obviously .
He had gone swimming for an hour first thing in the morning, and later he’d hit the gym, where he’d done some weightlifting and ran on the treadmill. He hated running. You’d only catch him doing so if there was a fire or if a creature from another dimension was hunting him down, but that was how desperate he was.
In the afternoon, he drove around the countryside in his ridiculously expensive car. One that, along with his two motorcycles, he didn’t need since he lived downtown and walked or rode his bike everywhere—having money as punishment made him kind of eccentric, or absurd, depending on how you looked at it.
Nevertheless, the need to fuck and destroy Noah was becoming a form of torture, an ambiguous one that pissed him off.
As animals, humans constantly seek the things that reaffirm and gratify our egos, as well as whatever gives us pleasure. Those are the basic drivers of our existence—rational thinking comes after that. So, when the delicate balance of our psyche is threatened, affronting our pride or making it impossible to satisfy our needs, something new blooms in the dark. And it’s precisely that negative emotional response Kaj had clung to in order to keep breathing.
But hatred and desire aren’t that different. While they’re on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum, they’re both obsessive and all-consuming. Forces that could end worlds.
So here he was now, waiting for the exhaustion to kick in so he could go to bed and not wake up in the middle of the night craving a fix.
Closing his eyes, Kaj wrapped a hand around his cock again and sucked in a deep breath. He slowly stroked himself while the fantasies unfolded.
“This is what I call a nice welcome.”
Kaj immediately stopped moving his hand, but he didn’t let go of his dick, waiting for it to go soft. “What are you doing here, Mads?” He sighed and put his hands on the wall again.
“And here I thought the little dude was happy to see me.”
“I haven’t gotten hard for you in years.”
“That’s so mean.”
“What are you doing here?” Kaj repeated, turning off the water tap before he opened the shower screen and stepped onto the bathmat.
“Well, the tour is over, and I didn’t feel like coming back to an empty, cold house.” Mads pouted, standing there like an idiot with his suitcase and violin case while Kaj rolled a towel around his hips.
“Is it the twenty-third already?”
“It is March twenty-third, yes. Sorry not sorry for disturbing your peace.” Mads shook his head. “Get ready. I have so much shit to talk about since you’ve been ignoring my texts.”
“Are you seriously staying?”
“Yes.” Mads cackled as he walked away. “I just arrived after a month of being away. My fridge is empty and I don’t feel like grocery shopping right now.”
“You could order takeout.”
“And eat alone?”
“Yeah, what’s the problem with that?”
“You’re such an antisocial, grumpy ogre.”
“I’m not antisocial, I’m anti-stupid. And you’re too much of that,” Kaj shouted so Mads could hear him from his room.
“I missed you, too!”
Kaj released another sigh. As annoyed as he was that Mads had interrupted his onanism session, Kaj was glad he was back. Being alone at home for so long wasn’t good for his mental health.
Kaj and Mads had been orbiting each other since he emancipated. They’d worked at the same café, grocery shopped at the same place, and even met at the cinema several times, where they used to go alone to watch VO ’90s movies, until they started going together. Months later, after learning that Kaj was living by himself in a crappy apartment no bigger than a shoe box, Mads invited him to stay with him and his grandma.
He’d been there when Kaj tried to take his own life. Encouraged him to play drums again after two years of not wanting to do anything with music. Showed him there were people he could still trust. Gave him the time he needed until he was ready to get intimate. Offered him a safe space and the freedom within their relationship to deal with his trauma.
Then the tables were reversed when Mads was about to start folk school and his grandma got really sick. Kaj was there to help them both in every way he could. It was the least he could do since they had saved his life.
Were there romantic feelings between them? Despite what people thought as they had an open relationship, yes. At some point. Until what used to inspire them turned into an unhealthy competition and date nights into a nuisance that hampered their progress when they were both trying to make themselves a name in the music industry. But when their egos healed all that was left was the friendship—the understanding, respect, and unconditional support. If Val, Aksel, and Xander suspected there was a darkness within Kaj he hadn’t shared with them, Mads had seen, touched, and tasted it.
“How have you been?” Mads asked from the couch where he was sitting with his legs crisscrossed.
“Good.”
“Your face is telling a different story.”
Kaj rolled his eyes while walking around the kitchen island. “Can we talk about that later?”
“Are you gonna talk about it later?”
“No.”
Mads chuckled.
Kaj didn’t add another word and opened the fridge, looking inside it for a few moments before finally grabbing a bottle of iced tea. “How was the tour, first chair ?” he asked, changing the topic as he sat on the other side of the couch with a knee bent, facing him.
“It was nice.”
Kaj arched an eyebrow while filling the two glasses he’d taken from the cabinet. “ Nice ? You’ve been working your ass off your entire life for this moment. You’ve actually been a pain in my ass for years with it.”
“I know, I know.” Mads looked down at his fidgeting hands and smiled, but the joy didn’t make his eyes shine. “It’s been amazing. Every city, the concerts, people asking me for photos and autographs… It was like living a dream, but Gran isn’t here to see me become a star.”
“Yeah...”
“It sucks.” Mads huffed. “A few more months and she could have seen me getting up there. All she ever wanted after the shit I went through as a kid, with Dad abandoning us and Mom killing herself, was that my dreams turned into a reality.”
Kaj twisted his mouth. As sarcastic as he was, the way Mads talked about the sad story of his life, like it was a bad joke, was always disturbing.
“I just wish I could have shown her the man she helped me become. To see the pride in her smile and the love in her eyes one more time. I wouldn’t be where I am without her.” Mads sniffed and rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “Fuck, I miss her.”
It truly hurt that she wasn’t around anymore. Kaj hadn’t known any of his grandparents, and Birgit had been everything—a mother, a grandmother, and a guardian angel when he needed it the most. And now it was just the two of them, which was one of the reasons he didn’t mind it when Mads invited himself over. He had inherited her house, and while it looked nice and cozy with all the renovations they’d done, Mads hated being there alone.
“You know,” Kaj started, “you don’t need to prove anything. She always knew you’d make it, even if you didn’t see it yourself. She was proud of you.” He reached for Mads’s leg and gave him a light squeeze.
Mads looked behind Kaj through the panoramic glass window with a faint smile full of melancholy. “Thank you.”
“No need. Just stop being so hard on yourself, yeah?”
“Aye, sir.” He sighed. “Anyway, how have you been?”
“Could be better.”
“The Emil drama?”
“Yeah.” Kaj nodded.
“I know you kicked his ass, but… are you okay?”
The question sounded similar to the one he just asked, but Kaj knew the meaning was completely different.
“I am now.”
“Good.”
Silence settled for a couple of minutes as they blankly stared into nothingness. Kaj happily picked at the little fuzzballs on his tartan pajama pants until Mads spoke again.
“So, who’s the new vocalist then? Because I haven’t seen any announcements of the tour being cancelled.”
Kaj bit the inside of his cheek, hesitating whether to tell him who he was or not. Jealousy had never been a thing in their relationship, unless it was Noah S?rensen they were talking about. And although they weren’t together anymore, that man was like hitting a raw nerve for Mads and his ego.
However, lying about it didn’t make sense. The band was going to announce who the new vocalist was next week, so he would find out, anyway.
“It’s Noah.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah...”
“As in your first, right?”
Kaj nodded.
“What a plot twist. Didn’t see that coming.” Mads laughed creepily.
“Me neither. And I hate it. I hate it so much. Seeing him every day, having to listen to him sing… It’s infuriating.”
“Sure.”
Kaj glared at Mads.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He raised his palms apologetically, but he was not sorry at all. Kaj knew him well enough.
“ Sure ,” Kaj parroted. “It’s been ages. I’ve changed. He’s changed. The only thing that’s still the same is the bitter taste he left.”
“Mm-hmm...”
“Stop doing that.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Mads said as he grabbed his phone from the coffee table and typed something on it. “Oh, here he is.”
“Who?”
“Noah. And he’s looking hotter than ever.” The bitterness in his tone didn’t go unnoticed as he turned the phone’s screen toward Kaj with a picture of Noah on it.
“So what?”
“You don’t wanna fuck him as much as you wanna punch him?”
Yes . “No.”
“You know I can read you like an open book, right?”
“Shut that hole in your face.”
Once again, Mads cackled. “I won’t ask more about it. But, dude, you gotta admit fate is so funny.”
“Yeah, so fucking much. Can we change the topic?”
“What do you wanna talk about, then?”
“You’re the one who wanted to talk. I just wanna eat.” Kaj unlocked the screen of his phone. “Fried chicken?”
“Whatever you want, sweet cheeks.”