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Author's Intro

Here we go then with a new story! This one's been on Patreon already, and features two characters from what's going to be a longer work. This will eventually be adapted into it, but for now I'm keeping it as a snapshot. I imagine there will be around five parts to this.

One thing I've realised during a quick readthrough is that because my regular readers know who these two are, there isn't much description of Hunter, so if you're read the tags he's the ermine, and Alex who narrates the story is the snow leopard.

As usual, if you like what you read here then please do check out my published books available on most ebook platforms under the pen-name of Todd Aldrington, and I'm also on https://www.patreon.com/toddaldrington But I promise I'll post the rest of this story for free here.

* * *

It's nice to sleep on something that's not moving for a change.

I mean the tour bus. Pervert.

Tonight though I've also had an unexpected pleasure: I moved out of the main crew bus and into my boss's special one. Here's a little taste of who Rico is: he's made so much money on this tour that he's not giving his band a raise, he's bought a new RV for his guitars, and he's put his tech in them.

So here's who I am: I've dutifully moved all Rico's babies into the new family touring home, and on the same night Rico decided to take a week off the road to go and take care of some non-guitar family stuff in L.A. So I picked up his best guitar, a white Gibson ES35, worth about ten grande (more than double that if Rico's boast that it once belonged to Alex Lifeson from Rush is actually true), found the band practicing (as expected during their boss's week off) and said 'Can I jam?'

Dumb question, they always let me jam. Of all the secrets I keep, the fact that I can play on a similar par to our boss isn't one of them. Except tonight I wanted to test a theory: these guys _really _needed a break from Rico's jazz-rock-blues zone where no mistake was tolerated. So when Darcy the lioness on keyboards said 'What are we playing?' I said two words that normally strike disgust into musicians like these guys:

'Blink 182.'

That brought Hunter to life. More so than usual. When I'd wanted to jam and said 'Let's try and sound like Dream Theater' that had done it for him. Now it was like I'd stick his tail in a plug socket.

'Fuck _yeah _we're gonna!' He said. 'Holy shit Snowball, is that Fantasma? Rico's gonna fucking kill you!'

Just like Rico to call his favourite guitar the Spanish word for ghost. 'How come?' I said, with a shrug as I shut the case. 'Who's gonna tell?'

Instead of saying 'Hellooo, dweeb-boys, what the fuck does a keyboard do in a Blink song?' she took up the mic. Jax the bass playing antelope, as usual, didn't say anything at all. They carried the 'There's nothing that guy can't play' without words, right down to being chilled about how most people would naturally use the male pronouns now even thought Jax was born Jaqui, and went through being Jack as a teenager to deciding they weren't quite one or the other and combined the two, by the that time looking overwhelmingly male. Who cared? There really _was _nothing Jax couldn't play, including Blink 182. Which sounded amazing in Darcy's voice. Tyler, Rico's porcupine rhythm and back-up lead player, let me take lead. We played the whole of Enema of the State, then I asked for 'Online Songs' and let Darcy play Fantasma while I just sang, because that was one of those songs that was so fun it made me want to forget playing the guitar and just be the frontman.

'Hey Techsnep,' Darcy said. (She always seems to forget my name, or at least the name I go by nowadays, but as long as I never hear my real name come out of her mouth, even by accident, I'll let her call me pretty much anything.) 'Rico can say whatever he likes about this kinda music, but here's something I know.' She handed me Fantasma back. 'When he auditions his drummers, you know what he does?'

Hunter laughed and flicked one of his sticks into the air like a baton and caught it. 'You tell him this and Rico will make sure you never work again.'

'Fuck him,' Darcy said. 'According to Rico, you know you've got the right drummer when there's one song they can nail.'

'Songs with seriously cool drum stuff,' I thought. 'Rico. Something unexpected. It'd be cool but not too flashy.' I put on a theatrical thinking look, knowing I was going to get it wrong. 'Got it! Phil Collins. It'd only be In the Air Tonight.'

'Heavier,' Hunter said.

'Muzzle by the Smashing Pumpkins.'

Hunter gave me such a look I wondered if he actually did have a boner. 'We're totally doing that in a minute, but no. Go even more un-Rico than that.'

Darcy rolled her eyes. 'Enough already, teenage geek boys. It's Basket Case by Green Day. We gonna audition Hunter?'

'Shit,' I said, shaking my head. 'Yeah, sure, gimme a minute, it's been a long time since I...' When did I last do that one? I wasn't really asking myself so much as trying to push thoughts of my old band out of my head. The last time I played this was when it was a request. I was 16 and we were playing a reunion gig for people who had gone to our highschool a little while before us. There was one guy who'd gotten expelled for making death threats worthy of a Wes Craven flick but really it was because he _had _had mental health issues and I really didn't want to look at him while I was singing that song, but only because I'd always thought it was a shame, because Kayden was actually pretty cool. Cool enough that my dad had let him take the 'get out of town' option instead of getting sectioned. Cool enough that he was back for the reunion and had somehow been allowed entry.

It took one simple thing to clear those days from my head: there was something Hunter did with that drum intro and repeated on every 'I think I'm cracking up' that just took it to another level. It was like the same technique that nailed that Neil Peart-esque thing he always did where he rolled down the entire kit like the end of 'Natural Science' or 'Limelight'. He'd added that to a Green Day song, extra notes between the already rapid gunfire drum-fill the whole world knew in the middle of that song.

God I loved Hunter, right down to how he was the only drummer that Rico hadn't bullied off a tour, because Rico had somehow realised that Hunter _couldn't _be bullied. It was like some nonchalant immunity, and instead of hating it Rico had come to respect it. What the hell was it? Rico always seemed to hate full of life people because he clearly feared them taking the spotlight away from him in any room, or just hated their flamboyance, but Hunter wasn't flamboyant. The whole crew knew he was gay, but he was the kind of gay that passed for straight until you walked past his trailer to hear whoever he was with either howling, growling, or plain begging. Maybe Rico just kept him because he seemed to want his latest band to be token-diverse.

I don't care about anyone's reasons for much tonight. I just want to jerk off thinking about Hunter. He's immune to the risks of being out too. I can't even make peace with how I'm probably bisexual. I want to be one or the other and feel like my stupid body and brain finally made a decision for me, and lately I think I want to be gay.

I thought everything with Finn back home had killed that side of me off, until halfway through my life of hiding from the law on tour busses, I met Rico for the second time in my life, and then Rico hired Hunter, and I knew I'd dealt with exactly nothing.

Tonight though I just need to get off.

Forget what anyone says about tours and groupies, getting your rocks off with someone in a top bunk that makes the bus feel like we're all packed into a morgue most nights is seriously uncomfortable. Thankfully nobody in this band's on heroin, because I often think sleeping like this feels like a rehearsal for where you'd end up after an OD. Add 80kph to that already wrong-for-sex atmosphere and you don't want your dick in a tight place.

Tonight though, we're not moving, and I've got Hunter to think about and a wicked hard-on take care of.

There might be no heroin, but a couple of nights I've seen Hunter so pumped up both during and after a performance that I'd damn sure he'd crack-piped some meth. I'm no expert on spotting who's on what, but Hunter reminded me uncomfortably of Finn those nights, except that Hunter could make something amazing happen while on drugs, if he even was and it wasn't just him having the time of his life, but damn, that extra hype and looking around more was exactly what I saw on Finn right before he started loosing control of his.

All I'd done to try and reassure myself was ask Darcy 'Hey, just between you and me, did Hunter get hold of something? Like maybe something blue?'

Darcy gave me that friendly but firm look I needed from her. 'One, it's never really blue in real life. Two, even if he did, which I seriously doubt even if he is wired as fuck tonight, we're not asking questions about it because we do _not _need Rico kicking him off this tour. So we let Rico ask, and we let Hunter do whatever he does that always keeps him here no matter what.'

'Got it.' I nodded, and thought about going to the bar to get another vodka and coke in the hope it would dull my need to ask Hunter about it myself. That's when Darcy caught hold of my jacket sleeve and turned me back around.

'Hey,' she said. 'I never told you this, okay? There was one night when it was just me and him packing kit up. I got him talking in a way he doesn't usually talk. He told me something personal. I'm not gonna tell you what it was, but let's put it this way: if there's a guy who knows life's too short for fucking up with drugs then it's Hunter. I don't think he's doing meth. I think this is him when everything seems a little too intensely cool and he doesn't quite know how to express it even on a drum kit.'

'Yeah, that was Finn and a piano once.'

'Who?'

'Never mind. Shit from back home. Ex...friend of mine. I thought he was just on meth but it was worse than that. Some shit happened. That's why I got on a road in the first place. I need this tour too. So of course I'm not going to Rico with this shit. That's why it's you tonight instead.'

Darcy and I liked each other. We'd done each other good a couple of times on quiet tour-bus nights. Hunter had once said 'Hey Darc, tomorrow night can you fuck Dylan a bit more quietly? I really need better sleep.' The little bastard. He was the heaviest sleeper on the entire band and crew combined, and he'd faked it to listen to us doing it? I'd have been pissed if it had been anyone but him.

'Dylan.' Darcy kept me there again. I'd long since started getting used to my cover name that I no longer worried that one day I'd respond to Alex because someone called another person that and I mistook it for them trying to get my attention instead. 'If you like Hunter, tell him. Because everyone knows, including him. Isn't it about time you did something about it?'

I shook my head. 'I'm straight, Darcy. I like Hunter because he's a cool person.'

'Are you fuck, and even if the second part of that's true, you'll think he's cooler if you actually just do go and have sex with him.'

'If he wanted that with me he'd have sought me out for it already and you know he would. Besides, even if I was gay, I'd be too scared. We've all been past the bus when he's with guys. Wouldn't _you _be pants-pissing terrified?' I knew she'd probably let me have the last word, but I couldn't resist one thing: 'What do you suppose he's into?'

She shrugged. 'Dunno. Apart from one thing, but everyone knows about that.'

'I don't.'

'Oh come on, snow brain. Why do you think he's always buying sneakers? The guy's got a whole suit case full of them. Rico lets him have an extra one because without them, no mojo. It's not just a fashion thing.'

'Your reckon? Come on, it's just a thing for showing off how he can afford designer clothes.'

'Guess again. There is _nothing _that guy doesn't know about feet. He might have been one hell of a podiatrist if he'd had med-school smarts and been able not to get a hard-on as soon as an attractive person took their socks off. I let him take mine off one night. I needed to relax. I figured if there was one guy who'd know how to give a good foot massage, it was him. Oh holy _fuck _did I get an education. He got hard for me but it was in a totally nice and non-pervert way, and he totally didn't want sex with me. He liked giving me a nice time, like a gentleman. He actually acted a bit deliberately charming. It wasn't quite him. But God my feet needed it.'

I was heading for a twilight zone hearing this from her.

'For God's sake, snep. Go _on. _Not even Rico cares who you stick your dick in. Nobody'd even care if you genuinely aren't gay but you just wanted to fuck Hunter anyway because he's Hunter, and you've not had sex in three years of touring. Apart from twice with me.'

Not true, but irrelevant. 'What does it take to never have this conversation with you again?'

'Dyl, I'm a queen-of-the-cats type lioness, and I gave you a pretty damn good time, right down to how you were so up for it you actually did_ _make me come. Congratulations, you're good at sex. Yes I believe you once had a serious long-term girlfriend and before whatever went wrong, you were having a good time. But was what we did together really the highest point you could possibly reach? Because I don't think so. I think you need to be in love.' She smiled. It became a lion's grin, and she flicked her eyes at Hunter.

I sighed. 'I'm not in love with Hunter.' I left a long pause. 'I'm maybe a little bit interested. Or maybe a infatuated. It's cool. Be it's not love.'

She thought for a moment. 'You know Hunter's an orphan, right?'

'No,' I said. 'Why would I know that? That's not exactly something a lot of orphans advertise.'

'No, but he's open about it if you get him talking. No secret. But you wanna know what I think?'

I always want to know what Darcy Whitman thinks, but the last thing I'm ever going to do is tell her that. All I had to do that night was what I always do in that situation: say nothing and wait.

'There's stuff Hunter _doesn't _say about where he comes from, but here's what I think it is from hints he's dropped. I think some pair of stupid fucks put him in a basket on an orphanage doorstep because Mommy couldn't handle how she had sex with someone who either wasn't another ermine, just something similar. Or maybe Daddy _was _the "right species".' She said it so well I could hear the inverted commas and knew what was coming next. 'But he wasn't a white one. You get what I'm saying?'

'Even if you're right, why are you telling me?'

'Who do you think Hunter is underneath, Dylan? Look at him. Everywhere he goes, people see a 'cross-breed.' They call it 'person of mixed ancestry' now, like we aren't all technically that. There's no term for it that doesn't sound like it's meant to be an insult somehow. People might try, but the whole point is people like Hunter still get looked at like they might be the wrong sort of different. They get arrested more, they get paid less, they get blamed for things that are nothing to do with them, they're a scapegoat. Even some people who recognise how wrong that all is still have hang-ups, because that's how prejudice works. Unless?'

'Unless what?'

'Think about it, snep.'

I thought for a few minutes while we had another drink each. I didn't know where she wanted me to go with this. 'Where's Hunter from?'

'Colorado.'

'He ever tell you what his foster family are like? Or did nobody ever adopt him? Did he learn to play drums on a kit donated to an orphanage and drive everyone nuts with the noise?' I could just imagine it all too easily.

'It's probably an obvious and dumb question all at once, but why not, y'know, ask Hunter all this?'

I smiled. 'And there it is. The point. You're trying to make me so irresistibly reporter-style curious about him that that's exactly what I do, and you think somehow it's going to strike up a conversation that ends with him asking me if he can fuck my pants off, maybe just to shut me up asking questions.'

'Yeah, I did think that might work. But keep thinking, snow boy. I'm gonna go put my head down. Have a good night.'

Am I irritated tonight because now that I have time to think after the fun of today's trailer-move and illicit jam session is over, I still have no idea what sudden thought I'm supposed to have that gives me a life-changing epiphany that somehow ends up with me having the night of my life with Hunter Kershaw? The mixed origin ermine, who I never think of as being mixed, or cross-breed, or even as being anything but Hunter Kershaw. Probably, yeah. But it's best I just stay irritated.

Having anything I believe to be an epiphany and approaching Hunter with it will probably end in disaster somehow. The last time I felt like this about anyone, it was Finn and Bonnie both at once, and look how that fucking ended. Finn's in and out of psych wards all the time, Bonnie's lucky to be alive and not in prison, and both of them wish I was dead. Not to mention that I _should _be in prison, according to the way the law works, and sooner or later this grand effort to stay out of it is going to fail and I'm going to have to do my time.

Not today. Not tonight. Maybe not for quite a few more nights after this. But fuck it, I'm still not poisoning Hunter Kershaw's life by inviting him into mine. I don't deserve anyone like him even looking at me. I'm lucky I've got that. I'm lucky he wants to have elicit jam sessions with me where we play music our boss despises and it's half _because _Rico despises it. I want to stay lucky this time.

So no, I'm still not going to try and have that good night Darcy wanted me to have several weeks ago and go and talk to Hunter until I end up being his yeowling, begging sex-slave. Now that I've got Rico's new trailer straight and set up for me to do my job in, and now that I've had my jam session on Fantasma and my college rock fix to boot, I'm going to turn in, jerk my dick off thinking about Hunter and enjoy how even after six months on the road with him, the secret thoughts where he makes me come are the one thing that stop me being angry about how I fucked things up with Bonnie. I should be on these tours waiting to go home to her at the end. I should have completed my community service and finished college all in the same year, and then I would be free for good. I should have waited.

Instead I snapped one day when my comserv supervisor docked me an hour. One stupid hour. Why did it even set me off? Why did I have to go and be chimp-mode Alex right when I needed to be a grown up and just deal with shit?

'Look, I was on the phone for that hour instead of picking up trash because my friend's sick and there's issues I can't avoid, and I didn't even want that call but his psychiatrist said it was urgent that we talked together, and how can I go to the hospital when I'm here? Doing com-serv. Picking up little bits of trash because that's somehow more important than looking after a person.'

'Mr Shaeffer.' Like calling me that took the edge off her. 'I'm sorry about your problems.' Was she fuck. 'But we're here to pick up trash. You spent an hour not picking up trash, and that means the others get to log that hour and you don't.'

I should have taken it. I should have handled it the way someone with a smarter head would have. IE Someone like Hunter, who life could throw anything at and he'd do the right thing. Instead I did what I'd always resisted doing to my mother, to any teacher who ever disciplined me unfairly, to Dad after _his _worst behaviour. To anyone. I turned to that dog, stared her down, let her walk back towards the bus and I gave it to her.

'You bitch.' That turned everyone's heads pretty quick. 'What is it, you don't like cats? You dock me an hour when someone else needed my time more than you did? well you're lucky. There are cats who'd give you fucking claws for that.'

Needless to say, I wasn't allowed back on the bus. I walked all the way back into Cedar Rapids knowing I was probably going to be arrested for threatening her even though technically I hadn't and might just get away with it if anyone corroborated how I'd said what I'd said, but who was I kidding? I _was _imagining her getting a claw swipe. I'd gotten away with a lot already in the eyes of many people, most of all Mom and Dad, but implying I might have done something like that? That was going to tear it almost as much as actually doing it.

That's when I knew it was get out of town time. My first lucky break was knowing I'd already been offered a chance. That tour bus that was in town with Albino Dragons needed a new tech. I'd said no thanks, I had stuff I had to finish before I could take off on the touring life. Was it too late to change my mind? As it turned out, no. I had a condition to add though: I was going to change my name, and they'd have to help me live as my new identity, including by paying me in cash because I no longer wanted to use the bank account in my real name.

So I became Dylan Highwood. Who's now trying not to be ashamed of one day three and half years ago while he makes himself come thinking about a guy he can't have.

It's not working. If this keeps happening, I'm going to crack within a few more months and decide it's time to go back to Cedar Rapids and face the one kind of music I'd almost kill to avoid. That can't happen, the killing part _or _the facing. I can't leave this tour, because I can't walk away from Hunter, Darcy or even Rico like this. Not after everything Rico's done to help me stay here. He might be a dick, but he's my kind of dick, and besides, I'm worse, and as long as everyone's attention is on Rico then it's not on me and what I've done.

So falling asleep limp and ashamed of myself is okay, because tomorrow I'll be ready to get up and go to work again, making sure my forty-five year old boss isn't reduced to the level of a five year old whose parents won't buy him a toy if one of his grown-up toys is even _slightly _out of tune. That will clear these vibes out of me. Maybe I'll just invite Hunter in to look at my new set-up. If I play it right, I might even be able to get Rico to let Hunter travel in here with me if I say that I've gotten used to the way Hunter snores and now I'm finding I can't get used to falling asleep myself, because without Hunter all I can hear is the bus and I hate that sound (I actually don't, but I'm getting creative already...and that's how I know that whole idea is too risky and I need to stop it now and just fall asleep with only Rico's awesome collection of guitars for company.)

There's a knock on the door. I'm ignoring it.

About a minute passes and the knock comes again. This time there's a voice.

'Hey snep, I know you're not asleep. It's barely eight o-clock.'

Oh no. Seriously no.

This time the knocking's insistent. 'Open the goddamn door, snow ball! Come on, don't be an asshole.'

'I'm working!' I decide, in my most irritated voice.

Laughter follows. 'You're in _bed, _you little liar! I can hear the covers moving.'

No bluff. Hunter always wears ear-plugs so despite being pounded with drum sound all the time, his hearing really would be that good.

'Come on you fucker, let me in. There's something I wanna talk to you about.'

Christ, Darcy, what the hell have you done? Hunter wouldn't be here saying that if you hadn't said something. Probably tried the same sort of act on him that you did on me in reverse, only he didn't just bite, he took the bait knowing it was bait, and not with his mouth, so now he's going to flash out of the water and unleash some sort of hell on not only the fisherman, but any goddamn thing he wants. Just so he can laugh and say 'Surprise!' afterwards.

Goddamn it.

Why am I about to open the door?