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ready on your mark

Kirri. Aussie. Music junkie/writer. Hi.

My tastes include but are definitely not limited to: Foo Fighters, The Beatles, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders, Split Enz, Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Live, Divinyls, The Cars, Garbage, Nirvana, Tom Petty, Crowded House, Iggy Pop, Blondie, The Who, The Police, The Doors, RHCP, David Bowie, Thirsty Merc, Placebo, QOTSA, Them Crooked Vultures, Silverchair, Amy Winehouse, and The Presidents of the USA.

Please don't tell anyone how I live.

Aneurysm Network

So this is the Grohlkins fic i’ve been working on (read: slamming my head on the table and nearly crying over because I felt like a shitty-ass writer while I was struggling to string words together).

Yes, this is slash. Don’t read it and then whine about it if you don’t like the genre, or I may have to kneecap you.

Sanctuary

Another sleepless night. There had been far too many of those lately and they were starting to take their toll. Too many nights spent staring at the roof, restless feet tangling in crisp, unfamiliar hotel sheets, unbearable silence broken now and then by frustrated sighs. Taylor sensed the change in rhythm of the city outside his window and guessed that dawn was approaching. He’d need to be up in an hour for another gruelling round of radio interviews. The mere thought of facing a barrage of noise and mundane questions from ill-prepared disc jockeys was depressing enough, on top of everything else that kept him awake every night.

Taylor laboriously rolled onto his side and gazed through the darkness at the pillow beside him. He reached out and ran his open palm along the cool, bare sheet. He wondered why he consented to doing these interviews when he knew it wasn’t really him that the media wanted to see. It wasn’t as if either party didn’t make the most of it – Taylor would always burst into the room with a grin from ear to ear, full of beans, and he’d win every journalist over with his charm and smart-alec remarks. But he knew at the end of the day that he was a consolation, that he was what they got when they couldn’t get Dave. They always wanted Dave.

He always wanted Dave.

They’d spent many days and nights in hotel rooms just like this, their sanctuary from a world that threatened to overwhelm them. They were safe and sheltered within the private universe they created for themselves, a place born from hunger and trust. When the shows were over, the autographs were signed and the cameras stopped flashing, they knew they could retreat to either Dave or Taylor’s room, lock the door and let it all float away.

Taylor raised his hand to the pillow and thought about the many times he’d fluttered his eyes open in the middle of the night to see Dave sleeping next to him, his mouth dropped open slightly and his breath warm against Taylor’s face. He always clutched Taylor in one way or another as he slept – sometimes he simply held his hand, while at other times he draped an arm over his hip, pressing his chest against his back. It didn’t feel right now, waking up without Dave holding him. The hotel beds felt too wide, the sheets too cool against his skin. He’d come to rely on the rhythm of Dave’s heartbeat to soothe him into sleep.

He rolled onto his back again, huffed and clawed through his hair. This was too much. He missed the many different levels of intimacy they shared. He wanted to be back in the room in Copenhagen, crying with laughter as he watched Dave impersonating boy bands they were watching on TV. There were so many times that they laughed until it hurt. Dave discovered Taylor was ticklish and sneakily attacked whenever he could, delighting in making Taylor squeal and squirm. Dave would be hysterical over Taylor’s inability to repeat jokes he’d heard just hours before. They laughed about everything and nothing.

Whenever Taylor tried to watch a movie he was reminded of the comfortable silences between them, as rare as it was for either of them to be quiet for very long. They’d typically watch movies with Dave sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of the bed, and Taylor propped up on his elbows behind him, absent-mindedly toying with the hairs at the base of Dave’s neck. When Dave knew that Taylor’s back was causing him pain, he would wordlessly move up onto the bed beside him and run his calloused fingers up and down the drummer’s spine, kneading his aching muscles into submission. Taylor had seen countless massage therapists and osteopaths but only Dave knew how to untie those knots, when to apply careful pressure and when to do nothing except stroke him tenderly, feeling the blonde relax under his touch.

Dave loved Taylor’s smooth, youthful skin. He spent what felt like hours tracing his fingertips along the surface, getting to know all of the dips and bumps. He’d rest his head on Taylor’s torso and kiss his birthmark. He’d close his eyes as his lips followed his finger’s trail, memorising every inch of his body, reading him by Braille. Dave loved to drag his tongue inside the ridges where his abdomen met his hips, the ‘v’ that made all who beheld it quake with desire. Sometimes when he was with other people he would let them touch him in the same spot, but it was never quite the same. He would always return to Dave and whenever their bodies connected again it felt exactly as it should, a subtle yet beautiful current coursing a fraction of an inch beneath the surface.

Taylor was a bundle of nerves now. It wasn’t just his back – he was rigid from head to toe. It went without saying that pain medication was out of the question. He needed sweet relief. He longed for the time when he was Dave’s and Dave was his.

He needed to see Dave’s brown eyes staring warmly down at him and the corners of his mouth curling into a small smile as he caressed his face. He sighed for those fingers exploring the texture of his lips before they slipped beneath his head and Dave’s mouth closed over his. Dave massaged Taylor’s tongue with his own and allowed a soft moan to escape. He needed Dave’s weight on his chest, his hardness against his thigh.

Nothing could begin to describe the sheer rapture he experienced when Dave was inside him, warm bodies locked together in perfect rhythm. Taylor squeezed his fists into tight balls and shook them out in frustration as he remembered Dave’s nails digging into his shoulders and the tickling in his ear as Dave hissed his name over and over again. He could barely hear himself when he’d tell Dave to go harder, go faster, breathless and giddy from the intensity. In those moments there truly was nothing but this room and this man. Jagged breathing, whispers and moans, the exquisite agony of release…Taylor’s back would arch and his entire body would shudder, the climax often so strong and all-consuming that it seemed as if time had stopped.

Taylor grunted in annoyance and threw the covers to one side, hoisting himself to the side of the bed and burying his face in his hands. Sleep had escaped him yet again and once his mind was on this path, there was no way he was going to get any sort of rest. He couldn’t allow himself to have such thoughts anymore. He could no longer have Dave and so it was futile to want him so badly.

Somebody else occupied Dave’s mind and bed now. Somebody else knew the taste of his lips, the warmth of his mouth, the saltiness of his seed. Another person would be enveloped in his arms late at night, nuzzled in the crook of his neck, feeling the love and protection that he once knew. From the day that he’d met her, his heart plummeted to his stomach when he realised that what he had with Dave was over. Of course they would always be band mates, best friends and kindred spirits, but Dave was about to turn over the keys to their sanctuary and he wasn’t ready to close the door. He gave short responses when Dave broached the subject with him, trying to act like he was happy for his friend and that he wasn’t heartsick. He didn’t want to hear that this girl “could be the one” and that Dave “wanted to commit to her”. Why couldn’t Dave commit to him and live every day the way they had since they’d met?

They carried on as if nothing had changed in their friendship, still riffing with each other in interviews with the familiar to-and-fro that had become their trademark. Their stage dynamic and collaborative spark was as strong as ever. They kept the I-love-you exchanges in their shows and Taylor knew that Dave meant what he said one way or another, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell his friend that each time they did it, he died a little inside.  

Taylor looked over at the door. He’d lost count of the nights he’d spent staring at doors like these, hoping against hope that he’d hear a determined knock and that Dave would be on the other side, begging for Taylor to take him back. But nights stretched on into weeks and then months. He’d lost himself in someone else and didn’t know how to return, had no idea what it was he was supposed to return to.

By now the sun had almost risen and there was no point in trying to get some rest – before long there would be a loud rap at the door acting as his wake-up call. He wearily rose to his feet and steadied himself with a hand against the wall, dizzy from sleep deprivation. He shuffled into the bathroom, flicked the light switch and turned on the hot water in the shower. As he pulled off his boxer shorts he caught a glimpse of himself in the vanity mirror and bit his lip at the sight of the gaunt, exhausted man staring back at him. He knew he would have to move on. He needed to sleep someday. If he kept yearning for someone he could no longer have, he didn’t know if he could stay in the band. Besides that, a treasured friendship was at stake.

In the meantime, he would have to learn to deal with empty rooms, empty beds and empty arms.