Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (3 page)

That was Mackey’s first couple of days in the house.

He arrived and looked around in appreciation. “All this?” he asked quietly. Blake was loud—he toured the outside with the swimming pool and the downstairs with the gym, whooping and hollering the whole time.

Mackey just looked around with big gray eyes, and Trav wondered what was going on behind them.

“Yeah, Mackey. I had control of your finances for a bit—you can look at the numbers, but with all of you here, you still have plenty to manage.”

Mackey smiled faintly. “Would you believe I didn’t even think about that?” he asked, full of self-deprecation. “I’m just so damned excited we have a house.”

Trav smiled back the same way, because Mackey was being
damned
quiet, and he didn’t want to scare him. “Would you like to see your room? I ended up ordering the furniture myself, but—”

“Thank you,” Mackey said, tilting his head. “I’d love to see it.”

Trav had taken pains with Mackey’s room. The biggest window faced the backyard, so when the drapes were open, you could see the pool and the fanciful flowered frieze that surrounded the backyard for privacy. Trav had picked the drapes, simple and bright blue against the white of the room. The furniture was a warm wood, and the bunk bed wasn’t the simple military cot style—no. The bottom bunk was a queen-sized bed, and the top bunk arched over the head of the bottom one. Both beds were made up, one with red and the other with green—bright, simple colors for Mackey. The desk set matched the bed set, and Trav had included a music stand, a full keyboard setup, and a rack on the wall for Mackey’s guitars.

Mackey animated when he took in the music corner. “Hey-hey!
That’s
what I’m talking about.” He did a slow pan of the room, which included a stack of framed concert posters Trav had gathered for him but hadn’t put up. “You didn’t want to choose for me?” he asked.

Trav shrugged. “I felt bad enough ordering the furniture without your input.”

Mackey grimaced. “Sorry about that—I kept planning, but I sort of had my head up in my own ass—”

“In other places,” Trav finished for him, and they both stopped awkwardly.

Mackey laughed weakly and rubbed his mouth. “It’s like you know all my secrets, and I don’t even know my own room,” he said after a long, pregnant pause.

Trav nodded, figuring. He’d dreamed about seeing Mackey jumping up and down in excitement like a puppy, because Trav had seen glimpses of the playful Mackey even under his worst moments. But Mackey lived up enough to other people’s fantasies when he was on stage. It was Trav’s job to let him be himself.

“Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have, like, a fucking hug or something? I really just want to take a nap and hear the quiet, but I’m feeling so lo—”

Trav didn’t let him finish.

Ah, God, how good he felt, how real, in the circle of Trav’s arms. Trav crushed that slight, sturdy body against his own, and when Mackey went pliant against him, Trav had a sudden, disturbing impression of what making love would be like. All of Mackey’s lightning in a velvet bottle. Trav shivered for a minute and tried to keep his prurient interests to himself.

But it was no use. Mackey knew his secrets too.

“Are you as fucking horny as I am?” Mackey asked, muffled against Trav’s chest.

“God, yes.”

“It was like jerking off was an art form in rehab, you know that, right?”

Trav’s skin sang with Mackey so close. He shivered, clenched Mackey tighter. “We can’t,” he muttered. “Not when you just got out—”

“I know,” Mackey said, surprising him. “Not… I gotta not be addicted to you too.”

Trav groaned. “God, Mackey, I’ll move out if you—”

“No!” Mackey looked up at him. “No. ’Cause someday, I’ll be okay in my own skin, okay? ’Cause we got to go record this album and start this tour, and you and me are gonna be together, and I gotta think that you and me are gonna be together. Just not….” He rested his cheek against Trav’s chest.

“Not just this moment,” Trav finished, and Mackey made sort of a purring sound in his chest.

“No.”

But soon. Trav could feel it. Either he’d have to leave, let this thing between them die, or it was going to happen soon. Trav, famed for his self-control, was hard and aching from a simple hug, and the touch of Mackey’s skin against his, the warmth of his body, made Trav shake.

Soon.

M
ACKEY
SETTLED
in a day at a time. That first day, he spent a lot of his time in his room, knocking around, hanging posters, putting his ass print on the bed (Mackey’s words), and getting on the phone and ordering three big ficus trees to put in the sunny spot under his window.

“I really want a dog,” he told Trav, “but we’re going on tour, what? Right after Christmas? I may have to settle for a ferret or something. Those things can travel with you.”

Trav wasn’t surprised. It was a standard rehab technique: the guy who got high because he didn’t give a crap about himself would possibly stay sober if he had to feed a fish or a cat or a dog—or a ferret.

Or a ficus.

(Blake’s choice was fish—Trav sort of liked the fish tank. It was peaceful, it was decorative, and guppies didn’t have the mortality rate that ficus trees did. Trav privately asked Astrid to double check the ficus trees when she could to make sure Mackey wasn’t watering them to death. He also started researching purse dogs, because dogs he knew, but ferrets were right out of his ken.)

So Mackey slept a lot in the first few days, and within a week, they were back in the studio.

Where Trav got to see Mackey shine.

For one thing, they all knew he’d been writing like a lunatic in rehab. They got to the studio planning to do all of the stuff they’d been practicing
before
rehab as well as the songs he’d sent from the place. And
then
Mackey pulled out five different notebooks—some of them obviously with pages ripped out—and passed them around.

“I wrote forty-fucking-five songs in rehab,” he said grimly. “Instrumentals and fuckin’ all. You guys gotta play this shit, and we can only record fifteen. Take a look at what I’ve got, decide on the ones that make you curious, and we’ll go from there.”

“Are we keeping the songs we were working on before?” Stevie asked, not complaining, just making sure.

“I figure half of ’em,” Mackey said. “There’s some good work there, some hard hooks, but not all of it was my best work. This here—this is my best work. I figure we pick the very best shit so the CD sells like a motherfucker, and we work on the rest of it on the road. There’ll be bootleg YouTube shit out the yang, and we’ll have another CD in a year.”

Trav tried not to gape. God,
he
was supposed to be the manager here, and for a minute, he thought about charging into the studio, grabbing Mackey by the sleeve, and pulling him out with an “Uhm, excuse the fuck out of me, but….”

And then he saw that Grayson was nodding.

“Good idea,” Grayson said. “If you guys are out of the country and want to record, let me know. You going to Europe?”

“Sixteen stops,” Trav confirmed, because he’d made those bookings himself.

“Ireland?” Grayson said hopefully. “I’ve always wanted to visit.”

Trav had to laugh. Well, it was pretty much the middle of the tour. “Dublin, then,” he muttered. “I’ll start making contacts for studio time.”

And Trav’s little ego tantrum was effectively erased by the
stunning
competence and creative brilliance that was McKay James Sanders when he was clean, sober, and on a fucking roll.

“The I’m Sorry Song” got a unanimous vote. So did the song called “Fiddlefuckin’ Around,” another one called “Window,” and “Words in a Glowing Box.”  So did Trav’s song, “Fixing.”

“I like the words one,” Kell said hesitantly when that decision was being made. “But Mackey, it’s… it’s a love song. Aren’t people gonna, you know, freak? ’Cause they know you’re singing to Tr—a guy?”

Mackey stared at his older brother and grimaced.

Trav tried really hard to ignore the look of disbelief from Grayson.

“Man, did you know ‘Wish You Were Here’ was written for Syd Barrett, the guy in Pink Floyd who burnt out before they got big?”

Kell blinked. “No.”

“Did you know Nina Simone did ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ before Eric Burdon?”

Again that slow blink. “No.”

“Did you know Melissa Etheridge recorded ‘Tuesday Morning’ as a tribute to one of the guys on that airplane that crashed who was gay?”

Kell grimaced. “No.”

“So you know what people are gonna think of when they hear that song?”

“What?”

“Their own fuckin’ problems, that’s what. They’re gonna hear that song and they’re gonna think of their own fuckin’ world and how perfect that song fits the person
they’re
in love with, so just don’t worry about the gay thing. We don’t make a gay thing about it and the world will just shut the hell up.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. It’s
your
heart up there on the fuckin’ stage, Mackey, don’t blow a gasket.”

Mackey grunted and proceeded to other business.

Grayson kept staring at Trav.

“What?” Trav snapped after a minute.

“Is he really in love with you?”

Trav grunted. “There hasn’t even been a kiss. He could have written it to a guy he saw on television for all we know.”

But that grizzled, unwavering stare didn’t quit. “Are
you
in love with
him
?”

Trav rubbed at his eyes. “This band is making me crazy,” he said, each word distinct.

Gray let out a chuckle and turned back to see how the band was getting on, then refocused on Trav. “That’s a yes,” he said softly. “You guys done anything about it yet?”

Trav sighed. He and Terry—they’d met, courted, made love and moved in together, and split up, and pretty much the only people who’d known or cared had been the people they were having dinner with. If Mackey’s song went big, Trav and Mackey’s little flirtation/fixation would be part of music history forever.

“No,” Trav said and went back to watching Mackey grab each of his band members by the heartstring he’d wrapped firmly around his fist. “Not. Yet.”

R
ECORDING
WENT
well.
Trav had never seen guys pick up songs,
rehearse them, and lay down the tracks so fast. He started to realize that even high, Mackey’s work ethic had kept his band on its toes, and sober? They were not backing down.

As October wound down to November, Trav was
stunned
to see that they would actually have their CD out on time.

“Holy crap!” Heath snorted inelegantly over the phone. “I am not paying you enough!”

“I didn’t do much,” Trav said, meaning it. “Once you get those kids some structure, they can take care of themselves.”

And structure they had. Wake up, go running, go to the studio, come home, plan dinner, and, oddly enough, watch television as a family.

That last one sort of blew Trav’s mind. None of the kids—not Blake, not Stevie, not any of the Sanders kids—had known family gathering time. What started out as Jefferson and Stevie leaning against each other on the couch watching
The Voice
while Shelia went to town in the kitchen had become a strategic planning of DVR capacity and when the gang would watch what where. Together.
That
blew Trav’s mind. They had personal appearances, dates at dance clubs, trips to the beach—but getting home in time for television had become a priority. Trav had actually heard Blake—
Blake—
tell a girl that he had to get home early from the club or he’d miss out on
The Bachelor
, and he and Kell had been taking bets on which girl would get the rose.

Mackey was the sci-fi/fantasy king, and he’d pick
Arrow
or
Teen Wolf
over any of the reality shows any day.

And he made sure Trav watched with him. In fact, infuriatingly, he made sure they were sitting next to each other when they watched. Trav had gotten used to scheduling two hours a night with his back shoved against the corner of the couch and Mackey leaning against his chest, under his arms.

Simple human contact. No sex. No kisses. Just
Mackey
lying against him. Smoothing his hand unconsciously on Trav’s stomach. Tapping out absent rhythms on the top of Trav’s thigh. Making little noises when interesting things happened in the story.
Smelling
like high-end patchouli and like musk and like
Mackey
.

Trav found that more and more, he had to go down to the gym and pound on the punching bag after television time. The good news was he hadn’t lost any of his fighting trim since moving in with the Sanders boys.

The bad news was that he went to bed every night thinking about Mackey curled up in a little ball in the corner of that brand-new bunk bed, and missed the days when he slept on Trav’s floor.

Except Trav didn’t want him sleeping on the floor anymore.

One night as the album wound to a close, Trav trotted up the stairs after a hard workout. They’d been watching
Hawaii 5-0
, which Trav thought was about the world’s dumbest show, but the interaction between the two leads was a hard smack in the face, because it was
just
like him and Mackey.

And Mackey hadn’t sat still the entire time. He’d squirmed and wiggled and grunted until Trav had smacked him playfully on the top of the head. “Mackey, you are driving me batshit. Sit still or go to bed.”

“Like a little kid?” Mackey asked, but he didn’t sound particularly wounded.

“Exactly like a little kid! What is this, kindergarten? Jesus, Mackey, wrap your arms around your knees and keep yourself from vibrating like a wind-up toy, could you please?”

Mackey grunted, but he held still, and they finished the program in peace. When it was over, Trav excused himself to go work out. When he came back up, Mackey was nowhere to be seen and everyone else was watching
Dracula.