3"One last chorus, I'll be singin' into
Empty glasses
No more music for the masses"
- Just A Lover, Hayley Williams
Prologue
Nesta leans against the brick wall of the back alley of the Firebird Music Hall. It's January and it's cold, the thin polyester sleeve of the faux leather jacket she'd thrifted out of her sister's closet sucks the wind and the crisp cold stone into her numb skin. A car horn cuts through the fog of the busy side street to her right, and she watches a foursome climb down and out the music hall's concrete steps and into the cab of a waiting taxi. They sound drunk, stumbling and laughing their way through the city.
It takes her a few tries to click her lighter on, her cold fingers and frozen pockets delaying the Bic from igniting. Someone down the street is singing, loud and off tune, and she can hear the light vibrations of music from the building beneath her shoulders. She cherries a spliff as the cigarette shaped taxi car rolls from the curb and into the city.
She tries to relax into the sensation, her fingers shaking against the muscle memory, but there's a subtle roar behind her eyes that hasn't left in months. Years.
A squeak as iron doors are forced on their hinges, and Elain's head pops around the other side of the rusting olive door. Her long chestnut hair is curled around her shoulders, delicate features extenuated with a heavy hand of stage makeup. It swallows her up. Her sweet, round face looks like a painted doll.
"We're on soon," her eyes bounce from Nesta, to the smoke, to the alley beyond her shoulders, and back. Meek to a fault, Elain didn't care much for Firebird – it was loud, sticky, and too raucous for her tender nature. In the three years they've played here, she's never joined Nesta in the damp alley for her smoke breaks, the shadows made her way too jumpy. Location be damned, though, the music still called to them. A gig was a gig.
"Ten of, right?" Nesta huffs, not for any irritation, but out of nerves. Elain smiles gently, and with a nod is gone back through the door. Once again Nesta is alone.
She tucks an elbow under one hand, foot taping. She feels a little dizzy, but she thinks that will stop once she's in the chair. It usually does. The moments where she's playing are of the few beautiful blissful moments when the roar stops. She just needed to wade through the thick moment of walking from this alley to the stage. That was the hard part.
She pushes the spliff head against the brick wall to snuff it out. It was a habit that was slowly become routine that she smoke before shows, but she knew neither of her sisters approved. They knew better than to comment on it, but it still rang through the looks they shared with one another when she'd squeeze out of the green room to light up. Like she was the only one with drugs in the whole building.
Nesta figured it was better to head in now before Feyre came sniffing for her. It was embarrassing, the pep-talk gentle tone her youngest sister started adapting around her, and Nesta knew if she heard it tonight, she'd blow a gasket. But she doesn't want to move. Can't fathom the idea of stepping out onto a stage when she's like this.
She just needed to get through tonight.
The back door squeaks open and Nesta braces for the onslaught her youngest sister - and then braces some more - as a male figure strides into the alleyway instead. She's not entirely trapped back here, she has a direct route that spills into the busy street, but her body is on high alert as the man clicks the door shut and turns. He halts mid-turn at the sight of her, and Nesta presses against the brick wall, forcing her posture to read nonchalance as she levels him a gaze.
"Oh, sorry, figured no one would be back here," he says, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The voice is husky, like the crackling of a wood fire.
She doesn't respond, but if her silence bothers him he doesn't let it show. He shuffles off the concrete landing and holds up a pack of Newports. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Go ahead," she says. There's a click of his lighter and then the sticky smell of tobacco smoke.
She lolls her head toward the street, keeping a side eye on the strange man to her left as she watched the cars zip past on the road. She feels the honey effects of the spliff from earlier smoothing over her brain, like a fog. The music in the hall pounds like a crescendo behind her shoulder blades, and it sings against her skin, like calling to like. Soon. She'll be ready to go on soon. She just needs another minute to work up the motivation.
"You here with one of the bands?" The stranger's rough voice cuts through the sounds of the city. She turns to observe him, smoking under the low backlight glow of the alley. He was tall, she suspected he had a foot or so on her.
"Something like that," she says. She wasn't trying for coy, just didn't have the energy right now to prove herself. She'd met many music boys in her life; watched the puff in their chest when she'd tell them I play drums. Not all, but to some, it was a game. A battle ground where, to them, she had to prove her worth in the music world.
Oh yeah, can you really smash them? A tiny thing like you?
He nods, even against her cryptic statement, sucking in on his cigarette between large fingers. She realizes he's rather handsome. A gruff kind of pretty boy - sculpted, open features and clean, dark hair tied back with a band. He was big, buff, probably played college football or something. He dressed simple enough, a dark short sleeve shirt despite the biting chill, and jeans. No school insignia though.
"I wish I was musically inclined," he says, as if she'd admitted that she was, "I'm more here for the company of it all." Puffs of cigarette smoke curl against the backdrop of his face. He smiles and it's cute. Almost boyish. It's a contradiction to the gruffness of him, softening him out.
"Company?" she huffs.
"The nightlife," he says, and this time when he grins, it's more fiendish. Even from her ten-foot distance she notices that it lights his eyes a little, like a comet. The half-smirk lifts a top lip, revealing a row of straight, white teeth. Something in her belly roils up against it. "I'm actually trying to nail a bouncer gig here."
Makes sense, he's built like a tank.
"You want to deal with drunk assholes all night?"
He shrugs, flicks ash toward the half-wet ground, "I want to deal with people. There's something about the music scene that brings everyone together. Like you're less likely to deal with rowdy assholes in a music hall then a bar or a nightclub. Everyone's just here to listen to the music."
Nesta doubted that theory, though she didn't tell him that. She'd met her fair share of assholes in the music scene. Been pawed at, leered at, spit on, had shit spilled on her. Music, for whatever reason, pulled back a barrier for mischief. People were all the same after the sun went down, didn't matter where they were.
The backdoor swings open and this time it's Feyre's head that pops around the corner, hair spilling over her shoulder in a thick braid, and her lips painted a blood red. She marks Nesta and the man with a startled expression.
"Well, good luck with that," Nesta says, skipping around the man and his smoke cloud toward the door. She doesn't offer him a parting glance, but she feels his stare on her all the way to the doorway. She feels Feyre's leering stare, too, but Nesta ignores that too. Doesn't matter. She'd never see him again after tonight.
"Good night," he calls. The gesture throws her for a moment, but she doesn't pause, doesn't acknowledge it, as she slips through the door. Whatever. Doesn't matter.
Her sister, however, calls a goodbye to the strange man, shutting the door behind them. The look on her Feyre's face bristles her a little.
"Is that my jacket?" Feyre asks, and Nesta snorts, charging ahead to the stage. "You could ask, you know, before taking my clothes."
Feyre follows with expert foot behind the dark backstage area, toward the stage. Ironbird was set in an old furniture factory, with old wood floorboards and spacious rooms, so the trek from back door to stage wasn't a maze. The last band had finished and the hall's sound guys were helping them prep for their set. Elain was already on stage, her guitar slung around her slender shoulders, fiddling with the mic stand she'd use tonight. She was wearing a dress Nesta couldn't dream of pulling off; lilac and layered down her arms and to her knees.
There was a small crowd gathered near the front, what was left from the last set waiting for the intermission to still and the sisters to start, and Nesta watches as Feyre strides confidently toward the mic stand in the front to start her check and mingle with the audience a little. She was full on tonight: skintight leather, smoked makeup, smooth, draping hair. Something about her sister always set a spark, and in turn, it lead to hungry eyes pouring over the rest of them. Elain could hold a crowd well; her meek beauty added a mystery to her that made up for the constant silence. She turned heads and affectionately held them.
People turned to Nesta after spending time in the candle of her sisters, and found barbed wire. She was too much bite. Too much spite. Try as she might – and these days she'd stopped trying for there was no point – she couldn't land in the embrace of others. Not like her sisters.
Nesta watched the crowd push forward a little, anticipation growing. Something deep and ugly in her skittered at the sight, churning and roiling against her, so she took her place in the back. Sliding behind the drum set, relieved to be set behind its bulk, she set to pushing her hearing protection into her ears. It wasn't her drum set, they didn't bother to lug her own personal set from home to each gig, just used the house set. Nesta didn't care. Never mattered to her if she was hitting her own personal drum set or a pair of turned over buckets – sound was sound, the dance moved on no matter the vessel.
She ran through the set list one more time in her head, fingers idly rubbing the smooth wood of the drumsticks in her hands. She could still feel the lingering rolling waves of the weed she'd smoked, and hoped it was enough to carry her through this gig. Briefly, she pictured the man from earlier, his boyish grin, and wondered if he were in the growing crowd that were obscured in the lowlight. She wasn't sure what to make of that thought. That whole conversation, though brief, set her on edge. She shifts in her seat, uncomfortable. Her fingers itched, she could feel the vibrations already, waiting to pour out. Soon. So soon.
She closes her eyes, listening. Listening to Elain's light strumming, a small feathering tune to Feyre's chatty greeting. The crowd as one, laughing to her sister's witty prose, cheering as Elain's tune picks up progression, finds a solid story. The first few chords of the first song on the set list. Nesta pulls in smooth, and soon Feyre's voice overlays like a ribbon through the instrument. It was a practice, a dance. The beginning was the struggle, trying to fall into the rhythm, the muscle memory. As much as she hates the sight of the crowd, their cheers, their bobbing heads, their stomping feet all feed into her motion.
It was a prayer. A litany. A farewell.
Tonight was the last night Nesta Archeron was ever going to play.
AN: This is an ode to concerts, because I miss them dearly.
I'm not musically inclined at all so if I mess up some sort of band terminology then uhhh oops I'm sorry! Anyway hope you're well. Do me a favor and find your favorite playlist and put that bad boy on. We could all use a little more music right now.