"Do you have keys to the hotel? Because I'm gonna set this motherfucker on fire - ON FIRE!"
Listening to Alex scream into a microphone wasn't exactly a new thing in Frank's life, but lately things had been kind of... well. Things had been rough, to put it mildly. Alex was on another sobriety jag but this time it seemed like he was serious about it, really serious, and while that was awesome it was also fucking terrifying in the sense that Frank almost couldn't remember a time when Alex hadn't been kind of fucked up, either on pills or booze or coke or some combination of all of those. He couldn't imagine what it was like for Alex coming off all the shit he'd built up in his system, breaking loose from the physical and mental dependencies he'd developed over the last decade.
They had kind of a big show coming up. Well, they had a few. Their first Saturday show at Betwixt & Between was going to be some kind of amazing - Alex was keeping certain things under wraps, even from the band, so Frank had no idea what entirely to expect. All he knew was that some of the songs they'd been cranking out lately had a different feeling to them. Not that any of that was bad, it was just different and it made him wonder what the hell was going on in Alex's head - what kind of dark place they were all kind of wandering into with their impetuous and imperious leader rushing ahead of them, half-blind and without a map.
"Hey Frank? Frank. FRANK!"
Frank jumped, only hearing his name on the third try. "Huh?"
Alex crawled over and Frank wondered absently when the hell he'd ended up on the floor. It was known to happen though - Alex had always been kindof a floppy guy.
"I was thinking, can you do like... a 007 kind of riff for this one..?"
"A what?"
"A James Bond kinda thing for the bridge."
Frank just nodded, even though he realized right that second that he had never seen a James Bond movie in his life. He'd never been into the whole love 'em and leave 'em spy thing! But Alex was asking, and he couldn't say no when Alex asked him to do something - at least not when it involved the Killjoys. He'd rent a few movies or see what Netflix had and he'd get to work on it as soon as he knew what the fuck that was. He kept that bit of information to himself though - he was pretty sure the entire band would jump down his throat if they knew he'd never seen a 007 flick.
"Hey, what about that one you and Toro were kind of working on? That sounded pretty badass, Alex."
Alex chewed his thumb and shrugged. "I'm not sure it's ready yet. I'm not sure I'm ready yet."
"C'mon, we can at least like, work on it right? We don't need to whip it out yet."
Sometimes Alex went into dark places - Frank knew that. And sometimes he needed coaxing to come back out, or he needed help exploring whatever it was he happened to find there. Some of his art and his lyrics lately had been kind of disturbing, but Frank knew it was as theraputic as anything else they'd tried in the last ten years. Maybe it was even more so, because when Alex was here he had four other guys that would do anything for him - especially Theo. When Alex just shrugged again and looked like he might curl in on himself, Frank let it go for now. Whatever it was, the singer seemed genuinely unwilling to broach the new song just yet. That was fine, they had time.
It was about then that Frank doubled over. He practically flung off his guitar and darted into the bathroom, the door slamming behind him. At least the band was fairly used to his health-related disappearences. Still, it always fucking sucked.
The other guys waited the prerequisite half hour before coming to check on him. At least he was vertical by then, leaning heavily on the sink and looking a little paler than he had been when he disappeared. "I'm good," he said when he heard a knock on the door.
Theo poked his head in and set a bottle of chocolate Ensure on the counter. Frank laughed a little. "You guys fucking suck." Apparently everyone in the band had gotten in the habit of keeping like a six pack of the stuff at their respective homes, just in case Frank got sick while there.
"Better than having you like... pass out on us from malnutrition or something." Theo smiled a bit and rested his head against the door jamb. "Feeling any better?"
Frank twisted the top off and nodded as he took a sip. "Yeah, sorta. I'll be fine."
"You always are." Theo rolled his eyes. "But yeah, I know."
"Shut the fuck up, you wouldn't even know what to do if I didn't bounce back like a ball or whatever. C'mon, let's go play stuff before Alex loses his mind or starts drawing on the wall or whatever he's doing these days." Frank pushed his way out of the bathroom, bringing the liquid nutrition with him.
