Ruin Porn (23 page)

His cell vibrated, and like the fool he was, disappointment surged through him when it was Ritchie calling rather than his dad. Jesus fuck, would he ever learn?

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey, dude, couldn’t sleep so I started to unpack. Somehow I ended up with your shower kit. You want me to run it over?”

Miah ran a hand through his hair and slumped down on a barstool near the kitchen island. “Nah, I’ll get it tomorrow.”

Ritchie went quiet. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just tired.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Ritchie replied, more concern than heat to his tone. “I can hear it in your voice. Wait, let me guess. Your old man isn’t home?”

Miah rolled his neck, the tension beginning to make his head throb. “He’s out.”

Ritchie muttered a “fuck” under his breath. More than likely, Ritchie hadn’t meant for Miah to hear that, but he had, and yep, that pretty much summed up his thoughts on it too.

“It’s no big deal,” he lied.

“You want me to come over? Or you could come over here. Mouse would love to see you.”

Miah was warmer than he’d been only seconds ago. At least he wasn’t totally alone. “Nah, but thanks for offering. I’m good. I’m going to take a hot shower and head to bed anyway.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, really. I’m fine. This isn’t my first rodeo.” He chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. Ritchie didn’t deserve to be dragged down or made to feel guilty just because he had someone to come home to. “I really am tired. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Alright, call me when you get up tomorrow, yeah? We’ll hang out, grab some grub or something. Drive around and see what’s been happening in the ‘hood since we left.”

“Sounds good, talk to you tomorrow.” Miah ended the call, folded his arms on the counter, and rested his head on them. He tried not to feel, think, or be—to put some of his meditation practice to use—but snapping himself out of this was as futile as trying to make his dad proud. He’d been on such a high after their last concert, adored by thousands, and he couldn’t make one man give a shit about him. The realization crashed down on him, nearly stealing his breath. Miah thought of calling Ritchie back and taking him up on his offer. The last thing he wanted was to be alone.

“Fuck it,” he grumbled and pushed up out of his chair.

He was a grown man; he didn’t need a welcome-home committee. What he really needed was a stiff drink and to grow a pair.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Los Angeles

S
ONGWRITING
HAD
always been a solitary process for Evin, even as a member of Sock in the Sun. He could be anywhere when a burst of lyrics came to him or the first notes of a melody, so he’d trained himself to be prepared: a notebook, a pencil (because pens could fail, and at least with lead he could dig it free with his nails if he was desperate enough), and a plastic-covered pocket thesaurus he kept tucked into the back of his jeans. He’d downloaded apps to his cell and installed the newest software on to his laptop—all of them touting to give him
unprecedented lyric power
or
unrivaled chord progression
. But he’d always come back to pencil and paper because it worked. It wasn’t as if there was any one else to collaborate with anyway.

Working on the second Resonator album challenged every step of his previous process and filled every moment of solitude (aka lonely wallow time) he’d thought he’d have when he came home from the tour. Miah didn’t give Evin time to miss him. He would text a snippet of lyrics, tweet a line, message an entire song, or just a string of notes. Evin struggled to keep up with the flow of randomness and figure out which parts were new, which were rewrites, and which were parts he should ignore because Miah was throwing pieces of bologna at a wall trying to see what would stick.

On Miah’s frenetic days, he would hunt Evin down with Skype, calling again and again until Evin picked up so they could sit in front of their cameras and Miah could watch what Evin was playing and not just hear it. For Miah, he needed to make sense of what he saw, not what he wrote or heard and certainly not what he felt—which was at total odds with how Miah approached everything else in life. Evin stopped trying to pick apart why Miah did what he did and learned to just go with it. Like a good night’s sleep, Miah was more satisfying when you didn’t fight against him.

And Miah knew how to satisfy. Over and over again, he threw ideas at Evin that fit with something Evin had already composed. Miah’s lyrics snuggling in with Evin’s melody. Miah’s instrumentation pushing up the intensity of Evin’s arrangements. Despite the distance, or maybe because of it, they became a true writing team.

As if he knew Miah dominated Evin’s life even long distance, Ritchie kept his communication link with Evin to texted pictures of his bar escapades, arctic urban spelunking, and selfies with his grandma.

Miah and Ritchie didn’t give Evin time to miss them. But more surprising, Finn didn’t either.

When Evin’s mood became as smog-laden as the sky outside his apartment and he would get sucked into the combative sinkhole that was the comments section of NPR Music, Spin, Metacritic, Pitchfork, AllMusic—pick a website where fans and professional critics could decimate his creativity with one word and he would spend hours scrolling through to discover just how little talent he had—one call from Finn would pull him back out. He still wasn’t sure what to do with that. It had been Finn that texted him first, only one day after arriving home. It was a picture of him, Miah, and Ritchie at some dive bar, four beer glasses in front of them and a note scrawled on a cocktail napkin that read
come join us xx
. Evin had swallowed the misery of just how fucking much he did want to be in Detroit with them, and texted back
can’t. already had my organic kale smoothie for the day
.

Since that day it was as if Madrid hadn’t happened. When he and Finn talked, it was about what the Detroit 3 were up to that day or stories about how much cooler the Rezors were in Detroit because they didn’t go apeshit with Rez sightings. They talked about
unprecedented lyric power
and
unrivaled chord progression
for the second album, but they never talked about what had happened between the two of them in Milan or Madrid.

When Finn couldn’t sleep, he’d call Evin and prattle on about the bands he wanted to see play live but wouldn’t be able to because of their tour. And he wouldn’t hang up until he had Evin struggling to breathe because he was laughing too hard. Miah made his days bearable, and Finn kept his nights from getting too bleak. Ritchie completed both day and night but in more nonobtrusive ways, but always there, lingering, lurking in a loving way in case Evin needed him.

Despite his constant communication with the three, he missed being touched. He missed the dog piles of limbs in backstage rooms after a concert. He missed Miah bumping up against him on stage. He missed the reassuring weight of Ritchie’s hand on his back. And he missed the spotlight-focused intensity of Finn’s hands on him more than any of that.

When his phone rang in the wee hours of the night, he picked up the call without looking at the display, knowing that it had to be Finn on the other end of the line.

He cleared his throat to wipe the exhaustion from his voice. “Hey, Finn. What’s up?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Finn replied, sounding breathless.

That greeting was now normal, but the way he said it wasn’t. “You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay.” Finn groaned.

Evin had been just about asleep, watching some mind-numbing infomercial, but alarm had him jerking up in bed, wide-awake. “What’s going on, Finn?”

Finn was silent, the only thing coming through the phone his heavy breathing, and in the distance…. Evin strained to identify a slapping sound. His stomach curled with want and his lips tugged into a grin. It wasn’t just him that missed being touched.

“Finn, are you jerking off?”

“I’m about ready to explode, Ev. You gotta help me out here.”

Evin flopped back on the pillow, a rush of blood making a mad dash for his groin, his cock hardening as he imagined Finn laid out in the bed, hand wrapped around his cock, thrusting.
Jesus.

“I’ve been on the receiving end of those hands,” he reminded Finn. “Pretty sure you know what to do.” His hand slid past the waistband of his boxers. Fingers skimming over the soft flesh, working his growing arousal to the sound of Finn jacking off.

“No, I need your help. I…”—
slap slap slap
—“Ah fuck. Ev, you gonna help me out or not?”

“And how am I supposed to help you from over two thousand miles away?”

“Talk to me.”

Evin’s breath stuttered. “What?”

“C’mon, Ev, grab your cock and talk dirty to me. I’ve been thinking about you all night, and I needed…. Couldn’t stop thinking about fucking you.”

Jesus, he’d done a lot of crazy shit, but this was a first. He certainly wasn’t opposed to the idea—hell he already had his dick in his hand and it felt really fucking good—but he had no clue what to say.
Oh oh, swallow my cock
sounded ridiculous in this situation. But Finn had called him and all Evin wanted right now was for Finn to swallow him deep.

“Ev, talk to me,” Finn whispered. Pleaded. “I know you like my hands on you, the feel of my lips on your cock, sucking you.”

A thrill raced down Evin’s spine and he sped his strokes as he imagined Finn’s hands on him instead of his own. “Fuck yeah, I like your mouth on me, the way you look up at me when I’m fucking your face.”

“That’s it,” Finn moaned.

“Soon as I see you, going to drop to my knees, show you just how much I liked it. Take you deep, taste you.” Evin closed his eyes, the image of him on his knees, his hands on Finn’s lean hips as he thrust vivid in his mind.

“God, I’m so fucking hard thinking about it,” Finn gritted out. “Going to come so hard, force you to take every drop.”

Evin held the phone between the crook of his shoulder and ear, freeing up his hand to tug on his sac, roll his balls as he continued to stroke himself faster, harder. From the breathless tone of Finn’s voice, he was close. He’d gotten an earlier start, but Evin was catching up to him fast.

“You’re hard? You should feel what you’re doing to me. I’m like stone, Finn.”

“I want to… ah… fuck, I want to touch you so fucking bad. Ev… Ev… I don’t know how much longer I can hold back, babe.”

The rhythmic slap of Finn’s hand on his cock pushed Evin closer to the edge. The seductive timbre of Finn’s need had him teetering on it. Evin teased his thumb over the flared head on each stroke, the steady stream of precum making his hand slide easily.

“I’m right there with you. Come for me, Finn. Give it to me.”

There was a second of silence from the other end of the line, then a low husky moan that was like Finn caressing him.

“Hell yeah, give it all to me, Finn.”

Moans and curses poured from Finn as he came, and Finn’s release was the last push Evin needed. Heat fountained up over his fist, covering his stomach and chest.

Evin barely had time to catch his breath when Finn started to laugh. “Shit, I needed that. Next time I’ll give you the live version.”

Evin smiled. “Promise?”

“Promise. I think I can sleep now. Well, after I clean up this mess you made. I miss you, Ev. For more than this…. I just…. I’ll talk to you later, yeah?”

Evin’s heart stuttered and he tried to joke his way out of the discomfort. “Glad I could be of assistance. Night.”

“Night, Ev.”

The line went dead, and Evin looked down at the mess on his torso. From two thousand miles away and with time apart, Finn made his dick hard and his heart hurt. He had to wonder how much worse both of those would be when he was physically with Finn again. The anticipation, the excitement, and the waiting were going to drive him insane.

E
VIN
WOKE
up with his sheets askew and a pillow with no case cradling his head. He was lax for the first morning in weeks, sated, and the balled-up cotton of his pillowcase on the floor was enough evidence that the call from Finn last night hadn’t been a dream. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Finn and keep him to his promise of a repeat performance while Evin watched.

He grunted, forced himself to put his feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed muddling through what to do next. His cell rang, and he fumbled for the phone as he hit the button to pick up the call.

“Hey, Evin. It’s Sid.”

Sid?
Did this mean…? “Good to hear your voice. How you doing, man?”

“Can’t complain. Hey, I’m calling to let you know Schaffer booked studio time to finish laying the tracks for the album. We need you in Nashville on Thursday.”

“Thursday? As in tomorrow Thursday?” A heady mix of excitement and nerves surged through him.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, no problem at all. I’ll be there.”

“Great, I’ll e-mail you your flight itinerary. Gotta run, see you in Nashville.”

Evin was left staring down at his cell as the line went dead, stunned, but his hesitation didn’t last long. “Fuck yeah!” He pumped his fist.
Six weeks had been plenty of me time.
He was so fucking ready to get back to doing what he did best, but after last night, he was even more ready to see Finn. Oh yeah, and Miah and Ritchie. He missed those bastards like crazy too.

Not two minutes later, he got a text from Miah that read
FINALLY
and Evin replied with a succinct
no shit
. He wasn’t the only one who was ready.

He spent the rest of the day sitting in a Laundromat keeping his head down and trying his best to shrink into the rows of dripping and thumping washers. He supposed staying incognito wasn’t really all that difficult since he hadn’t shaved his beard since he’d returned from tour. It worked to his advantage. Because of his longish hair and new fascination with beanies, he thought it was pretty much guaranteed no one would recognize him.