Page 98 of Replay
-24-
Spook slammed his clenched fist into the wooden wall at his rear.The impact sent a shockwave of pain up his arm and a dull boom thundering around the backstage enclosure.After the heat inside the yurt, the breeze across the open field left him chilled.He leaned back against the building, gaze fastened unseeing on the middle distance.Tears pricked his eyes, which he desperately blinked back.
“Spook.Hey.Hey.”Xane was beside him, gingerly reaching for his throbbing fist.Luthor was right behind him, which prompted Spook to throw Xane off.
“What’s going on?”Ash appeared on the other side of him, his brown fringe flopping over his face.Both he and his new missus stared at Spook like he was a fluffy bunny with myxomatosis.Ginny’s hand circled his wrist, and lifted his palm up so that she could better see the damage to his split knuckles.Irritably, she picked a splinter out of them.Then tutted over the already scabbed over cuts to his palms before pressing a wetted tissue to the weeping wounds.
“I’m fine, leave me alone.”He’d have shaken her off, but Ginny, despite her petite size, had the tenacity of a crab.She zapped him with her best school mistress glare.Belt up, Mortensen, it said.I know fine, and I know you, and you’re not fucking fine.It was easier to just let her do her thing than risk knocking her off her feet by snatching his hand away.Besides, Ginny didn’t deserve his wrath.
“So, which of you knuckleheads is going to tell us what’s going on?”Ash remarked.
“Ginny,” Xane said, ignoring Ash.“Would you please go and look for Dani?I’ve screwed up and upset her.”
“Again?”Her pencilled eyebrows jumped towards her hair line, and etched a sour smile across her red painted lips.
“What have you two idiots—”
“Three,” Luthor corrected her.
“—done now?”
“I stuck my dick somewhere it shouldn’t have been.”Xane confessed with brutal honesty.That made Ginny’s frown deepen.Her amber eyes rounded in surprise as she put two and two together.Her gaze darted between him and Xane a couple of seconds later.Abruptly, she let go of Spook’s hand.“I’m going to go find my girl.Otherwise—” She levelled them with her glare.“—I’d have both your knackers in a vice.What sort of morons are you?”She shook her head.“Don’t answer that.”Levelling him particularly, she pursed her lips.“Really, Spook?What were you thinking?”She walked away, tutting to herself, leaving him in no doubt he’d seriously dropped in her estimation.
Abashed, he put his head in his hands.
“Well?”Ash prodded him with his elbow.“One of you, start talking.”
Warily, Spook lowered his hands.He’d opened a couple of the cuts from last night along with his knuckles, and they stung like a bitch.Across from him, Xane watched him, unease scored into the fine lines around his mouth.
“We should really get that cleaned and some ice on it,” he said.
Ash continued to stare at him, waiting for an explanation, and Luthor refused to look at him at all.The discord left him with the acrid taste of bile in his mouth.Not only had he screwed up his own relationship, he’d fucked his best friend’s up too.
“Spook?”Ash prompted him.
“They fucked each other.What the hell else do you need to know?”Luthor grouched.
“Details,” Ash said in all seriousness, and then he burst into laughter.“God you’re all such clowns.”He smacked them both around the backs of their heads.“I suppose there’s no point in asking either of you why.I’m not going to get a straight answer.Also, if Luthor can’t get one…”
“How do you know Luthor hasn’t had one?”Xane remarked.
“Because he’s glowering.That’s how.”
Luthor had perfected the perfect pissed-off, why-am-I-in-love-with-a-moron, God-I’m-so-sick-of-this-fucking-shit scowl.His heterochromia added to the effect, lending a tinge of the preternatural to the expression.
“I should go after Alle,” Spook insisted, right at the moment Rock Giant decided to make an entrance.
“Yeah, you might just wanna.She’s currently with Ronnie about ten yards away.”He gave a backwards nod toward the security gate.“Whom I have to say, is looking a little discomfited, having a weeping, wailing woman clamped around him.What the fuck did you do?”
Ash gave a cough that turned into a chortle.“He fucked someone else.”
“No way.Seriously?Who?”
“Xane,” Luthor replied for him.“They’re now both in the dog house with their respective women, and me.And I’m up shit creak by association.”
Rock Giant heaved a sigh of relief.“Shit, for a minute there I thought it was about the other night, when we—”
Spook shook his head.
Ash quirked an eyebrow.He looked between the three of them, obviously trying to figure out what the hell ‘the other night’ entailed, and how Spook and Xane screwing one another had landed Luthor in the shitter.
“I failed to disapprove loudly enough.”Luthor steepled his fingers before him and tapped them against his lips.“I might be let off with a sufficiently grovelling apology.These two morons, though, who knows?”
“Yeah, well all the make-up action is going to have to wait, guys.You have remembered we’ve a gig to play.”Ash nodded towards the right, bringing the group’s attention to two figures strolling towards them.One was a wired-looking Ronnie Bush, the other a heavily tattooed guy with a forest-like beard and a radio.
“You’re up, gentlemen,” he announced, giving them a quick once over.“I need the six of you to start making your way in that direction.”He pointed at a gap between two of the yurts.“Then it’s across the gravel, and up the steps.The tech guys have your equipment set, so we just need to get you all hooked up and you’re live.”
“Your hand,” Xane remarked, as they were herded off.
Spook rubbed his bloodied knuckles against his jeans.“I’ll live.Just don’t expect me to enjoy this, and for fuck’s sake, don’t mess with me on stage.”
