Taylor is not a quiet person. I suppose that’s good, considering that the resting state of Nate, and even Chris to an extent, is contemplative silence. Without Taylor, it’d probably be a bit like touring with a Buddhist monastery. With him, you can always be assured that there’s gonna be somebody tooling up and down the bus aisles, poking people awake at two in the morning to let everybody know that there was an interesting billboard outside, winging food at the back of various people’s heads, and howling bloody murder for no real reason other than to watch those uninitiated in the ways of the Taylor jump out of their skins. And you know, those are the good days.

The bad days? They tend to involve a cappella versions of Mariah Carey’s greatest hits. In falsetto.

But when I knock on the hotel room door and hear nothing, not even when I do the drum line from the chorus of Under Pressure and botch about a fourth of it… well, I’m in the mood to tolerate some Dreamlover. Even Dreamlover, polka style.

I knock on the door again, no fancy shit this time. “Taylor?”

A shadow crosses under the door, like someone pausing on the other side. Then it’s gone. Still no noise, though, not even a bottle crashing into the door to let me know he’s just not in the mood for group hugs tonight, thanks. Some part of me breathes a sigh of relief to even know he’s upright. The rest of me is too distracted by the warning claxons going off in my head.

Okay. He’s awake. He’s even moving. He’s just ignoring me. Taylor “c’mon, Dave, we have to talk about this, don’t be an ass” Hawkins is giving me the silent treatment.

Oh, hell.

I touch my fingertips to the door, and end up holding my breath as that shadow crosses under the door again. He doesn’t hesitate this time, though, and is gone with the sound of little drummer feet.

Yes, that was a poetry reference. No, you can’t have my official grunge savior card. And for the record, Taylor’s feet are fucking yachts.

In my defense, I wait until he has to be about two feet away from the door before I drop to my knees and start fiddling with the luck. We ended up in a place with no key-card doors, strangely enough, which means it’s either a rathole or we’ve moved up in the world since the last time we were in Europe. Suppose I should be grateful for small favors; even with my misspent youth, I don’t know how to jimmy a keycard lock. But regular locks? Oh, yeah. Fuck, yeah.

The things you do to get a hotel room, and by proxy a shower, on month 3 of sharing a van with four very sweaty guys. Hey, the things said four guys will do to get the resident smelly drummer into aforementioned shower. Drop out of high school, kids, and start your life of petty crime now!

Oh, wait. I’m the role model. Well, fuck.

The lock gives pretty quickly after a few minutes of wiggling my credit card around. The click seems loud in the quiet, overly chic hallway, and I wince, grabbing at the doorknob like that’ll help. I’m not sure why; it won’t help, and besides, if I’m already invading the hell out of his privacy I might as well resign myself to getting punched in the face for my trouble. Hell, I’d punch me. Maybe I can tell the press that Courtney did it.

I wouldn’t have done this two years ago, even with the spectre of Kurt hanging over my head. But here I stand anyway, one foot in the doorway, closing the door behind me. Taylor, standing by the window with his back to the door, doesn’t so much as twitch.

He looks about the way most of us look after a show, which is to say that he looks sweaty and tired. Unlike most nights, though, it’s not a happy sweaty and tired. More… defeated. He doesn’t even drum absently, the way he always does when he’s bored or concentrating or even conscious. He just stands, one hand on the cheap mahogany desk, one hand occupied with what looks quite a bit like a bottle of prescription pills.

So that’s what it feels to have my heart stop. Kind of a shudder. Kind of like having the damned thing ripped out of my chest.  That might explain why I can’t seem to breathe, or blink, or move to wrench that fucking bottle out of his hand. And then, maybe for fun and recreation, I’ll shake him until his apparently minimal brains rattle.

Or maybe I’ll just stand here, and shake, and watch him breathe too swallow and too fast. The muscles in his back look like they’d snap if he tensed up any more. There’s a sheen to his skin like fever-sweat, and he’s chalky under the Texas-tan.

The truth trickles in at the edge of this incredible, terrified anger. It’s the painful truth, the kind that goes against every instinct I have, the kind that says I can’t take the bottle away. It won’t help, any more than hiding Kurt’s needles helped. There are always other needles, other pills. If he doesn’t put the bottle down himself, it doesn’t mean a damned thing at all.

Taylor’s strong. I trust him.

The light from above the desk catches on the scars on Taylor’s arm, long ago burn scars where he pressed a lighted cigarette against the skin for- Taylor laughed as he told me this, laughed but his eyes were dark and too familiar- for fun. I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from those three small scars.

I have to trust him.

Which doesn’t explain why I’m breathing as fast as he is.

Taylor lifts the bottle, haltingly, and presses the cap to his forehead. His breathing slows, slows, until with a ragged sigh it’s something approaching normal. We both hang there for a moment, in silence, until without so much as a warning Taylor turns and whips the bottle of pills at the wall. It ricochets off the cheap pastel painting of a sailboat, which doesn’t break but seems to consider it, then drops with a rattle into the trashcan.

He grins, manic, feral. His eyes are too bright.

The guy code of ethics says I should turn away at this point. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last nine years, it’s that the guy code of ethics is utter bullshit. Which is why I take this moment to offer, “Nice shot.”

Taylor, for his part, nearly jars out of his skin. He spins to look at me, eyes too big for his face, but he looks more guilty than pissed.

“Dave,” he starts, voice sounding clogged, but doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead he looks resolutely past my head and says, sounding almost angry, “I didn’t.”
“Yeah.”  I think my smile comes off a bit shaky, but sincere. I can survive that. “I know. I saw.”

His eyes meet mine, warier than Taylor should ever look. Used to be that I thought he wasn’t scared of anything. Our own personal supernova, charging ahead. Except for that part where up until six months ago he looked faded.

I shake my head at him, a silent ‘don’t explain’. He doesn’t have to. I’d like to tell myself that it’s because I trust him utterly, but it’s probably more that I don’t want to know. It’s a question for another night, when he’s not still shaking, when I’m not still shaking.

“Chris wanted me to ask you,” and it takes a minute to remember that, a short lifetime and three rooms away, Chris had nudged me towards Taylor’s room, “if you want to go out for a drink. Or three. Or five. There’s that bar downstairs.”

Taylor blinks at me for a second, then clears his throat and reaches for the towel on the desk. Scrubbing at his face like it’s all sweat, those trails down his face, he flings the towel at the bed and offers me a grin. “Yeah. Sure. Unless you’re too old to appreciate it.”

“Yeah, don’t think I won’t remember that when you hit thirty-one next year.” I shove at his shoulder as he passes, but without much force. “You get the naked cake midget. And I’ll make you sing lead all night, so I can have the easy job.”

A grin, then. “Oh, fuck you.”

All light, all easy, all to draw attention away from the fact that none of us, band or crew, have the heart to give him a cake with a gravestone on it. The Grim Reaper jokes can be saved for the people who didn’t almost meet him, made by the folks who aren’t altogether too acquainted with the dress-wearing knife-happy bastard.

If Taylor’s noticed, he hasn’t commented. Just like he doesn’t comment when he shuts his room’s door, though he does glance at the lock and then at me. The side of his mouth curves up, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. Not much does, lately.

When we slide into the elevator, relatively empty but cramped all the same, I manage to end up squeezed next to him. Five years of living in each other’s back pockets, off and on, means that Taylor takes it in stride. He even leans into my hip, warm and heavy, that tangle of hair just under my chin. He smells like smoke and soap and sweat. I can feel him breathe, hear him humming snatches of songs I only half recognize.

I’d like to say that I don’t close my eyes and let my cheek rest on the top of his head. I’d like to say my lips don’t move, words lost against his hair.

Don’t die. Please don’t die on me.

I’d like to say that when we get to the lobby and I lift my head, Taylor isn’t watching me in the mirror, the knowledge in his eyes sharp enough to cut.

I’d like to say that I have a joke for the occasion, a couple of words to bury this bone-deep ache. It isn’t my business anyway.

But I’d be lying.
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End.