The ringing in Sterling’s ears came and went. Some days, it was unbearable. Some days, it wasn’t there at all.
Today, it was unbearable.
It was so loud, he almost couldn’t hear anything over it. The high-pitched whine, like a distant howl, like something screaming for him to listen.
That was good. He should write that down.
He wiped his forehead on his arm.
“Are you alright?” Aleksandr asked.
“I’m fine. Just a headache.”
“You’re hungover,” Hale said.
“‘m not hungover. It’s just my head. My ears.”
It was his own fault for forgetting to wear an earplug on the side not occupied by the monitor. He made a mental note to ask Nelson to turn down the volume for him tomorrow night, and lost his train of thought immediately.
Funny enough, he’d barely been hungover all tour. When it had hit him, it wasn’t nearly as hard as usual. As much as he appreciated it, he couldn’t help be a little concerned. If he didn’t have a debilitating hangover as a potential consequence, what would stop him from getting completely fucked up every night?
“Mitch has— Vad är det— Tee-len-ol,” Hale said.
Hale was keeping his weight off his left leg, Sterling noticed. Even when he walked to lean against a wall, there was a slight hitch that wasn’t quite a limp. The strap of his guitar had been looser than usual, and he seemed to be grudgingly letting everybody else pack up their things.
“Looks like you need it too,” Sterling muttered.
The Vikings didn’t appear to hear him. It was a good thing, too. The last thing they needed was a fight about Sterling taking too many pills and Hale not enough.
Sometimes, Sterling wished he could be like that. He wished he could ignore the aches and pains centred in his chest cavity and just power it through the way Hale did. But he’d also seen what powering through it could do. He’d seen Hale sick and dizzy from it, barely able to get up off the floor when the pain got to be too much.
Even Immortal Hale had his limits.
Sterling didn’t want Tylenol.
“I’ll go find him,” he said anyway.
He stepped out into the hall, sticking his earbuds into place. He pulled his phone and flask from his back pocket. His thumb brushed the letters JVJ engraved into the side of the flask. It was almost empty. That was funny. He swore he’d filled it before going on stage. He swallowed down the last mouthful and scrolled through his phone for something to drown out the howling ringing. Saxophones and trumpets rang out against his eardrums, until they were replaced with the even plucks of double basses, and sweepers over a snare drum. Cab Calloway’s voice was clear despite the graininess of the audio file.
“Folks, here’s a story about Minnie the Moocher.
She was a lowdown hoochie coocher.
She was the roughest, toughest frail.
But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.”
It was nothing but sheer dumb luck that Erebus’ first tour was with a big name like Abolition. At least, a big name in metal. Most people outside the genre probably hadn’t heard of them, other than maybe seeing somebody wearing a t-shirt or something. They weren’t exactly a household name, but they’d been around long enough that every metalhead Sterling knew had listened to them at least once. They’d actually been Sterling’s entry to metal.
He still remembered the first time he’d heard them. He’d been thirteen or fourteen years old, sitting on Berto’s bed with the beers they’d snuck from Berto’s dad’s beer fridge in the garage.
“You gotta listen to this,” Berto had said.
He was always stealing his brother’s CDs to show Sterling.
The music had been brutal and punishing, but underneath it was a taste of jazz rhythms that Sterling had fallen for so fast and hard, Berto might as well have pushed him off the roof.
It wasn’t until a couple years later that they’d first messed around with that album to drown them out so Berto’s parents didn’t hear them.
And it wasn’t until not long after that that Marco’d begged Sterling to leave Detroit with him. Sterling’s face had still been bruised from the broken jaw.
The point was — What was his point? — Trial by Fire wasn’t absolutely nobody, but they were a bit more niche. They did well enough, but they weren’t exactly doing stadium tours. The biggest venue they’d played had maybe a 3000-person capacity. They’d played the History in Toronto once, which fit about 2,500 people, but that was opening for Judge & Jury. Most of the tours Sterling did, he was still sharing dressing rooms and techs, and they’d only just had the budget to get their own bus. It had always made sense to keep their overhead as small as possible.
Abolition, on the other hand, got whatever Abolition wanted. They could have been dicks about it, but they weren’t. Even after all these years, after all the gold records, Marc-André was just as down-to-earth as he’d been when they’d first met all those years ago. Maybe it was just because he and Sterling were still friends, maybe it was for Seb’s sake, but he’d made sure Erebus was just as taken care of as they were.
“Hidee hidee hidee hi
Hode hode hode ho
Hee dee hee dee hee dee hee
A hidee hidee hidee ho”
An unspoken understanding had developed that if anybody wanted peace and quiet, hit the Erebus side. For drunken ragers, find Abolition.
Even though Abolition was currently on stage, the green room was still loud. The food platters set out on the table were nearly empty, though the veggie trays were still mostly full. Sterling grabbed a handful of baby carrots. His jaw clicked a little as he crunched through them. He kneaded at the underside of it with his knuckles. There were still clean lines in the stubble where the hair refused to grow over the scars.