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Abby is good at a lot of things. He’s good at video games. He’s good at flirting. He’s good at making friends (in every sense of that word). He’s a fantastic grill master, no matter what anyone else says. When it comes to being a social creature in general, Abby is a very solid specimen.
But when it comes to being great at something, he’s got just a couple of those his name. And that’s okay! It’s perfectly possible to get by in the world even if you’re only great at a few things.
Abby is great at heavy shit. He is a black belt. Heavy shit trembles before him. He can pick it up. He can put it down. He can get it from point A to point B even if point B is down a narrow hall, up a flight of stairs, or in another state entirely. Sometimes all three will be involved, and he can do that too.
Abby is also great at sharing. Loves it, thrives when doing it, lives by the creed of it. Some of his favorite things to share are: good music, dick jokes, strange food, beds, showers, bad ideas, burdens, and heavy loads.
If anyone wants Abby’s opinion on it, though, they’re not really separate skills. If you want to be good at the former, you have to be good at the latter. (No one has wanted his opinion on it so far because that’s a really specific question.)
See, the world is full of heavy shit, very little of which needs to stay in one place forever. Everyone will have to deal with it at some point. And no matter what a dude’s gym circuit is, no one can lift everything alone. Heavy shit, very often, is a team sport. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that pretty quickly won’t be lifting heavy shit for very long.
Abby plans to lift heavy shit forever if he possibly can. And no one in his life will ever need to worry about lifting theirs alone.
There and back again. It’s a tale as old as time (or at least as old as The Hobbit, which is still pretty old) and it runs on repeat in a roadie’s life. The tour was a success, as most tours are if everyone makes it to the end. No major fuck-ups for the crew, no getting booed offstage for the band. Dinner and drinking went deep into the night to toast their friends at Napalm Era before their most epic mini-bus, with a paint job that looks like the nose has just plowed through a wall of fire, embers trailing all along the sleek black body, vanished into the night. A smattering of very tipsy roadies are left in a dark parking lot at 4 am with a 6 am bus call if they want a free lift to the backlot where this all started.
No one wants to test fate for 90 minutes of shitty sleep on a motel mattress that’s about as good for the back as sleeping in the coach bus. It’s safer, easier, and way more convenient to just sleep on said coach bus. And only slightly less comfortable.
Abby adjusts his shoulders a bit, hefting his living, breathing, passed-out backpack a little higher before he climbs the stairs onto the bus. Ahead of him, Jinu is doing his best to light their way with his phone’s flashlight while he and Ro support Mystery between them. Mystery is doing his best to fall asleep while walking.
“Okay,” Jinu whispers, chucking his phone onto a seat to free up both hands. He and Ro ease their drum tech down onto the seat in the back. The second his ass hits the seat, the guy just sort of slides down against the wall until some combination of moisture and friction between cheek and window halts his progress. Only the clumsy (but somehow still on-tempo) tapping of a waltz beat against the back of the seat signals that he’s still among the conscious. Barely.
“Just shove him up a little,” Abby says, shifting Baby’s weight and starting the process of figuring out how he’s going to move him without dropping him. It’s the world’s most uncoordinated effort for Jinu and Ro to shove Mystery half-upright by the hip while Abby essentially has to just dump Baby on top of everyone. The two techs manage to disengage their arms once Myst and Baby have come to a state of equilibrium (read: piled against one another in a way they can maintain for a couple of hours, probably), and Jinu has to climb out from the footwell. Success.
The conscious crew members breathe a sigh of relief. Jinu takes the seat in front of their passed-out friends, scooping his phone back up. The handful of other roadies roughing out the last couple of hours have stumbled or poured themselves into seats. Near the front of the bus, the make-up tech (who is a sweetheart and would paint little glow-in-the-dark skulls on crew member’s cheeks if they asked her to, which made them the envy of every pit) shoves the bus door back into its proper position before snagging the front row seat. Everything settles into the kind of silence that only happens in the complete absence of everything else: no more pressure, no more adrenaline, no more energy. Just the buzz of alcohol and new memories, hot off the presses.
Jinu is not turning off his phone. Which makes him the worst person to try and sleep beside.
“Dude. Give it a rest,” Abby yawns, making a casual swipe at his phone. He goes wide on purpose, just enough to make Jinu grunt disagreeably and twist his body closer to the wall.
“He’s right, dear. You’re going to have no idea what you meant to type in the morning,” Ro yawns, taking the seat in front of Jinu, which speaks to how likely he thinks it is that their leader will listen to them.
“Mmhmm,” Jinu agrees, and proceeds to ignore the suggestions entirely.
Abby snorts, shaking his head fondly. Jinu’s fingers move over the screen like he didn’t just spend several hours drinking. It’s impressive unless one has ever heard Jinu’s audible de-evolution as the drinks pile up, when he just says shit like ‘Of course, the magpie with six eyes steals hats’ in perfectly normal cadence and without ever explaining what the fuck it means. To be fair, by the time Jinu hits that point, everyone is pretty much all just nodding and agreeing with each other.
Abby slides into the seat beside Ro and sighs out a breath, exhausted but happy. Beside him, the guitar tech smiles, head already back against the seat and well on his way out of the waking world. It’s only his very slight humming that makes Abby notice he’s got his earbuds in. And he can almost place the humming but not quite…
“What are we listening to?” he whispers, leaning in and tugging the left earbud free. (Note: this is safe to do with Romance. This is Not Safe and Not Advisable to do with Baby.) It’s heart-shaped and teal in color, and the sound is pretty shitty. But Ro, seasoned pro that he is, knows better than to trust himself not to lose or break something that’ll be shoved into his pocket on the road. Case in point: last time Abby saw him wearing earbuds, they were pink and flower-shaped.
Over the slight static is a catchy, mellow melody with an easy beat under it.
“—but I’ll try (try not to think of yoooou)
Love, don’t leave me lon-ely
I’ll be alright without you—“
“Aww.” Abby nudges his near-sleeping friend gently. “Why are we listening to mope rock?”
Romance opens his eyes. “Hm? We’re… not?”
Abby gives him a knowing look. “Dude.” He knows Ro’s taste in music. And Journey is hardly in his top 10. Or top 50.
“It’s not mope rock!”
“Quintessential mope rock. I used to listen to this song in high school every time I got dumped.”
Ro’s face softens. “Oh, honey.” He rests a hand on the back of Abby’s neck and squeezes gently. “Everyone has terrible taste in high school. They didn’t know what they were letting go of.”
Abby has to bite back a laugh that will wake the whole bus. It’s so sincere and so well-meant even if the misses the entire point. He could try and explain again, he could try and find a different question, but… they’re both pretty buzzed, very tired, and it’s much easier to let it go. He slides the earbud into his own ear and drops his head back onto the seat. Ro’s fight-or-flight instinct dies quick and painless, and he’s gone before Schon’s guitar even finishes fading out. Abby is right behind him.
When the bus door rattles open, startling everyone awake, the sky has turned light outside. A few more roadies trickle into the bus behind the driver, the remnants of the crews that haven’t opted for some other way home. Abby groans softly and rubs his forehead and the beginnings of a hangover. Don Henley is in his ear, strumming a familiar, forward guitar.
“—and beg for something more?
But I’m learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes—“
“Dude,” he mumbles. “This is fully a mope rock playlist.”
Romance groans unhappily. “Abby. Sweetie. Mope rock is a very specific sub-genre. The Cure, The Smiths… it’s not just every sad song that exists.”
“Oh, so you’re saying this is just the sad song playlist?” Abby feels around blindly until he finds some part of Ro to nudge with his elbow. “Who broke your heart, man?”
The music cuts off abruptly. Romance stutters out a few syllables, but by the time Abby has opened his eyes it’s just in time to see the leggy guitar tech climbing right over his lap with surprising dexterity for someone who drank so much just a few hours ago.
“Jelly!” Romance immediately drops himself into the seat beside the merch manager. “Good morning, hun! I haven’t gotten to chat with you in days.”
“Romy!” Jelly immediately throws an arm around Ro’s shoulders and pulls him into a hug. “My dude, everything I own smells like sulfur now! Wasn’t that awesome??”
Abby listens for a couple of minutes while the two of them gush about the show’s effects and something about how the lead and rhythmic guitars converse with each other or something. He stands and moves back to sit beside Jinu, pulling the teal earbud out. “Is Ro okay, man?”
“Hm?” Jinu glances up from his phone at the seat where Ro was. His eyes flick over to where he is now (it’s not hard to find the pink hair in the bus). “Yeah, pretty sure he’s fine. Why?”
“I dunno. Does he listen to breakup songs at the end of every tour and I just never noticed?” Abby asks. He feels like he would have noticed that.
“Oh.” Jinu snorts a little and shakes his head. “You know how Ro gets after—” He seems to rethink whatever he was about to say. “I mean… he’s probably just feeling a little melancholy. Going back to the normal world doesn’t always hit great.”
Sure. Fair enough. Being on the road with the boys is definitely more fun than Abby ever has on a moving job. Hell, working days on tour are more fun than days off in the normie world half the time.
It’s just… Ro seems fine. Well, now he seems fine, sitting and talking with Jelly, the two of them showing each other photos on their phones. Abby looks down at the earbud in his hand.
So if everything is fine now, but it wasn’t when he was sitting with Abby…
Abby is not the smartest guy in the group. If you asked him, he’d say he only barely cracks the top 5. But he’s not a complete idiot, and if you give him the puzzle pieces and a bit of time to stare at them, he can figure out the picture on his own. And between Jinu being on his phone and the other two passed out, he gets about an hour or so to really look at those pieces. And he… he thinks he might have figured out the picture.
Baby makes a fairly agonized groan behind them when consciousness begins to pull him back in. Concentration immediately ruined, Abby looks back to see him turning his face to shove it more fully against Mystery’s ribs. Which says a lot about how his head must feel considering when any of them last showered.
“Welcome back,” Abby says cheerfully. “Wanna guess how how much you embarrassed yourself last night?”
“Wanna shut the fuck up?” Baby grumbles in response, half the words garbled into Myst’s shirt.
Jinu elbows Abby lightly and looks at the seat behind him. “We’ve still got a while before we get to the lot. You should try to go back to sleep.”
“You should step up as a leader and fucking execute me already.”
“Can’t put you out of your misery, man. You know what a pain in the ass it would be to replace you?” Abby laughs. “We are not doing that settling-in period again.”
Baby’s words run together into something that’s just pained noise. Then he just… goes still.
Abby blinks and looks at Jinu, kind of impressed. “Hey, he went back to sleep. That’s gotta be a record, right?”
Jinu is frowning and squinting at Baby, which is the correct response when anything is too easy with that one. “I… guess…?”
“…mgonabrf.”
“Ah, shit.” Abby stands up. “Hajun! We need a pull over!”
They rouse Mystery so he and Baby can both get it out of their systems on the side of the road. Ro grabs his bag from the cargo stash and disperses painkillers. Hajun swears at them for being stupid and they all apologize until he lets them back on the bus.
There is one— count ‘em, one— stop at a gas station. Is it because their bus driver is a kind and understanding soul and he’s taking pity on his hungover passengers? Yes. The most flattering answer is always correct when one has a solid bus driver. (Does it appear that Hajun also needs a fresh energy drink because the convenience store by the final tour stop only had the red ones? Perhaps. But still— kind and understanding soul.)
Baby and Jinu are both demolishing bottles of water because they both probably plan to go home and do more shit with the rest of their day. Ro allowed everyone a second round of painkillers because everyone will be dispersed by the time that recommended 6-hour window has elapsed. They’re all under orders not to take any more the rest of the day.
If left to his own devices, Romance will spend the rest of the short break hunting Mystery with a bottle of orange juice (because he’s about to be turned loose into the wild so it’s the last chance to pack vitamins into him). Abby already saw Mystery slink around the side of the building with two fresh Monsters, and presumably he will be shotgunning one of them so as not to get caught with both.
But this is also the last bastion of anything even close to privacy they’re going to have. When the bus dumps them back in the backlot, it’ll be hugs, fist bumps, back slaps, and goodbyes. The real world is waiting to swallow them all back up.
So this is the only chance he’s got to have this talk with Ro. Maybe for weeks because this isn’t something you do over the phone.
“Ro.” Abby catches him by the elbow before he can take his search for Mystery outside. “C’mere a sec.”
“What is it, hun?” Romance keeps one eye out the front windows but follows Abby to the back of the freezer section, because of course he does. Even if he’s busy Ro will parse his attention as much as he needs to if someone needs help. He’s a sweet guy like that.
“Dude. Listen to me, okay?” Abby hefts him up and sits him atop the ice cream freezer, planting a hand on either side of his knees to box him in. “You? You’re awesome.”
It does have the intended effect of getting Ro’s full attention. And, unintended, immediate suspicion. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” They probably only have a few minutes before someone starts yelling for everyone to get back to the bus. This happens now or it doesn’t happen. And Abby is not burdened by the curse of hesitation. “But I feel like maybe you forget that you’re awesome. You’re funny. You’re smart. You’ve got super… interesting taste in music. And you’re cute as hell.”
“I... wait, what do you mean, ‘interesting’ taste?”
“I mean it’s interesting,” Abby repeats. “You talk about complex melodies and shit.”
Romance huffs and sits up straighter. “Are you saying my taste in music is weird?”
“No! …Sort of. But in a good way.” This is going great. Regroup, man. Come on. “Look, the important thing here is… you’re an amazing guy. You better say you know that already. You know that, right?”
“Abby.” Romance rests his hands on either of Abby’s biceps. “Rip off the band-aid, hun. Just tell me what happened and we’ll fix it. Without telling Jinu if we possibly can.”
Abby sighs and presses a kiss to Ro’s forehead. Well, he asked for it… “Ro. If you’re gonna fall ass over teakettle for the cute, dumb ones, you have got to also have the balls to tell them.”
The long fingers yank back off his arms, and Ro clutches them into fists against his own chest. He can’t really go anywhere with the wall right behind him, but he does crane back as far as it will let him. “I… I’m sorry?”
“You heard me.” Abby prods his thigh with a finger. “How the fuck is someone supposed to guess when it’s you? You’re sweet and nice to everyone, man. I only just barely figured it out.”
Romance opens his mouth and then closes it again. “I… uh…”
The amount of color their crew mom has lost is a bit concerning. Fuck, this is not going well. Abby is going to be on Jinu’s shit list if he makes Ro faint.
“Hey. Breathe,” he says urgently, moving his hands to their guitar tech’s knees and squeezing gently. “What I’m saying is, you’re a badass. And you’re a catch, okay? Just tell Jelly you’re into him, dude!”
There’s a beat of complete and total silence where Abby is dead sure that Romance is going to either pass out or puke. He rallies himself enough not to do either (because he’s really is a badass). “…sorry?”
“Yeah!” Abby smiles. “You guys would be really cute together. You’re the same type of nerd. But man, you’re gonna have to say something. He’s not gonna get there on his own.”
“I… I don’t… I’m not…” Romance stammers around his words, some weird combination of relief and offense vying to space in his expression. “…Jelly? Really?”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, man. Look at some of the guys Myst hooks up with.”
“…Move. I need a cigarette.”
Abby relents and lets him free. That pep talk could have gone better.
Ro makes it through the better part of two cigarettes in the few minutes they have left. When they all pile back onto the bus, he spends the rest of the ride under the safety of Jinu’s arm, making eye contact with no one.
Abby is at least smart enough to figure that this isn’t one of those matters to keep pressing. If Ro isn’t ready to deal with it just yet, that’s fine. Some shit is just extra hard, and even a badass needs time.
Jinu is usually a creature who blends in with his world. Or complements it in some way. Black goes with everything, after all. It goes with pink, it goes with purple, it goes with blue. And it absolutely goes with fuchsia.
However, if one dumps Jinu into the front office of an elementary school, where there are tissue-paper flowers pinned along the front of the desk and posters with colorful, cartoon animals giving advice about sneezing into the bend of your elbow (do) and talking to strangers (don’t), he does sort of stick out. It’s like if the grim reaper wandered into Candyland.
“Not that I mind, but there’s probably not much I can tell your niece’s class that you couldn’t have told them.”
Abby leans back against the front counter where the admin is engaging in light combat with the printer. “You’re kidding, right? It’s Safety Week, Jinu. You could practically be the mascot.”
This is the truth. It is Safety Week at his niece’s school. (Technically it’s his cousin’s kid, but whatever. There’s no easy way to clock that and all his cousins’ kids just call him their uncle anyway.) And Jinu can teach the kids way more about that than Abby can. Safety is one his his life’s passions, and bless him for how well he puts up with three and a half crewmates who regularly test the limits of his love and patience. (Ro only gets half credit because he’s as bad as the rest of them when it’s crunch time and when the only danger is to himself.)
It is not the whole truth. The whole truth would be that Jinu has worked for 15 days straight without them even being on tour. (The details Ro has are spotty but it seems to boil down to Jinu playing Find The Minor Static Interference with an entire theater after some kind of equipment change.) Ro is starting to Google if someone can die from lack of vitamin D.
Telling Jinu to relax is not a useful thing— the dude probably thinks he has been relaxing because he’s had access to good water pressure and a whole ass mattress for those 15 days. The useful thing to do is to provide A Task that is more urgent or more interesting. Their leader is a border collie, he has to be doing something or Abby is pretty sure he’ll just die from the pent-up energy.
Jinu still looks like he doubts that, but he doesn’t fight it too hard. Abby would bet that just the ride over felt like a field trip. “I dunno. Sounds like fun, though.”
Behind them, the admin makes a squeaky but triumphant little ‘ha!’ and yanks a page from the printer. A few clicks of her scissors and she’s presented them both with stick-on name tags with the words ‘Registered Guest’ on top.
Abby grabs a pen from a cup of them stationed by the guest sign-in sheet and writes 'ABBY,' then adds a few lines in the vague shape of abs.
“Are you allowed to use a fake name when you’re visiting a school?” Jinu asks, frowning. His says 'Jinu' because what else would it say?
“Uh, it’s my roadie name. So it’s not fake.” Abby sticks it directly in the center of his chest and pats it down. When Jinu keeps frowning at him, as if they didn’t both just present completely real IDs to achieve these badges, he rolls his eyes. “Yes, dude. Relax, they’re not gonna give us a bad grade at being visitors,” he says, pulling the door open. “Come on, they’ll send her up to get us.”
Abby manages to get Jinu approximately 4 minutes of sunlight before a small, shrill third grader crashes into his back and throws her arms around him.
“You made it!! Uncle Abby, you came!”
Abby holds his arms up and looks down, grinning. “Aw, ya found us! C’mere.” He holds his hand out and lets her grab it, leading her around front of him. “Say hello to my friend Jinu. Jinu, this is—”
“Roadie names, you promised!” she says sternly, looking up at him. Her mother really went all out and gave her a thick layer of eyeliner that probably looked awesome when she left the house. Now that she and her friends have doubtless been poking at it, it’s smudged and smeared to hell. Which is still a pretty metal look.
“Roadie names it is.” He sets a hand on her head between her twin buns. “Jinu, this is Rock Sugar.”
Jinu, consummate professional that he always is, doesn’t bat an eye. He crouches down and holds a hand out to her. “Nice to meet you, Rock Sugar.”
She holds her arms out in front of her, clapping her hands together. “I know about the bubble! It’s this big!”
Abby gives her head and gentle wobble. “Wrong one, kiddo. You can shake his hand. This is our crew leader.”
“Oh.” Rock Sugar takes Jinu’s hand and shakes it. “Thank you for keeping Uncle Abby safe when he’s setting up concerts.”
Jinu smiles at her. “Of course. I’m very lucky to have him on my crew. I like your flannel. You match your uncle.”
Rock Sugar squeals and releases his hand, delighted as any kid is when an adult notices something they want noticed. She plants her hands on her waist just above where the sleeves of her black and pink flannel are tied. “Thank you! I like all your black. You look like a shadow.”
Abby has to cough to cover up a laugh. “Okay, so now we’re all friends. Show us your class before they send the truancy officer after you.”
Everyone working the music industry in any capacity knows that they have a cool job. Everyone. If a surgeon, a CEO, and a guy who drives the bus for a rock band were all at the same party, guess which one most people want to talk to? On the scale of cool, working in the music industry might have competition from pilots and firefighters. That’s about it.
But sometimes Abby isn’t sure that Jinu, who lives and breathes his job, fully appreciates that it’s really fucking cool. Because after the teacher introduces them (“Mr. Jinu and Mr. Abby are here to teach us about how they make sure everything is safe for big concerts!”), Jinu looks a class of 8-9 year olds right in the eyes, claps his hands together, and opens with this:
“So who wants to guess what the four basic types of tape we keep in every roadie toolbox are?”
The kids, because they are 8-9 years old and probably don’t even know there are that many kinds of tape in the world, stare at him blankly.
Jinu is undeterred. “Okay, how about just guessing one of the kinds of tape we use?”
Abby nudges him with an elbow. “Dude,” he murmurs. “Where’s your band instinct? You gotta warm the crowd before you hit ‘em with the B-side tracks.”
That gets a face out of Jinu, who probably thinks discussing gaffer tape vs. strike tape is solid A-side material. But he relents in the interest of keeping the audience engaged. “How many of you have ever been to a concert or seen one on TV?”
Most of the hands go up and Abby silently thanks the music gods for Kpop, Jpop, and even the fucking Wiggles. They’re bringing the next generation up right when it comes to an appetite for live music. And it gives them enough to work with that they don’t have to start from ‘here’s what a concert is,’ thank fuck.
It starts off pretty decent, actually. Jinu uses the whiteboard and draws a basic diagram of boxes to represent a theater setup and box trucks. He teaches them the parts of a stage and gives the class a rundown of how roadies load trucks and their most important safety rules. Honestly, he’s not bad at talking to kids, at explaining things in fairly basic terms, and even at judging when their eyes are starting to glaze over because he’s spending too much time talking about electrical diagnostics. Occasionally, possibly accidentally, he even mentions something cool, like the lengths they took to make sure the Pain Puppets’ 8-foot tall dragon fly-in never squished a band member.
“—so since Mystery would always be somewhere around the drum kit anyway, we made him the spotter for the piece.”
Jinu has let his guard down and become very involved in drawing staging schematics (which apparently took root in his brain because the Pain Puppets were almost a year ago and he might actually be recreating them to scale). Abby is a seasoned Show and Tell prop (see above note about Abby’s job being really fucking cool) and has half an eye on Jinu’s ramblings and the rest on the class to judge when they start losing the plot. One of the kids, mercifully, puts his hand up before the tech talk loses its novelty.
Abby points at him. “What’s up, dude?”
“Rock Sugar said we’re using roadie names,” he says, glancing over at her and getting a very confident nod in return. “Can I have a roadie name?”
“Sure. Uh… what’d you eat for breakfast?”
“Fruit Loops!”
“Great, then you’re Rings. What do you want to ask Jinu, Rings?” Abby nudges Jinu lightly to pull him back from the land of applied physics.
“Who is Mystery?” Rings asks, and gets a murmur of agreement from his classmates.
Jinu pauses in adjusting the angles of the pulley system he’s sketching out. “Oh, right.” He turns back to the class. “Mystery is another member of our crew. He’s our drum tech. That means he sets up the drum kit and makes sure it all sounds right at every show.”
“Why is he called Mystery?” The little girl looks hopefully at Abby. “I had toast for breakfast.” (Abby dubs her Jamz. She is especially pleased with the ‘z.’)
Jinu taps his whiteboard marker against his thigh, probably trying to figure out a kid-friendly and safety-friendly way to tell a class full of children that he and his crew know fuck-all about their co-worker and that Jinu hired him without so much as a name. “Well…”
Abby, who is well-versed in child-friendly shorthand, grabs the marker and wipes a hand through the middle of Jinu’s schematics. “He’s called Mystery because he looks like this,” he says, jotting a quick doodle of their drum tech on the board, most of the drawing comprised of his head and ridiculous hair. He’s not the best artist in the world, but he’s good enough to doodle shit that makes kids laugh. It’s easy. Go hard on whatever is the funniest and kids love it.
And the kids do love it. There’s giggling and mouth covering and a general sense of amazement that someone grown-up and professional has such wild hair and such a cool name.
“How big is your crew?” (Breakfast: eggs; Roadie Name: Coop)
“There’s five of us. Now, we’re just a small part of the overall crews who set up these concerts. See, backline tech does mostly—“
While Jinu talks, Abby wipes away the rest of his complicated floorplan drawings and makes some friends for the doodle of Mystery.
Jinu is simply a starfish-posed humanoid shape colored in with black squiggles, head to toe. And holding a walkie talkie. Abby helpfully points to the drawing and then to Jinu for the class.
Ro’s sweeping hair pretty much just turns his head into a heart with glasses. It’s the best way to get the vibe across when he doesn’t have a pink marker to do the heavy lifting.
Abby gives his own avatar a flexing pose and biceps about as big as his head. Best to keep it G-rated for this audience and leave his abs out of it, proud of them though he is.
And for Baby…
Jinu pauses his too-thorough explanation of acoustics when the class begins tittering. And then giggling. And then laughing. He looks over his shoulder at Abby’s work.
“Abby!”
Doodled Mystery is holding a doodled Baby, who is a head with a burrito-wrapped blanket for a body. Abby finishes the final touch of the pacifier. “What? It’s environmental storytelling.”
“It’s rude. At least give him legs!”
“Nah, this is fine.” Abby taps the board with the marker. “So we have Jinu, Romance, Mystery, Abby, and Baby. Since Jinu is the crew leader, we’re called the J—“
“We’re not called anything, actually,” Jinu says immediately, raising his voice to cover Abby’s. “We’re called backline techs. That’s all. We don’t need to have a name other than that.”
“Hey, whatever you say, boss.” Abby’s smile is clearly not innocent enough because Jinu just squints at him. “…So does anyone else have a question for Jinu?”
As soon as Jinu’s border collie attention is back on the class because that is where The Task is, Abby pulls out his phone to snap a photo of his masterpiece. That's when it happens.
Someone asks The Question.
They say The Name that no one should ever, ever mention around Jinu.
“Have you guys ever worked with Gwi-ma?”
Shit.
Abby can actually see the subtle tug-of-war going on between Jinu’s roadie brain and his play-normal brain. And to his credit, Jinu does try to default to a normal answer. He halfway makes it.
“Ah… no. Shows as big as Gwi-ma’s are a different kind of beast than what we do. Arena tours are very long and the crews are huge.”
Leave it at that. Leave it alone. Shut up now. Abby tries his absolute best to beam the message directly into Jinu’s brain but… yeah, the inner roadie has clawed its way to the forefront. The battle was valiant but futile.
“But speaking of safety, Gwi-ma actually has one of the worst safety records in the industry. There are major OSHA violations on almost every tour. Just this past summer at Fury Fest…”
The downhill descent is quick and savage.
It is extremely weird to be the one banished from the scene of an etiquette crime while Abby of all people does the clean-up. Jinu is sitting on the back of a bench in the outdoor reading garden, sneakers on the seat and arms folded on his knees while he considers the statue of Mother Goose holding court there, wings spread wide and welcoming.
“You know, I probably shouldn’t have gone into quite as much detail about third degree burns,” he tells her. “But seriously, what idiot uses open flames at an outdoor festival and doesn’t check the wind forecast? Kids are really impressionable, too. It would be wrong to tell them how cool it is to be a roadie and not warn them that not every band is a good one to work for.” He sighs heavily. “I’m sure you understand. You’re always looking out for kids.”
The statue is, of course, a statue and has nothing to add to the conversation.
“Good news, man. We still got in on snack time.” Abby ducks under the arched trellis the marks the entrance into the reading garden. Plopping down on the bench beside Jinu’s sneakers, he hands him a paper cup of apple slices with a glob of peanut butter at the bottom. “So, that was fun.”
“I’m sorry,” Jinu groans. “I hope I didn’t traumatize the kids.”
“Dude, I think you traumatized me,” Abby laughs, pulling an apple slice from his own cup and popping it into his mouth. “I’m gonna start flinching every time Baby pulls out his lighter.”
He sighs and sags. “…Did I get you in trouble?”
Abby laughs and rests his elbow on Jinu’s knee. “No. It’s fine. I can’t bring you to Safety Week and be surprised when you safety your little heart out.”
Jinu toys with one of the apple slices, twisting it idly for something to do with his fingers. “I probably didn’t need to tell them about the guy losing an arm in the scaffolding collapse.”
That just makes Abby laugh again. Their bass tech finds everything under the sun funny, and he’s always willing to tell you why he’s right to think so. It’s very comforting during a crisis.
“Well, if the next Jinu was in that class, they just got the fear of OSHA put into them in third grade. That makes their future crew pretty damn lucky.” He taps his paper cup against Jinu’s like they’re toasting with champagne. “Who knows how many arms you just saved.”
Small venues are interesting. Sometimes there’s just A Dude who shows up with a key and unlocks a door and tells them that the lights are by the curtain pulleys. And then he just fucks off and leaves them to figure out where the curtain pulleys are. In a dark theater.
Well. An almost-dark theater.
There’s a lamp on the stage. A tall, standing lamp with no shade, little more than a lightbulb on a stick. It’s switched on, a point of light so small that it’s completely useless. It’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever been in a venue they’re about to set up. They’ve found everything from bongs to underwear to a whole family of raccoons. The lamp is pretty tame. It’s just a lamp.
Abby and Mystery stand in the backstage doorway watching two penlights bob around in the cavernous dark. Jinu’s goes one way and Ro’s goes the other, both of them switching between looking up to follow the curtain system and forward to not accidentally find the edge of the stage in the worst way.
“Who the hell wired this place and put the lights so far from the door?” Mystery huffs.
“An asshole.” Abby watches one of the lights come to a stop, too far inside for him to see what it’s illuminating anymore. Hopefully light switches.
“Found ‘em!” Jinu calls.
Tiny pops emit as circuits click on and the overhead lights flicker on. They snap on one by one, reaching out over the stage and into the auditorium. The place is small and a little sparse, but that’s nothing that some blacklight and haze won’t fix come showtime.
“Alright, start the first unload,” Abby calls over his shoulder to the waiting groups of roadies and day hires there to lift heavy shit and, if they’re all lucky, beat the rain that’s rapidly turning the sky darker and darker shades of gray. “I’ll go get the hangar door open.”
He heads in the general direction of where the loading door is on the outside of the theater, since he can safely assume that’s also where it is on the inside. Ro heads to deal with the lamp before someone trips on the cord. Jinu begins making a circuit of the backstage area, getting the layout memorized so he knows what they’re working with. So far, so normal.
Abby is running a mental inventory of the load out and what they’ll really want to focus on getting through while they have dry weather. A place this small, they might not even want to fully unload. He’ll have to ask Ji—
Ro stops beside the lamp and faces out to the auditorium. Deep breath, like he has something to say. Abby pauses since no one else is around to listen. Commentary on how small the place is? Concern about how sturdy the wiring is? Theories about the acoustics?
Ro presses his hands to his thighs and bows. To nothing. There’s no one there.
“We have a lot of work to do,” he says. To no one, there’s still no one out in the auditorium. “We promise to work very carefully and leave everything just as we found it when we go. Please don’t cause us any trouble.”
Then he stands, snaps off the lamp, and gets to work unplugging the cord. As if nothing weird just happened.
“What the hell was that all about?” Abby asks, coming to hold the lamp still while Ro winds the cord up.
“Hm?” The guitar tech looks at him blankly.
Mystery pops out from around one of the curtains. “Dude, you were just monologuing to no one.”
“Oh.” Romance waves vaguely at the stage. “That was for the ghost.” He says it in a way that implies ‘of course’ at the end. ‘That was for the ghost, of course, and all perfectly normal.’
“The ghost?” Abby looks at Mystery. Mystery shrugs. They both look back for something a little more grounded, please. But now Ro is looking at them like they’re the weirdos. He gestures at the lamp.
“Ghost light.”
“I think it’s a lamp, actually.”
Romance rolls his eyes and shoos Abby’s hand away, grabbing the pole. “It’s a light left on for the ghost in the theater. And it’s obviously just good manners to be respectful.”
“…to the ghost,” Abby says, checking to see if he’s anywhere near the same page on this.
“What ghost?” Mystery asks. “Who died here?”
“Yeah, how did you know this place is haunted? We just got here.”
“Every theater is haunted, dears.” Ro picks up the lamp and heads off behind the curtains like that wasn’t the weirdest possible conversation they all could have had.
“That was all just word soup, right?” Mystery asks, watching him go. “None of that made sense to you?”
“Not a single word.” Abby scratches his head. Sure, those were full sentences, but…
“I always knew he was the weird one,” Mystery says, with an absolutely straight face. Abby cannot for the life of him tell if the crew’s cryptid with half a face is being sarcastic or not. He decides he probably is because that’s quicker.
“Well… whatever. We’ve got work to do.”
There’s no such thing as ghosts. Obviously. Ghosts are in movies and the stories you tell little kids while sitting on the kitchen floor waiting for the power to come back on. (And then your cousin yells at you because she has her kid sleeping in her bed for a week. It’s fun.)
But ghosts aren’t actually a thing.
“We’d have seen a ghost by now, right?” Mystery asks, glancing over his shoulder to the stage below.
“Ghosts aren’t real, man.”
If one wants to remove curtains from a stage (and they do want to because they will probably catch fire if they’re left in place), then the load must be counterweighted. One does not simply remove heavy items from a metal bar and expect that won’t make it go flying back up into the rafters as soon as the pulley lock is released. So when the curtain is lowered down, the stack of weights on the other end of the pulley system rises up. Someone will be posted on an elevated platform (the loading gallery if one wants to sound fancy) to deal with removing weights to balance the load. Hefting around heavy hunks of metal is Abby’s job.
Mystery is there for spotting and commentary purposes. And apparently also to be a chicken-shit.
“I mean, we’re at these places every night.” Mystery crosses to the other side of the gallery and looks down again. “We’d have seen a ghost.”
“We haven’t seen one because there’s no such thing.” Now… it’s not entirely true that they’re at a place quite like this all the time. Abby hasn’t seen a fully manual counterweight system in a while, actually. Or heard the steady pounding of rain against the roof so loud and close. He’s pretty sure the goddamn bus has better insulation.
But being smaller and maybe a little more dated doesn’t mean it has ghosts.
Obviously.
“Heads UP!”
Abby keeps one hand fisted in the back of Mystery’s shirt to make sure he keeps clear of the ropes as the one of the battens begins to lower. “Maybe even he doesn’t believe it. He could have been messing with us.”
Mystery stares at him, mouth agape. Shame, that look says. Shame for even thinking that. “Romance? Playing tricks just to be an asshole?”
“Okay, when you say it like that…” Abby sighs. “Fine. So Ro believes in ghosts, then. It’s hardly the weirdest thing about him.”
“Jinu!” Mystery lurches forward and hangs just shy of too-far, the safety railing pressing so low on his stomach it’s practically useless. Abby keeps his grip and lets their cryptid half-dangle over the open air. It makes Jinu lose two shades of color, which is always very funny.
“Myst!” Jinu is stock still under the gallery, arms out like he was going to have any hope of catching him if he’d been about to fall. He rallies a little once it becomes apparent that there’s not about to be an eight-foot trip to the floor for Mystery. “Dude, don’t do that!”
“Is this theater haunted?” Mystery, as ever, feels no shame. He is a free creature they could all learn much from.
Jinu just looks at him like he doesn’t understand the question. Outside, thunder cracks through the heavy rain. “I mean… all theaters are haunted, man.”
That’s a bit of a nasty shock. Abby turns abruptly and leans over the railing as well, their drum tech lowering several inches when he does. Jinu makes a nervous stutter of noise, trying to position himself better. (‘Better’ is a relative term because there is no position from which Jinu could break Mystery’s fall without just simply getting crushed by him.)
“What did you say?”
It’s one thing for Ro to believe in ghosts. He’s a prog metal type, ‘nuff said there. Of course he’s a little strange. But Jinu is Jinu.
“Could you not do that?” he calls up, still grimacing.
Mystery, who is perfectly content to be held aloft and lets his arms dangle like a rag doll, turns to look at Abby. “He’s not serious, right?” He turns to look down at Jinu. “You’re not serious, right??”
“Abby!”
That’s the ‘done’ tone. Abby hefts Mystery back onto the correct side of the railing and plants him back on his feet. When he turns his attention back, Jinu is absently rubbing his chest in relief, but his attention has already been fully monopolized but some new problem one of the carpenters has brought him.
“Start with 4 of ‘em and we’ll test it,” calls the guy below them as the pulley goes clunk and gets locked into place. On the stage, the long black pipe hovers just a few feet off the floor, the curtains on each end pooling on themselves in heavy black puddles.
“…maybe Jinu was messing with us.” It’s a statement that wants to be a question.
“He was messing with us.” Abby hefts one of the weights off the holding plate that’s risen to match the level of the gallery. “He just knows what Ro thinks about ghosts in theaters and decided to be an asshole. Obviously.”
Jinu absolutely has it in him to try and scare them for fun. He was probably just fucking with them.
While actively having his heart stress-tested by questionable work safety practices.
…Jinu multitasks all the time, he could have been doing both at once.
Abby finishes securing the weights and calls down the line that it’s ready to test. He turns back to tell Mystery, again, that there’s no such thing as ghosts. But, as free spirits are wont to do, he’s fucked off to parts unknown and left Abby alone in the gallery.
The lights go out.
Of course the lights go out. The rain has been hammering the roof for an hour, so hard and so clear that it’s just a wall of noise. The claps of thunder have gotten louder, clearer, and closer together. It would be more surprising if the lights didn’t go out.
The surprise (and Abby isn’t entirely sure it should be all that surprising) is that this theater, apparently, does not have a generator. Or if it does, it’s not working, doesn’t kick on automatically, doesn’t have gas or fuel… all of which amount to the same thing. A bunch of work crews with half-finished assembly projects are now standing around in the pitch black.
There are no windows, of course, because shifting daylight is the mortal enemy of the theater. The loading door was shut as soon as they had everything inside to keep the floor as dry as possible. Everything is shut, sealed, and fucking dark.
Abby has been unbolting rows of seats in the auditorium to clear standing space, so that’s a fun spot to be when the whole place goes black. He digs in his back pocket as people begin grasping for their headlamps, points of light appearing on the stage. When he gets his penlight free and shines it around, the beam passes along the rows of seats and casts shadows that seem to move and scatter just behind the light.
“Everyone, let’s move into the hallway,” Jinu calls, his disembodied voice coming loud and clear from somewhere further back. “We’ll give it a few minutes and then someone will brave a trip to the bus for camping lanterns if we’re in the dark for too long.”
“Everyone with a headlamp, help others vacate or locate their own flashlights before moving,” Romance’s voice adds. “No walking through scattered equipment in the dark.”
Abby is more than ready to be out of the dark pit that is the auditorium where every shadow looks like something crouching under the seats. He checks the floor for bolts and his own footing, then turns for the stage.
“Dude.”
Mystery is crouched on the edge of the stage directly in front of him. Abby stumbles backwards with a colorful stream of swearing as the penlight slips from his fingers. He hits one of the loose rows of seats, the metal screeching across the cement floor.
“Careful!” Jinu calls from where he’s herding crew members out. “Is everyone okay?”
“Fine,” Abby calls back, looking around for his light. “What the fuck, Myst?”
Mystery hops down to join him, fitting on his headlamp. “I told Jinu we were gonna go grab Baby.”
He’d almost forgot that their youngest crew member has been shut up in the sound booth all morning. The sound booth on the second floor of the building, only accessible by a staircase in the back of the auditorium.
“This place is officially the worst,” Abby sighs, snatching up his light and clicking it on and off a few times to make sure it still works.
“Come on.” Mystery catches his wrist and pulls him into the aisle, the spot of light from his headlamp narrowing as they close in on the door in the back. Abby glances up at the window from the sound booth overlooking the auditorium where surely Baby could at least see the parade of scattered lights vacating the stage. There’s no pinprick of a flashlight behind the glass to say he’s still in there.
“He’s probably on his way down already.” Abby shoves the push bar on the back door and sweeps his light around. They’ll definitely be able to just grab him on the stairs and—
The door swings shut. The click of it echoes up the stairwell and seals out the noise of the rest of the roadies. No more shuffling. No more low voices. No more smattering of lights like stars in the dark. The stairwell is the kind of silence that's a noise of its own. Just the hammer of rain above them and dead quiet lurking under it.
He and Mystery stand at the door. Abby raises his flashlight, slowly running the beam up the stairs. The slatted rails cast long shadows that crawl up the walls. The white paint is cracked and peeling, and heavy shadows gather over their heads in the underside of switchback staircase.
Mystery’s headlamp is fixed on the first landing of the stairs. “I don’t think he’s coming down.”
“Probably waiting to see if the lights come back.”
Something creaks over their heads, making them both look up. Then nothing.
“…old buildings do that,” Abby says, ignoring that he’s lowered his voice to a whisper.
“So do ghosts,” Mystery whispers.
“There’s no such thing.”
“Right,” the drum tech agrees.
There’s a moment of silence as they wait for… something. For Baby to come down? For the lights to come back? For something to pop out of the dark and—
Mystery hits his tension limit first and sprints up the stairs. Abby rushes up behind him. Their lights bob and swing through the stairwell as they run, hard shadows flying over their heads. They hit the landing, pivot, and run up the second flight of stairs. Mystery uses his shoulder to slam the door at the top over and they duck inside.
Abby presses his back to the wall and listens to his own hard breathing. The door glides shut, slow and lazy, the click of it so gentle it’s almost mocking them. Mystery’s headlamp shivers lightly on the whitewashed brick wall in front of them as he pants.
“Okay,” Abby says. The rain is so close and so loud that they can’t whisper anymore, and the air is stagnant and already turning warm up here. He sweeps his flashlight down the narrow hallway, landing on a door. “Let’s get Baby and get the hell out of here.”
“Done.” Mystery rushes the door and shoves it open so hard he almost loses his balance. Abby is right behind him and catches him by one arm to keep him upright and finish shoving him inside. “Baby?”
Their lights pass over the sound board, dark and silent. The window facing the stage is just a maw. Everyone must have made it into the hallway, taking their lights with them.
And an empty chair.
“…Baby?” Mystery crouches to shine his headlamp under the desk. His voice has taken on a new note of distress.
Abby doesn’t like it either, turning and checking all the corners as if their audio tech is going to be crouched there and cowering at the dark. “Where the hell could he have gone?”
“We would have seen him on the stairs if we’d passed him, right?”
They actually would have trampled him with the way they came up those stairs, but that’s probably not the most comforting thing to say. And they definitely also would have seen him as they ran him over. “Yeah, there would have been no missing him. There’s only one way up here.”
“…and you’re sure that ghosts aren’t real?”
It takes a second for Abby to realize he’s serious.
“I mean… pretty sure, yeah.” Mystery doesn’t move from where his hands are braced on the edge of the desk, his headlamp narrowed to a small circle on the sound board. Okay, do better, Abby. Come on, man. “Dude, I’ve been in buildings where people just died a few weeks ago and their kids want everything moved out. I’ve been in prime ghost territory. No ghosts, ever.”
“Then where’s Baby?” The question is quiet and sort of stark, the frustrated edge of a man who’s lost his pen while trying to connect the dots. “He wasn’t on the stairs. He wasn’t in the theater. He’s not in here.”
“And the only other option is that he was spirited away by a ghost?”
“Well, he’s gone!” Mystery growls. His fingers flex on the edge of the table before he pushes off from it, looking out the window into the maw. “We need to tell Jinu.”
Abby holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Let’s go,” he says. Whether it’s a ghost or Baby going on a smoke break without telling anyone, the end result is a missing crew member. They have to tell Jinu.
Abby grabs the door handle and pulls.
It sticks, snapping back shut.
He pauses and lifts his hand, hovering it cautiously over the handle as he strains to listen. The rain hammers the roof, the sound washing everything else out.
But he feels it.
The handle moves on its own, pushing inward and butting against his palm. With a growl and too much bravado, Abby clamps his fingers back down and yanks the door as hard as he can. The door pops open and a body crashes into him with enough force to send them both sprawling to the ground.
The thing on him is cold and damp to touch. It scrabbles at him with small, clawing fingers and makes a guttural noise.
“What the FU—“
Mystery swings his headlamp around, shining a spotlight on Abby and Baby sprawled in a heap. Both of them stare at each other, breath short and shallow.
Baby turns the fear into irritation first. “Why the hell are you yanking me into the room in the fucking dark, you psychopath??”
“Where the fuck were you?? Why are you wet??”
Mystery all but tackles Baby and ends up halfway sprawled on both of them, arms locked around their youngest member’s waist like he’s a lifeline on bad seas.
“We were trying to find you, but you were gone.” Mystery’s voice is muffled by Baby’s shirt. “We thought the ghost got you.”
Baby blinks down at their pet menace and loses most of the tension in his body. He wraps one arm around him and rests the other on his head. “Idiot,” he says without malice. “Why would you think that?”
“The theater is haunted. Ro and Jinu both said so.” He looks up, catching Baby right in the face with the headlamp’s beam and making him squint. “And you were gone.”
Baby sets a hand over the bulb, turning it into slivers of light shining between his fingers. “I was trying to go back downstairs and I took the wrong door. Ended up in a maintenance hall that went to the roof.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Myst.” Baby turns a scowl on Abby. “Why’d you let him work himself up like that about ghosts??”
“What did I do??” Abby protests. “I tried to tell him that they weren’t real!”
“Even Jinu said this place is haunted,” Mystery pouts. “He said all theaters are haunted.”
“Of course he said that. He was in a band.”
“What does that have to do with it?” Abby asks. “I was in a band and I don’t think this place has ghosts.”
“You were barely in a band,” Baby scoffs. Harsh, but true. He disengages himself from Mystery and gets back to his feet, holding out a hand. “Starter bands are a cousin species to theater kids. They use the same spaces and infect each other with the same superstitious bullshit.”
Mystery takes the offered hand and stands up, latching himself right back onto Baby’s back, arms locked around his chest. Their audio tech, in a surprising show of patience, lets him.
Neither of them offer Abby a hand up because they’re both dicks so he has to get up on his own.
“Well, this has all been fascinating and awful. Can we please go join everyone else? If we’re lucky maybe the circuits got fried and we can get the hell out of this creepy place.”
“I dropped my phone when you ripped me into a dark fucking room. Check the hallway for—”
The overhead lights flicker back to life. The sound board begins to hum gently as the circuits warm. The vents click and the hum of air flow fills in the background. The three of them look around from their tight huddle as life just… starts up again.
“Power’s back,” Jinu calls from the stage, waving his arms at the sound booth as the rest of the roadies rush back to their abandoned tasks. “Let’s get back to work, we lost half an hour!”
There’s no such thing as ghosts. Obviously. Not in theaters or anywhere else. But shitty vibes are definitely a thing, and this place is fucking haunted by them.
The gauntlet gets thrown at the very first venue of what will blessedly be a small tour. The band is probably just barely on the right side of being big enough to even need roadies or have a respectable number of bookings. They were smart enough to use an experienced tour management company for vital things like their audio and lighting.
Then they were dumb enough to decide that they also needed some flashy special effects that probably weren’t in the budget.
A light drizzle is falling as the drivers do their final checks on the loading doors of the box trucks, yanking the lift straps to make sure the locks are engaged. Baby is standing under an awning to a kitchen door at the side of the building. It’s not a smoking area, but it’s past 11 and the venue is closed. So for now it’s a smoking area. The show went the kind of way where no one is going to give him shit about it. Everyone just wants to crawl into their bunks and shake off that tragedy.
“Some fuckin’ night, huh?” One of the guys on the special effects crew ducks under the awning and pulls a small metal case from his pocket. He’s tall and lanky with the patchy beginnings of a mustache, and there’s something distinctly pointed and rat-like about the look of him.
“Some night.” Baby returns his attention to watching the trucks. He’s not particularly interested in talking to anyone right now, least of all one of the idiots who forgot to anchor their goddamn fog machine. But he can only watch this jackass struggle with a matchbook in the heavily damp air for so long before he just yanks his zippo from his pocket and tosses it to him.
“Thanks, man.”
“Hm.” Baby just holds out his hand and waits while the guy lights his cigarette… probably a cigarillo, actually, from the first waft of the smoke he catches… and drops the lighter back into his hand.
“You’re Juni’s boy, right?”
“Jinu.” Baby tucks his lighter back away and exhales smoke away from his current company. “That’s a weird way to ask if I’m on his crew.”
“Don’t know how you do it, man. That guy never shuts the hell up.” Rat Man leans back against the wall and blows out a mouthful of bluish-white smoke.
He shrugs. “I didn’t notice him being particularly chatty tonight.”
“Are you kidding?” Rat Man snorts, something halfway between laughing and clearing his sinuses. “He kept sticking his nose in it while we were loading the fucking trailer. Must have stopped us half a dozen times. Likes to hear himself talk, doesn’t he?”
“Not particularly, no.”
The guy seems to take the hint that Baby isn’t going to indulge him in bashing his own crew lead. Which seems to stomp out whatever mildly friendly rapport he was working on. “Yeah, well. Do me and my boss a favor and tell him to fuck off with that, huh?”
Okay. He’s going to have to deal with this.
Baby sighs and takes a very long drag of his cigarette. Nicotine, give him strength for this bullshit. He turns his full attention to his current shitty company.
“First, we work for different companies, which means you don’t have to listen to him or do a single thing he says. You’re free to tell him to fuck off and there’s not a thing he can do about it.”
And that’s true. Jinu is one of the smartest guys here, but he’s not running this show. He doesn’t run any of the shows. And he sure as hell can’t control someone from another vendor.
“Secondly, tell your numb-nuts boss to learn to pack his goddamn trailer correctly and Jinu won’t have to waste his time trying to help you idiots.”
Rat Man sneers. “Oh fuck you, asshole.”
Good. Now they’re on the same page with each other.
Baby drops his cigarette and grinds it out under his heel. “Have fun unpacking your shit at the next stop,” he says, and steps out into the rain to find better company.
By the time they hit the third stop on the tour, the pattern is emerging. Unload, work through 2-4 logistical crises largely caused by the special effects guys, handle 3-5 issues during the show, tear down the show, work through 1-2 more crises, get on the bus, sleep, arrive at the new venue, deal with lip from the effects crew, unload…
Like everything else about this tour so far, it’s not a fun pattern.
Abby has just finished getting dressed and he’s feeling the corners of his bunk for wherever he tossed his flannel. “What’s the issue with the new guys?”
Ro is pulling his loose hair back into a ponytail and can’t immediately answer without dropping the hair tie in his mouth. The eye roll he gives Abby says plenty, though.
The effects crew is definitely new to the game, and they’re a small, 2-man operation. Everyone gets a little grace when they’re green. But three stops in and those guys have picked up next to nothing. Sometimes Abby isn’t sure they’re not actually getting worse somehow.
Ro snatches the elastic free and begins twisting it into his hair. “They’re idiots is the issue.”
“I meant besides the obvious.” Because obviously they’re idiots. They keep throwing shit into their trailer in whatever order they feel like and then making a mess in the parking lot every time they unpack it again. They’re not great at working their own equipment. Hell, they didn’t even have their own van hitch attached correctly at the start of the tour. “What’s with the hate boner the boss has for Jinu?”
Shitty packing jobs are one thing. Those guys are only fucking themselves over by refusing to figure that out. But what’s really getting old is the bit where they decide every issue is someone else’s fault. And Jinu is clearly the crew boss’s favorite target.
“He’s mistaken Jinu’s impeccable professionalism for weakness.” Ro lets the band snap into place, testing the hold of it with a tug. “He thinks he’s going to use him as a scapegoat.”
Abby rolls his eyes, yanking his flannel free from being half hidden under his pillow. “If he’d spent half as long listening to Jinu as he has bitching at him, he’d have halfway figured out his job by now.”
“I feel like he’s a midlife crisis case. Or a bad divorce.” Romance slides his glasses on and considers the four hair ties on his wrist, then adds several more from a pack he keeps in his bunk. “I don’t expect the company will be around more than a few touring seasons.”
“—was in charge of your shoddy setup!”
It’s the unmistakable hoarse, gruff bark of the Fog Boss (no one has been able to have a civil enough conversation with the dude to get an actual name), and it’s ringing loud and clear through the walls of the bus. Sounds like the parking lot is already a fun place to be. Abby sighs.
“Great. He’s already at—”
“What are you bitching about this time?”
The second voice is not yelling or even particularly loud. But Abby and Romance both stop dead because, oh fuck, that’s not Jinu.
“Shit.” Abby makes it out the door first with Ro on his heels. Rounding the bus, it’s mercifully easy to find them because Fog Boss is about 6 feet and turns bright red from his bald head to his jowls when he yells.
“Which of your idiots fucked up our setup when you were moving shit around back there?? That machine doesn’t just shut down on its own!”
“That haunted house reject you’re using? It looks exactly like the kind of junk that shuts down on its own,” Baby says flatly. “We didn’t touch anything.”
“The machine is fine! YOU idiots messed it up!”
Abby steps up behind Baby, which has the instant effect of making Fog Boss take a step back and stop looming over someone several inches shorter than him. “What are we all yelling about out here?”
“This dipshit thinks it’s our fault his shitty, broken machine quit in the middle of the show last night.” Baby crosses his arms.
“It’s NOT broken!” Fog Boss’s jowls quiver as he jabs a thick finger at their group. “YOU assholes need to watch where you’re going!”
“What happened to it last night?” Romance asks, holding his hands up. “There’s usually a few things you can mess with and get it working again with just—”
“Probably your goddamn WIRING! You assholes put too much—”
“Woah, woah, woah!” Jinu makes it over to them at a light jog and puts himself right in front of the resident paranoia case. “What’s wrong here?”
“This Mensa candidate thinks that the audio cables turned off his shitty fog machine,” Baby snaps. “Which isn’t even how that wo—”
“Okay, great.” Jinu gestures with one hand without even looking at them. “You guys go help with the truck. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Among the plethora of unwritten rules that the crew adheres to, a very important one is this: if Jinu says any version of ‘fuck off and let me handle this,’ everyone should listen to him immediately. It means it’s something that probably has to do with being professional or following a chain of command, and also that there’s a real possibility one of them will fuck something up.
“You got it, boss.” Abby turns and lets his bulk do most of the work in keeping Baby one step ahead of him to avoid simply getting bulldozed along.
Baby glances back over his shoulder, looking like he might be considering turning back to go finish that conversation. Abby helpfully steps in his way to block his view.
“I hate that fucking guy,” he seethes, but turns his attention forward.
“Don’t let it bug you, hun,” Romance sighs. “That man has as much sense in his head as what comes out of his machines.”
At the fourth venue the great crime is that Mystery bumps a machine. It shifts by about 15 degrees. It cannot be stressed enough that this machine was not on.
“—want you to keep your fucking crew AWAY from the machines! This is sensitive equipment!” Fog Boss has taken enough offense to halt both their teardown tasks and his own so that he can be a pain in everyone’s ass.
“I know, and we want to be respectful of that,” Jinu says, calm as ever. “But Mystery has to be able to move around near the drum kit during the show in case—”
The guy turns a brighter shade of red. Under the stage lights, his head shines in a sheen of angry sweat. “Are you morons professionals or not?! Don’t fucking TOUCH the machines!”
Abby has a mental countdown going in his head and he’s hoping that maybe, just maybe, this asshole will get his frustrations out before the number hits 0. Jinu is having the exact same thoughts, and Abby knows this because he’s trying to get the guy to speed this up as best he can.
“Why don’t we deal with this after everything is packed?” he tries.
“That’s a good idea.” Romance has one hand locked just above Mystery’s elbow and Abby would bet that the silence radiating off their drum tech is actually just the first deep pitches of a growl. “We don’t want to hold up the venue.”
“Why don’t we deal with this NOW?!” Fog Boss barks. “I’m just about SICK of having to worry about what your crew of dipshits—”
The countdown hits 0.
“Keep your fucking hoses out of the fucking footpath and no one will trip over them, asshole!” Baby snarls as he makes it up onto the stage, immediately grabbing Mystery and looking him over. “He could have gotten hurt!”
“Maybe he should watch where he’s going!” Rat Man comes to flank his boss. It’s officially starting to feel crowded with the level of bullshit building up. “This ain’t a small machine. You’d have to be stupid to run into this thing.”
Baby whips around so suddenly that Mystery, pissed as he might be himself, catches his elbow.
“Hey.” Jinu’s voice is calm but there’s a new firmness to it. When even Mystery is having to join the peacekeeping effort, things are teetering on the edge of being Not Okay. “No one knew you were going to have a backup machine on the set. We need to know things like that so we can plan around them.”
Baby’s knuckles are white where he’s still gripping the back of Mystery’s shirt. “Why the fuck do you have a backup machine anywhere near where the crew needs to move?!”
“Okay, you guys get to work,” Jinu says abruptly. “I’ve got this handled. Go deal with the instruments.”
Romance pulls in a deep breath. “Right. Come on, we’re running behind already.” He sets his hands on Mystery’s shoulders and ushers him away, a slight growl left in their wake.
“We need a backup machine because of your crew’s shoddy setup practices,” Fog Boss snaps, jabbing Jinu in the chest with a finger. “We just can’t win with you fuck-ups.”
Abby catches the telltale rigid line of Baby’s posture as he releases his hold on Mystery’s shirt and doesn’t move to follow him.
“Uh uh. Let him deal with it, dude,” he says, catching the back of his shirt.
“There’s nothing wrong with how we’re setting up,” Baby growls.
“Baby,” Jinu snaps. “You’ve got work to do. Go do it.”
“The fu—”
Abby hoists Baby up and follows after Ro, ignoring the knee that jams against his hip.
“Abby! Let me go!” he protests. “I’m sick of this asshole running his goddamn mouth!”
“We’re all sick of him running his mouth,” Abby snorts. “If Jinu says he can handle it, the best thing you can do is not make him split his attention.”
Baby makes one more futile attempt to squeeze free of Abby’s hold before giving up. Jinu is probably too far away for storming back to still be a dignified option. “This tour fucking sucks.”
“Yep,” Abby agrees cheerfully. “But imagine how much fun it’ll be to drink this one away.”
“—just ignore them?”
“Or I could tell them to fuck off and learn their fucking jobs. Not all of us want to be a fucking doormat.”
Baby apparently takes ‘don’t make Jinu split his attention’ to mean ‘pick a fight with Jinu under more private circumstance.’ Which IS an improvement and Abby will give credit where it’s due. But man, this tour needed to be over days ago.
“Do you think we should separate them?” Mystery asks, tapping his fingers against his morning can of Monster as they loiter around the back of one of the box trucks.
“Nah.” Abby sips his coffee. Burnt and acrid because everyone is running on less sleep and less patience than usual and the consequences of that are far-reaching when everyone is crammed onto a bus. “Let ‘em deal with it. If we’re lucky they’ll be sick of bitching at each other by the time those assholes even get out of bed.”
The white van (with ‘The Fogfather’ stenciled on one side in a font that was probably not licensed from Paramount) is still dark and quiet. It’s the nicest part of any day when those idiots are still sleeping.
“I’m not a doormat!”
“You’re doing a great fucking impression of one. And you’re making all of us follow your shitty lead. Those chuckle-fucks have been stomping all over all of us this entire tour!”
“Baby.” Jinu presses his fingers into his temples, trying to contain whatever number the stress is doing inside his head. “It’s two more stops. Could you just deal with it for two more stops?”
“We shouldn’t have dealt with it as long as we have!” Baby growls. “You haven’t done anything wrong. None of us have done anything wrong. This asshole doesn’t even know how anything works but he—”
“It’s two more stops.”
Mystery sighs and fidgets with the tab of his can. His tolerance for infighting is considerably lower than Abby’s. “This is so stupid,” he grumbles. “They’re just going in circles.”
While that’s true, there’s also not anywhere else for them to go. It’s not Jinu’s fault and it’s not Baby’s fault. It’s just a shit situation.
“Yeah, you’re right. Might as well not waste what little peace and quiet we’re gonna get,” Abby agrees. Any minute now those dipshits will wake up and find something new that needs to be someone else’s fault. He sticks thumb and forefinger into his mouth and whistles, the sound loud and sharp enough that both combatants wince and cover their ears.
“What the fuck, Abby??”
“Dude!”
“Time to break it up, guys.” Abby pushes their drum tech forward as the sacrificial lamb. “Jinu, why don’t you and Myst go tape off the backstage walking path so the geniuses don’t park their junk there this time?”
Jinu pulls in a deep breath and, as always, is willing to be the bigger man. “Fine,” he says, and walks away, cutting the argument off clean. For his part, Baby doesn’t try to get in the last word. By all accounts, they’re both probably as sick of dealing with each other as they are of dealing with the actual problems.
Mystery hangs back just long enough to offer Baby, who is radiating his ‘nobody touch me’ energy, a tentative thumbs-up that’s more a question than an affirmation. Baby, whose righteous anger has died down into a vague collection of complicated frustrations with nowhere to go, sighs and gives the drum tech an impressively defeated thumbs up.
Abby jerks his head towards the bus. “Come take five on the bus while I clean the coffee pot. If Ro sees you like this, he’s gonna ask if you want to talk about your feelings.”
“Oh fuck you, Abby,” Baby sneers, but he does turn and head straight for the bus. Of the two evils being offered, Abby’s company definitely ranks higher than being crew-mothered right now.
The bus is quiet and the trip through sleeper row reveals rows of empty bunks with everyone off to start their day. There’s just the ambient hum of the air conditioner and the muffled sounds of people milling around a loose radius outside. Baby shoves himself into the corner of the tiny dining booth and rests his temple against the window. They get a few minutes of peace while Abby deftly disassembles the coffee maker and cleans the carafe under the weak steam of water from the faucet.
“So… what are the odds of you giving Jinu a break for the end of the tour?” Abby asks, carefully nonchalant.
“What are the odds of Jinu growing a fucking spine?” Baby scoffs.
“Uh uh, no answering the question with a question.” Abby shakes the coffee pot out of the sink a few times. It’s basically the same as drying it properly.
“That IS an answer.” Baby pulls his phone from his pocket. “Someone has to tell that guy to fuck off and do his fucking job. If Jinu’s not going to do it, I’ll do it.”
“Or you could let Jinu deal with it how he wants and just not get involved.”
“He’s dealing with it by not dealing with it. Which is fucking stupid because if you let some idiot walk all over you, they’ll do it forever.”
Abby snaps the lid back onto the coffee pot and stows it in the machine. “Personal experience talking?”
“Unless you’re gonna bend over and pull a psychology degree out of your ass, how about we play the fucking quiet game for five fucking minutes?”
Baby and Jinu are so fucking similar that if they ever manage to kill each other, it’s probably going to get ruled a double suicide. The difference between them is that Jinu has a shield mentality while Baby has a knife mentality. (Emotionally speaking, Baby may actually be several knives taped together.) Abby would never say so to either of them, of course, because neither of them could handle that information.
He turns to face Baby, leaning back against the small counter and wiping his wet hands on his jeans. “You realize you and Jinu are both trying to do the same thing, right?”
“Actually Jinu is trying to make peace with a fucking gorilla like that’s going to make it stop flinging its own shit around,” Baby scoffs, not looking up from his phone. “I just want to tell the gorilla to fuck off and do his fucking job and stop blaming us for everything.”
“You’re both trying to protect everyone else. You’re also getting in each others’ way about it and then taking it out on each other. This is a merry-go-round to hell, dude.”
“Jinu is trying to keep the peace by letting some dipshit call the rest of us idiots.”
“Jinu is making sure no one on his crew causes a scene with some dipshit who’s not our problem to begin with. He’s protecting all of our asses.”
Baby looks up from his phone and turns a suspicious look on Abby. “What is the fucking point of being this fucking nice to these idiots? Why aren’t they the ones who need to learn to work with other people?”
“The point is that we’re all still super employable at the end of this train wreck.” Abby pauses and leans his elbows on the table, squinting at their audio tech’s face. “…You do know that we’re never going to see this crew again, right? Jinu has been letting them show their whole ass this entire tour.”
“Jinu didn’t fucking hire them this time, why the fuck would he be able to stop it next time?”
The system known as Let Jinu Handle It is a really fucking good system. In all the time Abby has been part of the crew, it’s never failed them. If their leader says he can handle it, he handles it.
However. A person’s trust in a safety net will depend on their experience with other safety nets. And everything about Baby screams ‘I’ve fallen a lot and nothing caught me.’ Maybe this time the barrage is too aggressive. Maybe it’s been too personal. Maybe the near-nightly repetition of it is just too much. But if Baby’s at his limit of trusting the safety net to hold firm, then Abby will just trust it enough for them both.
“Okay. I’ll make you a deal.” Abby taps the table. “You lay off Jinu the rest of the tour. And let him handle the dipshit and his fog machines. In exchange, if we ever have to work with that guy again, I’ll help you slash his tires at the very first stop.” He holds his hand out. “Deal?”
Baby studies him suspiciously. Abby waits him out. This isn’t used car salesman bullshit, this is a fucking pact.
Baby’s hand hovers just outside his grip. “If we have to work with him at all,” he specifies. “If he comes back next year with some bullshit laser light company, the deal stands.”
“Goddamn right it does,” Abby agrees.
“…Fine.” Baby takes his hand and they shake on it.
There is no more infighting for the rest of the tour. There are three more confrontations with the special effects crew, which Jinu handles.
When Jinu gets home from the tour, he pulls out his laptop, opens the Notes app on his phone, and files 17 separate incident reports from the tour before he even does his laundry. It takes him just under 5 hours to finish and is extremely cathartic.
The Fogfather, LLC is added to the ‘Deal Breakers’ list of undesirable affiliates kept by the touring company. This will be defunct information within a year, as the effects company will no longer be in business.
As of nine months after the tour, Fog Boss has been under investigation for tax fraud and facing up to three years in prison, pending the results of a deep dive by the IRS. This was initiated by an anonymous tip left on a hotline at some ungodly early hour.