Chapter Text
They’re the silent ones. The quietest, most reserved. In every PR interview, they’re the ones to sit quietly, hardly ever offering input until asked directly. They’re soft-spoken, unassuming, gentle. Always in the background, toward the back of the stage and shrinking back from the spotlight.
That’s why the fans don’t suspect a thing.
It starts with a single question, uttered over a drum kit while the crowd rages on. Nobody hears it but them.
Jake intently watches Danny through a gap in his kit, waiting for the eye contact and the nod that means now. It’s an expression that is laser focused. In this blue light Jake’s eyes look black and his concentration carves lines onto his face, highlighted by the sweat and nearly holographic reflections. He is so intensely honed into Danny’s gemstone adorned eyes that the drummer startles, and when he gives the aforementioned signal for their loud finisher, his climactic drum-slam is a little off beat. Uncharacteristically off beat. It’s not like him to falter while playing live.
The crowd doesn’t notice that Jake and Danny have played a mismatched note, but when Jake’s hand rakes across his steel strings and his arm whips back with enough force to send his hair flying in a halo around his head, he doesn’t break his eye contact. Instead, his head cocks to one side and his frown asks the question his voice doesn’t have to: what’s wrong?
Danny doesn’t tell him it’s you. You’re what’s wrong. He just shakes his head and shrugs like he’s laughing off a small blunder. Jake turns toward the crowd as it rises into a deafening roar, but his eyes stick on Danny’s for a beat longer.
The surging mass of people blurs into one cacophony of sound, but Danny can make out a few isolated words. “ do it, Jakey!” “I love you, Josh!” “It’s my friend’s birthday!” It’s all the usual stuff. The crowd always loves that big finisher.
Danny watches Jake’s back. The shy, dorky way he walks forward to give someone in the crowd a thumbs-up. The shine of his rhinestone encrusted suit under the stage lights. The swell of his hips as he saunters toward his pedals. The delicate way he steps on the buttons to set up his guitar for the next song. Danny looks away before he is caught looking too long. God knew the fans always had their phones trained on him and he didn’t care to be the subject of speculation on the internet. He’d flown under the radar this long and he wasn’t about to rupture that privacy.
“Jakey, will you remind us where we are? I seem to have drawn a blank.” Josh hasn’t drawn a blank. Danny laughs because he knows Josh is acutely aware of where they are in the setlist, and this is just one of his rambly bits to keep the audience interested. The people at the barricade start screaming song names as if to help remind him, so the speech has done its purpose. Still, Josh hams it up, humming the first lines to a few of their songs into the microphone and bantering with Jake.
Danny watches Jake again, waiting for his cue, and his breath catches. Goddamn it.
The guitarist has settled into a low crouch, hair hanging over one shoulder in a stringy, sweaty mess. His instrument is braced carefully on his knee and his fingers have formed the shape of the coming chords, but that’s not what Danny is watching. He should be, he knows. He should be watching for the first strums of the next song so he can time his tempo exactly, but instead his eyes settle on the curves of Jake’s body. The swell of his backside and the pull of the fabric of his pants when his crouch strains the stitching. The slight pudge of his lower back where his waistband presses into him. The black guitar pick in his mouth, pressing on his delicate lower lip while his brow sets in concentration. Danny knows he should look away before his mind starts stirring with filthy thoughts, but he is absorbed by the sheer pull of it. The magnetism he holds while he stands in a dominating stance, smugly smiling because he knows what the next notes will do to the crowd.
Jake begins the haunting first notes of Age of Machine, his body moving in a rise and fall motion like the tide. He is graceful, with all the coordination of a dancer, and the jeweled fabric hugs his legs so tightly that Danny can see the flex of his thick muscles. The lights turn red, plunging them into a dark kind of ambiance, which Danny is grateful for because he can feel the flush of blood in his cheeks.
As predicted, the audience collectively loses their minds when Josh steps up to center stage and perfectly hits the drawn-out, echoing warble. The tension is building as Jake’s musical crescendo builds and his bewitching gyrating grows stronger. The music and eerie red lighting is taking its hold on him and possessing him to move like this, and his eyes slip closed as he dissolves into its powerful pull. It’s enchanting to watch, and Danny breathes in sync with the continuous march of Jake’s fingers as they effortlessly pick at the strings.
Fuck! Danny has missed the first cue altogether, so he looks back at his drums and compensates for his mistake. It’s just a dumb blooper, one that the crowd likely hasn’t noticed, but Jake turns his head to regard Danny in that gentle, concerned way, what’s wrong?
Danny doesn’t make eye contact with him this time, only feels his gaze against him while he settles into the groove of the song. That’s the only time he has faltered. For the rest of the song Danny forces himself to zone into the brilliant white of his drum heads and the motion of his sticks in his hands. He can’t afford to blush again, lest he be discovered once the lights change again.
The song is over and Jake approaches the kit, body low to the floor like a panther stalking its prey. Danny can’t avoid his eyes anymore, so he just forces himself to keep his face as nonchalant as he can manage. The lights are down and dark on this side of the stage and all the spotlights are trained on Sam as he settles into his organ solo, so they have a moment before either of them have to play anything.
It’s then that Jake asks the question.
His eyes are blacker still, this time full of a knowing, impish kind of satisfaction, “Am I bothering you, Danny?” He doesn’t have to raise his voice above the crowd because the two of them are so close, only a drum’s breadth apart, and Danny’s eyes read his lips as they move enticingly.
Fuck. Jake knows exactly how to get his mind racing and his blood stirring in the pit of his pelvis. The little bastard.
Jake turns away again and moseys toward his usual corner, but not without a knowing smile and an obscenely gentle stroke on the neck of his guitar.