Wings & Hearts

The tour had gone well enough - from Madrid to Barcelona, Marseille to Monaco, Milan and finally to Rome. Finally, we were leaving the vehicles behind and taking a flight from Rome to Paris, where we would take a three-day holiday, the proceed to Strasbourg, Stuttgart and beyond. Opposite most bands, the ’Eyes and H.I.M. (as I had learned Ville’s band was called) had started at the bottom of Europe and began working their way back home slowly, but surely. Originally, I had planned to go home when we finally got to Paris, but had kept pushing back my departure date closer and closer to the start of school. It was a silly thing, but I hadn’t wanted to leave Jyrki, not since that first night when I had been drugged (we did eventually stop at a hospital where I took a drug test and almost got arrested because of the presence of a prescription medication I wasn’t prescribed to in my system).

I stood just outside the airport in Rome with Jyrki’s arm wrapped around my waist, Ville’s castoff cigarette in my mouth, as Jussi bopped around the three of us like the crazed monkey he was. The four of us had become quite inseparable recently - Jyrki and I were understandably so, Ville was Jyrki’s best friend so that made sense, but Jussi had a tendency to infuriate all of us at least once a day if not on an hourly basis. I figured we had taken the short, spiky-haired youth under our wings because of his age difference and the fact that he wound up the others far more than he exasperated us.

“Jus, can you just have a seat for a minute?” I asked, and traded Ville‘s cigarette for the new fag he had lit for me. Together, we were smoking the last of the packs we had between the three of us before we got on the plane; Jyrki was attached to my hip and therefore forced to remain.

“No way, man, I’m going to sit for the next two hours, I’m trying to get out some energy for your sake!” He, too, took a fresh cigarette and cushed the remains of his old one out on the concrete, and continued his “laps” around Jyrki, Ville and I.

“So what we need to do is buy about a dozen packs of nicotine gum for the flight, and we’ll be fine,” I had asked Ville how he had managed to fight the jitters I had gotten on the last flight due to nicotine withdrawal. His answer made sense, nicotine gum would probably hold me over for a while. “You’ll be eating the stuff Sin, I swear, but Jyrki - you’ll love her for it man. Her breath will smell like a freshly mown field of mint and she won’t try to gnaw your head off.”

Jyrki let a deep laugh slip as he squeezed my waist firmly, his lips met my neck before he spoke. “I love her even if her breath does smell like cigarette smoke and she tries to bite my head off.”

“Ah, you jest,” I poked him in the ribs as I breathed in a deep drag of tar and rat poison, and coughed it all out as Jussi tripped on the sidewalk and completely flashed the three of us - and all of the old ladies trying to get their cat- and hat-boxes into their taxis (Jussi was very rough on old ladies, it seemed). Full frontal male nudity, not even from the man that I liked to see that sort of thing from. Jyrki and Ville groaned and I looked away as Jussi pulled his pants up - he didn’t have very far to pull, his legs were short and he wore his pants too low to begin with - and grinned impishly.

“Ei Vittu! Invest in a belt, boy. Lovely inventions.” The black-haired man behind me sighed and perched his chin on my shoulder as he shot at Jussi.

“I’m wearing one!” He protested, cigarette clenched in his teeth as he cinched said belt as tightly as it would go.

“That won’t work - you haven’t any hips for it to catch on. I think you actually taper downwards,” Ville joked, gesturing with his smoke. God, it seemed my entire world revolved around cigarettes, especially right before I was to live without them for two hours. It was nearly unheard of.

I chuckled at the thought, and the motley bunch I found myself included in as I stamped on my spent fag, knowing that there were no more. The chain-smokers and Jyrki (the ‘Eyes were mainly a smoke-free group, and I knew that Linde and Mige liked the occasional fag, but nobody could tear through a carton like Ville and I left to our own devices - the addition of Jussi to the duo only made consumption worse). It was surprising, though, that Ville still put up with Jyrki and I - how many times had he walked in on us in the hotel room the three of us had shared? I couldn’t even speculate on a number. I would have hated us if it had been me.

“We ready? Belts all tight? Pants where they should be?” I flashed Jyrki a half-grin and clasped one of his enormous hands in both of mine as the four of us made our way into the building and through security. For some reason, I was always the one who had to take off my shoes and be strip-searched through security in Airports, because I was so obviously the odd one out I guessed.

Finally, I reached the terminals, and found Ville with a brown paper bag. He shoved it into my hands.

“For the three of us,” I opened it and looked inside - a plethora of nicotine gum packs stared back at me, along with a surplus of barf bags. “And extra bags for Burton and Baize, I remembered we almost ran out last flight.” He grinned at me as Jyrki and Jussi arrived, both clutched magazines and bottled water like they were made of gold - probably similar to how I clutched the brown bag.

“Thanks, Ville,”

“Anytime.”

Hand-in-hand with Jyrki and chewing my first piece of nicotine gum, I made my way to where our flight waited. The Boys all sat in a corner - the more normal-looking people of the terminal had given them a wide berth, and nobody sat near.

“So Jussi, I didn’t know you could read.” The quips began as soon as we approached. It was sad, actually, to watch the boys all pick on the poor short boy; he was the scapegoat for all of their problems, when someone didn’t get ass one night after a show, it was because Jussi had stolen all of the girls, if something smelled, it was because of Jussi’s sweat, if they sat on something spiky it was obviously his head, et cetera. It was enough to make me angry, and I wasn’t the only one. As we filed onto the plane and took to our seats, I motioned to the window seat beside my middle seat.

“Here Jus, sit with us.” Honestly it was like middle schoolers in a lunch room; if I hadn’t offered him the seat, Ville would have sat with Jyrki and I and Jus would have been placed beside someone else who would have torn into him for the entire two hours of the flight. It was almost more than I could stand - as much as Jussi drove me up a wall, it killed me to hear what the guys had to say about him, and it wasn’t like he would ever utter a cruel word about any one of them.

His face lit up like a kid who had gotten just what he always asked for on Christmas day, and he plopped down into the seat beside me, tapping a pair of drumsticks he had produced from nowhere on the insides of his knees. Jyrki settled in for the flight beside me; he had pulled a nearly-finished, beaten copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula from my bag, along with a similarly-conditioned copy of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. Honestly, the man devoured novels - he was already three pages in by the time the plane began to taxi down the runway, when he was forced to put the book down in order to hold my hand (takeoffs were not my friend, neither were landings).

After we were in the air and able to move about the cabin, I flagged down the stewardess for alcohol, for which I was in desperate need.

“Want a glass, Jyrki? Jussi?” Jyrki took a pass, but Jussi and I got a travel-sized bottle of Absolut each. I chose to use the tiny plastic cup the flight attendant presented me, but Jussi simply chugged his straight from the bottle - in one gulp. Sipping from my little glass, I watched him with a raised eyebrow.

I finished my drink and rested my head on Jyrki’s shoulder as he read, the rhythm of Jussi’s drumming (he tapped on everything, even while he was reading!) lulled me to sleep. Unfortunately, that meant I missed an incident where Burton locked himself in one of the bathrooms and had a lot of angry passengers banging on the door, and when Baize vomited on a flight attendant - which didn’t bother me much, but would have been great things to tease them about.

I stood, shouldering the large duffel bag as I trailed behind Jyrki off the plane; I gripped the back of the shirt so as not to be separated from him. As we made our way to the baggage claim, I marveled at the fact that we were in France! Finally, I could wear a beret and fit in! Not that I would ever wear a beret.

After the chaos of the last baggage claim, the boys had each selected a bright bandanna (I had a few neon-colored ones in reserve, just in case the ‘Eyes deserted Glam Rock for Gay Rock) and somehow affixed it to their bag. It helped Jyrki immensely - he didn’t accidentally attempt to steal any poor traveler’s luggage; Jussi’s hadn’t been lost in Egypt - all was well. Ville, Jussi and I all chipped in to buy a carton of French cigarettes and one of good ole Marlboro‘s.

I lit one of the French smokes as I filed out of the airport with the boys - into yet another set of Black SUV’s. I settled into my customary place between Jyrki and Ville - with Jussi and Baize in the backseat and Archie in the passenger’s seat - before we rolled out of Charles De Gaulle, headed for our hotel in the city. Apparently, the lot of us were to stay at a swanky hotel at the Camps d’Elysse - which was extremely charitable of the label seeing as he was stayed in nothing but roach motels since we left Madrid - and the boys would perform at le Fleche d’Or, some sort of cute little venue or another.

As soon as we set foot in the hotel room I set out a fresh set of clothes and showered - there was still plenty of time to get lost in town before the gig.

I emerged from the bathroom with two of our three allotted towels - one wrapped around my hair, the other over my body. Jyrki lay sprawled on the bed beside my clean clothes, and Ville was nowhere to be seen, so I meticulously began to dry myself with the third towel - stark naked. The black-haired man on the bed perked up, riding up on his elbows with an eyebrow quirked.

“What?” It was such an innocent question, as if I wasn’t aware of exactly what I was doing to him as I slipped into one of my favorite matching sets (I never knew why I always wore matching lingerie - it was just something I thought was necessary, and by the time I figured out that every bra didn’t have to match every pair of underwear, I already had too many sets to quit). As an answer, Jyrki shot me the look he usually saved for Jussi when he was being too annoying for his own good; I tried my best not to wilt under that glare, but his eyes cut like icicles falling off a roof.

“But Jyrki, I want to go see the city,” A disgusting whine, the kind I only used when I made an attempt to mess with Jyrki. It never worked on the black-haired man, but it was always worth a try.

“You’ll still have time to see the city, I promise.” His huge hands wrapped themselves around my waist as he pulled me toward the bed, planting kisses on the bare skin of my stomach. I twined my hands through his hair and willed his face to mine (because there was no pulling Jyrki, he was just a tad stronger than I was). The moment his lips touched mine, the man threw me down on the bed (I must have bounced a foot into the air with the force of it all) and came down on top of me, the dastardly smile I loved so much plastered on his face.

So I ripped off his shirt, in retaliation for his rough toss. It had been cut up the sides for an earlier gig, so it was quite easy to do (even for lil’ ole Sini, the girl who was never allowed to carry anything except my duffel bag and perhaps my own purse if it didn’t look to heavy for me - the boys really could irk me so).

“But that was one of my favorites,” His murmur was into the side of my face as he struggled with a bra clasp - something he had never quite mastered. I thought it was something to do with the size of his hands, and whenever I attempted to help him or assure him that it was alright to fumble, he would take it as an insult and roll away, so all there was to do was lay beneath him and try not to lay too heavily on his hands.

“Fucking, piru viekoon!”

“Don’t you swear at me, Jyrki Linnankivi!” I gave him a good thwap on the head for his lip, just as his fingers finally managed the clasp.

“Oh, say it again,” The black-haired man quipped, wrapping his arms around my back in such a manner that he had to reach up to kiss my neck and jawbone. It was an odd position.

“Don’t be a brat!”

“I love you, Sinikka,”

“And I you,”

“Damn, I thought I had you there,” My hands fumbled at his belt as his flowed down my sides to rest on my hips.

“I’m a bit smarter than that,” He let a chuckle slip - big mistake. I smacked him upside the head with the flat of my palm - it made more noise than anything - and watched as he raised an eyebrow.

“Oh really?” I nodded in reply; and then there was a scramble for dominance on the bed, which I lost, naturally.

“Mina rakastan sinua, Jyrki,”

“God Sinikka, words can’t describe how much I love you.”