Deafened by Your Screams

His hand started to slide down the side of my neck, gently skirting over my shoulder and onto my chest while I hunched over in the chair. Pausing from the distraction while tuning my guitar, I looked up to see Ian stood over me, his fingers lightly drumming on my upper chest, a playful smirk stretching across his lips.

“I thought you were gonna be professional today,” I voiced, leaning back and resting my head into his stomach. “We’ve got a show to play soon.”

“Mmm, that sounds far less interesting than playing with you, though,” He replied, leaning down to kiss down my temple slowly.

I grinned, loving it when Ian was so obviously needy like this. I was aware of everyone’s eyes on us, watching as Ian seemed to seduce me, trying to tease me into bed where they probably thought he’d fuck me.

Wrong.

Yeah, Ian was seducing me, but there was no way in hell he was fucking me. Quite the opposite. Ian was simply a gyrating slut of a boy who liked to act tough and in charge, but was really the most desperate submissive to face the Earth. No one knew this though; I liked to play along and let Ian have his spotlight moments, let him pretend and fool others into what he wanted. I wasn’t really bothered.

He liked to control everything around him, he was determined and inspiring but with me he liked to let go, in our relationship it was simple to say what I say goes…at least behind closed doors. It was a way for him to release and not have to worry about everything. And I was fine with that. It was like a little switch game, I usually just went with the flow, but then got my moments of feeling…important I guess. He needed me, I needed him.

I’d been dating Ian for years now, probably about five, since we were teenagers and not much had changed between us. We’d always been inseparable, we’d always been playful and I think we’d always been in love.

As mushy as all that sounds.

“Of course it is, but just because you’re all well practised for Monday doesn’t mean I am.”

He let out the smallest hint of a whine against my ear and kissed it hard. In a whisper that the others wouldn’t believe if they heard; he begged “please, Lee. Please. I need you. Now.”

His soft, pleading tone was edged with desperation, something I couldn’t even contemplate ignoring.

Stu stared at us from across the room, his bass hanging around his neck and an eyebrow cocked up. My head constantly played out what this looked like to everyone else, and I knew right now that this would appear to be Ian demanding I got in the bedroom, or else. I grinned at the thought; it was getting hard for me to even take Ian saying something like that seriously now.

I nodded and shifted forward, feeling him back off so I could stand and take off my guitar.

“Good,” Ian said, forcing the smirk to remain.

“Oh guys, come on, we’ve got to practise!” Stu blared.

“No we don’t. We’re ace,” Ian said dismissively while I put the guitar away. “Go on, Gaze, bedroom.”

Ian pointed to the stairs which lead to the bedroom of our small house where we always had band practice. Stu was right, we were meant to be rehearsing for our biggest gig yet on Monday, not just to 20 people in Mike’s garage but to nearly 1000 people in a real venue, with bands actually supporting us for once. We’d been in this band, Lostprophets, for a few years now. Fucking about with demos and names for ages before getting out a solid album, and now stuff was finally happening for us. We had followers. We had a fan club. Fucking hell we were in magazines.

At the moment though, I had a feeling that Watkins needed some primal urges out before he could even contemplate practising. His ideas were more centred on making our own sweet music, not having to unplug Jamie’s decks every 30 minutes before we had a power outage.

I followed Ian’s lead and skirted upstairs quickly, hearing him say something, probably naughty, to the others to make them laugh before coming after me.

Ian’s smirk immediately faded as soon as he entered the bedroom, instead his teeth clasped his lip and his eyes filled with anticipation as he obediently climbed on the bed, not even needing instruction anymore. I grinned, watching him sit in the middle of the bed; his legs outstretched as he tugged his t-shirt off and discarded it before resting back onto his elbows, looking at me expectantly.

Just the sight of his slim, tattooed body waiting for me was enough to make me pounce on him, straddling my legs around his hips and shoving my lips flush against his while a spare hand found its way into his thick black hair to tug viscously. Moans instantly vibrated between us, all of them rising from his throat, only getting deeper the harder I pulled or the more I gripped and scratched his shoulder.

He soon fell back, spine slamming to the mattress, our pelvises rocking powerfully together. I tore away from the kiss and tugged at his belt and ripped his jeans past those ever-swaying hips, eyes and hands hungry to bare him. Ian was groaning, grinding against me in an enticing manner, head lolled back and eyes shut tight while I hastened my way into his boxers to grip my hand around him.

“That was a nice little display down there, Ian,” I told him, unnervingly watching every twitch of his orgasmic expression. His pretty lips wet and parted, eyes lidded in pleasure and quick breaths falling from him…it was enough to make anyone want him. “I think you might need a reminder of who’s really” I gripped him tighter, tugging my hand along his hard length “in charge though.”

Ian let out a nod and a gasp, arching his body to me. Bitch.

__

Eventually the practise was over and people started to file on home, storing their instruments in the corner of our living room as usual. Jamie always took a long time though, since he had the most equipment.

“Leave it, Jame,” Ian told him, a look of total tranquillity over his face, relieved from me fucking him ruthlessly only an hour or so previously.

“No, no, it’ll be ok. I’ll fuck off soon.”

Ian shot me a little look.

Jamie had been very…off recently. No one could blame him though. There was a lot of stuff going on further east, all these random attacks, waves of death…over here you sort of took on a “it won’t happen to me” sort of attitude since nothing had happened yet. Unfortunately for Jamie, something had happened. His little sister, Jessica, had been at university in Birmingham when the first real bout of this demon shit hit the UK. She was killed right out. It was only a few weeks ago, and it was easy to see how cut up about it Jamie was.

He’d never been majorly confident, but he usually was good at keeping a clear head and a calm demeanour, but this had shot him. He was a wreck. For days he just slumped around, on the brink of tears before descending in to what could only be called cold panic. He flipped from being subdued to being neurotic and anxious in a matter of hours. Now he was jumpy and although he was quiet, you could tell his thoughts were constantly screaming through his head, imagining his friends and family dropping dead left right and centre.

I can’t really comment on anything more than that, he refused to talk it through, other than a few disrupted heart-to-hearts just after Jess passed…Jamie hadn’t said a word about it. Although it was probably at the front of his mind, he seemed determined to ignore it, no matter how evident it was to the rest of us.

It was sad.

“Don’t worry about it, really. I’d rather you hung out here for a bit anyway,” I said softly.

Jamie looked up, a flustered look engraining his features. “What?”

His eyes were rimmed black, not an unusual sight from his eyeliner, but it stained all down to the top of his cheeks. He obviously wasn’t sleeping, and I reckon he was just piling one layer of eye make up over another; his eyes in general were strange. The dark shading of them was so focused and alert, but not on anything around him, he was deep in his own thoughts, all too aware of them. His skin was paler, shallow almost, and little cuts dug along his bottom lip where he worried it so often with his teeth.

“Stay here for a bit, we can hang out. Watch a film.”

“I don’t wanna watch a film,” he muttered, turning back to his bad where he moved this around and zipped it up. “I’m just gonna go home.”

“Alright…” Ian sighed slightly, a pained look on his face from watching such a good friend go through this obvious angst. “Get some sleep though, yeah? You look tired.”

“Mmm,” was Jamie’s only reply on the matter. He rushed a hand through the dark, pushed back hair that was nearly touching his back from its length. “See you, guys.”

Hoisting the bag onto his shoulder he turned and walked out the door with a strange shuffling stride, like he wanted to leave as fast as possible but couldn’t be bothered to lift his feet properly. Once the door was shut Ian flopped onto the sofa and put his head in his hands.

I slipped closer, gently patting his back, taking rest on the arm of the furniture. “There’s nothing you can do, sweetheart,” I told him sympathetically. “You’ve tried, we’ve all tried. He just needs time, his head’ll eventually clear.”

“But I’m so…worried about him. He won’t listen to us. He’s not taking care of himself,” Ian said. His voice was borderline angry, but I could tell it was not at Jamie, but at himself. He was frustrated he couldn’t help more, that he couldn’t make it all better and that Jamie wouldn’t let him. It was out of his control, something that in day to day life killed Ian.

“I know, I know. You can’t help that though, he’ll see sense. He needs to grieve. If he gets any worst or this carries on too long, we’ll take him to a doctor or something, someone who can help him through this better than us.”

Ian sighed and nodded, rubbing his face before pressing it into my side. I hugged his head, ruffling the hair that flicked onto the back of his neck affectionately, desperate for him to be comforted. Seeing him so cut up about Jamie was nearly as bad as seeing Jamie himself.