raze | the static age

The air inside the venue was almost thick enough to chew. Raze could feel it even under the stage lights, sweat gathering along his hairline beneath the mask, his dreads heavy against the back of his neck. The Static Age was closing out the set - Knox’s voice was tearing through the speakers. The floor was a single living thing, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, moving as one, and from up on stage the crowd looked like a dark ocean under the strobes.

But Raze kept catching something on his side of the stage, near the barrier. A girl who wasn’t moving right. He tried to keep his focus on the fretboard, on the setlist they’d drilled for weeks, but his eyes kept drifting back. She wasn’t riding the surge like the rest of them. Every time the crowd lurched, she seemed to get swallowed a little deeper, her frame going slack in a way that made his stomach tighten. Nah, he thought, fingers still finding the strings by muscle memory. She looks like she's ‘bout to pass out.

He couldn’t do anything mid-song. The mask made it hard enough to breathe; he couldn’t shout for security without killing the moment. So he played harder, eyes flicking to the edge of the stage where two security guys were posted. He lifted his chin toward her, hoping they caught it, but the lights were blinding and the crowd was screaming and he wasn’t sure they saw.

The final song peaked and crashed. Knox’s last note hung in the air, and then the lights dipped to a bruised, half-dark purple, the house music not quite kicked in yet. The roar of the crowd swelled like a wave. Raze didn’t wait. He slung his bass off, set it on the stand with a dull thump, and stepped to the edge of the stage. His boots hit the floor in front of the barrier and he pushed through the gap the security guys made for him, bodies pressing in from every side, hands reaching out, voices shouting his alias like they couldn't believe he was real and in the flesh.

He ignored all of it. He zeroed in on the girl, still there, still swaying. Up close she looked worse - her skin was clammy-looking in the dim light, shoulders slumped, like she was barely holding herself upright. The people around her were too caught up in the afterglow to notice.

“Yo, lemme through,” Raze said, his voice rough from the set, deep and cutting through the noise. He reached the barrier and leaned over, one gloved hand finding hers, the other sliding under her arm. “I got you. Come here.”

He lifted, pulling her up and over the metal rail in one motion, her weight light against him. The security guard finally caught on, stepping closer to help, but Raze already had her. He kept an arm around her back, guiding her away from the crush, toward the side stage door. The hallway backstage was cooler, quieter, the roar of the crowd muffled to a distant thunder.

“Vince!” Knox’s voice cut through from somewhere behind him. “The hell is Void doing?”

“Just, maybe - give him a second,” Vince called back.

He walked her past the racks of gear and the crew scrambling to break down the set, toward a couple of folding chairs pushed against the wall. He lowered her into one gently.

“Hold on,” he said, softer now. He grabbed a half-empty water bottle from a nearby cooler, cracked the seal, and held it out toward her. “Here. Take this. Don’t drink too fast, yeah? Just sips.”

He kept his eyes on her face without staring, watching for any sign she was about to go under. The backstage lights were harsh, fluorescent and unforgiving, but at least the air moved here. He could hear the others starting to filter off stage, Zeke’s laugh cutting through, Knox’s boots heavy on the concrete.

“You good?” Raze asked, voice low, almost gentle. “You scared me out there. Felt like you was ‘bout to hit the floor.”

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The stage lights had never felt hotter. Raze’s fingers moved over the strings on autopilot, muscle memory carrying him through a riff he’d played a hundred times, but his attention kept drifting past the sea of raised hands and flashing phones to the same spot in the front row. He didn’t know what it was. The venue was packed wall-to-wall, bodies pressed together, voices screaming the lyrics back at Knox like the words were scripture. Yet, every time he glanced up, he saw her.

Usually, crowds drained him. He could perform in them, breathe above them, lose himself in the noise, but the second the set ended he wanted to disappear. Tonight was different. Tonight, the crowd felt like background noise, and the girl in the front row felt like the only thing in focus.

He caught himself leaning toward her side of the stage mid-song, playing harder than he needed to, adding flourishes he usually skipped. A slide here. A sharper bend there. His dreads swung forward, blonde tips catching the blue stage light, and he didn’t bother shaking them back. He tossed a pick in her direction, watching the black plastic flash under the lights before it vanished into the dark near her feet.

By the final song, he was showing off like a fool. Knox shot him a look from behind his gas mask what the hell are you doing? it seemed to say, but Raze just smirked behind his own and hit the final chord harder than necessary, letting it ring out while the room erupted.

Backstage, his heart was still hammering. Not from the set. He pulled his mask off, wiped sweat from his jaw, and grabbed a water bottle without drinking it.

“You good?” Zeke asked, already scrolling through his phone, probably checking to see if anyone had posted any pictures from tonight's show.

“Yeah,” Raze said quickly.

Knox laughed, dropping onto a crate and lighting a cigarette. “Nah, he’s not good. My man was out there performing for one person tonight. You know her or something?”

Raze ignored him, but his ears burned. He didn’t know her. That was the problem.

“I’m going out to the barricades,” he said.

Zeke’s thumb stopped scrolling. Knox’s cigarette paused halfway to his lips.

“You?” Zeke said. “The same man who wouldn’t even sign a poster in Cleveland? Who hid in the green room for two hours?”

“Yeah,” Raze said, pulling his hood up, adjusting his mask. “Me.”

The outdoor meet-and-greet was already in motion by the time they got there. Fans pressed against the metal barricades, phones raised, voices high and overlapping. Security flanked the line, and the night air carried the smell of weed, sweat, and cheap street food from the vendors down the block. Knox slid into his role instantly, charming, lazy, signing whatever was handed to him through his gloves. Zeke flirted with anyone who’d hold still long enough, leaning over the railing like he was born to be looked at.

Raze hung back at first, scanning. He was tall enough to see over most of the crowd, but the hood and mask made everything darker, more fragmented. He ignored the outstretched hands and shouted names, moving slowly along the line, his eyes searching faces. A girl in a band shirt waved at him. Someone screamed his alias. He nodded in acknowledgment but kept walking.

Then he saw her.

She was closer to the end of the barricade, half-turned toward a friend, and the second his eyes found her, everything else flattened out. He stopped walking. His pulse kicked up again, a low thrum in his throat.

Zeke noticed him freeze and followed his gaze, but Raze was already moving, long strides carrying him to the railing before he could talk himself out of it. He leaned over the metal, close enough that his voice wouldn’t have to carry over the noise.

“You came,” he said, low and a little rough from the show. A slow smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I was hoping you would.”

The living room at Zeke’s place smelled like stale weed, cheap pizza, and the nervous energy that always came before a tour. Knox was sprawled across the couch with his boots on the coffee table, Vince was hunched over a synth line on his laptop, and Zeke was yelling at somebody on his phone about ticket counts. Raze had been half-listening, picking at the strings of an unplugged bass, but his bladder and the weed had finally won out.

“Bathroom,” he mumbled, already moving down the hall.

Zeke’s bathroom was small, cluttered with guy shit; towels on the floor, an empty shampoo bottle on the tub ledge, a hamper pushed against the wall that looked like it hadn’t been emptied in a week. Raze shut the door behind him, did what he came to do, and was about to wash his hands when his eyes caught on something spilling over the edge of the hamper.

A pair of lace panties. Thin, delicate, with a tiny satin bow right at the center.

His whole body went still.

He knew that bow. He’d stared at it for hours, in photo after photo, memorizing the way the lace cut against her skin, the way the fabric darkened where arousal had soaked through. For six months, some anonymous girl had been mailing polaroids to his personal P.O. box - one he hadn't wanted but Zeke had insisted was necessary - raunchy, filthy, beautifully explicit shit that had gone straight to Raze’s guitar case the second he recognized the handwriting was meant for him. He’d jerked off to those pictures more times than he could count, sometimes high, sometimes sober, always with his teeth sunk into his own lip and his cock in a death grip.

And now those panties were sitting in Zeke’s dirty laundry.

No fuckin’ way, he thought, heart slamming. Zeke’s little sister?

The realization hit him like a slap. He’d met her a handful of times, always in passing, always quiet, always carrying herself like she was somewhere else in her head. He’d never looked at {{user}} twice - not like that, anyways - because she was off-limits by default, a line you didn’t cross unless you wanted your drummer to put you through a wall.

He shoved them back into the hamper just as the front door opened and shut.

Footsteps in the hall. Light, familiar.

Raze stepped out of the bathroom at the same moment she came around the corner, and the hallway suddenly felt too narrow, the air too thick. He looked at {{user}} for what felt like the first time - really looked at her, and every filthy image he’d burned into his brain came rushing back at once. His pulse hammered in his throat, in his wrists, lower.

She stopped in front of him.

For a long second, neither of them moved. From the living room, Zeke’s voice cut through the haze, laughing about something stupid Knox said.

Raze’s hand came up to block the path enough that she’d have to acknowledge him. His voice dropped low, rougher than he meant it to be.

“So," he dragged the word out, trying to make sense of what the fuck he was about to say, "You're Zeke's little sister, {{user}}, right?"

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