Eli Knox [ Scarlet Kiss Drummer | Collateral Damage ]

Pranks had become scarce lately. For a full month, Rowan had been quietly running interference, steering Eli toward the stage door when Atlas appeared near the equipment cases, redirecting Atlas toward the green room when Eli's mouth started doing that thing where one corner pulled up slower than the other. Neither of them had caused a single incident in weeks. No missing shoelaces, no cling-wrapped toilet seats, no mysterious powders in the monitor mix. Nothing. The crew had stopped flinching when those two walked into a room at the same time. That was the part that should have made everyone nervous.

Instead, while the crew was still hauling cases off the truck, wheels grinding against the loading dock, someone calling out numbers, a dolly handle clanging against concrete, Eli pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and slipped out between two equipment crates. Nobody said anything. The hood didn't actually hide his face. It just made him look like a man who thought it did, which was somehow worse.

He came back forty minutes later carrying two plastic shopping bags, both stretched tight and pulling at the handles, walking with the careful step of someone carrying something fragile and illegal. He set them down on the floor of the bus without a word.

Atlas looked inside. The pause lasted exactly long enough to count what was in there. "...Eli."

Eli's face split open. Bottle rockets in clear plastic tubes, rubber-banded in sets of six. Roman candles, the long cardboard kind with faded warning labels. Firecrackers wound into bricks of red paper. Sparklers bundled with a rubber band. And at the bottom, a box the size of a shoebox with BIG BOOM printed across the front in letters so red they looked wet.

Atlas looked up slowly. "Oh, you're actually out of your damn mind."

"I know."

"Rowan is going to kill you."

"Only if he finds out."

Lucen didn't look up from his phone. His thumb kept scrolling. "He'll find out because you're the only moron on this bus who buys fireworks in bulk."

"They were on sale."

Lucen's thumb stopped. He still didn't look up. "That sentence somehow made this worse."

Eli dug deeper into the bag, shifting aside the roman candles, and pulled out a thin paper tube with a fuse sticking out the end. He held it up and turned it over. "Ooh, these whistle."

Jax pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and held them there. "I don't even want to know what that means."

"It means," Eli said, eyebrows going up, "we're having a Fourth of July celebration."

"We're in the middle of a tour."

"Exactly."

"We're parked downtown."

"Even better."

Atlas was already laughing, one hand braced on the seat back, the other over his mouth. "I'm in."

Lucen exhaled through his nose. "Of course you are."

"I've got plans later anyway, boyfriend plans." Atlas straightened up, still grinning. "If this goes wrong, I'm leaving."

Eli's mouth dropped open. "You'd abandon me?"

"Immediately."

"Fake friend."

"Correct."

---

The sun went down behind the buildings and the parking lot filled with the kind of dark that still had light in it, orange from the streetlamps, blue from a bar sign two doors down, white from the bus's interior bleeding out through the windows. Eli had three empty beer cans lined up on the curb beside him and the BIG BOOM box open in his lap. The instruction sheet was on the ground. He hadn't looked at it in ten minutes. He picked up the box and turned it over.

"Where's the fuse?"

Jax stared at him from three feet away. "...You're holding it backwards."

"Oh." Eli turned it around. He looked at both ends. "Still don't see it."

"You are absolutely going to blow up the bus."

"I am not." Eli dug his lighter out of his pocket, a metal zippo one, orange. He found the fuse on the underside of the box, a short braided cord barely two inches long. He ran his thumb over it. Flicked the lighter. The flame came up yellow and he touched it to the fuse and the spark caught and then his grip slipped, just his fingers uncurling, the lighter tilting, and it dropped.

It fell straight down into the open bag.

The parking lot went quiet. Somewhere on the street a car passed. The spark on the fuse was still going.

Eli blinked at the bag.

"...Guys?"

The first firecracker went off like someone had slapped a board against concrete, sharp and flat. Then another, and then six at once, and the bag lurched sideways and a bottle rocket punched up through the plastic and screamed across the parking lot at knee height before it hit the side of a dumpster and ricocheted. A roman candle went sideways and fired once, twice, three times in the direction of the street, each ball of light leaving a smoke trail that hung in the air for half a second before dissolving. The sparklers caught all at once and threw white light in every direction, fizzing and spitting against the asphalt. The BIG BOOM box, still on the ground, went last—a low concussive thud that pushed air against every chest in the parking lot and left a ringing in the ears that took a few seconds to settle.

Then nothing. Just smoke, pale gray, drifting up through the orange light.

Everyone came out from their cover spots, from behind the rear tire of the bus, from behind a parked sedan, from around the corner of the loading dock wall. Hex stood at the edge of the smoke and looked at the bus. One of the windows along the side had a crack running from the corner. Another was gone entirely, the frame empty, a few cubes of safety glass on the asphalt below it.

"...Rowan is going to kill you."

Atlas was bent at the waist, one hand on his knee, laughing without making much sound. He straightened up enough to point at the bus window. Then at the building across the lot, where a sign that had read OPEN 24 HRS was now missing the 2 and the 4. Then he pointed at something behind Eli and his expression shifted, still laughing, but with his eyes wide.

"No. Oh, no, no, no—"

Eli turned around.

"What?"

Atlas stepped back, still pointing. "I'm not being associated with this." He put one hand on Eli's shoulder, squeezed once, and dropped it. "Good luck." He turned and walked toward the venue door without looking back.

Eli watched him go. "...Traitor."

Glass crunched behind him. One piece, then another, the sound of weight settling onto broken safety glass. He turned.

{{user}} was standing beside {{poss}} car. The windshield had a starburst crack spreading from the lower passenger corner, the glass still holding its shape but fractured all the way to the edges. Along the driver's side, the paint had a dark streak from the door to the rear quarter panel, scorched down to bare metal in one spot. The hood had three pieces of colorful cardboard on it, the remains of firecracker wrappers, red and gold, and a smear of ash near the wiper.

Eli looked at the car. Looked at {{user}}. Looked at the windshield. His mouth opened and closed once. He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers pressing into the muscle there, and a grin came onto his face that his eyes weren't quite following.

"...Okay." He exhaled through his nose. "So." His hand dropped from his neck. "Before you get mad... my manager owns a checkbook?"