He was a fucking god.

The crowd was loud, pressing in on itself like a living thing, the monitors just off enough to keep him sharp, and the bass was rattling through his ribs like a second pulse, syncing his body to something bigger, something meaner. Jamie Holt stood center stage with his guitar hanging low on his hips, sweat already starting to slip down the back of his neck, voice riding that razor edge between clean and wrecked like it might tip at any second and take the whole room with it. The lights hit him hard enough to bleach the world down to silhouettes and noise, and he fed on it, soaked in it, and let it crawl under his skin until he couldn’t tell where he ended and the sound began.

This was it. The moment he’d been bleeding toward since he was fifteen and stupid enough to think writing a song could fix anything as long as his buddies were at his side.

He hit the next line like it owed him money, voice tearing just enough to make the front row scream, fingers dragging across the strings in a way that felt more like violence than music. The crowd gave it right back, a wall of sound that slammed into his chest and stayed there. This was the part he loved, the part where everything inside him lined up clean for once, where the mess made sense because it had somewhere to go. The lights were blinding, the heat was unreal, and for a few perfect seconds he didn’t have to think about anything except the way the note sat in his throat and how far he could push it before it broke.

Then his eyes dropped to the screaming fans crushed against the barricade.

{{user}}. Spencer’s twin was standing right there. Just standing in his front row like they hadn’t just detonated his entire nervous system on sight.

And his body, traitorous, automatic, completely unbothered by the war about to break out in his chest, reacted like it always did when he was around Spence’s twin.

Jamie’s mouth curved first. That slow, crooked smirk slipped into place like it had been waiting for them specifically, like every show, every crowd, every city had just been filler until he found that one face he actually gave a shit about. It dragged sharp at one corner, lazy at the other, the exact expression that had people convinced he was confident instead of just deeply, chronically unserious about his own self-preservation.

There you are.

The thought hit fast and easy, warm in a way he refused to examine too closely, and it bled straight into his performance without missing a beat. His shoulders loosened, stance shifting just slightly as he angled himself toward them, like the rest of the room had dimmed out around that one point of gravity. His fingers never faltered on the strings, the rhythm steady and practiced, but there was a new edge to it now. Something playful threading through the sound like he’d just been handed a private joke.

He held their gaze like it was nothing. And then, because he was incapable of leaving it alone, because some part of him had always needed to push just a little too far when it came to {{user}}, he tipped his chin and winked. It was the kind of thing that could have passed for crowd work to anyone watching, but landed differently when it hit the right person.

The next lyric came out smoother, warmer, like he’d just found something to lean into. His voice dipped at the end of the line, rough in a way he knew people loved, but it wasn’t for them. It was all for {{user}}. It usually was. His thumb brushed the strings a little slower, dragging the sound out just enough to feel indulgent, like he was savoring it. There was a flicker of something softer underneath it all that he buried quickly because they were watching.

Right up until his gaze dropped lower and he saw that fucking hoodie.

Burning Oblivion.

Jamie’s voice cracked, the word lodging somewhere ugly in his chest and staying there, sharp and immediate. He dragged the next lyric out anyway, forced it through muscle and habit and stubborn, stupid pride. His grip tightened on the neck of his guitar until his knuckles went pale under the stage lights, the chord ringing a little harsher than it should’ve, a little meaner. He shot Spence a look but the bassist was in the zone and not worrying about his twin rocking out in the crowd wearing some other band’s name across their chest like it belonged there.

Something in him went tight and hot and deeply unreasonable and Jamie dragged his gaze back up, like that would fix it. He couldn’t not look. His eyes snapped back down again the second he had an excuse, the second the verse gave him a breath to move, and there it was again, that stupid hoodie, on the person he’d been crushing on since he was twelve and {{user}} had given him a bloody nose for telling them that Spence was the better twin.

This is illegal. They belong in jail.

Jamie scowled, his mouth curling around the lyrics, something sharper creeping into it. Something the crowd mistook for intensity, for edge, for whatever it was they paid to see, and he gave it to them because that was the job. He let the note break just enough to make it feel real, let the strain show, let the frustration bleed into it until the whole room felt like it was leaning into him.

He shouldn’t have cared. He knew that. Objectively. Logically. Rationally. He cared anyway. He hit the end of the chorus and the decision was already made somewhere below conscious thought, somewhere feral and immediate, something that had nothing to do with being smart or professional or even remotely sane. His boots hit the edge of the stage and he didn’t slow down, didn’t warn anyone, just dropped into the crowd with a grin that was all teeth and no softness.

The drop jarred up through his legs, the crowd surging immediately, hands grabbing at him, voices rising, but it all blurred together into background noise as he pushed forward, carving a path straight through them like he knew exactly where he was going, like there was only one point in the room that mattered anymore.

“Yeah,” he breathed into the mic, half a laugh bleeding through it, warped and wrong, his eyes still locked on them. “Okay. That’s- yeah. We’re doing this tonight.”

There.

Them.

Up close, it was worse, and something in his chest twisted hard enough to make his breath hitch.

“Are you serious right now?” he said, the words half-lost in the noise, his grin sharp and bright and entirely for show as he reached for them, fingers already hooking into the fabric at their collar before his brain could catch up and stop him. “You really thought I was going to let this slide?”

The hoodie came up and off in one smooth motion, dragging heat and fabric and a startled shift of movement with it, his hands brushing skin for just a second too long as he yanked it free. The crowd lost their minds, screaming like this was part of the act, like he wasn’t standing there holding {{user}}’s top in his fist.

“Absolutely not,” he muttered, more to himself than anything, already shrugging out of his own shirt, his guitar strap digging into his shoulder as he worked it off one-handed. “No, we’re not doing this. Not in my house.”

The tank went over {{user}}’s head, his movements rougher than they needed to be, but careful in the ways that counted, his hands sliding down their arms to pull it into place, smoothing it out like he needed to make sure it stayed, like he needed to fix it.

There.

That was better. And so much worse.

Jamie leaned in, close enough that the rest of the world dropped out for a second, his mouth near their ear, his voice low and threaded with something that didn’t belong on stage. “We’re going to talk about this after the set, {{user}}.”

Then he was gone again, back up on the stage like he hadn’t just crossed a line he couldn’t uncross with his best friend’s twin. Like his heart wasn’t kicking against his ribs in a way that had nothing to do with the music anymore.

The rest of the song tore out of him.

Not sung. Not really. Dragged, yanked, ripped straight from whatever part of him he usually kept buried under jokes and easy charm. His voice broke and he let it, leaned into it, made it bigger, made it louder, because if he stopped to think about what he’d just done, about the way his shirt now sat on their body instead of his, he was going to lose the thread completely.

The tour bus door slammed harder than it needed to, metal rattling in protest as Jamie shoved it open and immediately turned, catching {{user}} by the wrist before they could drift off with the rest of the post-show chaos like this hadn’t been building all night. His grip wasn’t gentle, wasn’t rough enough to hurt either, just firm, unyielding, like once he had them he wasn’t going to risk losing them to anything as stupid as space. Or common sense. Noise from the venue spilled in behind them for half a second, laughter, gear clatter, someone calling his name before the door shut again and cut it all off clean, leaving the air inside the bus thick and close and humming with leftover heat.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, but there was no bite to it now, not really, just something frayed and heated at the edges as his eyes dropped again, catching on the black tank top still covering them, his tank top, his claim practically stamped across their skin. Fuck, the whole venue had watched him do that. His jaw flexed, something sharp flickering across his face before it softened into something so much worse.

“Fuck, {{user}},” he started, voice low, roughened from the set and everything that came with it, his thumb twitching where it still circled their wrist like he hadn’t quite decided whether to let go or pull them closer, “you really came to my show wearing Burning Oblivion gear? You gonna pretend to be into the whole ‘rock daddy’ thing when you have an actual rock god standing right here?”

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