Chapter 1: Flint

The guitar amp was still warm under his palm when he sat down.

Three hours had passed since Hollis & The Reckoning wrapped at the Massey Hall, and Roman could still feel the echo of those last three songs rattling in his teeth. The crowd had been massive for a Tuesday. People were still in the lobby downstairs, probably, laughing about setlist calls and complaining about the bathroom line, but up here on the fifteenth floor it was quiet. Just the hum of the AC unit fighting the heat still trapped in the walls and the distant hiss of traffic on King Street.

The bottle of tequila sat between them on the edge of the bed like something they'd agreed about without saying anything. Some cheap one from the corner store, the kind that came in a clear jug and had a label that looked hand-drawn. They'd cracked it open twenty minutes ago, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the mattress, still in their stage clothes minus the instruments. Roman's boots were kicked off by the door. Hollis still wore his, laces still tight.

"Danko almost dropped the snare on 'Neon' and I don't think anyone noticed," Roman said.

Hollis snorted. "I noticed. I looked right at his hands and his hands looked right at me."

"Danko's been like that since Columbus. He's been like that for months."

"He's been like that for two years. I think it's a personality thing."

They laughed about it. Roman did, at least. Hollis did the Hollis laugh, which was more of a slow exhale with one corner of his mouth pulling up, but it had the same effect on Roman every time. It landed in his chest and sat there.

The room was a mess in the easy post-show way. Guitars leaned against the wall in a row, cables coiled on the floor, a water bottle sweating on the windowsill. Half the blinds were pulled. The other half hung crooked, catching a slice of orange streetlight that cut across the bed frame and died on the wall. The air smelled like beer and the faint chemical bite of new carpet.

Roman reached into the duffel bag at the foot of the bed and pulled out the tin. The flint mints. Some local candy shop back home had started selling them a few months ago, little matte-black tins with the brand name in distressed serif font. Roman had bought three boxes on a whim and kept them in his bag ever since. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because they were just fun, something small and weird to carry around on tour.

He unscrewed the lid. The mints were black, almost charcoal, round and slightly ridged. He popped one under his tongue and immediately regretted it.

"Jesus." He rolled his eyes backward and gripped the edge of the bed. "This tastes like it was ground up in a mortar with peppermint oil and regret."

Hollis grinned. "You're dramatic."

"I'm honest. This is not a mint. This is a chemical weapon."

"You like them."

"I don't hate them. There's a difference."

Roman cracked one more open out of stubbornness. Hollis tilted his head. "How many do you chew in a day?"

"That's not a fair question."

"Forty? Fifty?"

"Maybe."

"You chew mints like candy." Hollis said it without judgment, just stating an observation. Like commenting on the weather. He took a slow drink from his glass and set it down with deliberate care, aligning the base with a faint ring already left on the wood.

Roman swatted his knee. Just a tap, playful. Hollis didn't flinch, just shifted three inches away and continued sipping his tequila. The contact lasted maybe half a second. It was nothing. The closeness of the bed made everything accidental anyway. Their legs touched every few minutes. Roman's shoulder brushed Hollis's arm when he leaned back. It meant nothing. Nothing.

He was starting to feel weird.

Not sick. Just strange. His mouth was flooding. He'd known mints could do that to a person, cause all sorts of saliva, but this was beyond what he'd experienced before. The mint was still dissolving under his tongue, slow and cold, and the water was just building and building, like a dam that had decided to fail.

He swallowed hard. The stream kept coming. A thin line of clear saliva slipped past his lower lip and dropped onto the front of his T-shirt.

He wiped at it with his sleeve. The fabric darkened in a small circle. He frowned.

"Holy shit," he said. "This is not normal."

He sat up straighter and pressed the heel of his hand under his jaw, trying to catch what was coming. It didn't help. Droplets fell from his chin onto the bedsheet beside him, leaving tiny wet spots that would never quite come out. He cupped his other hand below his mouth now, like someone holding a cupped hand under a leaking pipe.

"Sorry," he said. The word felt ridiculous coming out. "I'm sorry, I don't know why this is happening. This is stupid."

The mouth was just flooding. The mint was dissolving and the saliva was keeping up, then surpassing, and he couldn't keep it contained. Every swallow left more behind. Every exhale let a drop escape.

Hollis stopped mid-sentence. His glass hung halfway to his lips. The motion just ceased.

Roman looked up at him and expected a joke, a "you're disgusting," or maybe something about calling a doctor.

What he got was something else entirely.

The look on Hollis's face was wrong. It wasn't concern. Not disgust, either. It settled heavy behind his eyes, something dark and unmoving. His mouth went still. The jaw tightened, just slightly, a muscle flexing along the angle where it met his skull. He didn't blink for a long time. He just stared at Roman's mouth with an intensity that made the air feel thinner.

Roman's hand dropped from his jaw. The saliva kept running.

Hollis slowly set his glass down on the nightstand. The movement was careful, almost precise, like he was placing something fragile. His breathing changed. Shallow, slow. He leaned forward just a fraction on the bed, shifting his weight so his forearms rested on his thighs. His fingers pressed into the fabric of his jeans. He didn't reach for anything. Didn't offer to help. Just watched.

"You good?" Hollis asked. His voice was level. Too level. The kind of calm that someone builds when the default reaction is something else entirely.

"I don't know what's happening," Roman said. "This isn't normal. The mint's just -- it's like my mouth won't stop."

"Hmm."

That wasn't a helpful response. It barely registered as a response at all.

Hollis stood up. The movement was sudden. The mattress shifted under Roman's weight.

"Stay right there."

The words came out before the sentence finished, clipped, almost too fast. Hollis crossed the small room to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. The click of the latch was sharp.

Roman heard water running. The drawer of the bathroom vanity opened and closed. Something was torn open, a package being ripped apart. Paper crinkled.

The minutes dragged. The bathroom door stayed shut. Roman sat on the edge of the bed, hand cupped under his jaw, and stared at the closed white door. What had he seen? That look. The way Hollis had gone still, like someone walking into a room and finding something they hadn't expected, something that changed the temperature of the whole place.

Roman had spent six months on tour with this man. Six months of sharing hotel rooms, of learning Hollis's rhythms, of noticing how he drank his coffee black and hated being touched on the back of the neck. He thought he knew Hollis. He thought he knew what came after that look, usually a question or a joke or a subject change.

This was none of those.

The water in the bathroom stopped. The paper tearing stopped. Roman counted three seconds, then four, then five. The door opened.

Hollis stepped out holding a damp towel in one hand and a glass of water in the other. The walk wasn't quick. It wasn't the brisk, practical stride of someone bringing first aid to a person with a minor problem. He lingered in the doorway. The bathroom light caught his face and then he stepped into the darker room, where it washed out the details again. He looked at Roman from a few feet away for a beat too long before kneeling down.

He crouched in front of him. Close. Too close for this to be about cleaning up a mess. Hollis reached up with the towel and pressed it gently against Roman's jaw, catching the drop that was sliding down. The fabric was cool. Roman flinched.

Hollis's thumb stayed on Roman's skin after the towel moved. Just for a moment. It dragged down along the line of his jaw, slow, and the touch was deliberate in a way that had nothing to do with hygiene. Roman pulled back. Hard. His shoulder hit the headboard with a solid thump. The bedframe scraped against the floor.

Hollis froze. His hand was still half-raised. The towel was crumpled in his other hand, bunched into a wet ball.

Roman read the expression that crossed his face in real time. Hollis understood what he'd just shown. The stillness that followed was instant. No apology. No explanation. No "sorry, I didn't mean it like that" or "that was weird, forget it."

Hollis stood up.

He walked past Roman toward the door. Roman watched him from the bed. The walk was controlled, steady, like the walk of a man who was already composing the story he'd tell himself about what just happened. Hollis's hand closed around the door handle. The lock turned.

The door clicked shut.

Roman sat on the bed. The tequila sat on the nightstand, untouched, the liquid still half-full. His mouth kept producing. The towel was gone. The water glass was gone. Everything Hollis had brought into the room had gone with him, and what was left was just the wet spot on the bedsheet and the small damp circle on his T-shirt and the taste of something chemical and minty that wouldn't quit.

He stared at the door. The wood grain was familiar. He'd looked at this door forty times in the last two weeks, opening and closing it, hearing the lock from the other side, wondering what Hollis was doing in there when he should have been asleep.

The hollow thing in his chest had nowhere to go. He couldn't identify it yet. Something like relief that the look had been real, that whatever Hollis had seen in Roman's dripping, helpless mouth was genuine and not a joke. But underneath it, something else. Hurt. Or confusion. Or the fear that walked right behind them both.

Hollis had walked away without saying a word about any of it.