by Sam Hall
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied. “It’ll be rough, but that may work in our favour. Make it kinda intimate, like a confessional.”
“You ready for that?” I asked, my heart beginning to race as I did so. I was mouthing off to the lead singer of my favourite band—a guy who’d sold many millions of albums over the world—and asking him to dig up something that was widely recognised within fandom as one of his most painful moments. I resisted the urge to lift the camera when I saw the raw emotion spill across his face. I needed his buy-in, then I could dissect him with my lens.
“Is this what it takes?” His fingers picked at the nubby cloth of the couch before his head whipped around to face Marlow and his brother. “Is this what we need?”
“We thought it just required physical nakedness,” Johnno said, leaning over the back of the furniture. “Looks like it’s gonna require more than that.”
“You’re going to need to be fast with this. We’ve got a lot of preparation to do before tomorrow,” Marlow said.
“No, if you want this, if you want her to get under our skin, then you need a relationship between the photographer and the band. We’ll give her all the nakedness she wants, of both kinds, but she’s ours. I want her.”
“You’ll have her all day tomorrow.”
“No, tomorrow and on tour.”
On tour? My heart struggled to beat for a second, rattling in my chest. The thought of not only getting out of here, but of going on tour with The Changelings… My heart struggled because I was too scared to breathe and wake up from this apparent dream I was in. Liam just stared at the artistic director, not giving away a thing.
“Fine, and Anna by the look of it. You fine here?” Marlow asked us. I glanced at her, and when she nodded, so did I. “I’ll go call the Rutherglen, and get him to set the contract up.”
“Kill the lights,” Anna said. “Let’s go with a couple of spots and do some light tests, then…” She looked at Liam. “Then it’s go time.”
The test shots were perfect, of course. It was midday, but as we drew the curtains and turned off the lights in the room—with the exceptions of Anna’s spots—a comfortably warm gloom fell over the room, creating the cocoon-like environment Marlow had asked for.
“I’m going to ask the same question of all of you,” I said to Billy and Johnno, glancing at each one of them before my eyes were drawn inexorably back to Liam.
“Hold on for a sec,” Anna said, moving in close to Liam, hand outstretched, waiting for his permission. He nodded imperceptibly, his eyes flicking to me when she shifted a heavy strand of dirty blond hair over his shoulder. He held my gaze until I asked my question.
“When’s the last time you truly ached for something?”
I didn’t wait for his answer, instead, I shifted my focus to the camera and what I saw down the lens. I caught the moment his hand scratched at his chest, zooming in to where those blunt fingertips raked across the hard, unrelenting flesh.
“You know what I’m going to say.” His eyes hardened, growing brighter and more brittle as he stared me down. “You know it’s going to be her, about her. Everyone wants to hear about her.” His eyes jerked down and off to the side. He leant forward, arms resting on his knees, palms together. “Makes me wish I never wrote that fucking song.” His hands scraped through the fair stubble on his chin, and then he stopped still.
“Our parties are pretty fucking legendary. People talk about it being the second act of the night. It’s big, full of booze and drugs, like any other green room party, but this…” He glanced up at me, and I caught that quick, scalding side eye. “I don’t need to sell them to you. The people that come know, those who don’t…” He shrugged. “She was new. So were many people that night, but they didn’t glow as they entered the room, didn’t yank my attention to her like I was a dog on her chain, didn’t have me pushing my way through the crowd to get to her. Why? That, I’ll never know. Rhiannon is beautiful, everyone’s seen that. There’s photographs of her everywhere now, so the whole damn world gets to feel like I felt that night, while looking at ads for perfume or Dior’s latest collection or whatever. She was beautiful, but so were so many. We always get Grade A pussy, but her…”
He shook his head, just staring off to one side, as if he could see it all replaying in front of him.
“What do I fucking say?” He straightened up, glaring back at the camera, demanding that I answer. “Writing that song damn near took a month to get out, and you want what? Me to give you the real fucking story? For some fucking tour that’s gonna make Dave Rutherglen millions of bucks?” His breath blew out in a noisy stream. “I dunno what it was about her. I’ve asked myself a million times—why her? There were Victoria’s Secret models and actresses, socialites and groupies, all there that night, but none of them held a candle to her. I could only see her. I watched her walk over to the catering table, take a glass of champagne and bite a piece of fruit. My mouth was dry, my heart was pounding, and my dick went as hard as a stone. I dunno why I ached for her, all I knew was that I did.”
“And that’s it?” I said, clicking as I spoke, so that I caught it when his brows jerked down and the muscles in his jaws flexed. “Watching Rhiannon at the catering table was the moment you captured in the song?”
He snorted at that, a twist of a smile coming and going. I was lucky I was using a fast shutter speed to catch it.
“Not enough for you?” Those eyes flicked up and met mine for a second, then glanced away. “I ached for her plenty that night. I just stood there, like some kind of gormless twit, looking at this beautiful girl taking inordinate pleasure in the fruit she was eating, like it was laced with sex, drugs, and bad intentions. It was the weirdest shit, that she hadn’t made a beeline for me or one of the guys, because that’s what most of them did. That somehow a slice of melon held her entranced, but we didn’t? Probably what made me head on over there once the shock to my ego wore off.” He shook his head. “I thought I’d break the spell she cast, that she’d squeal or go all wide eyed and stammer some fatuous bullshit at me.”
He stared down the camera lens now, like he could see through all the mechanisms and mirrors and into my soul.
“I walked up to her with my heart in my fucking throat, and my first words to her were little more than a rasp. That’s why the song starts so quiet, so low key. Fucks my voice every time, but that’s why I do it—to recover that, remind myself of it. For a second, the world stood still as I introduced myself to this beautiful girl and she looked upon me with this smile, like she knew a secret and I didn’t. All I could focus on was the curve of her lips and the thin line of juice trailing down on her chin.” He leaned forward in a swift movement, his elbows going to his knees, his head in his hands, and he snorted when he saw me jerk back in response. “But that’s not what you’re after, is it?”
He hummed a couple bars of ‘Ache,’ his eyes falling shut for a second, but when they opened, they were that harsh unending stare I’d been treated to when we were introduced.
“I fucked her. Of course, I did. That’s been well documented. If she comes tomorrow…” A wistful note crept into his voice, but he dismissed it with a shake of his head. “I could re-enact it, if you like, for the sake of accuracy. She led me on a merry dance, panting after her. The first woman who’d said no to me in a long time, and apparently, that was enough to hook me good and proper. I pledged my heart to her, swore to take her on tour with us. Anything to get in her knickers… And when I did—” He froze, not moving, not breathing it appeared, his eyes going soft and unfocussed as they played out something. Something that held his attention for some time, while the guys shuffled in the background as they waited for him to come back to us.
“Liam?” Johnno said to his brother, reaching out, but the front man came back abruptly.
“It was just pussy. I have to keep telling myself that.” Liam’s gaze was brash and challenging, but the raw scrape of his voice told a different story. “It all feels g
ood, so wet and sweet and tight around my cock, pulling the cum right out of me. But somehow, this felt different. Maybe because she’d strung me out so long, made me do exactly what you asked—ache. I would lie there at night, rubbing one off over and over, dreaming of her.”
“Fuck, I remember that,” Billy said. “Couldn’t find a clean sock for love or money on the bus.”
“But I was prepared for the letdown. That when she got naked, she’d be just another beautiful body under me, a box for me to cum in. Little did I know…” He shook his head. “We sing all the time about love and lust. It’s the stock in trade for musicians, always has been. Sing some outrageous shit on stage to get the girls wet between the legs and the guys around them ready to service them. It’s a bacchanal, our shows. Everyone’s shows. The place where you let go and give in to the throbbing need everyone keeps hidden. I thought I knew. I thought I fucking knew…”
He jerked himself to his feet and I caught Anna moving the camera closest to her to try and capture his movement.
“When I was with Rhiannon, it wasn’t about my dick, her cunt, her tits. It was something that transcended all of that and made me aware of a whole other fucking side of the experience. Like, I’d been blind before then, not aware that others could see…” His hands were jerked out to emphasise the point until his voice trailed away. “The answer to your question—what was the last thing that made me really ache? When I was completely caught up in her, feeling shit I’d never have thought possible, and realising she didn’t feel the same. That even though we’d been together for a few months, that wasn’t what this was to her. That someone else was going to make her feel like I did for her, and that we were falling apart.”
His eyes jerked to Marlow, who had returned, phone in hand.
“That better be enough for your purposes, because I don’t have anything else left in me. If I’ve gotta bounce chicks on my dick for these ones to record for posterity tomorrow, I’m gonna need my beauty rest.”
“Beautiful,” Marlow said. He’d made his call and returned, and was now flicking through the images and paying Liam no mind with a kind of casualness I could only dream of. I blinked as I put down the camera, then went over to the computer to see what we’d just caught. I needed to, as the unreality of what had just happened was hitting me hard. Coupled with the offer on the table, one I was too scared to ask Marlow about, it all had my hand starting to shake as the adrenalin that had been battering at my system finally forced its way through. This was Liam fucking Hartley. I’d just pushed him to make some kind of confession, and for what? The clear, sure feeling of knowing what I was doing was being swept away with a tide of terror. What had I done, what the fuck had I done?
“Exactly what I was looking for,” Marlow said with a smile, gesturing for the both of us to take a look.
What the fuck is the deal with this camera? I thought. Everything was clear and crisp and just as beautiful as Marlow had said. Liam glowed like he was standing on stage with a full rig of spotlights trained on him, while the various paraphernalia in the background faded into a low focussed warm brown mass.
Except for Billy.
When had he gotten in frame? It made sense, I realised, as I looked back at the couch. He was on one seat at a right angle to the one Liam had sat at, so he could have gotten in shot when I was taking longer shots, but I didn’t remember that. Nor did I remember the carnivorous smile on the guitarist’s face as he reclined on the couch. A smile that was still on his face now, as I took a look back at the room, though it was more subdued.
“There’s a story there,” Marlow said, and I nodded. We both straightened, turning to fix Billy in our sights. “Front and centre, Billy boy.”
“What the fuck for?” he replied. “Got no sob stories about fancy pussy stringing me along. Not as fussy as our boy here. Just like ‘em willing, for the most part.” His grin widened at that. “You reckon you can take me apart? Give it your best shot.”
“I’m going for a smoke. Gonna find Luc,” Liam said without a backward look as he strode out of the room.
“Well, camera girl?” Billy said, an eyebrow raised.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was enjoying this. I turned away from the computer and nodded to Anna, who started shifting the lighting around. I lifted my camera, taking a few test shots, more to capture the predatory way Billy watched the girl work. He didn’t move, didn’t lift a finger as she fiddled with her equipment, just watched her with the kind of coiled intensity a carnivore would use when stalking its prey. That gaze with all its lazy menace switched to me when he heard the click of the shutter. His dark eyes felt like they filled the lens, like great dark holes in his skull within which galaxies whirled, and I was slowly being sucked in.
“C’mon, then. Ask your question.”
8
“When’s the last time you truly ached for something?”
I repeated the exact same words, but in Billy, the reaction was quite different. Somehow, he became even more relaxed, his very finely muscled body going fluid and lax on the couch, like he was without bones.
Click
I caught the moment when his fingers fiddled with a pulled thread.
Click
I shot that smile widening, then falling away before reinstating itself.
“Ache? You’re talking about desire. Well, you’ve come to the right place, girl. Desire’s my bread and butter, the coin with which I buy the world. You want to lose your fucking mind, drown in desire? I’m your boy. From that quiet, stifled, hold your hand over your mouth so you don’t scream, inside a closet, kinda sex, to being staked out before the whole crew, being made to come over and over until you can’t anymore, then having another orgasm. I’m a big fan of it all.”
He was trying to ruffle my feathers, I got that. The knowing smirk, the brilliant black eyes taking in every little shift of my body as I shot him, like a dark king on an incongruous throne. I lowered the camera, straightened up, and just watched him as he described one scenario after another. He looked straight into Anna’s camera, telling each story with growing relish, but that wasn’t it, not the brief.
“Cut the camera,” I said to Anna. She looked at me quizzically, but I shook my head, so she stopped recording. “That’s sex,” I said when his eyes whipped around to me. “Nothing wrong with that. Looks like you’ve got plenty of ideas for the performative side of things. I’m sure people will find it very entertaining, and it’s sure to be very popular on PornHub, but that’s not what this is. Naked, they said the theme was. You got these people naked, yourself as well of course, but you couldn’t have been less vulnerable if you tried. I could ask you to strip off now, and you wouldn’t give the slightest shit. You don’t feel exposed, you feel powerful.”
I saw something stir, then flex in his gaze, an expression I’d never seen before on his face, and I raced to capture it. I snapped shot after shot, wanting to check the images to make sure I was getting it, but not able to look away. There was something…monstrous about Billy, like a hungry animal looked out from behind those dark eyes, inspecting me now I’d drawn its attention, wondering if I was tasty.
“Damn fucking right I do,” he said, his hand going to a now swollen crotch, and if what I think I saw stirring from underneath that black leather was real, he had no concerns at all.
“Billy…” Johnno said.
“What!” snapped the other man, his teeth gleaming white in the low light.
I glanced over at the inconspicuous rhythm guitarist, who’d lurked throughout my interrogation of his band. That was odd in itself. He was a fucking good-looking guy, his warm darkness just adding to the strangely compelling air he carried about him. Like I’d known him for a long time, our relationship deepened into something comforting and enduring, each of us growing into the other.
“Remember what this is.”
Whatever it was I’d stirred up settled inside the dark man, but it was not completely subdued.
“Ache? I
don’t ache for anything. I make others ache.”
I clicked my fingers, hopefully cueing Anna to start shooting again, and just stared at him for a second, playing his response over in his mind.
“You don’t know what desire is,” I said. He snorted at that, looking away for the first time. “No, you know how to provoke it, build it like someone would a fire, and use it as a weapon.” Yup, whatever it was I saw in his eyes liked that summation. “But you wouldn’t have the faintest idea what it’s like to abandon yourself to desire.”
I knew I had my in when the smile faltered and then disappeared altogether. He’d mocked Liam, yet here he was, reduced to the same silence, his arms no longer slung loosely. Instead, they were crossed over that broad chest, and the foot that had been resting on his opposite knee was now bouncing.
“Is that what you think?”
I resisted shooting the moment he straightened, his hands dropping down to the couch and clawing at the fabric there. I just stared him down, feeling that hard, brittle mask I imagined myself wearing to protect me from his harsh gaze.
“You wanna know what makes me ache? To make others feel like I do. The selfsame gnawing at your guts, tightening of your balls, slickening of your pussies. That godawful hunger…”
“Billy!”
“I ache to make others feel like I do, every moment I’m awake and in my sleep too. I ache to see the world toss off its tight little strictures. All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy,” he said in a singsong voice. “The closest I get is when I’m on stage, when I’m pulling fuck knows what sounds from my guitar and there’s thousands of people going fucking nuts. They don’t care about work, schools, parents, or partners. All the things that hold them down are gone and there’s just this—them and me wanting and needing so fucking much.”
I swallowed.
His words hit me like body blows. I was a fan, so I’d seen the gigs and felt just a sliver of the euphoria concert goers seemed to get in the videos I watched. The imaginary mask I wore wobbled for a moment, and I saw his eyes sharpen.