Leave Fader Seventeen Up

After the Detroit show, Dewey clears the dressing room with one look and a muttered instruction about loading schedules. Pip is plugged into its charger in the front lounge, safely out of sight. Behind the closed door, a refrigerator fan hums near the counter and a faulty clock ticks three seconds fast.

Tibor leans against the wall.

“I want you,” he says. “But I need to know this is not because the whole world is pushing us toward each other.”

“It isn’t.”

“That is not enough.”

I set my phone facedown on the table. “I want you. I want privacy. I want to be able to stop whenever I need to.”

“You can.” His eyes stay on mine. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Yes.”

He crosses the room, then waits until I lift my face. His kiss is deliberate, warm, patient enough to make me angry at every night I have spent pretending I could keep this clean. His hands remain at my sides until I take one and put it under my shirt.

“Can I?” he asks.

“Yes.”

My shirt lands near the couch. His follows. I run my hands over his chest, the old scar beneath his collarbone, the lean muscle under skin that has carried him through every city in America. When I reach his belt, I stop.

“Do you want this?”

“Please.”

I undo him slowly. His cock is hard in my hand, and he closes his eyes for one second before looking back at me.

“Still good?” I ask.

“Very.”

His palm closes around me through my trousers. My body answers before I can make a clever remark. He lowers himself to his knees.

“Do you want my mouth?”

“Yes.”

He takes me in with a care that ruins me faster than hunger would. The clock keeps ticking. The refrigerator keeps humming. I grip the edge of the counter and watch him until I have to pull him upright.

“Not yet,” I say. “I want you too.”

His laugh is brief and strained. “You are generous at terrible moments.”

“I’m a journalist. Timing is my only gift.”

I kneel before him and take him into my mouth. He says my name, then stops himself, one hand hovering near my shoulder instead of claiming it. I look up.

“Touch me,” I tell him.

His hand settles in my hair. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I will.”

He pulls me up before either of us finishes. I find condoms and lubricant in my wash bag, suddenly grateful for the mundane foresight of travel. Tibor opens the packet, checks my face again, then kisses my shoulder.

“Do you want me inside you?”

“Yes.”

“Slowly?”

“Yes. Ask again.”

He does. He uses his fingers first, careful and slick, giving me time to adjust with every new inch. When I tell him more, he listens. When he presses into me, I hold his shoulders and let the room narrow to the movement of his body, the steady question in his eyes.

“Still yes?”

“Yes.”

He fucks me slowly at first, then faster when I ask. One hand works my cock while the other holds my hip. I come across his knuckles with his name in my mouth. He follows moments later, face pressed against my neck, shaking once before he stills.

Afterward, we stay on the floor longer than either of us expects to. We drink bottled water. Tibor hands me a clean shirt from his bag. The refrigerator fan sounds absurdly loud now.

“In 2019,” he says, “a profile writer used a private letter from someone I loved. Turned it into a clue about why I write sad songs.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I gave him access. I thought that meant he would behave.”

“I once let an editor print an off-record comment because it made the piece sharper.” I twist the cap back onto my water. “The musician never spoke to me again.”

Tibor considers that.

“Rules,” I say.

“Rules.”

“Nothing personal goes public unless we both say yes. No label photographs. No interviews about us. If one of us is hurt, we say it to the other person first.”

“And neither of us disappears when it gets difficult.”

I look at him. “Especially that one.”

Three nights later, we have dinner in a quiet restaurant outside Chicago. We sit in the back, share fries, argue over whether a singer can ever be trusted with a tambourine. Someone photographs Tibor passing me the salt.

By breakfast, the images are online.

Marcel sends a presentation deck to Tibor’s manager. I see the subject line on Tibor’s phone: THE STORY FANS WANT.

Tibor goes still.

“We should not be seen together for a while,” he says.

“We were eating soup.”

“They will turn it into something.”

“They already have.”

He looks toward the bus windows. “I can’t do this right now.”

“You mean us?”

“I mean all of it.”

The answer lands with more precision than cruelty needs. “We made rules.”

“I know.”

“And now you want me to disappear so you can survive the headlines.”

His jaw tightens. “I want to protect you.”

“No. You want fewer targets.”

Dewey finds me packing an hour later. He does not try to talk me out of it.

“You sure?” he asks.

“Sure is a generous word.” I hand him my laminate. “I’m done being a person other people can package.”

Outside, the bus engine starts. I leave before Tibor comes looking.

Four months later, Basil signals for one final record. The red ON AIR sign burns above the glass, and he turns toward me with his late-night patience.

“Last question, Dashiell. Did leaving save you?”

“It stopped me from becoming somebody else’s angle.”

“And now?”

The studio door opens behind him. Tibor stands in the hall, coat damp from March rain, hands at his sides. He looks older than Detroit, which is how grief measures time.

Basil sees him, sees me, and reaches for the music bed. “Listeners, we’ll be right back.”

He is not. He lets the record play its full length and turns the microphones off.

Tibor waits until Basil disappears toward the coffee machine. “The hometown finale is Saturday.”

“I read the listings.”

“I want to say your name from stage.” He keeps his eyes on mine. “I want to tell them you helped write ‘Exit Sign in D Minor.’ I want to ask you to come back to me. Not as my subject. Not as a publicity hook. But I will not say any of it unless you allow it.”

“Why should I believe you won’t turn frightened again?”

“You shouldn’t, yet.” His mouth tightens. “I was frightened. I chose distance because I could control it. It cost me you. I’m sorry.”

His apology has no polish, which makes it harder to dismiss.

“Ask me properly,” I say.

“May I name you? May I ask, in front of everyone, whether you’ll be my partner?”

“You may name me. You may ask. If I walk onstage, it means I’m ready to answer.”

Basil returns with three coffees. The sign clicks dark. For the first time in months, I leave a radio station without looking over my shoulder.

Saturday, the hometown theater holds every version of the Bad Faiths at once: old fans in faded shirts, new ones filming the stage, people who only know the chorus from their phones. Tibor walks into the light wearing black, of course, and begins “Exit Sign in D Minor.”

I know every turn of it before he sings it. I still feel each line arrive fresh.

After the final chord, he grips the microphone stand.

“This song began on a bus in Minneapolis,” he says. “A writer named Dashiell Vale gave me a line I was too proud to admit I needed.”

The crowd answers with a roar. Tibor waits for it to ease.

“Dashiell said I could tell you that. He also taught me that love is not material. It is not access. It is not a photograph somebody else sells.”

My hands go cold around the theater railing.

“Dashiell,” he says, looking toward me, “if you want to, come up here.”

I do.

He gives me the microphone without taking my hand first.

“Will you come back,” he asks, “as my partner? Not my witness. Not my story. Just mine, if you still want me?”

“I have terms,” I say.

The audience laughs. Tibor’s face opens with something close to relief.

“Of course you do.”

“Yes,” I tell him. “I do.”

After the applause burns itself out, we sit in the empty loading bay behind a row of guitar cases. Tibor uses an old hotel key to scrape tape residue from one black case while I hold the takeout cartons between us: cold noodles, fries, too much soy sauce.

Pip rolls beneath a folding table, its collar light blinking amber. I plug its charger into the power strip, and its little motor gives an approving chirp.

“No staged photographs,” I say.

“No separate answers about us,” Tibor replies.

“No private messages used as content.”

“If one of us needs distance, he says when he’ll come back.”

I look at him. “That one stays.”

“It stays.”

Dewey appears at the loading-bay door with a route sheet. “Next run has a double bunk at the rear,” he says. “Want it reserved?”

Tibor looks to me.

“One shared bunk,” I say. “Two names on it.”

Dewey marks the sheet and leaves us to our cold dinner, our guitar cases, our slow work of becoming visible without becoming available to everyone.

Tibor puts his hand beside mine on the concrete and waits.

This time, I put mine in his.