Song for this chapter is Echoand you can find the link on my profile since I can't add it to the story.
Chapter 5
Echo
The hotel for the after party was a locally owned "party hotel"—a hotel that was a legit hotel but was only rented out for special occasions with the attendees having the entire hotel to themselves. It was mostly used for things like this and raves. Basically, if you needed place to throw a hella fucking crazy party, this was the place. The hotel had seen its better days, like in the 80's, but for what it was used for, it was perfect. It was not in any way a motel but a very small hotel. The place had two different ballrooms spread out on two different floors with many smaller conference rooms and lounges to use as well. Since Mike, aka M, also owned the Jazzy Blue, he was on extremely good terms with some, if not most, of the local talent. It was not too difficult to get the best DJ's in the city to come and spin just to be able to party with the band. Being that this was the end of tour after party, Mike worked his ass off to pulled together ten of the best mixers he knew. Most of them even had their works in his shop. The lineup was so insane it looked more like an EDM festival than a simple rock band after party. And Mike would not want it to be anything less.
Levi sat in one of oversized posh arm chair of his hotel room trying to make sense of everything that had happened tonight. He was definitely wondering if getting Mike to arrange for the boy to come to the party was even a good idea. Fuck. He didn't even know if the boy would be old enough to even be at the after party. He was utterly confused by his own behavior. This was not like him in the slightest. But from the moment he laid eyes on the brat, an unfamiliar part of Levi knew that even if the world began to crumble away around them, he still would be helpless to tear his eyes away. He had never experience this with any other person. He had been thinking about the boy long after they had exited the House of Blues. He thought about him on the ride here, even with Mike and Hanji babbling to him nonstop; he thought about him as he got a shower, where he did things in there that he had not done while thinking about another person in a long time; he thought about him as he got dress, where he started wonder how he would feel when the boy ripped his stunning white leather and fur ensemble off his body; and he was still thinking about him now as he stared out the window not really looking at anything. And the conclusion that he came to made him want to lock himself in his room and not come out for the rest of the night. But he honestly doubted his self-control in this. And this scared him even more than he would ever acknowledge.
It was more than just the sex appeal of the brat that had him behaving so strangely. It was his soul's need to possess this emerald eyed vision. There was this numinous feeling that this boy's touch could fix his brokenness. Levi knew that this was totally crazy, and he should know. It was his day job: he was a psychiatrist for fuck sakes. These thoughts and his behavior were extremely irrational. Analyzing everything in his head, if he was his own patient he would have said that they were having a depersonalization episode and would advise them limit all actives and not to do anything drastic. Instead, Levi reminded himself that he was not the type to just lay low and let these types of feeling overcome and control him. No, he was stronger than this and would be the one to control his emotions and his behavior. And told himself that this will be no different than any other time he hooked up with someone at their after parties. It was because he hadn't had a piece of ass that fine in a long time-he wanted to fuck—plain and simple. And whatever this feeling was that was nagging at his core could just go fuck off.
Having finally won the internal battle with his head, Levi was finally in a mindset to become aware of surroundings. Looking around for the first time, Levi was glad Mike was on the best terms possible with the owner. Knowing Mike, he had probably drove them crazy with making them get this his hotel room as clean was what it was. Levi relaxed at this thought.
And he was right. Mike knew him well enough to know that Levi would not be open to staying anywhere in which his space was not spotless. In reality, Mike went as far as to getting a professional cleaning crew to come out and clean Levi's suite—TWICE. The hotel room might not be the best of quality, even if it was the rarely used presidential suite, but it was clean. So for Levi, it was perfect.
One of the other things Levi just now noticed was sitting on top of extended bar area next to the refrigerator. It would appear that the party fairy had visited his room and left a very nice gift. But before Levi could get up and pour himself a drink, the door to his hotel room was kicked open by his bandmates. Hanji walked in first with a blonde in tow, and Mike flowed, closing the door behind them.
"Who's ready to have the best party ever tonight?" Hanji shouted.
"Tch." Levi vocalized. "Hanji, who the fuck gave you a key to my room?"
"I stole it out of Erwin's office." They proclaimed proudly with a smile.
"So that is what you were doing in there. And here I thought you had come to see me." Erwin said, fringing hurt.
"Oh hush. You were the one who told me where you keep the extra keys." They picked.
Erwin just looked at Hanji with a smile on his face. He did indeed tell them where the keys were kept; he just didn't think they would steal them this soon.
Erwin was the owner of the hotel. In fact, he was the owner of quite a few hotels; though, the rest of those were regular hotels. And he also just happened to Mike's long-term boyfriend. They had been together even before the band was formed. And the only reason they were not married yet was because of Mike's laid back thinking. They were together because they loved each other willingly and not because some paper said they had too. But if it was up to Erwin, he and Mike would have married the moment it became legal to do so. That being said, one of the things Erwin had come to enjoy over the years was watching Hanji; he found them to be some of the greatest amusement ever created, which is why he told them where he keep the keys.
"Well I don't give a shit who told where the fuck anything was." Levi said as he jumped up from the chair and marched up to Hanji.
Hanji knew exactly what Levi was coming at her for—the key. And faster than he could get to them, they raised it high above their head.
"Hanji, I swear to fucking God if you don't give me that key right the fuck now, I am going to kick your ass."
Hanji waved the key over their head for a few more seconds. Then looking to the side yelled, "Hey Mike. Catch!" before they tossed the key to the drummer, which he caught.
Levi stomped on Hanji's foot in retaliation and then glared daggers at Mike. He was not in the mood to play the keep away for shorty game.
Sensing Levi's rage, Mike put his hands up in defeat. "Whoa there. I don't want any part of this. Here you can have the key."
"AAAWWWW! Mike's no fun," whined Hanji.
"I want all of us to have fun tonight and not just you." Mike knew that if Hanji keep up with irritating Levi, two things would happen: first, it would just ruin his, Erwin's and Levi's night; secondly, Levi would not want to party with them again for a long time. And He did not like either of those outcomes.
Levi walked over to Mike and got the key. "Mike, if it wasn't for you, I probably would have quit this band a long time ago."
"Well if it weren't for me," said Hanji, "you would've never been in the band in the first place." They then stomped over to the bed and dramatically sat down pouting.
Though annoying, she was right about that. Levi would never admit it to Hanji, but them getting him to join the band had saved him when he was at the point of breaking. If it weren't for Hanji, Levi would have never been anything period.
No fan would ever think when looking at him that Levi was actually a genius with an IQ of 189. At the young age of 19 (having gotten his pre-med undergrad out the way by 18), he was already enrolled in med school with the premises of becoming a physiatrist. He had been inspired by his adoptive mom Petra: she was a psychologist, and this woman had literally saved his life. When no one would give a traumatized problem child a chance, she did, seeing beyond the unbelievable diagnosis of PTSD in an 8 year-old to find the child inside. She died his second year in med school. The stress of the lost brought his night terrors to an all-time high, having them every night; thus, he would spend days without sleep to escape them. Suffering from lack of sleep for almost whole weeks at time, his brain crave dreamful rest which only caused him to have these violent episodes to plague his waking hours as well. With no way to escape, Levi starting drinking heavily to the point of never spending a second sober, even going to classes drunk. Only his intelligence saved him from flunking out and losing all his scholarships. Because even with being drunk, he still was able to receive high scores on all assignments. That, and Hanji literally was "dragging" him to classes every day. If he refused to go, they would throw him over their shoulder and then delivered him to his class personally.
Hanji had been one of his few friends since he started the med program. Seeing him like this broke their heart, and they knew they needed to do something. Hanji had been trying to get her friend, Mike, to start a band, but they lacked a singer. After a night of much coxing with the promise of buying him drinks all night, they manage to get him out for some drunken karaoke, and once he took the stage, they knew they had found their singer.
This gave Levi an outlet to express all his anger and sadness in a healthy way, and it also gave him a place to forget about the stressors in his world for a bit. He learned soon that being 'L' gave him a break at being Levi; it gave him a safe haven where he didn't have to think about things going on in his day-to-day life. It wasn't like he was running away from his problems, more like, pressing pause, which worked to recharge himself before he single handedly braved the world. Becoming L became Levi's therapy, and it worked. Gradually he was able to pull of his depression, and things went back to normal. Well, as normal as possible with being a psychiatrist by day and a rock star by night.
Out of nowhere, Erwin started rolling with laughter. "I think you guys off-stage performances are even better than your on-stage ones sometimes."
Mike slid his arms around Erwin's waist from behind. "And I thought you said my private shows were the best."
"Now I really need a drink to get this bad taste out of my mouth," said Levi. Walking over to the fridge, he was finally able to open his party gift. His gift was a basket filled with all Levi's favorite party favors: Jägermeister, sugar-free Red Bull, Gray Goose Vodka, gummy bears, a pack of black-n-mild's with the wooden tips, a carton of Dunhill lights, and a pair of rather nice looking glass drinking glasses. Levi pulled out the Jäger only to find that his basket contained even more goodies. Sitting under and behind the liquor bottle were condoms and some lube.
Levi was unsure of how he felt about seeing that stuff in the basket. On one hand, well they could be useful tonight; however; he did not like that it was someone else telling him that he would be needing this kind of stuff. His sex life was his business, and they should all butt out. Not wanting to discuss his hidden party favors with the group, Levi simply went about fixing his drink. He took out one of the glasses and then walked into the bathroom to wash it.
While in the other room, he heard Mike and Erwin began to talk about all that was happening tonight.
As Levi walked into the room, he was surprised to see that Erwin had pulled out a bottle of Cristal and was passing out glasses to everyone. "Hey Levi, give me your glass," Erwin said, knowing perfectly well Levi would not drink out of a glass he didn't know was clean.
"So what is all this for?" Levi asked as he took glass of bubbling liquid.
The toasting with champagne definitely put Hanji back into a better mood and they wrapped an arm around Levi's shoulders. "It's to celebrate of course. Has it actually been that long since you have come to one of the after parties that you forgot how we do them?"
Levi clicked his tongue in response.
Wanting to steer the conversation away from the direction it was going, Mike interrupted, "That doesn't matter. What matters is he, and all of us, are here now, and 'we' are about to have the best damn party we have ever had. So everyone raise your glass, and let's drink to having the best night of our lives." He finished and held his glass up into the air.
With that everyone followed in and raised their glasses. "To the best night ever!"
A/N: So are you liking it or not? :/
