When Novak finally came to, he awoke in an unfamiliar place.
He opened his eyes, looking around with blurred vision. His body ached and his stomach churned; his head ached in more than just the back where he had hit it, and he felt oddly fatigued.
The Serb was lying in a bed with black covers, and he had a cold washcloth on his forehead. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, standing. He tossed the washcloth aside on the carpeted floor, looking around the unfamiliar room.
He tried to remember; what exactly had happened at the hot tub? How did he get here? He knew he hadn't gotten drunk and passed out somewhere. He hadn't consumed any alcohol in the previous night… or had he? He couldn't remember.
Novak looked at one of the dressers in the room and noticed a photo sitting next to a lamp. He picked it up and looked to it, automatically breathing a sigh of relief. The picture was of Andelko and a very elderly man.
Novak looked over his shoulder as the bedroom door was opened, seeing Andelko walk in. The Serb set down the picture he was holding and turned around, smiling slightly.
"Oh, you're up. How're you feeling? You hit your head pretty hard, and all night you were running a fever. I brought you here to my apartment since it was closer than yours." Andelko explained, approaching the Serbian.
"I'm feeling okay... Just an ache in the back of my head." Novak lied; to be truthful, he felt like shit. He just didn't want Andelko worrying. "Thanks for taking care of me, Andelko."
"It's no problem. Not to pester you or anything, but do you mind if I take your temperature? I just want to make sure your fever is gone."
"I don't mind. Better safe than sorry."
Andelko chuckled, going to the bathroom and taking a medical thermometer out of a cabinet. He washed off the end with water, then handed it to Novak. "Here you go."
Novak stuck the thermometer in his mouth and held it under his tongue, sitting on the bed. Andelko sat next to him, sighing slightly.
"I'm just going to check the back of your head to see how bad the swelling is. When I looked last night you had quite a knot where you hit the concrete." He explained, leaning back. Novak closed his eyes and relaxed as Andelko felt the back of his head, moving his hair and inspecting the hurt area.
"… Doesn't look too bad; the swelling's gone down… Some ice wouldn't hurt though." Andelko told the other man, patting his back a bit. The thermometer in Novak's mouth beeped and the Serbian removed it from its place, sighing when he read the number. 103.2.
Andelko read the number and raised an eyebrow. "Still have a fever after an entire night... And this is a high temperature... Tell me truthfully, Novak, are you really feeling alright?"
Novak looked down.
"Let me guess. You feel like hell? Lethargic, achy, sick to your stomach? You don't have to hide anything from me, Novak." Andelko placed a hand on the man's shoulder comfortingly.
"… I just don't want anyone to worry about me. I just got here to the states… Being sick is the last thing I need…" Novak muttered.
"I'll help you back to your apartment. Just rest for the day, alright? Its best you recover before you do anything." Andelko stood and offered his hand to the other man. Novak took the Croat's hand, and he was assisted to his feet.
"Thanks… You hardly know me, and yet you're helping me so much." He said, looking to the bearded man.
"Everyone in the complex will help you up when you're down. I guess I just feel more obligated than others. I feel you need some good friends to help you get around here in the states. I'll be the first. Oh, by the way, here's my number, if you need anything." Andelko replied, scribbling down his number on a nearby piece of paper with a pen on the bedside table and handing it to Novak. "Now come on. Let's get you to your apartment."
Novak nodded, and Andelko led the Serb out of his apartment. When they arrived, Novak walked into his apartment with a sigh. "Thanks again, Andelko. I'll talk to you later."
"No problem, Novak. Talk to you later." Andelko said with a smile, before leaving. Novak, too unwell to do much more than lay around, had quite a bit of time to do absolutely nothing until he felt better.
Around midnight, the blonde-haired man was up and about, feeling much better after a long nap. He still had an ache in the back of his head from hitting it on the concrete, but it was nothing he couldn't handle.
Feeling restless, with enough energy to last him quite a while, Novak decided to have a quick swim in one of the complex's pools. He still had Andelko's swim shorts that he had given him.
After getting the swim shorts on, he walked out of his apartment with a towel and headed towards the closest of the three fenced-in swimming pools. Once he got to it, he set his towel on a chair and sighed. He was slightly startled when he heard some splashing come from the pool; he didn't see anyone in the pool when he had glanced at it before.
He looked to the water and saw Tiku with his arms up on the edge of the concrete ground.
"Heard you took quite the fall yesterday. You alright?" The Kosovar man asked.
"Yeah. I'm alright; just a lump on the back of my head now." Novak replied, chuckling. "Care if I join you for a swim? I've got so much energy, I don't know what to do with it."
Tiku laughed a bit. "I don't mind at all. I know exactly why you're here. I have to take the TriMet to downtown Portland for class at 6 in the morning, but I have too much energy to sleep tonight. I have a big test to take, too."
"You know, I never did learn what you're studying." Novak commented as he got in the pool.
"Oh, I'm studying Music Theory." Tiku said, smiling a bit. "The study of how music works; rhythm, harmonic function, melody, structure, form, texture, etcetera…"
"So if you're studying music, I'm guessing you play at least one instrument."
"Four, actually. I'm a jack of all trades." Tiku chuckled. "Electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, and violin."
"Violin? All the rock-oriented instruments, then violin? How did that come to be?" Novak asked.
"My mother was a violinist. When I was a kid, I used to always sit and watch her play. One day she handed me the violin she had, and told me to play. I sucked at first, but by the age of ten, I was really good. I mean, looking back at home videos, I never would have guessed someone as young as I was would be able to play so well."
"How about the other instruments? They're way different from the violin."
"Well, first came the electric guitar. My dad didn't want me turning into "a gay pansy", so he bought me an electric guitar and made me stop playing violin, much to the chagrin of my mother. I started off hardly having the motivation to pick up the guitar, which pissed my father off to no end. He threatened to hit me if I didn't play, and, well, when I didn't play, I got the shit beat out of me. It wasn't fun. I played to the best of my ability out of fear that I would get beat again. I played until my fingers bled. It wasn't pretty, but as a teenager, I fell in love with hard rock and metal music." Tiku explained, laughing slightly.
"My father was satisfied, but, since I was playing well, he had no one to take his anger out on. So, when he got pissed, he went out and beat the shit out of some innocent Serbs in northern Kosovo. Now he's in jail for twenty years. Feeling freed from my father wanting me to play electric guitar, I decided to play a different instrument. When my mother and I came here, I went for the bass guitar, and learned that while I went through high school. I picked up drumming towards the end of high school, and pretty much right when I graduated I got an offer to be in a band. Now, two years later, I'm still in the same band, and I'm studying to have a degree in Music Theory. Though the band just does an occasional gig here and there, it's still great to make music."
"I bet it is. Who's in this band of yours?"
"Just a couple of friends. Alfred Jones, Alexianos Kirzigian, Matthew Williams, and Lovino Vargas."
"Who does what?"
"Alfred is our Portland-born vocalist. Mainly clean vocals, but the occasional scream or growl. Alexianos, an Armenian guy, does rhythm guitar. He's a fucking beast at anything you tell him to do. He comes up with a lot of the music to surround Alfred's lyrics. Then Matthew, Alfred's Canadian half-brother, is the bassist; it suits him well. No one ever notices him, but we try to get the bass guitar to actually be heard in the music we've recorded. And then Lovino is our drummer. He has some anger issues, and his way of coping is to play drums. Man, I tell you, that Italian can work a foot-pedal like no other."
"And what do you do?"
"Back-up vocals and lead guitar."
"So you play electric guitar in this band, despite the fact that your father forced you to play it when you were younger?"
"That was a long time ago. I'm 20 years old now. I think just because someone forced you to do something until you got good at it isn't a reason to stop."
"That's an interesting opinion. So what's this band of yours called?"
"The Wings of Icarus. We play some pretty heavy stuff, but a lot of the times we'll play things a bit softer. Our range of talent is pretty wide. Hell, Alexianos can play redneck country music on a seven-string guitar."
"Wings of Icarus, eh? What's the inspiration behind that?"
"It's actually a pretty stupid reason; Alfred was playing some video game in his apartment that had something to do with the myth of Icarus. He had really shiny wings, which I pointed out, and we joked around about them for a while… and eventually, Lovino cut in and said if we loved Icarus' wings so much, why don't we just call the band that, and Al, Matt, Alex, and I just looked to each other and all said The Wings of Icarus at the same time. We did end up calling the band that, and it just kind of stuck. Lovino even warmed up to it." Tiku said, laughing. He went silent for a moment, and looked around.
"What're you-" Novak tried to ask the Kosovar what he was doing, but Tiku smacked a hand over his mouth.
"Listen. You can hear Lovino drumming." Tiku stated quietly, taking his hand off of Novak's mouth.
Novak listened for a few moments, and sure enough, he could hear the distant sound of cymbals and drums clanging and banging in a complicated beat.
"Wow…" He muttered. "That sounds tough…"
"He's playing off the top of his head. Random beats. His twin brother must have pissed him off." Tiku replied.
"How do you know that?"
"He always does that when Feliciano's done something to piss him off. Instead of beating the life out of his brother, Lovino beats the life out of his drums. I can't tell you how amazing it is to just to sit in the same room with him when he's drumming off the top of his head like this. It's so intense. He starts off incredibly strong with beats you'd probably only see in heavy metal music and speedcore and such things like that… The calmer he gets, the simpler his drumming gets. He'll either exhaust himself and have to stop, or he'll just mellow out and stop playing."
"How do you get him to play at gigs? It sounds like he only plays when he's pissed off."
"It takes some motivation to get him to play, but usually he comes to the gigs pissed off enough to play five gigs on a row. I think his brother does it on purpose just to motivate the poor guy."
"So what're your other band members like?"
"Well, Alfred's the only guy in the band who's American. He's a great guy; a bit out there, but great none the less. We were filming a music video for our song "Have a Heart", and he decided that instead of filming us, we would film on the streets, doing good deeds. We nonchalantly handed homeless people cash despite the fact that we don't have much ourselves, Alfred bought a stuffed animal and gave it to a random little girl walking around with her mom, Alexianos helped an elderly man get to the right TriMet station and waited with him for the train, Matthew gave a young teen playing an old decrepit bass guitar on the street a brand new bass guitar, Lovino re-painted the walls of a local business that had illegal graffiti all over it, and I pushed a woman's broken-down car six blocks to a repair place. It took us three months to do all these things, because we wanted them to be legit. We wanted to actually benefit people. And we filmed the entire video on handheld cameras."
"Wow, that's awesome that you guys did that. Anyways, back to my original question; Alfred's a genuinely nice guy who just wants to help people. What about Alexianos, Lovino, and Matt?"
"Alexianos is a quirky guy. Works at a flower shop. Loves to barbeque for some odd reason. He's probably the most fawned-over guy in the band, purely because of looks. Sadly, he's gay, so the women don't even have a shot. I guess that just goes to show, the best looking guys are always either gay or taken." Tiku said, laughing. "And then Lovino; you know about his anger issues, but he's a good guy deep down. Past that rough, angry exterior is an intelligent, ambitious Italian who studies to save lives. He's studying to be a neurosurgeon. He's also the most well-to-do out of the band; his dad's some prominent politician back in Italy and is paying for a lot of his education."
"And Matthew?"
"Matt's real quiet, kind of shy, but is very, very proud. He loves being a French Canadian, that's for sure. Any chance he gets, he goes to Quebec to visit his mom and step-dad. He's the older brother between him and Alfred. Matt's mom had him with a guy in Quebec City, Quebec… Then Matt's dad died suddenly, and about a year later, his mom was with another guy and pregnant with Alfred. So… They're about two years apart, Al and Matt. But they're so, so different. Matt's calm and reserved and quiet while Al is excitable, sometimes obnoxious, and loud."
"I see… Such diversity in the band. Do they all live around here?"
"Yeah. They all live in the apartment complex."
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
"That's awesome."
"Yeah, it is."
The two hung out at the pool in for a while, before they decided to both head to Tiku's apartment. Walking into the small apartment, Novak was hit with the very strong scents of multiple candles. Looking around, he noticed there were quite a few candles sitting around, many of them lit.
"A bit of a candle fanatic?" Novak asked, chuckling.
"Don't judge; I like the place to smell amazing. You have any clue how soothing it is after a rough day of classes to walk into a place that smells like heaven?" Tiku retorted, smirking.
"No, I don't, as a matter of fact." Novak replied, laughing. "You have a nice place though. It's smaller than the other apartments I've been in, but you've decorated it nicely."
"And this is just the living room. Come to my bedroom and I'll show you all my music equipment." Tiku said, walking down a short hall to his bedroom. Novak followed and walked into the room, going wide-eyed when he saw the bedroom practically drowning in music-related objects. At least five electric guitars and three bass guitars sat on stands against one white wall, a drum set sat in one corner, and a single violin lay in a glass case hanging on the wall. Instead of just clothes being in the Kosovar student's decently-sized closet, there were amplifiers taking up the floor space, with the clothes hanging from jury-rigged racks hanging from the ceiling.
"How in all Hell have you managed to buy all these things?" Novak asked, dumbfounded.
"I work at Oxenstierna Jewelry in the Clackamas Town Center, and the owner pays me pretty decently. I set aside money for college, set aside money for bills, set aside money for food and whatnot, and then whatever's leftover I use to my own liking. Oh, and add the band's gigs to that. You'd be surprised how much money you can get for a night of doing what you love."
"I see…"
"Would you like to hear some of the band's music? I've got a CD right here." Tiku picked up a CD case off of a dresser and held it up.
"Sure." Novak replied. Tiku walked out of the bedroom and went to a stereo system in the living room, putting the CD in. Novak sat on the couch and listened. Tiku sat next to him and listened as well.
The music began to play, starting off with a slow distorted guitar rhythm that progressed into a heavier tone when the drums came in.
"When all I want is to take this away,
I give it all to you,
Precious, I give it all to you,
When all I want is to keep this at bay,
I leave it all to you,
Love, I leave it all to you!" Alfred's voice was definitely something else, Novak thought. It wasn't deep, and it wasn't high, but the tone was definitely unique.
"Blinded by insight,
We pass the things we care about the most,
Blinded by our broken insight,
Take my heart,
Have my heart!"
"Have a heart,
Have a heart to do what you please with,
Show we care,
Show we know what you're going through!
Take it easy at this part,
Have… a… heart!" A strong scream complimented by heavy guitar riffs made Novak raise his eyebrows in surprise. For such a beautiful male voice to be so powerful at the same time was mind-blowing.
"That's one of the rare screams you get out of Alfred." Tiku commented.
"It's remarkable that he can do that." Novak replied.
"We lucked out when we found Al."
The two sat, listening to the music for a while. Novak was thoroughly impressed with the Kosovar man's band.
"You know, you've learned a lot about me today, Novak. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? It's only fair."
"Well, I was born in Serbia, as you already know. Lived in Belgrade all my life. My father's a war veteran, and I wanted to go into the Army because of that, but I decided against it because I wanted to study to become a mechanic. I gave up on that though, because I couldn't afford it, and I just got tired of Serbia. That's when I went to one of the ports in Montenegro and hopped on my dad's cargo ship. Rode around all over the world on that ship for four months before I came here."
"Maybe while you're here in the states you can study to complete your education in mechanics."
"Maybe, but that'll have to be in the future. I have next to nothing in my possession right now, and I have a very limited amount of money."
"I can ask my boss if he'll hire you."
"It'd help if you could put a word in for me somewhere. Anything helps, you know? I'd rather not have to get kicked out of this complex when I don't have any money to pay bills."
"Yeah. Say, Novak, I'm sorry if this is kind of a personal question, but are you gay?"
"Well… Yeah."
"You sounded kind of hesitant there."
"I'm not keen on telling people I'm gay. My dad is extremely anti-gay. If he knew about me being gay, he would murder me."
"I see…"
"Why do you ask?"
"Well…"
"Well…?"
"I mean, you're just…" Tiku sighed. "Nevermind."
"No, no. Tell me what's on your mind, Tiku. I won't hate you or anything no matter what you have to say."
"Would you… maybe… want to go out on a date with me? I just… We're both gay, we're both single, we get along… And I have to say, you're pretty attractive…"
Novak was silent with shock for a few moments, staring at the blushing Kosovar student.
"You and… Me? Of all people, you want to go on a date with me?"
"I know it's odd, since I'm a Kosovar Albanian, and you're a full-fledged Serbian, but… Can you give it a try? I mean, even if things don't work out, we can still be friends, right?"
Novak though for a moment, then nodded. "Sure… I'll go out with you…" He said with a smile.
"Thanks…" Tiku replied, grinning. "Thanks a lot, Novak."
"No problem… So, when would you like to go out?"
"Well, I've got class tomorrow… I won't be home until around noon, and I'll probably need to sleep for a few hours… So, say around five? I'll meet up with you at your apartment."
"Alright. That gives me time to do what I need to do tomorrow. My apartment is number 17."
"Alright."
"I best be getting going, so, I'll see you tomorrow, Tiku." Novak said, standing and heading to the door.
"Alright. I'll see you tomorrow, Novak." Tiku replied. Novak waved a goodbye then exited the apartment, heading to his own with a strong drowsiness hitting him like a ton of bricks. He got to his apartment and went to his bedroom, lying down and closing his eyes for a moment.
He forced them open when he remembered something he needed to do; call Andelko to see if the man could still take him to the Clackamas Town Center to shop for clothes.
He reached for his cell phone, which was sitting on the bedside table, and grabbed the piece of paper with Andelko's number scribbled down on it. He entered the number into his phone, saving it in his contacts before calling. To Novak's surprise, the Croat answered.
"Hello…?" A tired-sounding Andelko muttered.
"Hey Andelko, it's Novak."
"Oh, hey. Odd time to call; what's up?" Andelko's voice became more chipper when he heard that it was Novak on the phone.
"I was wondering if you could still take me to the Clackamas Town Center. Tomorrow, er… Later today, actually." Novak chuckled.
"Yeah, of course. What time do you want to head out?"
"Would noon be alright? That way we can get what we need to get, and get back here before five in the afternoon."
"Can I ask why you need to be back before five?"
"I've got a date."
"… A date? With who…?"
"Tiku… He kind of asked me out earlier tonight."
"Oh…" Was that disappointment Novak heard in the Croatian's tone? "Well, I'll watch the clock then, and be sure to have you back before five, then."
"Thanks, Andelko. I'll talk to you later."
"No problem… I'll talk to you later."
Novak hung up the phone and sighed, a bit puzzled. Why had Andelko sounded disappointed over the phone when Novak had told him that he had a date with Tiku?
Novak pondered that question for a few minutes, before deciding to go to sleep, closing his eyes and drifting off into peaceful slumber.