TWENTY-TWO

 

 

The room seemed to tilt, to whirl sickeningly around Ken, as though someone had shot him through the air and he was just floating, always knowing that he was about to fall and that coming back to earth would hurt.

“No,” Ken tried to speak, but he couldn’t make his voice work. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Lester had fired Justin out of nowhere, and it was because Justin had been arguing with Ken. Did that make it Ken’s fault, at least partially?

“Give me a break,” Jamie commented, and when Ken glanced over at him, he saw anger in the other man’s crystal blue eyes. “You can’t be serious. You’re going to fire our main songwriter? Are you insane?”

Ken had never really liked Jamie, but at that moment, he had to admit that he developed somewhat of a fondness for him. He had tolerated him because it was obvious Lance adored him, but hearing Jamie tell Lester off, that definitely helped Ken’s opinion of him.

“Yeah, come on, man,” Lance added, while Aaron just crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes in a way that was somehow more terrifying than anything else that could be said. Ken found himself abruptly quite glad that he wasn’t the one being stabbed with those remarkable purple eyes.

Having his friends behind him like that, Ken gave them all a grateful look. He had let things get way out of hand, but with these men by his side, maybe he could fix it somehow. So he turned to look at Lester, squaring his shoulders.

“We want him back,” Ken informed their manager, who was smirking at them in a way that Ken didn’t quite know how to read. Was the guy actually petty enough to be glad that he’d put someone out of work? Why did he hate Justin so much, anyway?

“Too bad. He’s the reason we’ve lost all the money. Things will be better now.” There was such a strange tone to his voice, something that Ken didn’t know how to interpret. Ken knew that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but something was up.

The manager looked around at all of them, and there was this furtive quality to his movements, like a trapped animal, that Ken wished he understood better. Something was going on here, some secret which might let him get what he wanted if he could only figure it out.

When Lester saw them all staring back at him, each and every one of them determined and defiant, rage filled his face, and he turned to reach for the door, which Justin had slammed behind himself just a few minutes ago.

Ken wouldn’t let that be it. Even if he and Justin were going through some tough times, even if, as Ken worried about when he let himself think about it at all, he might lose Justin entirely, he wasn’t going to let Justin be treated like this.

Justin was being used. Ken wasn’t sure exactly how he knew, just intuition, spawned by the way that Lester was acting.

“It’s my decision, and he’s gone,” Lester growled, then opened the door and slammed it hard enough that the room shook.

Red, hot rage bubbled through Ken’s veins, hot lava that had been building far too long. With a sound that was almost a scream, Ken grabbed the nearest piece of sound equipment, an expensive microphone, and threw it, hard, against the wall. It shattered into pieces, and while it didn’t actually help anything he couldn’t deny that it felt damn good to do.

“Ken!” Lance’s voice was sharp, but it couldn’t get past the anger. When Ken was really, truly pissed off, nothing really could, and even when Lance came to him and wrapped his arms around him, that wasn’t enough to defuse the explosion inside of him.

“Ken, please! Stop it,” Jamie pleaded, and he was there, too, touching Ken’s shoulder. And that was weird enough, being touched, comforted, by Jamie, but then Aaron was walking over and squeezing Ken’s shoulder, not hugging him, as Lance and even Jamie were, but there and offering his presence.

“He’s not worth it,” Aaron actually spoke, something that he didn’t actually do that often because he only spoke when he had something worth saying. It was one of the reasons that Ken had once had such a crush on Aaron, and yet, while standing this close to Aaron might have once had his heart racing, now he felt nothing like that.

“But …” Ken’s shoulders heaved with his rapid breathing, and more than anything, he wanted to break free of them. Punch a hole in the wall, maybe. But these were his friends, and he realized that they weren’t going to let him.

“I know,” Aaron spoke and then shot a look over at Jamie and Lance, who were nodding. “Something is going on with Lester. He’s trying to hide something, and I think he’s trying to blame Justin for it.”

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Lance spoke up, and his face, normally so light and smiling, was serious, his full lips set in a solemn line. “And I think that it’s our job to figure out what it is.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow, a wild animal had crawled into the depths of Ken’s stomach and was using his stomach as a scratching post. Maybe a tiger. Or that’s what it felt like, anyway, a nervousness so intense that he could barely think about anything else.

There should have been some sort of sense of triumph to this. After all, they had had their suspicions proven correct, and who didn’t like to be right? But in this case, the truth was sort of sickening.

Ken had asked for this one chance, and he knocked briefly on Lester’s door before he pushed it open and went in. One chance to do it right, to give the guy a real chance to come clean before the consequences kicked in.

Those consequences, Ken had been assured, would have a lot to do with how Lester reacted to this. And since it was Ken’s boyfriend, or whatever Justin was to him now, that had been used to hide what Lester had been doing. It was Ken who had asked to go in and speak to him.

“What do you want?” Lester grumbled, hastily shutting his laptop in a way that reminded Ken quite vividly of a day, not so very long ago, when Lester had done the same thing. This time, Ken was watching for it, and he saw what Justin must have seen part of before.

“What are you doing?” Ken asked, looking at this man, trying to figure out where all of the hate and all of the anger had gone. This man just seemed sort of pathetic to him now.

“I asked what the hell you want, kiddo,” Lester replied, his hands still on the laptop, pinning it closed like he thought Ken might just run into the room and yank it open.

God, it really was true, wasn’t it? Part of Ken, the part that actually wanted to think good things about people, had hoped that it wasn’t. That Lester was just incompetent and a bit of a dick. Looking into his eyes, seeing the panic there, Ken knew better.

“I want you to tell me why you fired Justin,” Ken spoke firmly, refusing to look away from the other man’s eyes, refusing to let him escape. “The real reason.”

“I told you already. He was costing us too much money.” Lester met Ken’s eyes, but with an overly firm quality to his gaze that made it very clear that he was forcing himself to do it, that he was trying so hard to seem honest that it was only too obvious that he wasn’t.

“No, I don’t think so. It was because you worried about what he might have seen. Just so you know, though, I don’t think he saw anything. And if you hadn’t tried to fire him, I doubt that we ever would have known.”

There was a sort of uncertainty growing in Lester’s eyes and then the shadowy darkness of fear, too. If Ken hadn’t been sure before, he was now, and what really shocked him was that he wasn’t as furious as he would have expected.

No, the whole thing was so much more depressing than anything else. He had never liked Lester, but he had trusted him, and he knew that the same went for the other members of the band, too.

“I’d watch your back.” Lester rose to his feet, his hands still on the laptop, pinning it shut, as though Ken was interested in tearing it away and opening it. He wasn’t. He already knew what he would find there. “We replaced Darien, and now we’re bigger than ever. We can get rid of you, too, if you think you know more than you should.”

Ken sighed softly and shook his head.

“You might as well come in, guys,” he said, and the door opened again, with Lance, Jamie, and Aaron striding in, along with the head of the record label, a woman with a strict demeanor who was giving Lester a look which Ken was very glad wasn’t directed at him.

“Lara? What’s …” Lester’s voice died down as Lara sighed and shook her head, an expression of sadness on her face.

“You would have been fired either way,” she told him, and she walked over to the desk and picked up the laptop. Lester didn’t quite seem to have the nerve to try to stop her. “But I was trying to decide whether to initiate criminal proceedings against you.”

Ken looked at his bandmates, his friends, and he saw the same expressions on their face. This had been a big betrayal, but at least they still had each other, right? Not that he thought Aaron would admit to something so sappy, but he didn’t have to. It just was, this bond between the four of them, something that no dishonest, crooked manager could ever undo.

“I think she has this,” Ken murmured, and the four of them left because Lara certainly did seem to have everything firmly in hand.

“I think one of us should tell Justin that he probably has his job back,” Jamie pointed out, with a significant look at Ken that showed very clearly just who he thought that should be.

“I’m on it,” Ken said, and despite how much it really did suck to be betrayed like Lester had done, he couldn’t help but smile a little bit. There was a rough road ahead, and he couldn’t even be sure that Justin would be willing to give any of this a try, but he was going to give it his best shot.

But no matter how many times he called, Justin didn’t pick up his phone, and it was then that Ken came face to face with the fact that he really might have lost this forever.