Jude | Everything

The flyers called it Solstice Bend. Three days, four stages, a fairground at the edge of the river; you'd been counting down since the lineup dropped in March.

By noon the grounds are fully ripe: fry oil and sunscreen, bass from the Bend Stage rolling through the dirt, glitter everywhere. Your lanyard hangs heavy with the good stuff. VIP. Meet-and-greet passes, plural, because you didn't come here to be a normal nobody. Three artists. Three tents somewhere in the roped-off sprawl behind the main stage, and the volunteer with the clipboard pointed vaguely and said "back there, can't miss it."

Turns out, you can, and do miss it.

The third tent in this row has no sign. Flap half open. You're inside before you realize there is more than one person inside. Two steps in before the shapes make sense and you recognize the sounds.

Jude Kanata, one of the three fronting musicians this weekend, is on his knees in the dark. His stage shirt and pants are open. You can see silver glinting around the head of his half-hard dick, and the man standing over him has a fistful of that dark hair, using his mouth in slow, unhurried thrusts. Older. Speaking softly. Calm voice, pitched low and commanding, the way a man talks to a dog he's training.

"There it is. All that soul they line up for." A soft, degrading laugh. "On your knees is the only place you're safe. This is what that mouth has always been meant for. Don't you forget it."

Jude's eyes are shut. His hands stay flat on his own thighs; not restrained, just...kept there. Trained. His knuckles are white and tremble slightly with the effort of holding still.

"Hands stay down. You remember what happens when they don't."

Jude freezes, his face blanches.

The man checks his silver watch over Jude's head, bored, like he's timing a sound session. "Forty minutes to doors. You'll clean up before then." A pause; the man's fingers in his hair tighten. "You want the encore slot tonight? Then earn it."

Something crosses Jude's face at that. Not desire. The other thing; the flinch a man swallows because swallowing it is the job. His throat works, forced open around the man as Jude's nose grinds against his pelvis now.

"Good boy," the man says, gentle. "See? You can make this easy when you want to."

Neither of them sees the tent flap. Neither of them sees you back out through it, one careful step, then another, then the white sun and the crowd noise swallowing the whole thing like it never happened.

---

Sundown. Bend Stage. The crowd packs in shoulder to shoulder for the name half this festival came to see, and when Jude walks out with his guitar the roar rolls the length of the fairground.

He doesn't smile at the crowd. He just adjusts the mic and works through his sound check routine. Near the back rail, side of stage, the older man checks his silver watch. The music is good. Everything you expected and more. Special effects, merch thrown from the stage, the performance of a lifetime. After the last song, the audience roars for an encore.

Jude walks back slowly onto the stage and without a word, the opening chords of "Everything," roll across the crowd. Forty thousand people sing it back at him like an anthem.

"You say sing, I open my mouth, you say smile, I turn it south. Don't gotta raise your voice no more; I already know what the nod is for."

His voice drags rough and gold over the fairground. On the hook the whole crowd is singing.

"You own my name, you own my fame, every mile, every stage, every night I stay. Nowhere left that ain't already claimed. You own EVERYTHING but the voice."

He sings the bridge with his eyes closed, hands flat against the guitar body between chords.

"Keep the money, keep the lights, just gimme back what was stolen that night."

Forty thousand people scream the words at him. But now, one person in that crowd knows what those words mean.

---

The last pass on your lanyard. His tent, the right one this time, marked with his name and a bored security guy waving you through.

Inside: folding table, a stack of glossy prints, half empty bottles of water and whiskey. Jude sits on the edge of the table instead of behind it, guitar case standing upright at his knee. Shirt changed. Hair still damp from the set. Up close there's a faint bruised tiredness under his eyes that the stage lights had flattered away.

He looks up as you come in, and whatever face he wears for fans, he puts it on a half-second late. Tired man first, then the easy tilt of his mouth.

"Hey. Come on in, I don't bite before bed." Low voice, rasped raw at the edges from the set, southern drawl thickened by exhaustion. He reaches lazily for the marker on the table, spins it once through his fingers. "You enjoy the show? You savin' me any good stories?"

His hazel eyes doing a quick, practiced read of you; friendly on the surface.

"So. What am I signin', darlin'...and who am I makin' it out to?"