Heart's Done Time (Aerosmith Fanfiction)

Chapter sixteen, part two

Sesame's POV
We were loaded up and pulling out of the high school parking lot by 3:16, and the venue was only two and a half hours away. Unfortunately, it had also snowed buckets since Wednesday night and the roads were icy and precarious to drive upon, not to mention that soundcheck was at 6:00.
Altogether, the odds were against us, with Steven sick as a dog and snoozing in the passenger seat and the road before us too dangerous to risk going the speed limit, and I had to admit I was worried.
The others were too, obviously, but they did well at hiding it under translucent layers of nonchalance, apparently afraid to make me anxious when Steven's illness already had me at my wit's end. I thought that was kind of them, but I didn't say so. Instead I shook Steven awake gently.
"Okay, sweetie, time to dose up," I told him, keeping my eyes glued to the road at all times. "Joey, dear, could you grab that first aid kit and get out the Tylenol, please?"
Joey obeyed, and within half a minute Steven was pumped full of all the over-the-counter pills I dared to give him at one time. He was back asleep even quicker.
"Thank you," I said, peering at Joey through the rear-view mirror and offering him a smile. He nodded his welcome.
Soon--only a few minutes later, in fact--I pulled onto the highway and breathed a sigh of relief to find the roads salted and plowed more than sufficiently, and immediately stepped a bit harder on the gas, causing Steven to stir just a bit. I pretended not to notice, and paid careful attention instead to keeping the speed limit the whole time we were on the highway--thanking whatever god was listening that we hadn't run into rush hour traffic--and making it to soundcheck on time without incident of any kind.
And I succeeded, more or less, for no incident occurred until long after my chauffeur job was completed for the time being.
It was just far worse than I could've imagined.
---
We made it to the venue with time to spare, and with four of the five members all working frantically, Aerosmith's gear was set up in record time and soundcheck could commence. The men at the soundboard were very eager to get started.
At now two and a half hours after we set out, Steven had managed to keep down the water and flu meds he'd swallowed earlier, and was actually looking rather better than earlier that afternoon by the time we got him seated on a stool in front of his mic. The owner had been less than thrilled to see the band's lead singer seated and not bouncing around, but we were able to assure him this was only a temporary thing, and he buzzed off for the time being, leaving the band to complete soundcheck quickly and long before the bar/restaurant's dinner shift began.
That, however, left over an hour of free time that the guys had to kill before they went on at 8:00, and plenty of time for Steven to psych himself out, and so between Joe and I we decided it would be best for everyone if we all stayed put backstage and made sure someone was with Steven at all times. That wasn't too hard though, since most of the guys had homework and Steven wasn't exactly eager to leave my side anyway.
About twenty minutes before the guys were to go on, the owner (he said his name was Brent) showed up backstage and gave the guys their instructions.
"You're on from 8:00 (that's in about eighteen minutes) to midnight, with a half hour break in between the two sets," said Brent. He was large, but not as threatening as his voice would suggest, and he looked perpetually unhappy. He spoke again. "Beer's on the house, but if you get hungry you're gonna have to pay for food," he told Aerosmith, eyeing me for a half a moment before he decided I was just a supportive girlfriend here to cheer on the band. "Any questions?"
Steven piped up then, speaking for the first time in awhile. "Yeah, uhh," he said, one arm wrapped around his abdomen. It just looked like a position preference to most, but I knew better, and I had my hand in his before he'd even finished the question, "where's the bathroom?"
Brent pointed to the door just behind himself and to our left, saying, "if that's it, I'll see you in two hours," before departing. Steven immediately dashed for the bathroom, and I was just a able to slip in before he shut the door hard and dropped to the dirty tile in front of the toilet. From there on it was just like any other pre-show anxiety attack, and I was able to talk him down just in time for the band to take the stage.
I walked him from the bathroom to where the band was assembled and angled him to look me in the eye as I planted a kiss on his cheek. I frowned.
"Steven, honey, your fever's gone up," I managed to get out just before a stagehand yanked him towards the stage, looking apologetic but too frazzled to care about anything other than getting the band on now. I bit my lip, and Steven staggered onstage behind the rest of the band and took his spot at the front, looking pale and small and sick under the stage lights and above the crowd of rockers. The song intro played, and he began to sing.
He did great, actually, when you took into consideration that he'd been coughing up a storm and "drowning in snot" for a few days now, and the first set went beautifully from beginning to end with the other members picking up the slack Steven couldn't in his condition by being every bit as energetic as their frontman usually was. It was one hell of a show, right up to the end.
And then afterwards was when it all went to shit.
The set was completed gracefully, and Steven told the crowd that they'd be back in thirty minutes and not to go anywhere, and then all but stumbled backstage looking worse than I could ever remember seeing him look.
He had lost all color in the matter of moments it took to get offstage, and his cheeks were flushed bright red at the tops of his painfully sharp cheekbones, eyes looking sunken and glassy and so far from earth that it sent shivers up and down my spine. His footing was also unstable, and his skinny legs visibly trembled in time with his skeletal hands. I worried legitimately for a time that he would hurt himself shaking so hard.
And perhaps I was right, for half a minute after setting foot backstage, his eyes rolled back in his head, and Joe just barely made it in time to catch him before he hit the ground in a dead faint.