Honey Drip // Danny Wagner

Part II // Chapter VIII

So short! It ended up being a lot of dialogue. Hopefully you all find it to be worth it nonetheless. Thank you, as always, for reading  & sharing your thoughts! I love you all!

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Josh bounced along beside me, his lips already tinted blue from the slushie he was drinking. I had actually figured the band's new lifestyle--infiltrated by gourmet meals made from free-range, organic, clean foods--would deter all of them from indulging in the middle class comforts of home we all used to; thankfully, I was somewhat wrong. Josh slurped the blue raspberry slushie, Danny was still excited by marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter sandwiches and Jake told us he was in the midst of making chocolate fudge cookies at home. Sam was really the only one who had completely deviated--suddenly he was a connoisseur of top-shelf alcohol and clean living, though I wondered if the amount of empty Fiji water bottles defeated his hippie mentality.

The hippie mentality had always been there for all of them, blue raspberry slushies or not.

Josh's tiny gold hoops caught the sunlight as he bobbed along. How he wasn't getting a brain freeze was beyond me. I had missed him painfully too--the missing of him had been just as painful as it felt to miss Danny, but different. Josh and I went even further back than Danny and I, and seeing videos of him onstage and getting periodic texts just wasn't the same as experiencing him in person. He was always so vibrant--where did he get the energy?

Walking through the village, it was impossible not to notice the looks that Josh got from other people. Even if they didn't all know who he was, his evolved appearance and natural showmanship stole their glances--gold in his ears and on his wrists, long, messy, sunkissed curls, an oatmeal colored t-shirt adorned with a variety of wooden and beaded necklaces. The outfit was far from the svelte and skintight outlandishness of his stage outfits, but it was the way he carried himself that stole the glances too--completely confident, his small frame still emitting a self-assured strut down the sidewalk.

They all walked like that--well, Jake and Danny a little less so. Sometimes I wanted to shake Danny for not being able to see how magnificent he truly was; I thought Jake knew other people thought he was this wildly hot guitar god but you could tell, if you really watched, that he wasn't always convinced. The humbleness was good, all in all, and I was glad for it, but if Danny knew just how highly I thought of him, I think even he would think I was a little nuts.

How could I be blamed, though? I had spent months pining after him, chalking it all up to mere lust, only to have found myself head over heels for him. We were still young and we had been even younger then--the thought of the future still scared me, meanwhile Josh bobbed along my side as if he had no such thoughts. He could live entirely in the present. I could only wish for that ability.

"I love traveling," he said, lifting one hand into the air and waving it as he spoke. "But I really missed this. I didn't even realize how much I missed this."

"Walking down the street with a dollar slushie in your hand?" I asked, smiling all the same. I had missed it too.

"The sun, the air, the people," he went on, catching my glance. "This will always be home no matter what."

"I'm glad you see it that way," I said, noting how flushed his cheeks were against his tanned skin. How much sun were they getting in Detroit anyway? "Home is where all of us are, I think. I can't imagine home without you guys."

Josh elbowed my side. "Especially one of us."

I smirked. "Yes, you, Josh."

"No! Daniel."

"Yes, Daniel."

"So," Josh said, adding a dramatic pause after the word and turning to look at me, our steps nearly in sync. "You two talked?"