Something to Believe In

Twelve

September, 1991

The next couple months seemed to fly by at twice the speed of Light and Sound combined, yet drag on at half the speed of ketchup. Hardly anyone'd heard from CC since that last show in Mears, Michigan on July seventh, so most of the Time, even their manager wondered, if he was dead. It hardly woulda been surprising to send the copsta his place for a welfare check, only for him to be found somewhere in his house, bloated and already turning Colors, 'cuz he'd been dead for so long.

        Rob turned his focus inward the way Pagans were said to do as the Winter months approached–toward hearth, home, and his family. Zep was still thriving, now only a couple weeks or so from turning nine months old, and he couldn't have possibly been happier about that. The lil booger was almost constantly using his fingers as teething toys, if he didn't give him an actual, frozen teething ring or one of his lil teething biscuits. And Gods only knew he'd used his eye for target practice when he was trying to change him more Times than he could count since he was put in his custody. Still, even though he'd been terrified of having to raise this lil booger into a fine young gentleman at first, he wouldn't give him up for the World now.

        One of the other biggest Changes he'd made to his Life was that–as certain in his relationship as he was–he'd popped the question to his girlfriend. Lyric'd made it pretty clear that she didn't wanna legally wed him, which'd upset him–till she said there was a compromise they could go with. As it turned out, there was a Celtic Tradition called handfasting, which was quite literally where the phrase tie the knot came from.

        After it'd been explained to him, the young bassist was all for handfasting, rather than actually legally marrying his girl. It allowed them to take that next step in their relationship without tying themselves down in a way that was expensive to do in the first place and undo later on, if they choseta divorce. Going this route, he could prove to her that he was in it for the long haul without pushing either of them outside their Comfort zones. That being said, that was exactly why they'd thrown together a small, intimate Ceremony for July thirtieth, which allowed them to really celebrate during the Sabbat of Lughnasadh the next Day.

        It was on the afternoon of September fifth, though that he found himself incredibly nervous–more so than Poison's first show as a signed band on the Look What the Cat Dragged In tour. He and Rikki'd both shown up more than early enough to get ready for their all-important performance on the MTV VMAs, yet still have Time to just relax beforehand. Bret'd shown up half-drunk, but sober enough to get through the show without fuckin' up too royally–like the Time Rob'd to be picked up and carried offstage by his tech that was immortalized in the video for Every Rose. Now, they were waiting on their lead guitarist, who still had yet to show up, and he was getting a really bad feeling about that. He couldn't explain why, other than that Intuition of a Water Witch of his was acting up, but he'd the feeling tonight wasn't gonna End well at all.

*         *         *

"Ya sum-bitch!"

        Before anyone could take a breath or blink, Bret's fist was slamming into the side of CC's face backstage after their performance a few hours later. The shortest blonde–who'd since dyed his hair a shade of pink so hot, it made their eyeballs throb to look at it–had finally shown up with just barely enough Time to get ready. However, the trouble didn't stop there, not by a long shot–if anything, it just kept getting worse as the Night wore on, but they hadn't expected it to come to this.

        Rikki jumped in with their manager and several of the backstage crew to separate the brawling band members, completely uncaring of whether he took a few blows, himself or not. Rob's attention was on Casey–who'd since moved out West with her daughter and brought her to see the show–and his young family. He managed to put himself between the women, who were holding their respective baby, and the brawling pair so he'd take any blows that accidentally came their way. Poor Cindy Crawford–who was also backstage tonight–wasn't quite so lucky since she almost took one of the blows that were flying wildly. It was just a completely insane and Chaotic moment for everyone, and few saw the fight-Ender that was hurtling straight toward them.